HossC

Undercover (There was a character called Jo Jo in 'Undercover Dukes') I'd never heard of JoJo Potatoes either, but according to Wikipedia, they are a variant of potato wedges which are popular in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northern Utah, Northeast Ohio, Wisconsin and Upstate New York (their words, not mine).

wings

It's a shame you're retired, Roger. I'd have love to have seen your colleagues' faces when you turned up to work with your lunch in that.

Over here, we're normally asked if we're vaccinated or have had Covid in the last X months (the X seems to vary from 3 to 6). Recovering from Covid does seem to provide some sort of immunity, but as I've so far avoided catching it, I went down the vaccination route.

We've being doing antigen tests at work on a weekly basis for the last month, but so far they've all been negative. Pubs and restaurants here now have to close by 8pm. We've been wearing masks in stores and other indoor spaces from the beginning. A friend only got her negative test back yesterday, so at least she'll be able to enjoy Christmas. I got my booster shot on Monday, and other than a slightly sore arm on Tuesday night, I've had no adverse side effects.

It's time to revive an old thread and wish HazzardNet's Supreme Superior Commander, MeadowMufn, a very happy birthday.

Happy Christmas everyone. No sign of snow here. It's been raining the last two mornings, and there's more forecast for next week. At least it cleared up by lunchtime yesterday, giving me a chance to meet some friends and exchange my last few cards and gifts.

As far as I remember, Hobie was only in 'Bye, Bye Boss' in season 3 and 'Goodbye, General Lee' in season 4. I've only just noticed that they both have farewells in their titles - there's a coincidence.

Bunny

I got to see some live music tonight for the first time in ages. As part of the local Christmas events there are various acts playing on a temporary bandstand in town. Tonight it was a local family where the father sings, the mother plays piano and the son is an international award winning violinist. Funnily enough, they were the main act when I sang in the cathedral a couple of years back (we joined them on stage for 'Nessun Dorma'), and I've since found out that the mother is the cousin of friends of mine (well, this is Ireland after all!). To top it off, the mother had made Christmas cake for afterwards.

A friend of mine was talking about seeing a comet or something similar earlier in the week. Five out of 10 Premier League soccer matches have been postponed due to Covid, as have several international rugby matches.

I was going to post the news that Mercedes have decided not to pursue an appeal against the outcome of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, but when I looked for the article again, I found a newer article where Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said that Hamilton felt "disillusioned" by the events in Abu Dhabi and he could not guarantee if Hamilton would continue to race in F1.

Lewis Hamilton may have lost the F1 world championship on Sunday, but he received his knighthood for services to motorsport from Prince Charles during a ceremony at Windsor Castle earlier today. I wonder if his name will come up as "Sir Lewis Hamilton" on the captions next year.

Your references to Ghosts sounded familiar, so I looked it up. It's a UK TV show made by the BBC, and I now remember watching a couple of episodes when it started in 2019. There have currently been three seasons of the original. By your character references, I'm guessing that you're watching the US remake. The Viking in your version is a caveman in the original, and other characters have apparently been Americanized. Here's a short trailer for the UK version.

Thanks, Hobie. I had a very painful, stiff shoulder in the middle of last week - it's apparently a known after effect of being inflated with CO2. That kept me awake for a couple of nights with only strong painkillers and a hot water bottle giving a few hours of respite. Luckily, that's now eased considerably, and last night I got the most sleep I've had for over a week. I stupidly went straight back to work last Monday. I initially felt OK, but by the end of the day I was exhausted. Tuesday I did less than half a day, and then I gradually built up to about 80% by Friday. This week I'm back to normal hours, so fingers crossed I get on alright. I survived today!

Driver of the day in yesterday's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was Kimi Raikkonen, who is leaving F1 after 19 seasons, 349 races and a world championship in 2007. He secured 42.8% of the vote, with Red Bull's Sergio Perez second with 21.5% after he supported his team-mate Verstappen by holding up Hamilton. By contrast, Mercedes' seven times world champion Lewis Hamilton took 10.9% and the new world champion, Max Verstappen, only got 7.6%. It says something about the outcome that driver of the day went to a driver who retired from the race from a midfield position at around half distance!

I was told today that about 240 vehicles took part, so I underestimated!

We had the prospect of a great finale with the two title contenders starting first and second. As a bonus, the race was also live on free-to-air TV. I'm still annoyed by the ending, which is why I didn't post the result myself. What a complete mess it turned out to be after such a great season. If it had been a straight wheel-to-wheel fight I'd have been fine with the outcome, but the race stewards seemed to decide which rules to follow as they went along. Normally they either resume racing in the order they stack up behind the safety car, or they let lapped cars overtake to unlap themselves, but yesterday they just let the five cars between Lewis and Max go through and almost immediately restarted the race. Mercedes still plan to appeal the result, so this still may not be the end of it. At this point I'm not even sure if I'll be watching next year!

I'm sure Roger would have liked my afternoon - a charity tractor run went through town. I think each vehicle had to pay €20 to join the convoy, and there were plenty of people shaking buckets along the route. As well as tractors, there were also a good few trucks, and I nearly went deaf as they all sounded their horns as they went by. The majority were decorated with Santas and Christmas lights. I lost count of the number of vehicles, but they took almost half an hour to pass. I'd say there must've been around 200 altogether.

Thanks for the link, Hobie. It's quite fun, and there's a good few Dukes references in there. I just struggled slightly with the line "In that car all painted o'nge". Virtually nothing rhymes with orange (Blorenge (a mountain in Wales) and sporange (a technical word for a sac where spores are made) don't fit the theme), so maybe he should have put it in the middle of line. Other than that, good stuff.

The line was spoken by Lori in 'Southern Comfurts'. She was played by Lori Lethin, who seems to have stopped acting (at least on TV and in movies) in 1999.

Did you check the basement for silver thieves?

Yes, I'm supposed to be on a low fat diet. I was definitely nervous because they have to go through the worst case scenarios. I've still been sore today, but the painkillers seem to do the trick. I'm just hoping for a good night's sleep. I'm glad that covid hasn't affected your family too much, Roger. We've got tighter guidelines starting again this week. Let's hope that we don't have to go back to lockdown again before Christmas.

We had a very strange F1 race in Saudi Arabia today. It was the first race at a brand new street-style circuit, and it came with its fair share of incidents and controversy. There were a couple of crashes with red flags, several virtual safety cars for debris, and some "interesting" on-track moves. In the end, Lewis Hamilton won the race, with title rival Max Verstappen in second. They now go into next week's finale level on points.

Thanks, Hobie. I've just ventured out to get some groceries, and while I was walking it felt vaguely like I'd been punched in the stomach, but not too hard. Hopefully things will get even better tomorrow.