rock, scissor, plastic bag?

i taught johanna (a swede) how to play ticshamtoe to pass the time during class. a couple of us invented it when we went to the boston harbor islands. basically, you rosham for moves, but the sequence of moves stays the same (you always place xoxoxoxoxo...), so the first rosham winner gets to be x and places an x whereever (his opponent is automatically o). the second rosham winner places the o (regardless of whether he's represented by o or x), and so on. the roshing completely changes the defensive strategy!

i won five roshams in a row to win the first game, and she gave me a dirty look. during the second game, i realized that she never threw rock so i started throwing paper lest she lose interest in the game entirely. at one point, i tried to explain to her why she kept losing the rosh's, but i'm not sure she believed me. that's when i lost interest in the game. during lunch, i realized the problem: the swedes have no concept of paper! they play with plastic bags instead. no wonder i had a natural advantage. other interesting things i learned about swedes: their favorite desserts are salty licourice and blueberry soup. seriously, they rave about these "treats". we asked one of them what goes in a blueberry soup...like blueberries and what else? and she said that you don't actually use blueberries, you get the soup as a powder out of a packet...yummy! after reading laura's entry about swiss food, i'm beginning to appreciate american food lots more.

instead of paying attention in class, i'm learning how to write macros in excel. yesterday i made a random number guessing game (exciting, i know, but cut me some slack, i'm learning vb via the help menu...not even internet to offer code samples). today, i started to make a rosh game. tomorrow maybe i'll figure out tictactoe...you see where this is going. the ultimate prize would be sudoku...but then i really wouldn't learn any finance.