LucasArts is expected to release Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings this spring. The trailer looks very cool and I would love to play this game, but unfortunately it is not coming out on the PlayStation 3, which is the only gaming console I have. The game has been in the making for years but apparently LucasArts recently dropped Xbox 360 and PS3 from this title’s release because it would be too expensive to make. I’m so surprised that new games like this would come out for PS2 and not PS3 … I’m very disappointed.
Anyway, seeing the trailer reminded me of some of my most favorite adventures games of 20 years ago. I was too young to really get into the text-based computer games but starting in the late 1980s I was a huge fan of graphic adventure games like the Space Quest series by Sierra On-line and classics like Monkey Island by Lucasfilm.
Here is a list of my favorite classic adventure games:
We used to like to make fries at home. In Holland we had a very nice large black pot with a wire fry basket insert and a glass lid. It was perfect to use for stove-top frying, and we loved it. So why the heck didn’t we bring it with us?! Because it was big, bulky, and breakable, and we thought it would be easily replaced. Ha!
We looked for frying pans with baskets at all our local shops (Kohl’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, Sears, Walmart, Target, etc) but they only sell electric fryers. So I had a look online. Plenty of shops sell minuscule pots of 4 quarts or less. I figured we need at least 7 quarts, but even bigger would be better (I guess our beloved old one was 9 or 10). I found one restaurant specialty shop that sold baskets and fryers separately at reasonable prices, but shipping was crazy (about the same price as the implements themselves). Then I found out that Farberware makes a 7Q fryer with a basket, and that I could purchase it from Target.com with reasonable shipping costs. Yay! I placed my order.
Despite the State of Illinois’ deficit of nearly $9 Billion and a recession with record unemployment, the Illinois Senate has apparently plenty of spare time to vote on trivial issues such as whether or not to make Pluto a full planet again. A bill that was unanimously-approved by the ninety-sixth general assembly of the state of Illinois declares that as Pluto passes overhead through Illinois’ night skies (whatever that means?!), it be reestablished with full planetary status.
Uh, shouldn’t they leave this sort of astronomy stuff to the astronomers? Pluto was downgraded to a dwarf planet in 2006 after the International Astronomical Union defined the term “planet” for the first time and reclassified Pluto as a member of the new category of dwarf planets along with Eris and Ceres.
Last night on The Colbert Report, Stephen wagged his finger at God for being Dutch! Apparently, a Dutch artist named Johan van der Dong set up a phone line in Holland that you can use to leave messages to God. The number of God’s Hotline is +31644244901 and will be up for the next half year for people to call and leave a message. Stephen believes that the number is for atheists who do not have the nerve to break up with God in person.
Fast foward to 3:05 in the following video to see the segment:
In this video from ScienCentral, chef Elliot Prag of the Natural Gourmet Institute shows how easy it is to make your own vegetarian bacon. Just add some salt and olive oil to shitake mushrooms, put them in the oven and voilà: pig-friendly bacon! Great to toss in a salad for some extra taste. We recently tried the Veggie Bacon Strips from Morningstar in a BLT and were pleasantly surprised by its strong bacon taste. I am going to have to try these mushrooms too, it looks so simple.
Today’s photo is from our visit to the largest salt lake in the Sahara, the Chott el Djerid in Tunisia. A road of 60 km crosses this 7,000 km2 salt pan. We were passed by hundreds of white Land Rovers racing south to take tourists on desert safaris when we drove this road from Tozeur to Kebili. There were some rest stops with refreshments along the way and at one of these places they had left this row boat.
It’s been slow at our bird feeders since we moved in here. In the weeks since we put them up we’ve only had two different birds visit our feeders: one goldfinch and a few dark-eyed juncos. Whoop-te-do! So you can imagine our delight when we saw two Black-capped Chickadees at our feeders this morning. That makes three different birds so far. We’re getting there.
Yesterday we went to Nippersink Forest Preserve for a walk, which was rather unpleasant because of the freezing wind. We saw only two other people there that were crazy enough to be outside in the cold. We made only a quick walk around the lake before our faces froze off but did see most of the area and trails. It seems like a nice place that we’ll need to check out further in the spring, when it’s warmer.
Here’s a panorama photo (16 pictures stitched together with Windows Live Photo Gallery) from a lookout point at the south side of the park:
We saw this Little Bee-eater at Kotu Creek in The Gambia. He was flying around catching bees and kept returning to the same place on this branch. Every few minutes he would get a bee and hit it repeatedly against the branch to remove the sting. Then when the bee wasn’t moving anymore he would squeeze venom out before swallowing it. You can actually see a little squirt of venom come out of the bee. We watched this colorful little guy and some of his friends do this over and over again.
We are Arthur and Amy. We met online in 1997 and have lived together in the Holland for 9 years and are currently living in the Chicago area in Illinois.
On this blog we write about our life in the Netherlands
- Arthur's native country - and America - Amy's home land. Our
hobbies include traveling, birding and
scuba diving.
