At the risk of blowing my own trumpet (but, hell, I am proud of it), my highest point is the summit of Mera Peak in the Himalaya at 6476 metres (21,247 ft). I now live at about 40m asl.

[Rosie] No, my fault, not yours. I just remembered because my highest is almost identical to yours, but in a completely different part of the world (Colorado Rockies).

(INJ) I'm impressed. Did you need oxygen? It's not warm up there either, is it? (Guess -15°C, if summer, plus a "breeze").

[Rosie] - No oxygen. I was slowed down by the lack of it, but not reduced to gasping. The main effect was that I lost my appetite completely. I was there in March-April, so pre-monsoon. Overnight it was regularly down to about -20°C. During the day there was a lot of bright sunshine, but I reckon the shade temperature didn't get above freezing; it was fleece jacket, thick gloves & balaclava even when working quite hard and down clothing as soon as the sun set.
Mera is the highest 'trekking peak' in the Himalaya, anything over 6500m is a 'climbing peak' even if there is no technical difficulty. However Aconcagua is higher and presents no technical difficulties and is only about 20km from a good motor road. It's probably the ultimate challenge for the non-climber.

(INJ) I'm further impressed. The pressure up there is about 42% of sea level pressure. Apparently the lack of oxygen causes considerable problems with cognitive tasks but as I imagine you weren't writing up a PhD up there it probably didn't matter. Well done! I could manage Leith Hill (965 ft) these days but probably not Snowdon (3561 ft) even if I called it Yr Wyddfa.

[Rosie] Acclimatisation helps a lot. We flew in to about 2400m and then walked in for about 10 days, mostly on the ‘walk high, sleep low’ principle, which got us to a camp at about 5300. We then did a short day up to 5800 and then a push to the top. I reckon the last 700m would have taken me a bit over 2 hours from sea level (I was fitter then), and actually took between 4 & 5 hours. We then dropped about 1500m, to below the previous 2 camps. As for cognitive impairment – I ‘lost’ a good part of the next day. I couldn’t remember much of it only a day or two later and have never been able to, even prompted by photos. Another interesting effect was that my tent companion went into a pattern of Cheyne-Stoking while asleep – disturbing when you first hear it, but common at altitude. Of course, one of the effects of the cold and low pressure is that the air is extremely dry – it was hard to drink enough, especially as water bottles exposed to the air froze. It’s the physically hardest thing I’ve ever done and I certainly couldn't do it now.

The good news is that we've discovered the cat is a mouser (one of the reasons for getting her). The bad news is finding this out obviously entailed a renewed incursion. We look forward to being woken up by her dropping half-dead mice on our faces and being shown how to kill them. Will need to look at the bait trays over the weekend to see where its been taken. Sometime over the next few weeks we're getting our floors repaired which should seal up some of the holes at least.

Revisiting the bait sites I discover the trays in the kitchen are untouched, which is good news, but the one I put under the sink cabinet in the bathroom had disappeared! I have an image of a family of mice living in a red tray marked 'Poison' somewhere down there...

[Rab] I've seen that Tom & Jerry episode...

A week with nothing to say? Yikes!

Perhaps we need a couple of new games, as we've not had any in 8 months (ignoring Mystery Crescent, restarted after running out of steam. Well gosh, it's run out of steam again!)

I'll kill it off if no-one can be bothered to play (and if I can remember the winning move - I don't think I wrote it down anywhere).

I think Tuj is right. This is a great mc site, but we have perhaps let it get a bit stagnant. My vote is for keeping AVMA, since it is almost a defining game of this server, but some of the other games could be given a breather. And with that in mind, I've killed the clerihew game.

imho, pretty much any of the other games could be rested.

[Kim] I think that may be the case - it's suffered from not being quite the right game for the pace of the server.
Meanwhile, could Film Club be due a more meritorious retirement? The thing is, now we need to have some suggestions for new games to spruce up the place!

