Olly olly Oxen Free

From our old standby, Wikipedia

"Olly olly oxen free is a catchphrase used in the childrens' game of hide and seek to indicate that players who are hiding can come out into the open without losing the game. It may possibly be from the German phrase "Alle, alle auch sind frei!" which loosely means "everybody is free!" (Too bad the Nazis didn't use the phrase during WWII. But that is another topic.)

"The correct phrasing used for generations of hide-and-seek and kick-the-can players is based on old English and goes as follows “ALL YE ALL YE IN COME FREE” and it means exactly what it says “all ye players may come in free” ."

OK PMT, time to check in. It has been two weeks since your last post here and we haven't seen you at all around the corner. This blog was your welcome brainchild and it just doesn't flow well without your input.

We have an interesting new poster, PJB and the rest of us still have an unstated opinion or two. Windhover has been dropping his two cents around the corner, but he needs to come back here to really vent. Like the rest of us, all he needs is a little encouragement. (I know, WH, not a whole lot is required.)

AND we still want to hear more about your cruise/vacation.

We all hope that everything is well with you.

Called Out As A Racist...Who, Me??

Around the corner is just getting to be more and more fun. Today, I was called out by one of those idiot anons for being a racist. My racist remark (now get this) was that I noticed the country of origin spelling of his/her original post, between offence (British) and offense (American). Haul me off and and make me a jailer on...oh, where was that prison in South Africa where Nelson Mandela was jailed for 27 years? Now I remember, Robben Island. Yeah, I can hardly wait to start abusing shackled, defenceless (British spelling, notice) prisoners. Oh rats, the country's gone democratic and all that apartheid crap is history.

Or maybe I was being a racist for objecting to the anon's comment about someone being a "phobed out closet case". Hey, I'm as tolerant as the next black, Jewish lesbian (had you fooled, didn't I?), but the comment was ridiculous and was obviously meant as an insult.

All of this started because Brokeback Mountain was a subject of discussion. I thought the movie was cheated out of an Academy Award by a cowardly group of Academy voters. I thought the subject was handled with tact and dignity and left me feeling a great deal of sympathy for the lead characters. Beside that, it was a beautifully filmed movie. I'm sorry that my accuser liked the movie too. That is one too many things in common for me.

PMT, where are you? It is time to get back out here and start offending some people, amusing others and letting everybody know just where you stand!

Impressions

Lucky!

Sort of.

The day we left it was stormy. Richard, having spent many years working undercover for the FBI in JFK posing as an immigration agent, had the good sense to ask if we could board an earlier flight out of Ft Lauderdale. We were booked on the 5:15PM flight, but were there two hours early as required for international flights. The announcement informed us that the 3:15PM flight was delayed by an hour due to thunder storms. Rich figured that the 4:15 flight would also be delayed by at least an hour and, likewise, our subsequent flight. He asked if we might be put on standby for the next flight and, sure enough, we got on that one. This worked out great for us. Not so, unsurprisingly, for our bags. When we arrived at Arlanda International in Sweden our bags were not there. To Delta's credit they did know where our bags were. Apparently they were en route to Stockholm via Paris. We hoped for the best and that is what we got. About ten or twelve hours later our bags arrived at the hotel. Things were looking good. I figured that if that was the worst we had to deal with on our trip we would be getting off easy. As you know, that was not meant to be.

T he next couple of days were amongst the nicest of our trip. The weather was gorgeous. All of the Swedes came out for the big marathon and it was really a wonderful atmosphere in Stockholm. It couldn't have been better. The hotel had in-room Wi-Fi and that was when I was able to post the picture of all the people down along the Slussen.
I knew that the Swedes in the NHL were not typical. The professional hockey players are big. But still ...
Not only were the Swedish people nowhere near as big as I expected, they were fairly small. So much so that it struck my notice virtually immediately. The first day (Saturday), boarding the metro, I expected to be on guard psychically against the forbidding descendants of the vikings. Nope. They were neither as large as I expected, nor as blond.


The last day, the weather turned. That was the day that we had already boarded the ship and we spent that day on a tour bus visiting all the must see places around Stockholm while it rained. This turned out to be for the best. Our previous two days had been on foot and, at least, on this final day we were sheltered by the bus.



to be continued