#love the mini cabbage patch kids | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

crimezi · 1 year ago

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okay so theres still 3 days left in this and there are 29k+ votes, ive read through almost all of the tags/responses and have collected some data!! and want to provide some interesting things:

BARBIE STATS

practically 90% of the barbie girls (gender neutral term) did not have a ken doll and the 10% that did tended to have 2 both of with where the "slutty glitter stripper / beach whore" in their own words which i personally think is a serve

transformers x barbie is very common choice by the children suggesting the better alternative to the films

west coast USA is actually barbieland USA

east coast USA is also acutally barbieland USA but this time then also had a shit ton of hand-me-down cabbage patch kids too

there were less babrie knockoffs that i was assuming but most of the ones out there are like a national knockoff (the most common one stated was the mexican off-brand)

though uncommon if a child is given a gimmick babrie that child will either be terrified of it or love it so very much there is no in between

lesbian barbies are the only barbies that matter actually

BRATZ STATS

Bratz kids get INTO IT, almost every response that says bratz mentioned the doll by name, that they adored all media relating to the girls and and overwhelming majority still have the dolls

every Bratz kid has a favorite and there doesnt seem to really be an outsanding it girl but there are lots of opinons

MH STATS

most people where "just out of the doll playing age range" for monster high dolls since they didn't come out until 2011

most of the people that where in that "doll playing age range" when monster high came out had parents who refused to buy "slutty/devilish" dolls just grew up to dress like said devilish sluts

oh boy does the MH fandom have opinons and you WILL know them all

the favored MH dolls seems to be actually having both Clawdeen and Draculaura which as we all know cannot be seperated

POLLY STATS

most polly pocket kids chewed the shit out of them

polly pockets seem like the most common doll used to (re)enact traumatic events, eviromental disasters or be the outlet for childhood worldbuilding aventures (lots of socratic debates on the nature of humanity and inventing dystopian cities of the supernaturally gifted)

mighty max (the 'boy version' of polly pocket) was not as uncommon as assumed it too be and it was not uncommon to have siblings of the opposite binary to mix their pollys and maxes into a large vat in the hallway

polly pockets had the most diverse spread over the world and the only border that i could clearly see was they werent imported to eastern europe nor parts of the medertian

i have an unstatuable desire to follow every lesbian that picked polly pockets because monkey see monkey do or whater (its terminal actually im in love with every lesbian and they all loved polly pocket)

those old enough to rmember the 'tiny ass' orginal polly pockits all had younger sisters that got the non-choking hazard generation and call them "jumbo-pollys"

CPK and BABY DOLL STATS

i may have inserted my personal bias for the CPK brand into the study as most people claimed to be "too young" for them and that by the time they would have been hand-me-downs they where considered "ugly and weird"

a decent number of people had a bunch of CPK but the people who actually likes them are a) not normal about it and b) insane (i am in fact just talking about myself)

still unsure if anyone else had the mini plastic cpk dolls that where actually pretty cute and had lots of fun furnature but the hunt continues

other baby dolls are rather uncommon other than fuckin Baby Born

AG STATS

american girls were and continue to be hella fuckin expensive but a seeming majority of girls in the USA end up with there prefered girl and a just like me

the common alternative for us poor people was reading all of the books and having a prefered girl

the online game(s) isn't a figment of my imagination

the prefered girl tends to align more with the interests of the indiviual and not race / location / age or interests of parental figures

Josphine it THE it girl of AG with americans

Kaya is the horse girl's horse girl

Felicity is a morbid topic it seems

PORCELAIN DOLL STATS

most kids did not own porcelain dolls by choice by did use them as decoration not as toys (a good portion would then become terrified of them dooming many and elizabethian dressed baby to the darkness of a spooky closet or forgotten box in the attic)

eastern europe didnt import most of the name brand dolls at all or until recently so porcelain dolls are more common

ACTION FIGURE/ POSIABLE STATS

bionicles bionicles bionicles bionicles bionicles bionicles bionicles

most boys had action figures didnt mean they where action figure kids

i am an idiot for forgetting how prolific the Lego commnunity is but in my defense i dont consider them human figurines and no i cant explain that but im glad to see fellow lego children are still fellow lego adults (lego fans i love you)

girls who where boys and boys who where girls love Lego (t4l real)

OTHER CONTENDERS

the Ever After High fans are upset that they where left off on purpose because i am spiteful and its the preps answer for the goth majority that is mh domaniance but their decication to a forgotten brand is stronger than my distain

MyScene dolls are WAY more cunty than i remembered

said MyScene dolls belonged to a very specifc subset of the turn of millennium crowd and i can only describe that group as intense

those with the Groovy Girls all had neat grandmothers and are generally pretty cool people themselves

the midwestern USA is full of Betty Spaghetti and thats okay

i betrayed the Strawberry Shortcake clan and may face serious retrubution for it

the La La Loopsy gang is a visocous group and i fear for my saftey

Littlest Pet Shop fans don't know how to read but also own oh so many tiny animal stores its a true accomplish for them

Nikita warned me that every german was going to say Schleich Elves and she was right but also every european also said Schleich

british 80s girls loved Sindy and the fact that didnt have a smile plastered on

Jem and the Holograms dolls are adored and revered in some cases

FUCKING PLAYMOBIL DOMINATES THE NON-USA MARKETS IM SO SORRY FOR THE DISRESPECT

NOTES ON DOLL CULTURE & OTHER CHILDHOOD THINGS

autistic children love dinosaurs / barbie deserves pet sauropods

autism be damned having pretty dolls overwhelmed the urge to just line everything up, however the alternative was consitently orginizing and growing a collection but not actually "playing in normal terms'' we love just dressing and redressing the same doll 40 times a week and never doing anything else ever

80s babes are all My Little Pony kids, everyone over the age of 29 mentioned MLP and it seems less of a statement on horsegirl culture and more in line with not liking Barbie or baby dolls

post 90s babes where MLP kids for a different reason -_-

most other poor children took what they could and that tended to be a libraby memebership and bratz dolls they totally didnt steal

almnost everyone regardless of anything (age/gender/country/parental intensity) ended up with a barbie even if it was a secert

the furries REALLY LOVE the phrase "i didn't play with humonids" and my friend (the arugement maker) autumn laughed everytime i readed this phrase

having THE PLANE is always the most important thing regardless of doll type its a sign of dedication to the brand and every brand had THE PLANE and it was important (trust me)

if there is a mermaid in the doll line its gonna sell like hotcakes EXPECTUALLY if she has color-changing hair

paper dolls where way more common than i was expecting, i didn't think people played with them longer than a day or so but that may be the point more research is needed

somewhen around 06 there was an empedemic of doll... bungey jumpers

the stuff animal kids are a vast clan and overwhelm the might of any doll clan, the divide and concure method works

CONCLUSION: most people ended up the an assortment mainly from hand-me-downs, a favored doll often had more sway over the personal collection but most liked there stuffed animals more

tune in later to see the winner and how it's probably barbie because we are all barbie girls living in a barbie world

end an argument for me

and for the sake of my data add your region/country, reblogs would help for proving my bias wrong

#i have underestimed the barbieness of this barbie world #i have more notes but im like a day and a half behind

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blue-eyed-bloodstains · 2 years ago

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When was the last time you swam in a pool? 🏊‍♀️ a few years ago (pre COVID) at Hershey Park Water Park with my fiance. wayyy overdue to go swimming this summer

Would you rather have an indoor pool or outdoor pool? doesn’t really matter to me

What was the last thing you said out loud? “oh my gooooodddddddd” bitching at my computer trying to get music playing to start this lmao

Do you think you could ever be an opera singer? hell no!

How often do you eat bread? 🥖 I’m Italian/Irish mostly so it’s most of my diet lol I’d say maybe 3-4 times a week given we get subs and burgers a lot

When was the last time you looked in the mirror and thought you looked pale? I’m ALWAYS pale, not just the Irish in me but I’m barely ever outside due mostly to debilitating illnesses making it hard to physically function for long on my feet for years now so...yeah

Have you ever wanted to be a nurse? 👩‍⚕️ not a nurse no but I did wanna be a vet for a long time as a kid so basically yeah just for animals instead

Would you ever want to be a nurse? Why or why not? no, I live in and out of hospitals I always have and I’d never be able to handle the trauma and mental/emotional hell...

Who or what do you worship? I don’t worship anything, I have my beliefs but I’m not religious

What was the last thing someone made fun of you for? ha seriously? what DON’T they? umm but for a lighter note of being made fun of, messing with one another between a friend and I on FB vid last week

Do you own a mini sewing kit that you use for altering clothing? 🧵 no my fiance’s parents are the sewers lol

Do you know a Ted? I have in the past but not currently no

Do you own a beret? 👩‍🎨 no

When was the last time you wore a beret? when I was real young in gymnastics for a performance

What is one thing you have found to be a bore? my every day which is stuck home couch ridden alone stuck to my own devices, especially with my fiance being gone for work all the time

Where do you keep your out-of-season clothes? I don’t own many clothes, so I don’t have “seasons”

If you had to pick your top three favorite colors, what would they be? black, blue, beige/tan

How many inches do you normally have to hem up your pants? 👖 please I’ve never needed to, pants have always been mostly “floods” on me cause of my height and long legs lmao

What are three things you would buy if you were rich? 🤑 our own house, my own car (nothing flashy), lots of pets

How many times in your life have you been stung by a bee or a wasp? 🐝 never thank god and I don’t plan on it! knowing my luck that’ll be the only thing I’m actually allergic to on top of it hurting like all hell

Have you ever swam in one of the Great Lakes? nope would love to though

….and if so, how many of the Great Lakes have you swam in? –

Do you believe in the devil? 👹 yeah? look around, how could you not??

What is one thing you wish were more easily accessible? mental health care/treatment

Do you enjoy playing icebreaker games when you’re in a group of people you just met? ummm not sure I’ve ever really played any, but I’d like to since I’m very socially anxious so it’d help me relax a bit

What is your favorite icebreaker game? –

What is one thing you find serene? standing on the beach at the Highlands in NJ where we spread Mimi’s ashes...I try to go every anniversary of her death and I always feel her there so strong and I can actually just breathe and relax...

Have you ever chopped something with an axe? 🪓 no and I’d probably fail miserably lol

What is your favorite genre of music? I love most anything

What is one thing you like that tastes sour? I mean I can suck on a lemon or lime no problem without cringing? then again I’m an alcoholic so that’s probably why I got used to it from garnishes lol

Do you think “Sour Patch Kids” sounds too much like “Cabbage Patch Kids”? I guess lol never really thought about it

Did you ever own a Cabbage Patch doll when you were a kid? umm I could swear Mimi got me one when I was a baby from what I was told but I don’t remember it

Do you like the candy Sour Patch Kids? yeah they’re delicious and now I want some dammit!