I know I've not been here much recently, but perhaps Film Club could be retired in favour of a Book Club? Or if anyone was wanting to pretend to be youthful again, how about a video games club? It might test people's Google skills if nothing else!

Of course, at this time of year, Dunx's annual Festival of Crescent means that attention is necessarily (albeit temporarily) diverted elsewhere. But I'm always in favour of a cull.

[rab] .....two things happen. The first is - you can't remember the winning move of a game that you created and the second is, errrr...., oh yes, you have to ask for help in killing it.

[Kim] Think Richard O'Sullivan.

[Rab] None the wiser. I kept thinking of Gilbert O'Sullivan and it put me off.

Right, er, Chatsworth, or Lanhydrock maybe.

Can we have a banter game of some kind?

Well, I wouldn't contribute to it.

Having instigated this, I feel responsible - and I certainly don't want blood on my hands if the game slots vanish entirely again =(
However, I've not really got any ideas. Except, well... I've seen an online game called NationStates where one runs a country via its inner workings. So I wondered if perhaps we could invent the continent of Morningtonia, each stake a claim to some land and then see how our national/international diplomacy skills are... and hope that the answer to the question "When does the game end?" isn't necessarily "NUCLEAR WAR!"

... I'd like to suggest a game called "Lead Balloon".

Cat chess? This rules variant is slightly different from the last one I saw, but looks promising.

[Tuj] A game of Morningtonian Government sounds like fun to me.

I like both ideas that don't involve cat chess. I don't understand how Cat Chess would work. Bantering would be my vote if it is an ether/ore choice.

Have you noticed that there isn't a single game of "Mornington Crescent" in play on this server. Why don't we start one of those?

How do you play that then, Kim?

I dont' think MC itself works very well here. It really has to be played live so that the players can display all the mock-gravity and in-depth knowledge of arcane rules that this involves. It's a performance, really, and needs rather good actors.

Then maybe a game of 'Dress Rehearsal Mornington Crescent' will show what sheer hard work has to go into putting on a slick performance in the Game itself? I'm thinking this might give us an insight into the director's final, fraught instructions, the referee's frantic consultations with the rule book(s) and the performers' last-minute nerves showing through.

Game slot still available, of the suggestions go along with pen.
Dusted the cob webs off the BBQ over the weekend. My only quibble was the sausages, those from the local butcher cooked a treat but the Walls sausages almost went up in flames they were spitting so much fat.

[Rosie] A lot of the games are like that -- improv theatre, really. Take a look at the yorkives link on the front page here and contemplate the glories of the past, when MC was the main game played.

Talking of which. Is this someone we know?

Ah, just seen it's CANCELLED - but I guess the question still stands...

(rab) Do you really need to ask that?

[rab] Yep, that's us. All things considered, just as well we cancelled (a couple of months back) as only one song is yet complete, and we keep going back to the synopsis and tweaking. Should show up next year in the form of a reading or full production, hopefully. We're devoting tomorrow to completing a 10 minute extract which will be done this year at Theatre 503 in London, then podcast as an audio-format musical.

Good luck. If you do ever come up to Edinburgh be sure to drop me a line so we can catch up over an IPA or something.

[rab] Coincidentally, I'll be teaching a course on the IPA next semester.

[rab, Néa] aɪd lʌv ə bɪə

What do all the little squares mean?

(rab, Néa) Isopropyl alcohol is not good for you.

[SM] They mean your browser isn't rendering International Phonetic Alphabet symbols

[Rosie] Any chance you can get the rain to stop? It's started leaking into our flat. Roofers have been called but they're a bit busy today.

(rab) Edinburgh, yes? It'll gradually peter out but Saturday afternoon brings another dollop. Hope you can get it done before then. This used to happen at work rather a lot so we set up an indoor raingauge network.

