If you have a special place in your heart for simplistic, zero character development plots involving wizards, talking swords and kidnapped princesses, 8 bit graphics, command lines, cryptic text parsers, Midi music and 5 1/4 floppy disks you'll get a kick out of the web series Deeds of Yore. The year is 1987. After an all night gaming binge on his Commodore 64 David Grigsby wakes up to find that he's lost his girlfriend, his job and his car. To drown his sorrows David heads over to the electronics store where he picks up a cheap adventure game called, "Deeds of Yore." That night, as the game is loading, a mishap with some tequila causes his Commodore 64 to malfunction sucking him into the Land of Yore. Here's where the story picks up:    <p>Je</p> Note: I made Jean endure watching most of the 13 episodes and she admitted that she found them funny.

Camping without a tent not so much fun Back at the clearing we flipped on our phones. No bars. Not even enough reception to get a text message through. It was probably a good thing. I’m not sure what I would have told whomever we managed to get a hold of. I imagined my end of the conversation going something like this. “Hey, how's it going? Well, I'm calling because um.. Jean and I lost in the Blue Mountains." "Really, we are. It's crazy isn't it? But don't worry. Neither us is hurt or anything. I think we'll be okay." "Yeah, I know, it seems like people get lost in the Blue Mountains all the time. We've become statistic." "Yeah, I'll tell Jean in a second. I'm sure she'll think that's ironic too. Anyway, we'll be spending the night out here I guess. We should be fine but if you don’t hear from us by midday tomorrow, call the police I guess, alright? Yeah, thanks. Bye. Yep, you too. Bye.” ...

Sydney weather forecasting is very much an arcane art. Where in Texas, hot and sunny is often a good bet and the meteorologists can prognosticate with a fair amount of accuracy the extended Sydney climate projections often delve into pure fantasy. Even a day out, the predictions are suspect. Many times I’ve seen the little weekend weather icon on my desktop that so stolidly declares sun all week long suddenly shift to partly cloudy to overcast to thunderstorms over the course of a few hours on a Friday afternoon just before the rain begins to fall. The weekend before our Mungo excursion most weather sources were calling for sun. It had been a mixed week and we weren’t overly confident. Not keen to waste a sunny Saturday though we loaded our day packs Friday night. At dawn on Saturday I padded out into the living room to take a look. The blanket of clouds that had been with us the day before had vanished over night and it was all clear sky as far as I could see. I woke up Jea...

The Saturday before last, between a lackluster winter clothing shopping foray and a grocery store stock up extravaganza, we swung through the Paddington market. The Paddington market is a weekly affair featuring a wide variety of artisans and their Australian made wares, diverse and delectable treats and musical performances that are sometimes a bit esoteric. Meandering through the stalls we found some really beautiful and clever work. I particularly liked these photographs encased in thick laminate. The clear casing, a little over an inch thick, caused a variety of lighting effects dependent on the angle of the light source. When holding up a photo of a sunset scene up to the actual sun the red and orange hues in the picture seemed to glow. In the end, we restrained ourselves to only purchasing the wind chimes pictured above along with a couple more similar pieces for gifts. The glass maker was a genial and talkative fellow. As as he carefully wrapped up the wind chimes we had q...