What was the last song you listened to on repeat? Nutshell by Alice In Chains....

What is one mistake you’ve made that you hope to never repeat? pretty much my entire life, swear to god...

What was the last thing you baked in the oven? pssh me bake? XD

Have you ever been to a track meet? 🏃‍♀️ no

What do you call the bathroom? Do you say bathroom, restroom, washroom, lavatory, loo, toilet, latrine, or….? bathroom, occasionally restroom if I need a public one and I’m asking an employee at whatever store

When was the last time you made guacamole? 🥑 I never have

Do you know of any schools that have the beaver for a mascot? not that I know of

Have you ever stayed in a suite? no, just an occasional real nice hotel room

#survey #about me #random #bored

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toku-fangirl-dolls · 3 years ago

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Dolly Good Season: Christmas

Merry Christmas! I love pajamas, both for myself and for the dolls, so I had to get everyone dressed in their holiday jammies! Evette’s are handmade and the rest are from AG. I have a matching pair with Mary Kate (the red snowflake top) that I got on clearance for like $5…I think AG must’ve way overestimated how much interest there was in matching pajamas for women, because they only did it the one year and they originally wanted $50 for the adult sizes.

Santa Claudia and her elves Sarah and Eiji have lots of toys to deliver! The mini stuffed toys and Cabbage Patch dolls are Happy Meal toys and the Care Bear in a gift bag is an ornament. I actually had the Cabbage Patch toys as a kid, so I was super excited to find them again at a toy show a few years ago.

We got the shelf from IKEA. I love having another level for displaying things!

Melody and Evette are putting the finishing touches on the gingerbread house while Luciana, Bree, Mary Kate, and Addy set out milk and cookies for Santa.

#doll photography #american girl dolls #dolly good season

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chibicrow · 6 years ago

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let's play "show/movie/fandom and I’ll tell you": VRains, Arc V, Zexal, please :> (are three okay? or too much?)

THREE IS PERFECT THANK U. (I had to click 8 pages on my blog to find the original prompt tho lmao @ me)

AND IT’S THE NEW GEN YGO YEEEEEEEE. I love me some new-gen YGO. (even tho I got a strained relationship with Arc V rn, but once I rewatch it in a couple of years, all should be good lmao)

VRAINS

my favorite female character: GHOST GIRL/EMA BESSHO. What a queen.

my favorite male character: MY FIRE SON HOMURA TAKERU/SOULBURNER!!!!!

my favorite book/season/etc: ??? I mean, there’s only been two seasons so far (technically), so I think I’ll pass on this one lmao.

my favorite episode (if its a tv show): ok so that episode where Takeru goes to up to Yusaku and is like “H-Hi Playmaker... :D;;;” A masterpiece.

my favorite cast member: well, it was Ishige Shouya b/c his tweets give me so much life, but then VRAINS was like “hey guess what kaji yuki’s gonna voice homura takeru,” and it’s been him ever since. I’m literally watching four anime rn where he voices major characters. It’s bad lmao.

my favorite ship: ALL ABOARD THE DATASTORM SHIP!!!

a character I’d die defending: FUJIKI YUSAKU!!!!! thankfully I haven’t seen a whole lot of hate for him lately (tho, I’ve unfollowed and blocked a good majority of folks I’ve seen hate on him so lmao), but the amount of hate he gets just b/c he doesn’t develop as visibly as the Other Treasured Soft Main Protags is a bunch of bullshit. also I know it says character and not characters, but I’d also jump in front of an army tank and punch Blood Shepherd in the face for Homura Takeru.

a character I just can’t sympathize with: Go Onizuka, which apparently makes me racist, but go off, I guess, Go Onizuka fans....

a character I grew to love: Spectre. Surprisingly. Even tho he was such a little shit in the last arc/season, especially towards Blue Angel. I blame the last VRAINS fic I wrote 1000% and the fact Blue Girl also slightly irritates me now for this tho lmao

my anti otp: ANTI-OTP AND NOT NOTP? WHAT. But anyway, I’ve said all my VRAINS anti-OTPs at this point I think, but considering I saw this pair recently, Aoi x Yusaku. Can understand why people would like it, but just. Can’t get on that ship.

Arc V

my favorite female character: HIIRAGI YUZU!!!!

my favorite male character: if we’re counting veteran characters, CROW HOGAN-SAMA OF COURSE

my favorite book/season/etc: Synchro Dimension arc best arc. don’t change my mind.

my favorite episode (if its a tv show): when Crow-sama defied everyone’s expectations and just uncarded himself and tag-teamed with Shingo to roast Zarc into oblivion. I didn’t even care that they were defeated, I was just glad Crow-sama wasn’t a card anymore. :’D (AND IT WAS TWO DAYS BEFORE MY BIRTHDAY TOO. BEST PRESENT.)

my favorite cast member: BESIDES SHINTARO ASANUMA, OnoKen. Love him so much. Also Hosoyan.

my favorite ship: ugh I have so many fave ships from Arc V tho. YugoxRin, YuyaxYuzu, Crow-samaxShinji.... (also I low-key ship ShingoxSerena lmao)

a character I’d die defending: besides Crow-sama (obviously), I would get hit by a bus for Sakaki Yuya. (I’m seeing a theme here with the main protags... smh @ fandom)

a character I just can’t sympathize with: as much as I tried to, Yuuri. After he carded Yusho, that was it lmao. Any sympathy I had for him was GONE. like can u just let people live a little, you wilted cabbage patch kid.

a character I grew to love: SAWATARI-SAN!!! oh man, he used to annoy me so much in the pre-JYC arc, but then his rematch with Yuya was SO GOOD. But then he got on my nerves again up until the Synchro Dimension arc. and then he became friends with Crow-sama. And it was all smooth sailing in the liking department from there lmao. I love Shingo.

my anti otp: I used to be kinda on board with this ship, but YuurixSerena. I think the overexposure to it killed all the tolerance I had for it....

ZeXal

my favorite female character: ANNA KOZUKI. Her personality was an instant hit for me lmao.

my favorite male character: even tho he died too much in ZeXal, Astral. I still love you, my naked blue alien. REAL close second is my Shark son tho.

my favorite book/season/etc: The Barian Invasion arc but like. Just before the Sargossa mini-arc. That was a good arc (with minimal amount of emotional damage!)

my favorite episode (if its a tv show): THE ASTRAL-YUMA REUNION IN ZEXAL II AFTER ASTRAL DECIDED TO BE MIA FOR LIKE 10 EPISODES. I BAWLED!!!! so good ;A;

my favorite cast member: besides Hosoyan (FANSERVICE!!!!), Hatanaka. What a gem. I love him.

my favorite ship: KEYSHIPPING. KEYSHIPPING. KEYSHIPPING.

a character I’d die defending: I would get sucked in a black hole for Tsukumo Yuma. it’s the least I can do to atone for my sins.

a character I just can’t sympathize with: ??? I mean, other than Don “I’m petty AS FUCK” Thousand or Mr. “HEART BURNING!!!!” Heartland or Vector’s dad, I don’t know lmao. I could sympathize with them all.

a character I grew to love: not really “love” and not that it took me a long time to tolerate him, but Tokunosuke

my anti otp: not . . . sure I have one?? the benefits of watching ZeXal long after it aired, I guess lmao.

#natsumi talks vrains #natsumi talks arc-v #natsumi talks zexal #THANK U FRIEND!!!!#breakdawn-avenue

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quaintlouise · 6 years ago

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#thequinneffect

I spent the morning of Quinn Harper’s birthday angry.

I'd been thinking about how to make the significance of my contribution to #thequinneffect worthy of the importance of Amber in my life. That's not shade at/on (which is correct? I don’t really care, do you? Lololololol. Be Best.) anyone else's participation, it's just that Amber and I share a bond born of tremendous grief. Loneliness. Loss.

We both know that pulsing sternum when people remind us of God's plan.

Thanks, random coworker/neighbor/third cousin on FB who has an affinity for minions (???). But God's plan for this chapter of my life is so sad/hard/cruel that I haven't yet had time to reconcile with all that seeing as this death/diagnosis/devastation hit me three days ago, or three weeks or however long it takes for me to understand, or never understand, or until FMLA runs out.

We know the confusion and sadness at the disappearance of loved ones you'd never imagine would leave your side. The annoyed satisfaction when loved ones act as poorly as you would have predicted. The friends and family who stepped up beyond belief and the acquaintances who did the same and became family. We also know the loneliness that descends once you realize those loved ones need to deal with their own BS that continued or began during your crisis.

Anyway, I was angry at the world. Angry that the Ruszkowski’s have been denied the type of family that seemingly everyone else gets. Angry that my little girl will grow up without her twin. Angry that I got cancer. Angry about the heartbreaking cruelties that leave mothers with empty arms and children without the arms of their mother to hold them. Angry that instead of pinning ideas for Quinn Harper’s first birthday party, Amber is instead bravely trying to find ways to honor her daughter's sweet soul while managing her own sorrow.

I grew surlier as I walked past the windowless steel door at the OBGYN, the one they usher you out of when things go terribly wrong.

I’m sorry to tell you I have very sad news.

The heaving sobs subside a bit when you are hit with the fresh air from a door you didn’t know existed. Best to keep the waiting area free of the weeping formerly expectant parents, I suppose.

I'm sorry to tell you that you have cancer.

We’ll need to fill you with poison...just enough not to kill you; poison with ingredients of mustard gas and platinum. Then we will take your breasts, uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes and cervix. You’ll need thirty rounds of radiation on those fresh scars. This might keep you alive. There’s also a special pill you can take that will shut down all the rest of your estrogen production! This may be the hardest part of treatment. Surgical menopause at 38 is gonna f with your head. There is no way to relieve the symptoms. Antidepressants might help. Oh, I see you take some. Wow, you’re on a lot of meds. Perhaps that’s part of your problem.

Nah. My problem right then, on Quinn's birthday? Was the gynecological nurse who read my chart, looked me dead in the eye, and said

I’m not sure what you’re here for?

Me neither, lady. Me neither. But actualllllllly the surgeon (y’all referred me to) built a cuff (TF? Can they come up with a better word?) down there so my insides don’t fall out and this is the place you go to get that looked at? Also, thank you for the offer of the lap gown, however, I’ll just leave my skirt on and take my panties (old maternity underwear) off. Oh? Oh yes, thank you for correcting me that it is a breast gown I’ve turned down. Fitting!

It was an easy walk across the street to get another blood draw after a full round of bloodwork three days earlier.

Your white count is low. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about but we need to check that again and call me this afternoon for results.

Awesome.