(rab) It was wet day even for Scotland with 40 mm in parts of Edinburgh, according to this. Edinburgh's mean annual rainfall is actually considerably less than mine in the dripping wet Surrey uplands. (680 mm vs 815 mm)

I suppose if you get 6% (21 days' worth) of your annual average rainfall on one day you can expect problems. Two surprising things about Edinburgh -it's further west than you think (more so than Bristol) and not as wet as you think. Paisley (just to the west of Glasgow) has twice as much rain as Edinburgh.

[Rosie] Rest assured, the men are up there now tying the chimney down. It needs to resurfaced or something, which means we need to get somewhere between 7 and 10 neighbours to contribute to the costs. Oh what fun!

(rab) What fun indeed! Glad it's never happened to me (yet). More rain Saturday but fairly routine stuff.

It has been pissing down (scientific term) here in Brussels for as long as memory serves. I drove the new Alfa to Cologne on Friday and visibility in the rain was worse than in a carwash. Don't you just love summer in Northern Europe?

(ISP) The official term is AFPD. Take heart; this is a bad summer by most standards and least it's better than winter.

It has been a lot better over here than up north this summer. We have avoided rain for the most part (apart from 72mm in 4 hours the Sunday before last). It's looking a bit iffy for the rest of the week, though.

Does anyone here like cold tea? I do.

Yes, especially with ice and a slice of lemon or a sprig of mint.

Iced tea, yes. Hot tea gone cold: URHGURHUGHHUHYYEEAEAUURK.

I generally don't drink tea, but regularly drink hot coffee gone cold, and occasionally iced coffee. I hasten to add that if I had milk in my coffee, I would, in all probability, drink it neither iced nor gone-cold.

(Softers, Graham III) No, I meant tea gone cold. Great! Coffee gone cold is just as good. I make a virtue of necessity because having brewed it I get on with doing something and forget about the drink.

Well, I drink tea and coffee without milk anyway.

Once I have made myself a cup of tea, I'll drink it all, even if it has gone cold. Coffee less so. I love iced tea, and iced coffee, and make both at home in the summer. If I'm at home, I put milk in tea and coffee. If I'm in Holland, I'll drink them without milk.

Yeah, what Raak said!

Panna cotta, custard, Yorkshire puddings, macaroni cheese, icecream, buttered toast, cappucino, parsley sauce... [Phil, Raak] I don't believe you.

[pen] I was with you all the way until you mentioned parsley sauce, whereupon Raak suddenly started to make more sense.

[CdM] OK. Switch that to 'peppercorn sauce' for your rib-eye steak.

[pen] Well, I don't like milk, custard, panna cotta or cappucino; but the others are nice.

(Phil) What do you put on your cornflakes/shredded wheat/weetabix? Not syrup, I hope.

[Rosie] As a result, I very rarely eat breakfast cereals. If I do, the milk needs to be as fresh and cold as possible.

[Rosie] I put canned fruit on my muesli. If I ate porridge, which I don't, I'd make it with water.

I stopped taking milk in tea and coffee as a result of trying to reduce my cholesterol count. I like milk and cheese and all the things pen listed, so tea and coffee without milk keeps the intake down without too much pain.

Anyone who was a child in the late '40's will have had it drummed into them the milk was a Good Thing (free at school, off the ration) and as far as I'm concerned it still is, within limits. Nothing could beat slurping the cream off the top of the bottle, and still can't. Fortunately, at the moment I don't have a cat, which would obviously have first shout.

Free school milk nearly put me off milk for life. In summer it was stacked in the playground in the sun for a couple of hours before we got it, so it was always warm and slightly off.
I now only drink skimmed when I have a choice - full cream just tastes greasy to me. However I still eat too much cheese and use plenty of whole milk & cream in cooking.

I went off milk somewhere between 14 and 18, I reckon. I used to drink loads of it before then. The thought of the cream off the top of the bottle makes me feel queasy these days. Oh, and please don't even mention the "straight from the cow" option - yuk!