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This is Slanty’s third game of online diplomacy (but the second based at the turn of the century Europe, so WWI).  Those of you that weren’t involved don’t know about the intrigue, the terse emails, and the Black Sea Betrayal — or you might have been forced to listen to a significant other go on about it.

You can see the entire history of the war in this PDF.

Congrats to Russia and Austria (Matt and Mr Sodomy) for taking the continent.

We will gather people for another game at the same pace.  If you’re interested, weren’t involved in the last game, leave a note in the comments.

The trip to Australia was for Kate’s sister’s wedding.  It was a great day, lovely venue and happy people!  Shaun and Em were fortunate that it didn’t rain, but then again it is Australia…

Kate went shopping with the “Swift girls”.  After going from the £ to the $ everything looked cheap, maybe that was why she bought so much??

A very small selection of photos appears here (we were too busy to take photos!)

So it’s that time of year again, our annual flood season has arrived! Here’s some stories told on the BBC website.

This isn’t particularly remarkable, but what is funny is that we’re moving to a house on a road called Loopland Park. We move in next weekend, but watching a bbc video today (no link, don’t think you can watch it outside the UK) about the flooding and up popped our street! So I grabbed a screen-shot so all can enjoy.

The good news is we’re at the higher end of the street so no flooding damage, though for a brief moment I had hoped that maybe we’d have a swimming pool.

Following Battle, Tom and I meandered back to Oxford. From there we made a few day trips out and about. Notably we made it to Winchester - the former capital of England (during King Alfred’s time). Winchester is a great place, a lot of the buildings are either still in use, or are open air museums. We found King Arthurs Round table, well it was a fake, a 700 year old fake, but impressive non-the-less!

With Kate in tow, we also made a trip to the Cotswolds. We were able to find some old stones, in particular, the Avebury Circle. It’s like Stonehenge but about 1500 years older! It’s thought to align stuff during certain periods of sun/moon etc! Neat I tell you… Funny thing is, the town of Avebury is smack bang in the middle of the stones, and the main road runs through the circle, having to turn a bend so you don’t hit any stones…

One other trip of note was a leisurely ride to Banbury. There is a canal that runs from Banbury to Oxford that used to be used to transport goods (pre-rail).  To drag the barges horses were used so there is a tow path alongside the canal where they walked. Now the canal tow path is a bike/walking track. The first few miles out of Oxford is very lovely and picturesque! However, we eventually hit foliage. Lots of it… and heaps of stinging nettles too. Of the 44 km, we managed about 30 before we gave up! Never again, I tell you. Ridding through nettles and other plants that are higher than you is not my idea of a nice ride. Good thing I had Tom to whinge at!

So that’s about the extent of my arm of Tom’s visit. There were some pubs involved too, but I won’t bore you anymore!

Our next trip was Australia! I didn’t take many photos there, but I’ll put some up soon.

How about some pictures?? (more here)

So, we’ve made some more changes in the way we’re doing things around the house.

You may know, that our environmental conversion started small, first with a clothesline in the summer months, and then we moved to cloth diapers and a new hot water tank (ok, that latter one was kind of a last minute thing).

The latent environmentalism doesn’t mean we’ve changed how we think or anything — we’re not any more likely to vote Green than we were previously.  I believe that we simply consider the future a little more with the little guy around.

So we’ve also switched to phosphate-free dishwasher detergent (trial run, have tried both the Seventh Generation and the President’s Choice brands) — hoping that this sort of thing will become law as it has in Manitoba (I believe) and that prices will fall.

We have also drastically changed the sorts of things we used to clean the house.  This is what I use for the majority of our cleaning.

Cleaning Stuff

It’s baking soda, vinegar and liquid dish soap.  I find it weirdly satisfying to clean the house with things that I might use in my food — the dish soap excluded of course.  And I worry a lot less about using gloves or getting overwhelmed by odors.

It works, so tell a friend.

Here’s my photos from India for your perusal:

There’s a lot there, but I figured why not just upload them all, and then if you’re really really bored, you’ll have something to do for about 5 minutes before you get even more bored. I was by myself so I’m not really in that many of them, but that’s probably for the best.

So its been a few weeks since getting off work.  My leave is 25% over already, and I haven’t done many of the things I’ve been meaning to do (I’ve got work to do on the deck yet… that may be a dream… I’ll get around to hosting a nice BBQ well before that).

I have gotten fully into the routine for the kid, and the routine I’m likely to follow for the next eight weeks.  Having figured out everything for basic survival, I’m now trying to figure out the next steps for the kid — things for the future — the next toys and activities for the kid.  So for your amusement, I give you a line from a toddler class description that I was reading.  “Open to children who can refrain from putting clay into their mouths!”  (Emphasis is theirs, not mine.)

One of many signs that my life has changed, I suppose.

Other milestones in the last couple of weeks:

• He’s pulling up on furniture, so his range has increased.  Quick, hide the booze on the VERY top shelf!
• He’s figured out how to drum (ie: object A strikes object B equals amusement!), and I’m encouraging him to use pots and pans — they’re cheaper than toys unless he destroys a teflon pan.  They are also louder, so please send me all communication in written form.
• We were down at the Vancouver Chinatown festival the other day to look around — we caught a small section of guided tour and might go again next year.  But he was slurping rice noodle at lunch like a champ.  He gets that from me.