I asked if I was going to be one of those rare cases where the chemo causes leukemia. The neurologist deadpanned that I was funny.

I proceeded that day to my psychiatrist and managed to overwhelm her with all my new diagnoses, calendar of appointments, and general complaints of apathy, mania, obsessions, rage, malaise, guilt, forgetfulness, indecisiveness, impulsiveness blah blah blah.

She upped the valium.

I drove around for a while. I sang sad and angry sounds at the top of my lungs in the car. I contemplated buying a pack of smokes.

I pulled into Little Flower and felt hopeful that just sitting in a pew listening to the quiet would spark something.

The door was locked. (When did they start locking church doors???)

I wept. I stood in that parking lot scattered with cars and I wept tears of just pure despair.

But then I looked up and I saw the prayer garden. Circular, with small benches surrounding a statue of Our Lady. Or maybe it was St. Therese. It doesn’t matter. Behind it was a small labyrinth with instructions to enter with an open heart, meditate while walking the labyrinth, and exit it with a peaceful thankfulness. I sat on one of the benches to try and clear my head. I figured I’d pray the rosary and then it occurred to me that it was Tuesday. Of course.

The Sorrowful Mysteries. Eyeroll. I couldn’t get glorious or joyful? Something uplifting? (See what I did there????)

I said my rosary. I was cold (wearing a skirt, remember) and weepy and feeling like I was too screwed up to get it together to honor little Q.

But something happened as I fell deeper into meditative prayer (I know, I know, who am I?). A peace fell upon me at the fifth mystery.

Woman behold your son. Son behold your Mother.

The sun at that moment hit my face. I looked up to the sky and saw the moon as the clouds swirled.

I smiled. Took a deep breath. Because it was then that I knew.

I knew that it was in the arms of the Blessed Mother where Quinn Harper is safe and loved.

As am I.

As is Amber.

As is my Bridget being my earthly life to end.

As are all the motherless babes and the babeless mothers.

A droplet of rain glimmered in the brief warmth of the sun as I entered the center of the labyrinth. I felt hopeful. I turned to exit the labyrinth and saw my body cast a long shadow through a row of boxwoods in the shape of the cross. Make of that what you will.

Rather than me doing something to honor Quinn that day, she helped me. Helped me acknowledge some of my grief, helped me find solace in prayer, helped me look for other ways to find peace when the obvious path of day drinking alone at the View lost its appeal when I remembered you couldn’t smoke in bars anymore.

I blew Quinn a kiss and made it through the day.

However, I knew I wasn't done and I left my heart open looking for a way to pay it forward.

On Saturday I received a text from an old friend that I hadn’t talked to in a while. The kind of friend you can not talk to for a while or months or years but is still family.

He and his husband had signed up to be foster parents and had been (long-term? permanently?) placed with two little girls, 3 and 4. Sisters.

And then I knew. I knew how to pay it forward in honor of one little girl to two others that so desperately needed it.

That night I sent a Target delivery of cabbage patch dolls, coloring books, crayons, fruit snacks, juice boxes, cereal bars, pajamas, cuddly blankets, bath toys, kiddy spoons, forks, bowls and plates, goldfish crackers, pudding packs, mini muffins, peanut butter, honey, uncrustables, raisins, bubbles, a bubble machine, bigger kid sippy cups, shampoo, tangle spray, string cheese, mandarin oranges, mac and cheese, smoothies, pull-ups, wipes, fridge magnets, Rapunzel, Cinderella, peanut butter crackers, and stickers.

I felt joy. Joy that these little girls had warm beds and a loving home. Joy that my friend had been gifted this experience. Joy that a contentedness had befallen me as I felt my contribution to #thequinneffect was complete. Joy that even though I knew all too well that contentedness is temporary, so is sorrow.

For years I've been saying "When I start my blog...". I think this is it. Post #1. Could be the first of many, could be the last. Whatever, I did it.

Thanks, Q. I owe you.

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livingcorner · 3 years ago

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August in your Garden – Bulleen Art Garden

Well, the last weeks of winter are finally here, with the scent of Wattle signalling the promise of spring just around the corner. The first Magnolias are in flower and the gold and purple of Acacias and Hardenbergias create a dramatic floral display. The cold, frosty mornings are a prelude to the burst of new growth that heralds the coming new season of life. We have already had our fair share of frosty mornings and more are likely, so continue on with those frost damage prevention measures for a few more weeks yet.

You're reading: August in your Garden – Bulleen Art Garden

It is still an excellent time to plant bare root deciduous trees. We have weeping specimen trees as well as shade trees and other ornamentals, as well as fruit trees, berries and vines. We also have a rose for all situations: standard roses as well as climbers, bush roses and ground-cover forms. If you need some help selecting a tree or rose, come in and ask for some advice.

Produce Gardening in August

Click here for a full list of herbs, fruit and vegies that can be planted in Melbourne this month.

August is an excellent month to plant your seed potatoes, asparagus, strawberries and rhubarb. Use only seed potatoes to avoid introducing diseases into the soil. Asparagus will last for years and years so choose an area where it won’t need to be disturbed. Rhubarb is another perennial which will do well left undisturbed so prepare the soil well before planting with loads of manure and compost.

In the vegetable garden it’s time to plant seed or seedlings of asian greens, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, kale, leek, lettuce, onions, parsley, parsnip, peas, radish, rocket, silverbeet and spinach. Peas eaten fresh from the pod are delicious and children love them. It’s the start of the season to plant globe artichokes, strawberries, turnips, chicory, sunflowers and your last chance to plant jerusalem artichokes and spinach by seed.

Companion Planting

Let nature control pest out breaks in your kitchen garden by planting some beneficial insect attracting flowers in the garden. Go for mixes of alyssum, foxglove, echinacea, bergamont, poppies and calendula. Also, plant some coriander and dill to allow to go to seed. Companion plants camouflage your edible plants from insects, enhance growth in some cases, and as a bonus some are edible, such as borage, pansies, viola, calendula and nasturtium. Click here for our companion planting factsheet.

Put down some rich compost or well aged manure around the drip lines of your fruit trees.

Prepare other beds for your summer vegetables by incorporating organic matter such as well-rotted compost , blood and bone and animal manures. Green manure crops should be dug in now before their stems become too woody.

Read more: Potash And Plants – Learn About Potash In Soil And Potash Fertilizer

For those of you with glasshouses / hothouses or similar you can try your luck at getting an early start with sowing seeds of tomatoes, chillies and eggplants. The seeds can also be germinated on a sunny windowsill indoors. You can also plant seedlings of basil and early, more cold tolerant tomatoes in your greenhouse. Early tomato seedling varieties include Apollo, Rouge de Marmande, KY1 and Roma.

Spring Into Seeds, Bulbs & Seedlings

We now have our spring-summer seed range in stock, with tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis and lots of other delectable summer delicacies! We also now stock a large range of organic, non-hybridised herb and vegetable seeds. The seed of these can be collected to produce another generation of true-to-type produce. In the shop also we now have summer flowering bulbs, such as Oriental Lilies and Peony Roses. Ideally try to get these in by the end of August for a good summer display.

Now is the time to plant both summer and autumn flowering bulbs and tubers, such as Cannas, Dahlias, Liliums, Lily of the Valley, Hippeastrum, Tuberose, Nerines, Gladioli and Alstromeria. Prepare the soil by mixing in plenty of manure and don’t forget to put the stakes in now for the tall Dahlias and other tall flowering plants.

It’s also time to plant summer flowering seedlings such as Snapdragons, Hollyhocks, Verbena and Lupins. Marigolds and Petunias can be planted now, but you will need to provide protection from late season frosts.

Pruning & Re-potting

If you didn’t prune your Apricots in autumn (preferred time of year) you can prune them once they start flowering, which normally occurs towards the end of August (pruning in winter allows entry of bacterial gumosis).

Winter flowering native shrubs that have finished flowering should be tip pruned to keep them compact and to encourage bushy growth. Native shrubs may be fertilised with blood and bone at half the recommended rate, or use a native fertiliser mix.

Many jonquils and daffodils will have finished their flowering. Cut off the spent flower heads but leave the foliage to die back naturally. They need to do this in order to store nutrients in the bulb.

Continue to liquid feed winter / spring flowering annuals every two weeks with a complete liquid fertiliser. Late this month is the time to prune Hibiscus and Gardenias and then fertilise them and other flowering evergreen shrubs with an all purpose organic fertiliser and mulch well.

Repot overcrowded cacti and succulents. Use a cacti and succulent mix and pot them up into a larger pot. Any broken bits can be planted up and you may even get new plants out of them.

Repot your ferns and other indoor plants and remove any dead or damaged growth.

Remove spent blooms on your Azaleas and Camellias. New growth buds occur at the back of each flower. When they have completely finished flowering give them a dose of Azalea and Camellia fertiliser.

If you have not already pruned your roses, now is the time to do so. Remember to clean and sharpen secateurs and prune with the aims of cutting out dead wood, improving air circulation, creating strong structure, and especially promoting flowering. Fertilise with an organic Rose Food later this month to promote new spring growth. Spraying Lime Sulphur or Copper Sulphate on the bare stems at this time can help prevent fungal disease. Also remember to spray Peaches and Nectarines for Leaf Curl disease (more info below) just as the buds begin to swell.

Pests, Diseases & other annoyances

Fruit Tree Issues

Read more: Potash And Plants – Learn About Potash In Soil And Potash Fertilizer

To help control overwintering pests and diseases, it’s your last chance to clear up any fallen debris from underneath the trees and in the branch junctions of the trees. Make sure any healthy prunings go to the green waste recycling or are chopped up in a hot compost. Also scout for and remove any overwintering pests at the base of trees, in the cracks of bark, in rough bark and within the branch junctions.

Grapes can be sprayed with lime sulphur just before bud burst to help control fungal problems and the ‘Grape Blister Mite’

For your deciduous trees, if you’ve had problems occurring, like scale, bacterial and fungal diseases, you may want to do a winter spray with Bordeaux, copper or lime sulphur.

Peach Leaf Curl

Growers of fruit trees, such as peaches, nectarines, almonds and occasionally apricots, have all been confronted at one time or another with the new leaves on their trees becoming thickened with blisters and curling up. The blisters start off red in colour, then turn white with a bloom of fungal spores.

Peach Leaf Curl is a fungal disease that infects Peaches, Nectarines, Almonds and other Prunus species. The symptoms are noticed in spring and summer, when the leaves appear with raised lumpy light green and red patches and are curled up. This problem weakens the tree if it occurs year after year, and will result in a reduced fruit yield. Once you see the symptoms, it is too late to spray. The trees should be sprayed from mid-to-late winter from bud swell until the leaves emerge. Spray with Copper oxychloride during this period, and again after rain, as the rain will wash off the spray. This is a preventative spray, so the swelling buds need to be covered with the copper spray. The nursery puts up signs when we spray our Peaches, Nectarines and Almonds to remind you when to spray your own trees at home.

