Weekend Fun : Aardvarchaeology

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Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.

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Weekend Fun

Category: Having Fun
Posted on: May 23, 2010 1:54 PM, by Martin R

Chore in order to achieve future fun: my wife called in a stump grinder a few days ago and had the remains of a thuja in one of our planting beds disintegrated. I emptied the crater of wood chips (harrisian single-context fieldwork methodology, you know) and she planted a magnolia on the edge.
Outdoors Chinese dinner party with good food and animated incomprehensible conversation. One guest, a retired Peking opera singer, had made excellent wonton soup where the meat stuffing was mixed with a common garden weed, Shepherd's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris, Sw. lomme). Nice cabbagy taste, and now I find that the plant's use in wonton is actually attested in Wikipedia!
Got ass kicked at Agricola even though one participant had never even seen the game before. But I console myself with the thought that the man knows how to program the flight computers in jet fighters.

And you, Dear Reader?

Comments

Grrl and I have been recovering from a week in Helsinki. I did buy a vacuum cleaner, though. As any owner of a y chromosome knows, the way to do housework is to make sure it involves cool toys.

Posted by: Bob O'H | May 23, 2010 2:34 PM

I'd like a robotic one.

Posted by: Martin R | May 23, 2010 2:42 PM

RPGing is on temporary hiatus, the group having reached a consensus that Mutants and Masterminds blows chunks. Next up---Shadowrun.

This upcoming week, the husband and I are on vacation. I plan to sleep 'til noon each and every day.

Posted by: cicely | May 23, 2010 9:47 PM

I never played Shadowrun back in the day. The combination of Tolkien's and Gibson's worlds seemed awkward.

Posted by: Martin R | May 24, 2010 1:26 AM

I've never played it, either. But it was either that, or D&D 4th edition, which I'm not real excited about.

Posted by: cicely | May 24, 2010 2:02 AM

They seem to have focused the new rules on miniatures, dungeon crawls, combat and levelling. I'm more of a Runequest man, as my surname indicates. Give me epic stories, not a job as goblin exterminator!

Posted by: Martin R | May 24, 2010 3:14 AM

We have a magnolia in our front garden. My next door neighbour frightened me by telling me they grow 25 metres high, but I think there are a lot of varieties. I console myself with the thought that I will be dead before it grows that big, and in the meantime, the flowers smell absolutely wonderful and the scent floods the whole garden.

Posted by: Sandgroper | May 24, 2010 6:02 AM

On the other hand, the magnolia has grown half a metre in the one year we have been living here and is already about 3 metres high, so I'm not sure. Ah, life is full of uncertainty. It could be a race, whether it gets too big while I am still young enough to cut it down. I don't know where the roots go, hopefully not into the sewerage pipes.

But who cares - really, the scent of the flowers is worth it.

Posted by: Sandgroper | May 24, 2010 6:29 AM

You might instruct your heirs to give you a Native American tree burial among the magnolia's branches when that day comes.

Posted by: Martin R | May 24, 2010 6:35 AM

LOL! Good idea, Martin. But an Australian Aboriginal tree burial would be more relevant, both geographically and ancestrally.

Posted by: Sandgroper | May 24, 2010 7:42 AM

I hope they decorate your bone bundle with an over-sized phallic didgeridoo.

Posted by: Martin R | May 24, 2010 7:49 AM

I appreciate your kind thoughts.

But if I know my daughter, and I do, she won't want my stinking rotting corpse hanging around. Being the rational student of science that she is, she will have my body burned and my ashes dumped wherever they might do some good by helping some plants grow. If she loves me, and she does, that is what she will do.

Posted by: Sandgroper | May 24, 2010 8:06 AM

I've never tried Runequest. Might be worth looking into....

As near as I can tell, the current D&D developers' philosophy seems to be to sync the tabletop game up with computer gaming, thus hopefully luring in the younger crowd that spends so much of it's time computer gaming. The rest of us, being old, will die soon, anyway, taking our spendable income with us; and that's no use to them.

Not that I'm bitter....

Posted by: cicely | May 24, 2010 5:43 PM

Not that that isn't a perfectly reasonable approach from a purely business POV, but please, won't somebody think of the geezers?!?

Posted by: cicely | May 24, 2010 5:51 PM

cicely: If homebrew RPG games in [future world, some magic (optional), RQ-inspired mechanics] or [ world of today, magic-heavy, "gritty urban" feel, mechanics tailored to the world rather than the reverse ] appeals, I may have something for you.

Future world, RQ-inspired mechanics
Gritty, urban, magic

Martin: Not surprisingly, I know at least one, maybe a few, who fit that description ("male, programs fighter flight computers", at least one I learned to know via SCA. So, on the off-chance it's one of them, say "Hi" to Texas...

Posted by: Ingvar M | May 25, 2010 8:05 AM

Aha, there's more of them! My buddy Anders is a native Stockholmian and does not to my knowledge have any SCA leanings. Though he was a semi-member of the Stockholm Tolkien Society for many years.

Posted by: Martin R | May 25, 2010 8:08 AM

Thanks, Ingvar; I'll go check it out. :)

Posted by: cicely | May 25, 2010 7:53 PM