A Few Quick Notes 110

-Today is another nice summer day in St. John’s. While not hot, the temperature is by no means cold, though I can imagine that some might say that it is cool. Actually, while on my early morning bagel run with my sister, she claimed it was cool enough to need a jacket. Not surprisingly, at least from my perspective, she soon found that it was actually warm enough and removed the jacket.

-As some of you might have been able to deduce from comments written above, Georgetown Bakery has re-opened after their summer hiatus. Not surprisingly, it was pretty busy, many people obviously wanted their fix after going two and a half week without Georgetown products.

-On the subject of stores, several weeks ago I learned that the NLC store on Water Street will be closing in the near future, though I don’t know an exact date. Prior to learning that it was closing I learned, by reading NLC’s annual report, that, comparatively, it did not make that much money. For the year reported, the small store in Churchill Square and the Water Street stores had similar revenues.

This closure may cause some of you to worry that your access to high-end wines will be disappearing, but this is not the case. It seems that controversial new store, built on what was once a field, even now has a better selection of high-end wines than the Water Street store.

-On Tuesday, as is my practice, I went to the Rose and Thistle for their weekly trivia night. As the evening was to get underway promptly at 9:00 PM I arrived a little earlier than usual so that I would be sure to have a good table. Not surprisingly there wasn’t a big rush and upon my entry I became one of only two patrons in the bar. This wasn’t so bad as I had a free copy of the Town Cryer (sp?) with which I was able to distract myself.

With plenty of time to spare Peter showed up and we patiently waited for things to get underway. As we should have expected, this didn’t really happen at the pace that we had been lead to believe it would last week. As usual things got underway ten or fifteen minutes after 9:00 PM.

As the first fifteen questions were being asked there was a definite sense among the participants that they were on the easy side of things. Even if this is the case, my experience is that the second half is typically more difficult than the first half.

Anyway, as we proceeded to the second half we were feeling pretty good about the early round, and pretty good about the questions in the second round, though were definitely a few that we did not get. Unfortunately, the host did not open up a question about the boroughs of New York that would have allowed me to earn us an extra point. Anyway, thing were still ok. Fortunately this week, unlike last week, there were no instances of last minute changes or disagreements that lead to the correct answer being exchanged for the wrong answer. Shortly after the final question we handed the host a copy of our answer sheet (so that he can confirm the score we have given ourselves).

As the correcting started out positive feeling continued, it seemed that we had a few that several other teams had missed, though we also missed a few. By the time the grading had stopped we appeared to have 24 out of a possible 30.5. As the host counted down from 30.5 our hopes of winning grew, particularly as he a steadily approached out number without anyone else announcing a higher score. Suddenly he reached 24 and we alerted him of our having attained that score.

It seemed that another team also was trying to indicate that they too had a similar score. Actually, as it turned out, they were thought that they had 24.5. After the host checked their answers it became clear that they actually had only 24. The host then went on to check our score. Within a few minutes he came over to our table and indicated that he only was able to count 23 on our sheet. We then started to go through the questions one by one, that was until we reached the question about what “SWAT” stood for. It seemed that on the answer sheet that we had given him we had actually written “special tactics and tactics” instead of “special weapons and tactics” as we had written on our copy of the answer sheet. The biggest burn was that we had actually written the correct answer on the back of the sheet that we had handed him. I guess we will just have to be more careful next time.

-Several months ago, May 1 to be exact, I placed an ILL request at the A.C. Hunter library. Since the placing of the request over three months ago I have heard nothing from the library. By this point I would think that they might say that they will not be able to procure the book or give me some kind of time frame, or even just let me know that they haven’t forgotten about the book. I guess I should go back and let them know if they don’t have it shortly then it will be to late, I will have left the province. I just didn’t imagine that it would take more than 3 months (particularly when there is a free version of WorldCat with which they could have located a copy book in about 1 minute).

-Last night I played a game called ‘kubb.’ Apparently this game’s history can be traced back to the Vikings a thousand years ago. The basic premise of the game is that teams are trying to knock down the opposing team’s blocks before their own are knocked down. As one might guess, with a thousand years under its belt many variations have been developed, each of which adds a particular element to the game. If you are curious, it was pretty fun as well as simple. It should also be noted that this is definitely an outdoor game (though as a child I definitely would have been tempted to play a modified version in the living room).

-After reading a biographical timeline outlining the major events in Benazir Bhutto’s life in today’s Globe and Mail I examined their short list of sources. Along side such sources as the Encyclopaedia Britannica and H.W. Wilson were Wikipedia and Famousmuslims.com. While I don’t know exactly how these sources were used, I certainly hope that any information from any of these less than completely credible sources was confirmed in more credible sources. I really would not have expected the Globe, or any self-respecting newspaper, to turn to Wikipedia on such a subject, particularly when certain parties might be interested in presenting her in a certain light. While I don’t know that this is happening, I would still think it too risky to use Wikipedia because of the ease with which such tampering could occur.