If you would prefer not to use the fungicides year after year, be very vigilant and pick off affected leaves as soon as they appear. (Dispose of them with your garbage and not in your compost). However, this will weaken the tree so encourage new growth by feeding with some fast-acting organic fertiliser, such as Blood & Bone. If your tree was very badly affected one season, you may need to consider using a fungicide the next.

Click here for more information on Peach Leaf Curl.

Citrus

It is a good time to plant citrus. There are many dwarf varieties now available as well as a range of regular varieties. Remember to protect citrus from Citrus Gall Wasp by cutting out any affected wood and hanging sticky traps in the trees.

Kids in the Garden

Set up a sunny windowsill inside as a mini-greenhouse. Small containers, such as empty yoghurt tubs or strawberry punnets (with holes punched through) can be used with seed-raising mix to start growing tomatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers and other tender summer vegies. Make sure the soil is kept moist and your seedlings will be well and truly ready for planting outside when the soil warms up.

Images Cauliflower image © Oasis Horticulture… used with permission. Succulents image © Bulleen Art & Garden

Source: https://livingcorner.com.au Category: Garden

source https://livingcorner.com.au/august-in-your-garden-bulleen-art-garden/

#livingcornernews

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pennycandyllc · 5 years ago

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grizbehr · 8 years ago

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This is a Facebook post from a pastor who went to the Trump rally in Florida. It’s long but a very insightful read. One thing I found particularly interesting was this passage: What I discovered was that by hosting this as a campaign event, Mr. Trump could determine who was and was not allowed in the venue. If he came on an official visit, they could not prohibit anyone from entering and he couldn't sell his campaign merchandise.

Joel Tooley

What I am about to write and what you are about to read may make some people very uncomfortable, if not angry.

That is not my intention nor is it okay with me to cause anyone to stumble. That being said, what I experienced tonight was so dramatic that I cannot help but reflect on it and share what I experienced.

A few days ago, people across the United States heard the news that our newly elected President would be visiting Melbourne, Florida – our hometown. It is no surprise to many that I do not support many of the objectives and "campaignisms" of Donald Trump. I know many people who voted for him - friends, family, church people who all voted for their own reasons. The point of this experience is not to relay all of the reasons why I think he should not be the president. Those points are moot – he IS our President.

Now, I am enough of a sentimentalist that when I found out THEEEE President was coming to town, I got online quickly and reserved two tickets.

The tickets were being given away by the Trump-Pence campaign; I found it odd that the tickets indicated that this was not a government/White House event & that this was a campaign event. I have, of course, posted a joking post about that earlier. What I discovered was that by hosting this as a campaign event, Mr. Trump could determine who was and was not allowed in the venue. If he came on an official visit, they could not prohibit anyone from entering and he couldn't sell his campaign merchandise.

So, in essence, he was only allowing his supporters in the room. Well, with a few exceptions…

I talked my 11-year-old daughter into coming with me. After all, how many times do you get to see the President of the United States in person – let alone in your hometown? I was eager for her to have this experience. It has to be a pretty cool thing, as a kid to see Air Force One, the President and the First Lady.

The event started at 5 PM; we got in line at the venue shortly after 2 PM and the line was already pretty long. There are several mini stories to be told about that experience but don't need to be told for this post. Suffice it to say, it is always an intriguing sociological experience to be surrounded by people in line for something for which they are fanatics - whether it is for a movie premier, a live concert, the release of the latest beanie baby or Cabbage Patch kid. Fanatic people are fascinating to me.

While I am not a fan of Trump, I certainly did not want to come across as a vigilante protester while standing amongst some of his most adoring fans. I truly wanted to see if what I was going to witness in person was any different than what I had observed on TV.

The entry into the event was very impressive. I have always admired the professional posturing of the Secret Service, including those from our own local law-enforcement who were on duty serving in this capacity. These are women and men who should be highly commended for placing their lives on the line.

We entered the venue at 3 PM, two hours before the event started. As we entered, everyone was being handed pom-poms and Trump campaign signs. The hosts made sure everyone had a sign in their hand. Someone shoved one into my hand and gave pom-poms to my daughter.

I felt like a sheep in wolves clothing.

Music was playing loudly throughout the venue as it filled up with hundreds of people. I would guess there were eventually at least 3000 people in the room. It was nowhere near full, but there certainly were a lot of people there. From my view, the crowd was 99.9% white folk. I did see a row of about 10-12 supporters who were black, wearing T-shirts that said, "Trump and Republicans are not racist" - they were positioned in the seating area directly behind the podium.

We were about three rows of people from the very front and had a very good position to view the President and the platform. As people were coming in, there was a lot of excitement and a strong sense of patriotism. Approximately every 15 minutes, the music would be a little more enthusiastic and party-like. I posted my play-by-play feedback of "God bless the USA!" in an earlier post...it was almost church-like. People sang along, raising their hands and were emotionally moved by this anthem. It was intriguing to watch.

People were being ushered into a deeply religious experience...and it made me completely uncomfortable.

I love my country; I honor those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom and I respect our history and what we stand for, but what I experienced in that moment sent shivers down my spine. I felt like people were here to worship an ideology along with the man who was leading it. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't the song per se – it was this inexplicable movement that was happening in the room. It was a religious zeal.

You might liken it to the experience fans would have after their favorite team won the Super Bowl – faces painted, banners flying, confetti in the air and celebrating.

But this – this was deeper.

A couple of local politicians got up to bring greetings followed by state representative, followed by one of our Congress representatives. A soloist sang, "God bless America" and there was a strong sense of patriotism in the room. A pastor got up to pray and repeatedly prayed throughout his prayer, "Thank you for making this the greatest nation on earth…in Jesus' name."

Uh-uh. No. No way, josé.

Pastor, this is not the greatest nation on earth. The greatest nation on earth does not exist. Are we a great nation? Definitely. But there are many other great nations as well. Pastor, you have your eyes on a different kind of "greatness" and certainly a different kind of kingdom. Shame on you for praying those words in Jesus' name!

Suddenly, the music changed from the pep rally theme to something that seemed more Star Wars themed. The crowd went crazy and turned towards the opening of the airplane hangar that was the venue, just as Air Force One pulled up.

What a magnificent sight! That enormous airliner is absolutely breathtaking. The crowd was going wild; signs waving in the air, people cheering, and every cell phone was positioned to take photos and video. As the First Lady and the President emerged at the top of the stairs, the air was electric! It really is a magnificent image to see in person!

As they entered the venue and walked to the platform, there was terrific celebration. I have been in the room when other Presidents were in a similar mode – it is always such a meaningful experience to be that close to them, regardless of whether or not you view them with adoration. Theeeee President of the USA!

The First Lady approached the platform and in her rich accent, began to recite the Lord's prayer.

I can't explain it, but I felt sick. This wasn't a prayer beseeching the presence of Almighty God, it felt theatrical and manipulative.

People across the room were reciting it as if it were a pep squad cheer. At the close of the prayer, the room erupted in cheering. It was so uncomfortable. I observed that Mr. Trump did not recite the prayer until the very last line, "be the glory forever and ever, amen!" As he raised his hands in the air, evoking a cheer from the crowd, "USA! USA! USA!"

Just as the President begin to speak, a short grandmotherly lady in front of us asked me if I would help hold her walker – the kind that has a seat built into it. She said, "I need to climb up on it and hold something up." Such an odd request at such an odd place at such an odd time. So, I helped her.

She held a pillowcase that had something written on the front of it, words I could not see. She climbed up onto the seat, wobbly-legged and held the sign up above her head. People in front of her turned around and started jeering and yelling at her. After holding her sign up for about 10 seconds, she climbed back down and thanked me. I asked her what her sign said – it read, "You had your chance, now resign!"

The very first words out of the President's mouth were the words of a bully. That is not simply one person's perspective, it is factual. He immediately began badgering and criticizing the media; like a bully inciting a crowd.

Now, do I think the media needs to be held to a high standard and be able to be held accountable? Absolutely! The media as a whole has become sadly non-journalistic and more entertainment, in my opinion.

Call it what you will, but I was completely dumbfounded as the most powerful leader in the world began his speech by badgering the media. The crowd began screaming angrily at the entire press corps that was present.

He could have said something inspiring and worthy of a Tweet or Facebook post, instead he emerged as an overly powerful bully. Literally, everything that he began speaking about evoked this angry response from the crowd. Immediately following the words of prayer that Jesus taught his followers…

It was then that I heard two ladies off to my left chanting, not yelling or screaming but chanting, "T-R....U-M-P; that's how you spell - bigotry!" They repeated the rhyme over and over.

Two ladies in front of them began seething and screaming in their face while shaking their Trump signs at them. Another couple standing behind them started screaming at them as well. One of the chanting ladies had her eight-year-old daughter on her back; the other had a severely disabled child in a wheelchair in front of her. As they continued chanting, the people around them became violently enraged. One angry man grabbed the lady's arm - that's when I went into action. I barged through the crowd and yelled at them to back off. My heart wasn't racing; I just instinctively became a protector.

I didn't actually want a Trump sign, but one of the volunteers had shoved it into my hands as I walked through the door earlier; "Make America Great Again!" That sign probably saved someone from getting hurt. I held the sign close to my chest as I positioned myself between the chanting protesters and the angry mob. My 11-year-old daughter was clinging to my arm, sobbing in fear.

The two angry, screaming ladies looked at me, both of them raised their middle finger at me in my face and repeatedly yelled, "F*#% YOU!" Repeatedly.

I calmly responded, "No thank you, I'm happily married." Their faces and their voices were filled with demonic anger.

I have been in places and experiences before where demonic activity was palpable. The power of the Holy Spirit of God was protecting me in those moments and was once again protecting me and my daughter in this moment.

I raised my voice and calmly said, "These ladies have the right to do what they are doing and they are harming no one; this is America and they a right to express themselves in this way. They are harming no one." A couple of other people around me stepped in and supported me in protecting them as a barrier, as well.

My daughter was shaking in fear as she clung to me. The one man behind the protesters shoved himself forward, grabbed the lady by the arm and screamed with multiple expletives, "I'm going to take you out! This is my president and nobody has the right to disrespect him and nobody has the right to keep me from hearing him!"

I wish I could have captured the expressions of that man on camera. I will never forget him.

The little girl on her mother's back was crying, completely frightened. I leaned forward and reassured her in her ear, "Your mommy is being brave and we will not let these people hurt you. You are afraid because these are angry, awful people. We will not let them hurt you or your mommy. You are being so brave and your mommy is doing something very brave."

