I don't drink...wine

Mrs Rasmussen and I went to a Halloween party yesterday night at our friends' P&P. We came as Poison Ivy and Count Dracul (Gary Oldmand-style from Coppola's film). Look at the picture, I think I was really convincing.
Anyway, it was great. We had a ball. I mixed and burned a special-CD-for-you-my-friend Halloween soundtrack. We drank champagne punch. We danced.

All is well in Apple Land

One of the good things about being an Apple Mac user, apart from that everything works as it should and looks good too, is the absence of viruses and similar nasties. There are Mac viruses out there, especially for the older versions of the Mac operation system, and until this morning I had never heard of a virus for Mac OS X. For a second I was worried.
The news was about the worm Renepo, AKA Opener, which is a script that specifically targets Mac OS X. If installed on a Mac computer, the worm can do a lot of damage and open the computer up for outside attacks and such. The virus is not out in "real life", but only being analysed by anti-virus software companies. So, big deal.

At least it's raining

Mrs Rasmussen went back to work the last six and a half weeks before her Christmas holidays. I went back to my PowerBook and my desk, which is completely filled with notes and print-outs and books. I am writing a childrens' book, the first draft hopefully to be finished before the clock strikes 2005.
We have managed to persuade Mrs Rasmussen's parents to come and visit us over Christmas. Their visit will of course include a mandatory tour of some of Edinburgh's best sites, as well as trips to Fife and Loch Lomond.

A taste of winter

Mrs Rasmussen and I went north on our own a couple of days. We stayed at a B&B in Stonehaven, a small fishing village on the east coast, about 15 miles south of Aberdeen.
The following day we drove to Aberdeen, just to have a look at it. We hung out in a bookstore, did some shopping and eventually drove west, into the Highlands. The weather got worse and worse, and we reached a small town called Braemar, right in the middle of the mountains. We found a small B&B in the darkness, and had dinner at the local, and only, hotel. It was raining and windy. And so quiet.
We woke up the following morning to minus degrees outside. According to the B&B lady, Braemar is the coldest place in Britain, and we felt the winter had come along far too early.
Our way home took us right through the mountains around the ski resort Glenshee, with miles and miles of empty mountain road and snowclad peaks. We stopped for a couple of hours in Perth, did some more shopping, and the rest was easy with motorway all the way to Edinburgh.

Scotball

We were talking about Scottish football yesterday, after their national team only scraped home 1-1 against the less than scary opponents from Moldovia. The question is why Scotland has, and has had for a very very long time, an appauling national football team. It's painful to watch. Almost like those Sunday amateur games you only watch because somebody on the pitch is related to you or is your friend. Otherwise you would leave and do something sensible.
Scotland has five million inhabitants. A professional football league. Much like Denmark. The Scottish supporters seem to think it has something to do with the coach, but the problem was there long before Berti Vogts took over. A different coach might make a difference, but I feel that a change in the attitude to how modern football is played is also required. It seems to me, though I am no expert in the game, that the general view on how football should be played is very rooted in 60s and 70s tactics. It doesn't matter how well you play as long as you score more goals than your opponent.
The trouble is, Scotland not only plays badly, they also don't score more goals than their opponents.

Don't panic

Three days to mid-term holidays, and Mrs Rasmussen and the kids will be off school for a week. They are all tired and in desperate need of some time off.
BBC 4 have started to air new episodes of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on Tuesday evenings. They have also re-launched Douglas Adams' and Steve Meretzky's old text adventure game from 1984.
THE HITCHHIKER ADVENTURE GAME by Douglas Adams

Beautiful monster

Remember The Dude from The Big Lebowski? "I toured as a roadie with Metallica. They're a bunch of assholes."
Well, you could think that they actually are, but after harrowing theraphy over a three year period, they're actually not. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster is a superb documentary following the band's trip to hell and back. It's sometimes painful, sometimes gruelling, sometimes moving and mostly downright excellent to watch.
And don't let trailers and promotional clips fool you into believing that Lars Ullrich is a bigger asshole than the other two - their bass player left before this documentary - or that James Hetfield is a very understanding fellow. Watch the whole thing. It's long, but it all makes sense in the end and stands out as what must be the finest portrait of a rock band ever.
Their new album, St Anger, sounds like it's also very good indeed.

Contact

Matthias is very into sports at the moment. He plays for the school's Rugby team and practices basketball Wednesday after school. There is also additional rugby training Monday, and last Saturday he was in Kirkcaldy to play against another school.
Now, this is the time when his parents wish he would have chosen golf, snooker or any other non-contact sport. Monday he arrived home with a shoulder injury from another player's boot, and he has already had several other minor scratches. One of the other boys broke his collar bone. These things worry parents, trust me.
Yesterday I went to the driving range at Braid Hills golf course, not far from our house. I went with my friend P (not P from Prague, but P from further down the street), and we both hadn't played for a very long time. It was so nice whacking those little white suckers away. So nice we'll be doing it again. And Matthias is coming next time. Time he had some healthy interests.

Slivovice

P from Prague, who moved in upstairs a couple of weeks ago, went back to the Czech republic last week. She was collecting more of her stuff and of course visiting her family.
She brought back a bottle of Slivovice for us, which was a superb surprise. Slivovice is the Czech traditional spirit, like snaps is Denmark or Whisky in Scotland, and it's made from plums. The bottle is from the Rudolph Jelinek Distilleries in Vizovice in the Zlin region, eastern Czech Republic.
We discovered the great taste of slivovice in 1989, when we visited a family in Padubice, but in fact haven't tasted it since.