Indoor Gardening

At a DellCon this year E had played and very much enjoyed Sanssouci. A game with a theme of laying out a formal garden.

This was duly noted when it came to looking for prezzies.  Despite much scouring of online and offline games shops I had failed to find a copy.  Eventually sourced a copy from Germany.  Predictably, it was a German copy but this isn't a problem as the game is language independent (i.e. no text on the board or cards) and you can download translated rules from BoardGameGeek.

The day started very casually with us nudging the boys out of bed around 9am and the traditional unwrapping of small silly presents sitting on Mum & Dad's bed.  This worked rather more easily (albeit earlier) when they were 5, 7 and 9 than when they're all in their 20's!

Then the traditional walk, albeit one involving hills which wasn't quite the tradition in Cambridge.  (Wandlebury does not count). The views from British Camp were, err, absent (see extra) but the air good and, um, bracing.

'A' is here with us now and we've had a relaxed day of real fires, games, food, food, games, food and Doctor Who.

Bit of a theme on the presents. We seem to have bought each other around 50 hours of DVD, most of which we actually wanted to watch ourselves.

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I'm going to start adding the following to my postings, just in case a passing reader isn't aware of the situation and can help:

Are you aware that the future of Blip is very much in question?

It is unlikely to survive longer than a few weeks of 2016 unless a 'community buy-out' is successful.  The original 'Blipfoto' failed a year or so ago. The then buyers ('PolaroidBlipfoto') have failed to make it profiable and will close it soon.

Four plucky Blippers are coordinating a Community Buy-out ("BlipFuture") so that we can own it ourselves as a Not-for-Profit venture. They are asking for pledges to buy shares in the new venture.  Treat this as a donation and not something you'll ever get back. If you value the Blip journals, even if it's only one, now is the time to place a figure on that 'value' because every contribution is needed, and it's needed before the 11th of January.

Please see https://www.blipfuture.com/invest