That's when another lady screamed in my face that what I was doing was un-American. I just chuckled and responded, "What I am doing is completely American – I'm standing up for people who are being bullied – it doesn't matter if I agree with them or not. You came here to see the President, now ignore these ladies, turn around and enjoy the show." Without explanation, they calm down and turned around to hear what Trump had to say.

The two protesters then moved towards the back and left the building. I got a couple of high-fives and "thanks for stepping up for them" from bystanders . I wanted to say, "Thanks. Where were you when the the demons were screaming and fists were getting ready to start swinging?"

Once again, the environment reminded me of some church experiences I've had. Bystanders.

I have no clue what Trump was saying at that point – draining the swamp, vetting refugees, and other things. Oh yeah, I heard people chanting, "Build that wall, build that wall!"

I realized then that we were not listening to someone presidential, we were listening to someone terribly powerful.

My kid was shaken - she had just seen some of the worst of humanity. We edged ourselves away from the front of the room to the opening of the hangar so we could get a clearer picture of Air Force One. I wanted to give her at least one positive presidential memory.

The crowd was much thinner at the back of the room, people were leaving by the hundreds. Outside, there were two jumbotrons set up for a potential overflow – there really wasn't a need for them. There were maybe a couple of hundred people outside watching on the big screens.

Not too far behind that group was a large group of protesters.

Inside, Trump had rallied the group by giving a little bit of attention to the "paid protesters outside." Now, I can't speak for all of them, but I asked a few where they were from and why they were there - every single one of them were from different cities in Florida and could quickly articulate why they were there. They were not paid protesters – not the ones I spoke with.

I'm trying to separate how I actually feel about this man and his campaignisms. I know why people voted for him; I know why people voted against his opponent. But, at the end of the day, what I felt from his leadership in this experience was actually horrifying. There was palpable fear in the room. There was thick anger and vengeance. He was counting on it. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that it would not have taken very much for him to have called this group of people into some kind of riotous reaction.

Now, not everyone in the room was a part of the angry mob mentality – I looked around the room and saw many people who could quite easily be folks from my neighborhood, folks from my church, folks who were planning to go grab a bite to eat at Cracker Barrel afterwards. Folks who truly wanted to see America "great." The people who support the Republican Party want to see some needed changes in the government – the people that were there for that reason, are by and large good folks. But those are not the people the President was inciting – they are not the people he was leading. He was rallying the angry, vigilant ones.

As we began to leave, I knew my daughter could not possibly care less about Air Force One or the fact that she saw the President of the United States and his wife, in the flesh. I truly had hoped that she could have had that sentimental experience.

What she WILL remember is the angry, violent man screaming demonic vitriol at a child and her mother. She will remember the two ladies screaming at her Dad, her pastor – flipping the middle finger and using the F word repeatedly.

Now, I know there are people who are convinced that I am jaded and cannot fairly give this man a fair chance. Perhaps that's true. But please remember, especially those of you who know me well, I am a student of culture and human behavior. I am not a stubborn, close minded individual who likes to stick to the status quo. I know there are people who long for me to see the good things about this President and to talk about THOSE things. I know there are people who want me to realize that not everything he is doing is bad and that every President has their strengths and weaknesses and…

I know there are people who, when they see these words and hear my thoughts will feel badly because perhaps they can't like me as much as they once did because they don't agree with me. They want me to like the President that they like – they want me to see him the way they see him.

I'm sorry. I cannot. You see, the angry, F-word-spewing man is what has been depended on throughout this campaign and is the one who is still being counted on to sustain the message. I tried.

As we left the room, these words were echoing in my mind, "Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done..."

At the end of the day, I'm a citizen of a nation - I have a leader who God is very aware and who has tremendous responsibilities. I MUST and will pray for him. I'm a citizen of this world and I must continue to see beyond my own limited world view to seek ways to obediently serve Christ. But greater still, I am a citizen of a different kind of Kingdom - the Kingdom that strives for peace, mercy, kindness and a love-relationship with the King of kings.

May God have mercy on me.

#anti-trump #florida rally #facebook post

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years ago

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Missed Classic 79: A Christmas Adventure (1983)

Written by Joe Pranevich

Merry Christmas! Welcome back to another Christmas at “The Adventure Gamer” where we are looking at our sixth holiday adventure game! Time flies while we are having so much fun and I’m just amazed that we keep finding new holiday adventures to play. This time out will be 1983’s A Christmas Adventure, a “bitCard” (more on that in a bit) by Chartscan Data, Inc. This game has two notable distinctions: First, it is the earliest Christmas game that I have found so far. Merry Christmas from Melbourne House and A Spell of Christmas Ice were both 1984 games, but this one is a full year earlier. This may be the first commercially released Christmas adventure ever, but we’ll keep looking for more. Second, this game was brought to us by you! Last year, we ran a brief GoFundMe to purchase the only available-to-the-public copy of the game from Retrogames. Our community pitched in some funds and we purchased and sent the game off to the Internet Archive. Unfortunately, they were unable to get the game imaged for the holidays and we detoured to Humbug instead. The archivists uploaded our game in January and that gave us plenty of time to review it for this Christmas.

The Christmas Adventure story begins in Montreal, Quebec at the home of Frank Winstan. It was spring or early summer 1983 and he was working on an idea to design and sell personalized software as an electronic holiday or greeting card. You wouldn’t just play an adventure game, you’d play a game that knew your name and would have personalized messages and other features set by your friends or family. Even in the 1980s, the holiday card industry was hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly sales; if they could tap even a tiny portion, the upside would be huge. In part due to a fear that someone else could capitalize on a similar idea first, he set his sights on a Christmas release for his first electronic “bitCard”. Even for the fast development cycles of early games, the timing was incredibly tight and made all the more so due to a lack of marketing or distribution infrastructure. Winstan needed to bootstrap a startup and ship their first product in less than five months. Was that even possible?

The software retailed for approximately $45 in today’s money.

Winstan had been advised by others that his timeline was too tight, but he enlisted the help of a Larry Callahan, a friend from Vanier College, and they set to work. Chartscan Data was born! Winstan was a psychology professor and he did not have experience with adventure games. Nonetheless, he and Callahan established a system where he (and Ron Sperber) wrote the scenario, Callahan built much of the initial Apple II version, and other programmers were brought on board for porting and other work. Callahan wrote the software in a combination of BASIC and 6502 assembly for speed and size. To make an impossible task even harder, Winstan targeted five separate 6502-based systems, each with their own versions of BASIC and other platform dependencies, all needing to ship at the same time.

While Callahan and others built the product, Winstan built the company. Time was against him. Despite marketing copy that said the game would go on sale in October, he only officially incorporated his company that September. Winstan’s role was to ferry code and documentation between the contracted programmers, develop marketing relationships and ship copies of his near-completed game for reviews, as well as write and type-set all of the documentation, and just about everything else. The coding wasn’t entirely going according to plan either and with only a month to go, he was still placing “help wanted” ads in the McGill University newspaper looking for experienced 6502 programmers. He reports that he frequently slept only two hours per night to keep all of the gears turning. Christmas was, in a very real sense, coming!

Judging by the date on this review, you would be correct to surmise that they made it! Chartscan Data released their first product on time, but not quite everything had fallen into place. Given the schedule, there was insufficient time to produce or distribute a boxed version of the game or to develop relationships for the same. Instead, all sales were to be via mail order. Winstan had managed to get seven or eight (by his report) reviews published, but these were in the holiday issues of various computing magazines. Between the delays inherent in print publication and the challenges of a mail-order only business model, there was a slim window where readers could purchase the game and ensure that it arrived in time for Christmas with all of the customizations inact. Samples were sent to computer stores, but this was not the perfect harmony of distribution and marketing that Winstan’s e-cards needed to be successful.

The Apple II edition of “A Christmas Adventure”

I’d love to report that A Christmas Adventure was the surprise hit of 1983, but that distinction falls to Care Bears and Cabbage Patch Kids. They made their Christmas delivery, but ultimately the timeline and budget were too tight to build a distribution pipeline to reach the masses by Christmas morning. Less than a thousand copies were sold that first year, plunging Chartscan Data into debt and ultimately bankruptcy. Having played the game (as you will soon read), they did not fail for lack of either effort or a good idea. Winstan’s concept of personalized games as gifts was a remarkable leap in 1983! In fact, I would assert (without adequate proof or research, mind you) that he is likely the unsung inventor of the “e-card”. I hope that he and his team look back on this failure with a certain amount of pride.

As a final coda on this part of our story, Winstan tells me that The Sloane Report, a Miami-based newsletter focusing on software in education, named A Christmas Adventure as their co-game of the year in 1984. Of course, this recognition came too late for the Christmas season, but it hinted that there may still have been life in the product after all. Although Chartscan Data had gone under, a new Bitcards, Inc. emerged through the magic of business and financial wizardry. Winstan taught himself BASIC and continued the development of A Christmas Adventure himself, releasing a “2.0” edition in time for Christmas 1984. This is the version that I played in my review. He continued updating and selling the game through Christmas 1986 with the final version being tagged as version 2.8. He tells me that he nearly had an agreement for a boxed edition of the game, but at that late stage the industry was shifting towards IBM PCs and that was not a platform that he or his team envisioned supporting. In the end, no other Bitcards were created and the company was eventually folded. Winstan and Callahan continued their careers at Vanier College. Winstan taught Psychology, while Callahan ran their IT Support Services (a role that is very dear to my heart!).

Frank Winstan in the 1980s.

This title has become exceedingly rare. Unlike so much of the early Commodore and Apple II software library, the game was never picked up by the BBS community or the abandonware forums. Very few copies were known to survive. For many years, the only known version was one of Winstan’s “sampler” demos sent to computer stores, documented by AppleAdventures in 2015. This version included 50% of the story and a “mini-customizer” so that you could see how your personalization would affect the story. AppleAdventures was later able to get his (or her?) hands on an original full version by 2018 and produced a “Let’s Play” video of it on Youtube, but I was unable to convince him to give us a copy to review. When I speak of the differences in the 1983 version below, I am comparing to his earlier efforts in documenting the game.

The version that I played for review was Winstan’s “version 2.0” edition with a 1984 copyright date. This update incorporated a few new puzzles and cleaned up old ones, added a bit more music, and redid some of the item names and text descriptions. This is the version available today on the Internet Archive and, I believe, the version that we purchased last year in our GoFundMe promotion.

Before I begin, I want to thank Frank Winstan and Larry Callahan for their kind cooperation in my review of their work. I can only imagine what it is like to have strange people email you about something that you did thirty-six years ago, but to their credit they have been incredibly forthcoming with details and anecdotes about the development of the game. It is to my great shame that I only incorporated around a third of the historical details that they provided me. I am also exceedingly grateful for Frank for sending along a copy of the manual and offering to mail me a pristine Apple II version for my review. I was unable to take him up on that given the time constraints– I suspect rushing right before Christmas is a feeling that he is familiar with!– but appreciate it nonetheless.

