Marvelous Thursday

Nothing to report, really.

Humid and cool with a bit of a breeze. I would start out with my jumper (sweater) on because I was chilly, but would soon have to shed it because as I walked I got hot and sticky. I don't like humidity. But at least there's the breeze.

Caleb's school is having a harvest festival service next Tuesday morning. I think they have Thanksgiving envy, so they invented a fall holiday. Caleb's class is reciting a poem about Jamaica and how we get bananas and cocoa beans from there. How harvest-y. I guess. And Caleb gets to say "It has plenty of fertile lands which means there are many farms." I don't know why he's saying this, but we have to help him memorize it. We'll take the camera.

I've got a hair appointment set up for after the thing at Caleb's school. I decided that I'm going to keep my bosh hairdo, but make it shorter. I like having shiny straight hair. I've also set up a massage the week after that. I wish I had seen Sandi H. for a massage before we left home! I'm going to need to see her when we get back, that's for sure. I've found childcare for the girls for afternoons when I need a few moments to myself - like the massage. I'm going to go shopping next Wednesday all by myself. Since I saw the summer English styles, I need to see the fall styles now.

Hmmmmm. Steve has decided to watch "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." I don't know why. We've already seen it once and we decided to call it "Crouching Movie, Hidden Plotline." It makes even less sense this time than it did the first - maybe it's because they keep breaking in with commercials. Cool flying through the air and martial art-sy sorts of things, but we can't make heads nor tails of it.

So Steve played skittles the other night. Sort of like bowling. He went with a guy from work to the rec center place at AWE. They sat around in a pub-like place drinking pints and watching the game. There was one lane. This is what he has to say about it:
It's 9 pins instead of 10 set up in a diamond, rather than a triangle. You play 8 "legs" (frames) with 2 teams, 8 on a team. You need that many cos generally they don't have many automated pin resetters. The teams take turns going to the end to reset the pins and roll the balls back. The balls are grapefruit-sized and the pins are set so that there's enough space between each pin for the ball to fit through. You get 3 balls for each leg. If you knock down all 9 pins during your 3 turns, they set the pins back up and you finish your leg of 3 turns. So the best you can do in one leg is 27. Three turns knocking down all 9 pins each turn. Spares are rare. Sometimes players can go several games without anyone getting one. Strikes are as rare as an all-beef hamburger in an English pub. It's a quintessential pub sport. They had a board with team and personal best scores going back to the 1950s. It's truly more of a social event than a serious sporting event. At least at this level.

That's all from Steve. I'm supposed to tell you now that he won. The money pot was composed of an ante of 50 pence from everyone, but part of that went to pay for the game, then you had to pay 10p (pence) if you only hit between 4 and 5 and you had to pay 20 if you got 3 or less. Because only Steve and one other guy on their team bowled spares, they split the pot. Whoever bowls a spare gets the pot, but if nobody bowls a spare, it goes to whoever has the highest score. So Steve came home £1.37. Impressive, no?

This Saturday is the Craft Fayre at Caleb's school. They spell "fair" as "fayre" here. Weird. Pronounced the same, though. Like "tyre" for "tire." So I'm going to go to the fayre (but I won't ride no rides, dc) to see what sorts of handicrafts they have here in the UK. I've already done a bunch of Christmas shopping, so I don't anticipate buying much, if anything. But supposedly they have make-and-take crafts for the kids, so I might drag "the fam" along with me. Or at least the 2 big kids.

I'm going to sign off now and go knit. If I don't get going on this cardigan, it will be May before I get it finished.

Oh - one more thing. I'm going to go to the Community Bible Study class tomorrow. They're doing Matthew. I did that one the first year I was in CBS in Los Alamos, but apparently the CBS International classes do condensed lessons, so it will be different. The class has about 16-20 people, including leaders. This is definitely a far cry from my class at home, but I am *so* looking forward to it!

Night!