You sound like us. We have a few weeks blocked off but no plans yet.

No, No. You don’t understand. They are great drivers, an accident won’t happen to THEM!

That’s a good point, I choose to be flattered.

Iditarod sounds neat!

OK, this is pretty good.

We usually know what city/countries we want to visit this year, but actually looking for hotels or airfare is like a month out. We’re pretty chill vacationers, and we have our style worked out so it’s not usually stressful for us. YMMV!

Dog sitting is challenging, that’s true. We’ve had trouble with that before.

My new bestie right here.

WHAT?

This is me as well.

You must camp nicer places than I do!

The dog is a problem for sure.

That sucks, but it’s an interesting way to plan!

Danke.

I liked it too, bought it at the used book store with no idea what it was, just because I love Discworld. It’s really interesting! I’ve got 1 and 3, waiting for the others to turn up at the store.

Lobsang is an interesting character.

Also, obligatory GNU Terry Pratchett.

I notice that my lemmy instance does not have “clacks-overhead” in the HTTP headers, so they’re not doing their part to keep his name alive in the Clacks. (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clacks-overhead-gnu-terry/lnndfmobdoobjfcalkmfojmanbeoegab)

Those are all fantastic choices! Rama is one of my favorites, even with the co-authored sequels losing a lot of the majesty that makes the first book so engaging.

If you liked those books, I think you might like Hal Clement’s A mission of Gravity, about an expedition to a very high-gravity planet and the fascinating perspectives of the creatures that live there.

I just picked up the Alpha Strike box 35690 and I already had the Alpha Strike Commander’s Edition book 35680, so I’ll try a few games and get a baseline of experience with the rules before I try it with newbies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrol_Air_Cushion_Vehicle

Very cool. Seems like a good idea for the terrain. $1 million each makes it a hard sell vs 13 patrol boats. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrol_Boat,_River

Good point.

You know how some people’s like having a ridiculously huge truck just to show off to other people that have a ridiculously huge truck? Some gun enthusiasts are like that. It’s not uncommon to see novelty guns like this made, sometimes custom or sometimes by a factory. Stuff like a revolver that also shoots shotgun shells or a pistol with two barrels to shoot two shots at once or a bolt-action pistol to shoot the (basically) largest rifle rounds.

I think this happens in any hobby. I’m sure there are bird watchers with $5000 custom hand-ground binocular lenses or something.