Very nice “3D” rendering of flying towards the palace; quite advanced for 1983!

Introductory Movie

The game opens with an extended cinematic, very unusual for a game of this era and well-done over all. The camera flies over a darkened North Pole snow field towards Santa’s Ice Palace. We are taken inside to Santa’s office. A “greetings” message on the wall appears to be customizable. I’m not positive who is narrating, but they have “chatted” with Santa’s computer many times before and refer to us, the viewer and player, as a “poor mortal”.

Something is amiss? What can it be?

OMG. Who could it be?

Suddenly, an alert appears on the computer: Santa is missing! With only a few hours before Christmas, the computer springs into action to figure out what to do. It searches its worldwide naughty-and-nice database to locate someone that can help. That someone… is you! My version has the name set as “Current Player” although this also is customizable.

With that, we are instructed to flip over the disk and begin.

Presumably the Apple logo was also customizable.

Playing the Game

We start the game where the cinematic ended, in Santa’s “Ice Palace”. The greeting message from the opening is still there, but the safe that was clearly visible before is now covered by an Apple painting. I’d wager that was either customizable as well, or at least changed based on which platform you were running. Is that a hint? Yes! We can move the painting to reveal the safe, although it is keyed to only let Santa open it. A strange parser issue shows up immediately in that the “waste basket” is spelled “was’basket”, presumably because the word was too long. You have to be careful as “basket” isn’t recognized as a synonym. I’ll have to be on the lookout for these sorts of things.

When we look at the desk and chair, we get the message that they “cannot be manipulated in any way” and “this is not a trick”. The 1983 edition of the game doesn’t mention them at all and I am not sure what was gained by adding them in except to fill out the room.

In terms of customization, the 1983 video that I viewed has the game brought to us by “Frostbyte Computers” while my version says “Apple User Magazine”. Apple User was a magazine published in the 1980s by Database Publications, although beyond that I am not deeply familiar with it. Frostbyte is a name that is used by far too many companies over the years and I am unclear which one this referred to. In both cases, my guess is that these are companies that Frank Winstan worked with to promote the game. I do not know what a straight-from-the-factory edition of the game would have said.

In addition to the vault, we also have a computer that wants us to insert both a system and a data disk (oh, the 1980s!) and we can pick up the waste basket.

Made in Canada!

My first task is to explore the house and see what I find. Rather than narrate through every room one-by-one, let me summarize:

To the north is Santa’s Workshop, complete with a map of Canada! I grab a shovel, but the crafting tools are too delicate to be picked up by my fingers. I pull aside the rug to reveal a key. I ignore the stairs down for now.

In the northwest of the palace is Santa’s minimalist art gallery: only a single painting adorns the wall. Moving it causes me to be attacked by “cursed elves”. That triggers a brief action scene, but there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do except watch as they ransack the place. I am forced to restore already. A window in the room is too high up for me to do anything with it. Will I find a ladder?

West of the office is a living room with a chair and a (very!) hot fireplace. Even looking at the fire kills me, so I’ll avoid that for now. I sit in the chair and discover that it “feels funny”. I remove the cushions and discover a rope that I can add to my collection. A sword over the fireplace seems interesting but I can’t do anything with it.

Further west is an entertainment room with a jukebox and ping-pong table. I pick up a record, but there is no obvious way to play music.

North of the living room is a spartan kitchen containing milk and an empty bag. I nab both.

In the south, I find a bedroom with dressers and closets. One closet contains a surprise Pac-Man cameo while the other has a full set of Santa regalia including boots, a hat, a coat, and gloves. I pocket some coins from the dresser. A second drawer is locked, but my key fits. That contains a disk labeled “chanukah”! Finally, a piece of paper falls out of Santa’s coat that says to call “Current Player” (me!) in the event of an emergency. How did they know I was so good at adventure games!?

Hey look! It’s a cameo!

That is a lot to digest, but I want to highlight a few things. When you enter that closet in the bedroom, the screen goes black and Pac-Man marches across the screen. When he gets around half way, he discovers that he’s in the wrong game and quickly runs off. It’s bonkers and the first laugh-out-loud moment of the game. I hope we see more examples of the authors’ humor as we play on. It seems impossible, but when this game came out Pac-Man (1980) was very new and “Pac-Man fever” had only just subsided.

Interface-wise, the game is inconsistent whether or not objects disappear when you pick them up. The shovel and key disappear, for example, while the wastebasket does not. Unlike Sierra’s Mystery House-style games, dropped objects only appear when you drop them in the room that they originated in. The parser seems very simple with very few supported synonyms. I’m also fairly sure that it has only three characters of sensitivity, as opposed to the five used by many other early adventures.

Finally, this is the first reference to Chanukah (or “Hanukkah” or any number of equally-valid alternate spellings) in one of our Christmas games! I’ve been hoping to come across a Hanukkah adventure game, but I’m almost certain that none were made in the classic era. The only Hanukkah game that I know of at all is Game of the Maccabees (1983), a little-known action game for the Atari. The earliest Jewish-themed adventure game that I know of is The Pesach Adventure (1993) celebrating Passover. If I ever find a Hanukkah adventure, you can bet your menorah that I’ll find a way to cover it.

If only Amazon could work out how to store 43 million boxes in such a small space!

Just beneath the workshop is the “gift storage room” where we can see piles of gifts for the good little boys and girls in the world. Looking at them triggers a database-style interface where I can theoretically learn the gifts of all 43,126,798 good children, but for simplicity we can only see the first eight entries. While 43 million seems like a big number, there were 63 million children in the United States alone in 1983. Were the rest naughty? And what about all the good children everywhere else in the world? And did I spend more time than I should researching historical census data? The answer to the last question is “yes”.

We can look at the presents, but only a couple of them seem valuable. Presents #1, #5, #6, and #8 all teleport me somewhere around the castle when I look at them. I’m not clear why. Present #3 is apparently “curtains” and thanks to the magic of an overly-destructive pun, I die and have to restore. #7 is the present for me that I will get at the end of the game. The only presents of value are #4, a doll that I can pick up, and #2, a rhyme:

I was talking to a computer ace Her name, it was Veronica I said, “Hi Ronny- what’s the word?” She said, “The word is Chanukah!”

With two references to Hanukkah in the last couple of minutes, I think that will be important later.

The 1983 game has a completely different puzzle here. In the opening cinematic, there is a brief display of Santa’s gift list. For some reason, Susie’s present is listed in that opening but left blank here. Somehow this is supposed to clue you in that you can pick up (“get doll”) in this room. Regardless of how you get it, the doll is pull-string and intones, “Mommy says that you have to keep warm when you are sick.” Could that be a clue?

The sleigh is pointed in an inconvenient direction, don’t you think?

Past the gift room is the empty reindeer stables and a garage containing Santa’s sleigh. With neither reindeer to pull it, nor jolly old man to steer it, they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. I do find a blanket that I can grab. By this point, I’m out of inventory space and storing things elsewhere but you get the idea.

With no more rooms in the Ice Palace, I resolve to solve some puzzles. The first is easy: Santa’s security system is fooled by wearing his clothes and that gets me access to his safe. Inside is an unlabeled potion. I can also insert the “chanukah” disk in the computer, but it still needs a second before it will boot. (Weren’t old-timey computers so quaint?) It takes some time and experimentation, but I realize that the record from the jukebox is referred to as “floppy” in its description. That makes no sense at all, but the computer boots when I (somehow?) insert it, so what do I know?

On startup, the computer asks for a password so I take the most obvious guess: “chanukah”. It works! Only a moron would write the password on the disk itself, but my wager is that Santa isn’t the most clued in to digital security. Wait until he gets his whole “naughty” list hacked one of these years! The computer displays a menu with four options:

The first is the gift list, but it doesn’t appear to be useful. The list does not match what is in the store room; the doll is the same, but the third gift is a bicycle and not (evil) curtains.

The second and third options are “need to know” and the computer somehow thinks I don’t need to know yet. When I need to “cure elf maladies” or render “reindeer first aid”, I’ll know where to look for answers.

The final option describes an emergency exit from the palace. It reveals that during an emergency (like this one), the castle is automatically sealed to prevent anyone entering or leaving. However, there is one way out via a “virtually empty” room, although it involves fastening together two common items hidden elsewhere. To make it trickier, one of the items is in a “different time plane”. Is there time travel in this game? My guess is that the rope is one of the items, but what is the second?

The 1983 edition has the computer with the same password, but without the menu. Instead, it gives you a (unnecessary, in my case) clue to access the vault.

Catch the elves in color!

This is where I get stuck and I eventually watch the 1983 video to see what I missed. The next puzzle that I could solve was the “cursed elves”. I had not noticed that if I opened up the painting while carrying the bag, my action scene would be different. Now, I can control the bag with the arrow keys to capture as many elves as possible. It was more difficult than it looks! For one thing, the elves can move diagonally while I can only move up and down or left and right. Even leaving one behind ends the game and it took me a few tries to capture them all. Once I did, I discovered that I captured seven bad elves and one good one. I have to play over again to try to leave one of the green elves and this adds another layer to the difficulty as the green ones seem to kamikaze whenever I get close. After a few frustrating attempts, I work out that the striped elf is the “good” one (not the plain green one) and seal the deal.

This puzzle is clearer in the black-and-white version of the game as all of the elves wearing vertical stripes are evil while the one with horizontal stripes is not.

Catch the elves in black and white!

Once we work out the correct elf to keep and get lucky with the arcade sequence, the final elf appears in the room with me. Unfortunately, all of the evil magic has made him ill (an elf malady!) and I can now consult the computer to see what to do. The computer tells me that I need to feed the elf the potion and to keep him warm. I hand over the potion and blanket and he’s right as rain again. The elf turns out to be the leader elf and is happy to follow me around from room to room. I am not clear how to solve this puzzle in the 1983 edition of the game as there is no computer hint. I believe that the doll’s advice was supposed to clue you in to give him the blanket, but I am uncertain what may have clued you in to needing the potion as well.

With the elf in tow, I can pick up the tools in Santa’s Workshop since he can carry them for me.

I fail to notice at first, but you can walk through the hole where the evil elves poured through. This leads to a dark tunnel and then to a time machine! See? I knew there would be time travel here eventually. The original edition of the game has a small maze in place of the tunnel, but since I’m just watching a video I have no idea how difficult it was.

This time machine has a Y2K problem.

