Simpson's Paradox

I’ve never made it to the top of the Gardening skill track in the Sims, but I’m pretty sure that the top proficiency is “Meg’s Granny” skill level. At this proficiency level, you use a stick to stake an amaryllis, and the stick grows. True story.
Unfortunately, I didn’t exactly inherit that. I still love [...]

It’s really all Sanchaita’s fault.
When I was visiting my sister Bethie, her friend Sanchaita invited us to dinner. She cooked the most amazing chickpea curry — as part of a feast of other amazing dishes, I should add — and when I asked what kind of magic and rainbows went into it, she said it [...]

Resorting To Danger, by Her Interactive, is the second in the Nancy Drew Dossier series, following Lights, Camera, Curses!. This time, Nancy is investigating a series of bombs at the Redondo, a rejuvenation clinic for the stars. The bombs are more mess than death, containing pie filling or ladybugs, but Nancy’s still got to defuse [...]

Last weekend, Stick and I went out to pick strawberries.  We ended up at Buckwheat Farm, where we filled a tray and our mouths with hot red berries. It was summer-day perfection.  After half a tray, we started to get hot and sweaty, and the Nintendo games back home in the air-conditioning were starting to [...]

I once had an English professor who told us that foreshadowing, symbolism and irony are literary terms, and by definition, can not happen in real life. It is our desire to see our life as a coherent story, he believed, that made us look for such things in hindsight. I disagree, but then, I think [...]

Oliver Twist
8111-137 Creedmoor Rd
Raleigh, NC 27613
Last week was Triangle Restaurant Week, when an assortment of local restaurants run a special set menu. We were meeting up with Lynn and some of her friends.
I ended up narrowing our dining choices to between Oliver Twist and Red Room, but the humor value of a restaurant naming itself [...]

My friend Lynn works in a flower shop. She called about a week ago to tell me she was on her way over with a present, a little potted lavender, because when I said I always kill my plants, she took it as a challenge. Lavender, she promised, require occasional watering and they like to [...]

I have a review of the new Faerie Solitaire up on ThumbGods.

I’m a bit late posting this because every time I went to get another screenshot or check a fact, I got sucked into playing a few hands of Faerie Solitaire.
Faerie Solitaire from SubSoap is a new casual game, mixing a cute fantasy story [...]

The new online kids’ game Garden Party is almost ready, and Victoria from Asylum was nice enough to send me an email introducing me to the beta.
I checked out the game, which is billed as a safe, multiplayer world for kids. Garden Party is a collection of minigames, which can be played interactively or [...]

Barbie just introduced me to N., a Stephen King story, about a psychiatrist and his patient, who might be saving the world or just garden-variety insane. The story is intriguing and it’s been turned into a series of short, comic book-style videos (adapted by one of the Eli Stone guys, too). It’s completely addictive, each [...]