44 new things #4 - Bowling for Charity

At lunch today I bowled for charity (the annual food drive on campus). I was a last minute sub for one of the library teams. It's been a long time since I've bowled - when I lived in Colorado, I used to bowl with a singles group occasionally.

For someone who hasn't bowled in over a decade, I didn't do too badly. Using a random ball and wearing men's bowling shoes (they were out of women's shoes in my size), I got an 81. That includes 1 strike (and 3 gutterballs). I don't think anyone would challenge a pro bowler - or even a league bowler. I was the 3rd best on my team and probably a little below average overall. I'll need to soak my behind tonight - that muscle doesn't get exercized enough.

One of the sponsors for the team I was on had pledged one item of food for every gutter ball, so even the gutterballs weren't a total loss. Most of the other sponsors were pledging .01 to .10 per pin, with various bonuses. I pledged a bonus if anyone got a turkey (3 strikes in a row), but no team got that.

Westminster Dog Show

I'm watching the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show tonight - they've had the Working Group and the Terrier Group (my favorite) so far. I fell in love with the Glen of Imaal Terrier. It's probably easier to list the breeds I don't care for than the ones I like, but I'll try.

This year, I liked the Cairn Terrier, the Lakeland Terrier, the Miniature Schnauzer, the Norfolk Terrier, the Norwich Terrier, the Scottish Terrier, the Welsh Terrier, and the West Highland White Terrier.

Did you know that if you type terrier enough times, it looks misspelled?

British PSAs

KOr as they call them in the UK, Public Information Films. BBC Magazine is airing one historical ad every day in February; today's is Splink, a 1976 traffic safety ad for children. The other ads are here. The oldest one is from 1948 (on coughs and sneezes); most are from the 1960s and 1970s. Most of them are unintentially funny, usually due to dated graphics. The strangest (and the most disturbing) is the "Dark and Lonely Water" spot. It's really creepy.

A good Southwest mystery

I just finished Thief in Retreat, the second Sister Agatha mystery by Aimee and David Thurlo (best known for their Ella Clah novels).

I really enjoyed Bad Faith, the first Sister Agatha mystery, when I read it a few years ago. Sister Agatha is a nun in a cloistered community in New Mexico. She is an extern, one of the 2 nuns who has contact with the outside world. Bad Faith had a pretty good mystery, interesting character, and a fascinating look at the life of a cloistered nun.

Thief in Retreat is also good, if not quite as interesting as the first book. In this book, the archbishop asks Sister Agatha to look into a mystery of art missing from a former monastery turned into a hotel. I think some of the flatness of the story was that Sister Agatha spent all except the first chapter of the book out of the cloister. Also, there was a unrealistic and completely unrelated incident in the first chapter, where Sister Agatha is running errands for her house and accidently walks into an armed robber, who she takes out with the help of her dog.

I'll check out the third book when it is published later this year. Overall, I recommend the books if you like cozy mysteries.

Gold Medal for Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony Play by Play goes to

Biscuit on The Perfect World.

The Amber Room

Just finished reading The Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure by Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy. Fascinating book, even though there is no final definitive resolution to the mystery. Their proposed solution, while plausable, couldn't be confirmed.

It was very interesting how the story of the Amber Room, which was stolen by the Nazis during WWII, only to disappear at the end of the war, was so wrapped up in post-war and Cold War politics.

I could never do the kind of research that the authors did - working with layers upon layers of Russian and German bureaucracy where it was often only by working indirectly through others who had the right connections that they could get access to relevent material. Waiting weeks for approval to see material, only to be told that if they didn't look at it immediately upon being granted permission, they would never be able to see it. The frustration levels must have been staggering.