Even with the time machine, I am immediately stuck again. The 1983 video just shows the elf activating the machine when you enter the room and look at it, but that doesn’t happen in the 1984 version. I have to solve this myself. Before I get too far, let me admit that this was multiple hours of experimentation with a little bit of “reading the source code” included. Only a small portion of the game is written in BASIC and I was unable to find anything relevant, but that tells you how desperate I was. Given the rarity of this game, I do not believe a “request for assistance” would have been useful!

If I only had the manual when I played!

This is when I discovered the “help” feature and boy is it robust! This is all clearly laid out in the manual, but I did not get my hands on a copy (thanks again to Mr. Winstan!) prior to playing. By typing “help”, you can request general information (such as a list of verbs that the game understands) or more specific information about the room that you are in. You can even decrease the difficulty of the elf capture game! This is a great feature, made slightly worse by all of the disk swapping that you have to do to access it. This was likely quite easy on a real system, but my emulator did not handle the disk swapping correctly (probably because the game writes its state to the disks?) and so I had to restore after receiving the hint. I will blame this on modernity rather than a bug in the original. The two hints for the time machine room are cryptic:

“He is his name and his name is like he. Get his attention- that’s the key!”

“Only someone who is small by design can help you slip through the cracks of time.”

Both clues point to the elf as the solution, but I only stumble on the answer by accident. We can, it turns out, issue commands directly to the elf by typing “elf” by itself. That brings up a second prompt to tell him what to do. You can even type “help” again and he’ll give you his own clues! In this case, he tells us to examine the time machine. I had done that already, but now I tell him to examine the machine. This reveals that there is a keyhole in the back.

I know I missed something because I never learned that the time machine was broken, but if you tell the elf to “fix timemachine” when he is carrying the tools, he does so and we are whisked back to the past.

I had thought that this strange syntax for asking the elf to do something would have been in the manual, but it turns out that it is not. My manual is for a later update to the game and perhaps this puzzle was tweaked again, but as it stands I found this to be the most frustrating part of the game so far. Being able to issue commands to the elf is a great feature! It opens up tons of puzzle mechanics and was implemented very well in the Zork series, for example. I am not aware of any other games using this syntax and I wish that it would have been mentioned in the manual.

Prehistoric!

With my complaints out of the way, I travel back to the year “1”. (The current year was “8X”, but I’m not going to nit pick this two-digit year too much. I expect there were more than just cave paintings in the year 1901!) When we are in the past, the interface doesn’t really work because– somehow this makes sense– we are in an era before computers existed and therefore we cannot tell our computer to do stuff for us. Fortunately, the elf traveled with us and we know how to control him so it all works out. It’s clever but reminds us that we are working through an avatar. We learn that the cave paintings are done by an ancient Evil One and that he is the one that put the elves under a spell. Did he make Santa and the reindeer disappear as well? I discover a hook hidden under a pile of bones and grab that before heading back to the present.

The 1983 version of the puzzle is different.

In the original version, the time machine is easier to activate as I stated previously, but also takes you to a different era. This is the only example of changed art that I see so far between the 1983 and 1984 games. Rather than going prehistoric, we seem to go somewhere else. The dial remains on “83” so I am glad that this sequence was rewritten for clarity. We still pick up a hook in the past (behind a painting rather than in a pile of bones) and then travel back to the present.

With the hook and rope together, I can create a grappling hook! I throw that to the window in the art gallery and I am able to leave the Ice Palace for the first time. I’m not even going to mention that we were on the second floor.

Just because my nose glows… I just don’t fit in.

I have been reluctant to mention this before now because I am not sure what is the game and what is the emulator, but I have been struggling with infrequent lockups. I’ve never lost more than a few minutes, but from this point on the game suddenly becomes much less stable. By the time I reach the end in a few minutes from now, I’ll be carefully plotting every move and avoiding actions (like checking our inventory!) that can trigger a crash. I push through, but if these bugs were in the original then I am not sure how much patience the players would have had for this. I’m going to assume that the bugs are due to emulaton and possibly due to my use of save states rather than saving to disk as intended.

I emerge outside. To the west is a snow bank. I dig with the shovel and discover that Rudolph was trapped under the snow! He’s suffering from the extreme cold and his nose has turned orange rather than red; apparently that also means that the other reindeer will not recognize him. Are glowing colored noses so common that they couldn’t put two-and-two together? Sure, Comet and Cupid might be dumb, but Donner and Blitzen could have worked it out. I ask the computer what to do and it tells me that I need to administer a “hot non-alcoholic beverage”. I don’t have any of those yet.

Not the game’s best art.

Abandoning Rudolph for now, I head east to discover a hut with a loose floorboard. Looking at it tells me that it is “hanging at the window” and I can only assume that it’s a translation error of some kind. It hardly matters because I can move the board to find a path downstairs. Heading down, I discover not only Santa’s secret stash of booze, but also the jolly old elf himself. He’s been tied up, but it is no problem at all to “untie santa” and he heads off on his way. Santa will wait for us by his sleigh.

The final puzzle stumped me for a long time, but I eventually found the “hint” that I needed by hex-editing the game files. I know, I know… I’m a dirty cheater. The 1983 edition of the game just requires you to give the milk to Rudolph, but the 1984 edition wants it to be warm milk. I had guessed as much, but no amount of trying to warm it by the fire seemed to have helped. I eventually noticed an item in the game called “was’bas+mlk”. This revealed that I could put the milk in the basket, then I could put the basket in the fire, and finally I could fish them back out and have warm milk. Make sense? The parser doesn’t handle this very clearly as we cannot remove the milk from the basket when done, but it gets the point across and we can feed the milk to Rudolph. Once back to health, he too went back to Santa’s sleigh.

I race back to the sleign, noticing that there are now reindeer in their stables. Presumably Rudolph gathered them together once he was feeling well. At the sleigh, Santa gives me a present and a message from my friend that gave me the game and heads off on his yearly rounds. I win!

Time Played: 6 hr 35 min

Santa thanks you and leaves for his once-a-year task.

We get our gift (never revealed) and then the game ends with a personalized message.

Final Rating

We made it to the end of another holiday classic! I hope you enjoyed this trip as much as I have. I have a ton of fun researching these holiday games and I hope that comes through. This is a game that has tremendous promise, but for everything that is ahead of its time (the personalization and help system especially), there are some head-scratching moments that a more seasoned game designer would have avoided. The fact that I had enough fun that I was willing to try to hex-edit the game to solve it should be seen as a sign of my enjoyment and desire to reach the end, rather than my frustration.

Every one of our reviews may be someone’s first and that is doubly true for these holiday posts. Let me remind you that we are using our “suspiciously similar” EGGNOG system for review since our usual rating scale doesn’t seem festive enough. Also keep in mind that these scores are based against an idealized version of a circa-1990s LucasArts or Sierra game. Text adventures and early adventures in general do not score all that highly, but this is an indication only of their quality compared to games released more than a decade later. These ratings are designed to be fun and it is generally not a good idea to put too much stock in them.

Let’s get to reviewing:

Enigmas and Solution-Findability – On the whole, I enjoyed the puzzles in this game even though most did not rise above fetch quests around the house. The use of the computer for hints was fantastic, as was everything involved with the Elf, and the creation of the warm milk. Ultimately, those were let down by the primitiveness of the parser but the underlying ideas were solid. The animated arcade sequence was also done well with the right level of charm and frustration; having to work out which elf to save was a nice touch. I am giving extra credit for the robust helpo system which was exceptional for the era and helped to ensure the game remained fun and not frustrating. The rhyming clues ( which I only briefly covered) were some of the game’s best sources of humor. My score: 3

Game UI and Items – As much as I hate to say it, the interface isn’t quite baked yet. A three-character parser with very few synonyms is not great even by 1983 standards and it shows that the developers hadn’t played that many adventure games prior to building this one. If they had better tools, they could have made a better game. Still, the verb list was helpful (even if it felt like an exaggeration) and there are some great features such as the ability to make multiple moves in a single line which are listed in the manual but which I did not discover on my own. My score: 2

Gameworld and Story – The Ice Palace and environs were fun to explore, but they never felt like a real place and the story never coalesced into a full narrative. We never fully understood who our avatar was in the game (an intelligent or magical computer?) and the menace of an Evil One from the dawn of time who plotted something against Santa was a great start, but didn’t go anywhere and didn’t have any impact on the ending of the game. It feels like there were plot beats missing. Who tied up Santa? How did Rudolph end up trapped in the snow? Did we ever cure all of those cursed elves? My score: 1

Noises and Pretty Pixels – This game gives us both a Christmas soundtrack and some excellent art, including a surprisingly nice opening animation. A few of the locations weren’t drawn as well as the others, but the little touches ranging from Pac-Man’s cameo to the catch-the-elves game were done very well. My score: 3

Overworld and Environs – In our normal rating system, we refer to this category as “Atmosphere” and it describes how the game made you feel. Was it tense? Did the setting evoke strong emotions? Did it all come together in an indescribable way? Unfortunately, I have to say that while the game was good and had some nice bits of levity, the overall tone wasn’t consistent. I may have felt differently if I had used the help system more or if the rhymes were integrated into the game itself. My score: 2

Gregariousness and Thespianism – This category refers to the game’s text and I’m very much in a split-decision. On one hand, the room descriptions were spartan and a few object names had strange contractions. And yet, some of the jokes landed, the computer interfaces were nice, and the help system was robust and clever with lots of rhyming clues that most players would never see. I loved those rhyming clues! My score: 2.

Before we add it all up, I want to add one bonus point for being customizable. I was considering deducting points for the crashes, but as I am uncertain whether that was my game or the emulator, I’ll give the game the benefit of the doubt.

Finally tally: (3+2+1+3+2+2)/.6+1 = 23 points!

Honestly, that feels about right. This is another case where the game is greater than the sum of its parts, but it is in good company with several of our other Christmas games, as well as Brian Moriarty’s early work. I am positive that the Bitcards team would have continued to improve had they remained in the industry. With a slightly better engine, they could have done wonders. Even so, it seems likely that Frank Winstan invented the computer greeting card.

I might be stretching things a bit, but I would not be at all surprised to learn that Winstan’s game inspired the release of Merry Christmas from Melbourne House the following year. While they were Australian (but releasing games in the US and UK) and it seems unlikely that they played this one, a particularly inscrutable joke in that game was that you could only exit Santa’s workshop via a window. We may never know if these events are connected, but I have my suspicions.

If you are looking for even more Christmas-gaming fun, please check out our previous holiday specials:

Merry Christmas from Melbourne House (1984)

A Spell of Christmas Ice (1984)

Crisis at Christmas (1986)

Elves ‘87 (aka Elf’s Christmas Adventure) (1987)

Humbug (1990)

As for me, I’ll be taking a break until the new year when I will resume our Infocom marathon (finally!) with Trinity. See you in 2020!

