Ummmm... the Yakima fire affected the 2006 crop (so mostly last year's beer). I've seen figures from 4% to 10% of the 2006 US crop was burned/smoke damaged. This is probably more r/t limited production/poor growing last year? or OIL pricces.

We brewed with hops that my neighbor grew with no problem. It pretty aggressive plant that needs lots of overhead support. Beatiful plant, though.

Oh, yeah--Morse code wouldn't work either, as I am informed by my daughter that "." and "," don't work either. Only punctuation allowed are "!" and "?".

Must say... my 11 yr old daughter plays on "CP" regularly, as do many of her "real life" friends, and the kids have found much more creative ways around those rules. They (at least my daughter and friends) view it as a challenge.

And no, she's not some sheltered Disneyphile... she reads like a fiend (she's recently into Poe and Ray Bradbury alongside her old standards Harry Potter and Judy Blume). She converses intelligently with adults--being the only child in a large circle of purposely childless adults--and she plays with dolls, mostly when her friends aren't looking. She has free and unfettered access to the internet, too, and chooses CP often (I know, I know, her training wheels for MySpace.)

I have found that with a reasonably smart child and adult guidance, "playing" on the internet has brought up great conversations about personal information and privacy. I'm a bit old school when it comes to being "googleable." I sent her the link to this post, and she thought it was hilarious.

I suspect lots of the thousands of "banned words" are likely phrases. One way around many of the "banned words" or personal conversations that the kids use is to type single words... if you type "want to come over tonight for a sleepover?" it won't go through, but you can type "want" "to" "come" "over" "for" "a" "slp" "over" in the ridiculous little cartoon bubbles that appear over the penguins' heads, it goes through just fine.

BTW, "hate" becomes "hat" she told me (apparently they've been unable to ban "hat"--many of the joys of CP are r/t "dressing" your penguin. They cannot type numbers or "@" so "C13v31@nd $t33m3r" would not go over.

I have to say that "twittering" (mahjong jargon for shuffling) the tiles and building the wall is quite a part of the game, but it can take almost as much time as the hand itself, so if you're playing like a pro, I can see the appeal... We play pub mahjong on Friday nights. My mahjong group has also discovered that while alcohol does not impair one's ability to "build the wall", other intoxicants have a detrimental effect on building straight walls with the correct number of pieces, so once again... I can see the appeal, although it looks like it's probably quite an investment.

Nice creatures. My immediate response was that the biggest one reminds me of the critter in Put Me in the Zoo, which I hadn't thought of since I was about 4 years old. http://www.amazon.com/Put-Me-Zoo-Beginner-Books/dp/0394800176My
My 11 yr old probably won't want to play with these little lovelies, but at least I have an excuse to buy Gama-Go, Kidrobot, and dunnies.