We dined at the Beach Chalet overlooking the Pacific Ocean (foggy night but you could make out the ocean waves as slowly-descending lighter bands on darker background), 7:30 reservation for greatest flexibility for the rest of the evening.
(Enough colds went around in December that until right before the 31st, it wasn't a sure thing that we'd both be healthy.)
Rang in the New Year with Julia's best friend, her husband, their wedding photos, some Ali G, and some Family Guy.
Spent January 1 with Julia's parents, exchanging gifts and such. Joe's mention of Apples To Apples gives me fond memories and makes me wonder: Could this game be playable among people whose native language is not English? I'm thinking of a group of Russians who generally came here in the 1970s and have known each other ever since but have varying degrees of English fluency.
Dealt with household repairs on Sunday, eating up more question-writing time than I would have liked. (Not that this NFL schedule thing didn't eat up question-writing time itself. Now that I'm finally satisfied with one (or so I think) - now that I finally have one where I can honestly say, "Yeah, it's plausible that they can use this intact" and not point to specific "no, they'd never do it that way" flaws, maybe next year and ever after I'll be free of the temptation to plug away on that. Unless... if I were a better software developer of course I'd design an automated scheduler. Just define every parameter as explicitly as possible, use brute force and computing time to reach a schedule that meets all parameters; if you're not satisfied then figure out how to express what needs to be fixed as an additional parameter and repeat...)
Posted by Matt Bruce at January 3, 2005 12:43 PMMy buddy John Cooper (http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Ginohn/news.html) had this to say when I forwarded your posting to him:
This game is not my cup of tea (though many people do like to play it so I must be missing something) but I think people who have a limited vocabulary could still enjoy it. You might try Apples to Apples Jr., which may (I haven't seen it so I'm guessing here) have fewer references to American trivia.