Mega-Birthday Haul

Hey there!

Well that has got to be one of the biggest and wackiest birthday prezzy hauls I've had in living memory! Not that I'm materialistic or anything ;-) but I do like puzzles and games and things.

Forgi and I spent the day together just doing stuff! Here is us posing with a mutant mushroom of love!

We went to the nearby country town of Waterdown to have a look at the sholps on their main street. We've been meaning to do this for a while as it looked like a good spot. We found a second hand bookshop, a "British food" shop, a second hand clothes shop and a tea room called "Tea at the White House" where we had a Devonshire tea. We also practiced our Tai Chi steps outside in the not-quite-spring cool temperatures of late March.

And here's what I got!

There was a package in the mail from Mum and Kara which had: "The Weather Makers", a book on climate change by Tim Flannery; "The Gunston Tapes", a DVD of clips of Gary MacDonald's comb-overed alter ego; "Sudoku For the Smallest Room: A Book for the Bog" featuring splashproof plastic cover; and four t-shirts with prints such as "Who are you and why are you reading my shirt?" Forgi had done some web-shopping and got: a ThinkGeek t-shirt with an Escape key; a bonus booster pack of PerplexCity puzzle cards (part-trading card game, part Da-Vinci-code-like competition); some notepads and envelopes and magnets from Nut And Bee (dot com) with wacky cartoons; and a remake of the original Nintendo Donkey Kong LCD game on a keyring (because I keep my broken-band watch in my pocket anyway so I may as well have something cool with which to tell the time).

These PerplexCity cards look like fun. It was really only a bonus add-on that ThinkGeek threw in with the t-shirt but is intriguing. There is a $200,000US prize for solving the main puzzle - which involves collecting together the whole set of maybe 200 puzzle cards. There is also an internet element to it.

Josh also sent a demo of an online roleplaying/puzzle game called Puzzle Quest, which I stayed up way too late last night messing around with. If you've ever played the Sega game Columns aka Diamond Mine, then you know the main puzzle part of the game - it's used to represent the battle sequences so that it's testing your wits rather than just your key-pressing reactions and dexterity.

Anyway, that was good! And I still have all of Sunday to just do stuff! And my tax return!

Yay!

Bye!