The Tome Exodus Begins

Tomorrow, at last, the first truck arrives in front of the Berkeley apartment. Two trucks in fact, one for donated books (41 boxes) and one for personal papers off to the museum (16 cartons). Then on Tuesday, two more trucks; one for furniture (14 large items) and one for the antiquarian books (20 more boxes), which means --- I can schedule the carpet cleaner and potentially, if the river don't rise, I will be sleeping in Berkeley come next weekend.

There is still the matter of all of the art to be evaluated and sent off to the appropriate collector, dealer or museum, but I can share space with art and come mid-week there will be enough space in the apartment for at least one large humanoid and twelve million dust mites.

Once I am in residence I will share some of the truly interesting facets of my latest domicile, but as of today I am officially closing the final calendar month of the longer-than-expected non-domiciled period I so casually entered early last year.

The next big life decision: will I be in one place long enough to once again co-habitat with a feline. It has been three and a half years since last I shared space with a furr-ball and I surely do miss the purrs.

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Let me just say up front that I derive no monetary benefits from your potential use of the website profiled in today's post. I am not an affiliate member, nor do I have any financial interest in said website, nor do any members of my immediate family or any recent lovers.

I am not a fan of solitaire and having recently given up online poker, so I was in need of some cyber-pastime other than my interest in english language newspapers from non-US countries. Then I discovered Sporacle.com. I apologize to any of my readers who become addicted to Sporacle but as all consuming websites go, it is more educational than most and a lot less stress on your wrist than many more pictorially oriented sites.

Sporacle describes itself as "mentally stimulating diversions." It is that and also frustrating, embarrassing and challenging. It is design to be "played" solo but while in Indiana on my recent trip, my brother and I found with a laptop each we could have Sporacle Challenges.

Basically, Sporacle is a factual, quiz, trivia, general to specific knowledge set of tests which as of now number "2,782 published games plus 60,865 user created games that have been played 199,855,339 times." Allow me to tweak your interest.

How about can you name all fifty U.S. states? Easy right? Well you get 10 minutes and yes they do give you a map.

Think you are geographically intelligent. Name the countries of the world. There are 195, you get 15 minutes and if you manage half of them, you are a star. Oh, did I mention spelling counts. Is it Herzegovina or Herzagovinia or Herzegovinia? Kasikhstan right?

You can pick from the most popular lists or go with geography, history, entertainment or sports among the fourteen categories.

Can you name the Seven Dirty Words?

How about the three most populous cities of the world by letters of the alphabet? Nope not Athens or Atlanta.

There are quizzes on corporate logos, college mascots and famous Dicks.

Some trending topics are topical, there are a lot of Olympic ones right now.

So go ahead give it a click, why not it's only time you could be spending with your family or planning your retirement or solving global warming (hint: fewer people being entertained by a power gobbling computer). Have fun.