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-79-a-christmas-adventure-1983/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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koreaboundfan · 6 years ago

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Busan

So I had to just go to Busan. I have seen dramas filmed in and about Busan and it was on my bucket list. I am really glad I went this whole weekend! It was a bit of an ordeal for comfortable Americans, like myself, to have to manage all the buses, trains, walking, etc. I walked to my bus stop 1132 and took that to Taereung where I caught Line 6 just for one stop to Seokgye, got off and walked a lot to Line 1 and took that to Seoul station. That’s were I walked a lot more and got to the KTX station up on top and bought my ticket to Busan. I walked to the gates where everyone who was waiting was sitting on these pretty bleachers to see what gate their train would be at. Just fyi - it only shows the gates to go to for trains departing about 30-40 minutes into the future. Ten minutes of waiting I see gate 8 and its a mad dash down two flights of stairs. The seats were luxurious and comfy. I was able to have free internet for most of the ride as provided by KTX as long as we weren’t in a tunnel.

South Korea is full of hills, small mountains, and deep green trees and bushes. I guess I was really amazed at all the beautiful forestation and mountains with full cities in the valleys. I highly recommend you take the train south at least once to see it. I can only imagine what it looks like in the fall!

Getting off the KTX train was an adventure as you had to go out the main doors and down about 4 flights of stairs to get to the metro lines. There I was a bit confused as route 1004 was actually train 7. Thanks to two beautiful young Korean ladies who walked up to me and asked if I needed help, I made it to the right train. Then off the train and about 4 blocks of walking I was about where I needed to be. Thanks to public internet, I could use my map with great accuracy to find my hotel down this alley type street. In SK, there are stores, restaurants, you name it, tucked away on literally every nook and cranny of street space. Basically there is no ‘backdoor; or backside to a store. There are TWO stores for every single building, unless it’s a rich store who owns both the front and the back. :)

After checking into my hotel with the owner and her cute 12 year old daughter, I was shown the Korean way of using your key. It goes into a slot in your mini hallway to turn on all your room electricity. When you leave with the key, everything goes off to save the bill. Next are the slippers you have to use as you are not allowed to use street shoes in any home or hotel room. I then had to use the bathroom so bad after all the train/bus riding and walking. This is where I saw and used my first real Korean shower. See, this country does not have bathtubs, only showers with no shower curtain and a drain in the center. You can take a shower, brush your teeth in the sink all while soaping up! For those reading who have watched the K-dramas, or dramas from China or Thailand, will know exactly what I am talking about. I will post pics later in my blog so be sure to look for those!

With wet hair I walked back a few blocks to ‘The Hyundai” department store where I was told they had everything and a food court. Well, it’s like a Korean Macy’s just full of helpful people giving you cups of tea, little cookies and trying to get you to buy some expensive item. Thanks to google translate I was able to determine that they did not sell any type of hair products for covering the roots of your hair. I did manage to get suckered into buying ‘White Musk’ violet version that older and quite attractive, Gong Yoo endorsed. It smells delicious, and like Korea on the trains - cute Korean women dressed to the 9′s, and smelling good.

Desperate for a root touch up, I walked into a salon two doors from my hotel. Again Papago translator to the rescue and we determined that Korea does not sell this product. So with that I thank the Chinese government for tossing out my can of gray root cover up and decided to let these nice folks give me a $40 hair dye cover-up. Wow! They matched my hair color exactly, shampooed my hair (even though I just did it lol), got a head massage, water/tea and little dumpling, and good conversation with the family. They stayed open late just for me to get this done too. They wouldn’t take a tip, which is just like Korea - no tips for anything.

Dinner, heck I hadn’t had lunch either! So I walked again, about 3 blocks across from the big street and found this chicken place. I had the famous chicken and beer thing everyone says you have to have here. It was good and I was given a fork and tongs to pull the meat off the bone. There will be none of this eating with your fingers here! There is a little bucket already lined with a bag for your bones along with a pack of wet wipes on the table. I had half regular and half of the soy sauce wings and lost my sense of all flavor. Soy sauce crunchy fried chicken is the bomb - they know how to do this chicken thing RIGHT! Served with cut small radishes, along with Korean mustard and more sauce. I went ahead and asked for the famous Korean beer - at only .50 cents why not? It was good, and a perfect match to the chicken. I was happy sitting alone but the 5 Korean college kids invited me to their table saying “no one should be alone”. They were nice, one kid had applied to SM and was hoping to be an idol even though he was 19. He sang a bit for us and his friends gave him a hard time. I had been secretly enjoying their banter and laughter from my table. One student had a contagious laugh that was just awesome. I thanked them for their company and walked back to my motel even though they insisted on walking me.

I was asked to coffee in the morning from a language friend here in Busan. I said yes and agreed to 9:30am since he was teaching the junior high kids at church. On Sunday morning he calls me and said he was already out front 30 minutes early! Way to panic a tired American who probably shouldn’t have drank beer the night before since I’m not a regular alcohol consumer. The coffee and company was nice even though my new friend had to leave and apologized for not be able to show me around Busan.

I said goodbye and went back into my hotel to grab a bite of breakfast. I gave the rest of my wings to the other owner, who gratefully accepted them for his lunch. I just didn’t want to walk around all day with the chicken and have to pitch it later from the warmth of my backpack. Breakfast was good but the best was being able to try on the Hanbok, traditional Korean clothes, and get a picture.

I walked in and out of shops, not actually finding what I wanted so I decided it was time to catch a bus to the beach. Gwangali Beach was beautiful, 75 degrees and a little cloudy with a generous breeze! After all the previous sweating and melting, it was a welcomed relief for this lady. I spent about 45 minutes down at the beach and then started to walk around the shops. I found BBQ - the chicken place endorsed by BTS for the crispy friend chicken with pure coconut in the breading. I asked for a half order and waited for this chicken, sitting at a side table watching all the people walking to the beach.

The chicken arrived, same utensils as the previous night. looking just like the picture on the door and the menu. I was in love at first bite! IT was just as crunchy as the commercials and had a little spice to it that I cannot identify. All I know is that it was good and I sat there talking briefly to the husband and wife who owned this restaurant. Both in their 60′s, the husband delivers food on his scooter. The wife knew she had an internet order for delivery by the bell that rang. I watched as she would get up and go check the order and start cooking a new order. Oh Korean chicken I love you and will miss you so much when I have to leave.

Next I walked around at the shops but still did not find what I wanted to get for my kiddos. So, it was time to go get on a long bus ride to Seomyeon, the shopping district. I managed to get dropped on the opposite side of Lotte, the largest store and mall in Busan. Problem is how to get across the street as their were no walkways across this 6 lane main street. I decided to try the train station entrance since there was also on the other side. Guess what? The entire train station below was crammed with underground shops! Such a steady stream of shoppers and commuters that you could barely make it across the way. I finally made it to the Lotte entrance and entered. Immediately I could tell this was a huge store - larger than the Hyundai Store. I would compare it to Von Maur on crack. I went up and explored all 6 floors and yet not one Kpop item anywhere to be found. I did find something called the ‘Main Event’ area where people were clamoring for items just put out at 60-90% off regular price. I watched as people bent over and squeezed in between other shoppers in a display that resembled a Blue Light Special back in the days of K-Mart. Only this was like a BLS on steroids selling Cabbage Patch Dolls for $5 instead of $35 like they were back in the day, lol. There were equal amounts of men and women fighting for the items and I was entertained just watching it all. What really amazed me were the male salesmen in the cosmetic area. One they were dressed better than me, second the smelled better than me, and third their makeup was flawless. Men both old and teenagers were all over the counters looking at moisturizer with sunblock in it, foundation to cover imperfections, and tinted lip gloss with yet more sunblock in it. Let’s face it, Korean men take good care of themselves physically and mentally. They are good with their masculinity, and were skin products to protect their skin. Why is skin care only limited to women in the rest of the world? ?Just why? Spiritually, more Korean men attend church than American men per percentage of population. So for the guys back home who want to call these guys ‘feminine’ or ‘gay; - it won’t bother these Korean men at all. They are very secure in their lives, are healthy, take care of their bodies in and out, and wear pink teddy bears embroidered on their $200 shirts. They also have a flock of women following after them as well...

Well, after the fiasco of shopping frenzied budget minded folks I was ready to get closer to the station while also window shopping along the way. I finally made it to buy my ticket back to Seoul and almost didn’t make it back in time! Seats were selling fast on all trains but this lady managed to get my economy class at 1825. That was over an hour later than what I wanted but it was better than being stuck in the station until 2100. Time for a coffee, get on free KTX internet, and write down my train and bus routes just in case I wouldn’t have internet later on when I ‘needed it’. i watched people come and go, talk, hug, laugh, run, and chat along during that hour wait. I already knew this but I have to say it again, “People are people”. They love, cry, say goodbye, give giant hugs when they see their loved ones, get married, hubbies all carry tiny babies on the trains, women rub their pregnant tummies while their husbands protectively walk besides them. What I did notice too is that Korean couples are just plain cute. The men are protective over their women, not like they are going to be robbed protective, no it’s more like caring protective? They open doors for older women, those with bags in their hands, carry the babies, ask if their girlfriend or wife is “okay” as they walk long ways, and just seem more attentive to others feelings. Maybe because this is a culture where others are supposed to be thought of first versus yourself. You see this on the buses and trains here in Korea. They have special seats for pregnant women, elderly, or handicapped. You can sit in those seats as long as their isn’t a need. I watched over the last two weeks the same scene play out over and over again - a younger person, including myself, would get up and offer their seat to a grandma/grandpa or obvious person who was not feeling well. It’s automatic, not a second thought to it, they just offered their seat immediately. Many times the elderly men would try to offer me a seat and I would nicely say “no”. The two times I did take a seat I gave it up the second a women older than me got on board. Respect for the elderly and those older than you - it’s built in, it’s taught from birth, it’s a good thing, it works and it’s amazing to witness.

Off my soapbox of Korean societal praises, don’t worry I’ll be back later lol. Long walk to line 1 to catch my train in reverse back to Taereung. Two stops away the conductor tells us all to get off because of a problem. No worries, the trains run every 6 minutes and bam, there was another train and back on schedule. Off perfectly and walked to the correct side of the station to be on the correct side of the street. Buses actually follow the flow of traffic for their routes - go figure. Only 3 stops and I was off and walking the few blocks back to the university and to my dorm building. First thing I noticed once coming outside for the bus ride? Humidity had returned to Seoul while I was gone - welcome back sweating lol. A nice shower and a made bed waiting for me. Maybe tomorrow I can get a ton more pictures uploaded for ya all. Night!

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