Lemon Barley Water!

No, It's Not Code Nor An Officially-Sanctioned Swear
It is a drink, of old used to treat those who were weak and sickly and unlikely to see the week out unless they got LBW*.  Conrad, having had it pop up in his mind, decided to make some.
     You boil the barley for 30 minutes, strain the hot water into a bowl, add 6 ounces of sugar and 3 peeled, chopped lemons.  Strain and cool and you get

This!

     Let it cool and drink.  It tastes like water with lemon and barley flavouring, pretty much what you'd expect.
     Oh, I ate the barley later on with some sweet chilli sauce.
     Okay, Intro over - let us proceed with the yeltom!**

"Lillyhammer"***
Given his knowledge of Norway (they have lots of snow, fjords, Jo Nesbo and pine trees), and his extensive experience with Norwegian cinema (Orion's Belte, Trolljaeger, Thal, Dod Snow, Rare Exports), Conrad was surprised  about this television series, now having completed it's third season.  He'd never heard of it.
     It stars the talented yet lugubrious-looking Steve Van Zandt, whom some of you will recognise as a talented musician and others as starring in "The Sopranos", and he co-writes "Lillyhammer".  Which is an odd yet evocative name.
     It is a fish-out-of-water drama comedy.  Steve plays Frank, ex-mobster relocated under the WPP^, a city-boy down to his bones.  He chooses to relocate to Lillehammer, a provincial town in deepest Norway.
  
     Here an aside.  You can't really be anything like "deep" in Norway as it is like string, long and thin, but Lillehammer is probably the closest you can get to "deep" - 

Norway.  Lillehammer north of Oslo.

     Back to Steve.
     Frank, actually.  Okay, I wonder if they have Royksopp on this program?  That would be rather awesome.  Steve, being a musician, must have heard of them.  

<scrinch>

     That's the sound of Conrad crossing everything he's got for Royksopp.

Syncopation
I was going to comment on this but it looks dull and complicated so instead we'll hurry right on to -

Mesembryanthemum
Conrad has a vague memory of writing about this entity previously, although it might have been the chrysanthemum or the Baluchitherium.

Don't pull it's tail, mate!

     What is the Mesembryanthemum, and do you need fear it's razor-sharp talons or it's poison-injecting incisors, or it's 20 ton mass that will crush you flat as it undulates across the landscape?
     None of the above.  It's a flower, from South Africa:

Mesemb - Flowers.

Some Would Call This Cruel And Unusual Punishment
Conrad quite enjoys it.
     "What are you talking about, Conrad?" I hear you ask.  "Surely the man's not been necking the nitromethane again?"
     I speak of my copy of the "History of the 2nd Division - Volume 2".  This volume has been printed from a scan of the old original history which will have been published 80 or 90 years ago, a process which creates the odd typo here and there - a ratio of maybe 199:1 in the text.
     

     In the photo above I've highlighted the original page numbers and added them to the page at the bottom, e.g. PP443.  
     This is significant because the actual page numbers bear no relation whatsoever to the original text - the pages above are number 35 and 36.  I have been marking the index as well, so that I can relate the page numbers there(numbered in relation to the original text)  to the latter-day pages.  Thus:

A slow process!

     This might take a few weeks to complete.  We'll see.

Xenta
No!  Not the name of my icy alien homeworld.  A species of electrical equipment, to wit, headphones, viz:

     These are far better than the computer speakers, which is a good point as, if Conrad wants to play his music LOUD then he has to use the head- or earphones on account of the neighbours^.
     They will also serve on the bus to work, as my current earphones simply can't keep out the noise of other passengers, the bus, traffic and all other ambient noise sources.
     Thank you Wonder Wifey!

Darling Daughter
I did mention that the first thing Sally did yesterday when she arrived was cut up a giant bone, then boil part of it.
     What, asked curious Dad, was she going to do with it?
     Make it into the handle of a glass cup, she replied.  This seemed a bit ambitious, but -

She made this herself!

     She has experience of blowing glass.  A bit worrying given that molten glass is, no other way to put it, Dog Buns! hot, but curious Dad is proud of her artistic skills.
     Oh, and her knitting as well.  How many other youngsters knit nowadays?  She can't sit and not knit.


* Lemon Barley Water not Leg Before Wicket, because one is a drink and the other's  cricket.
** "Motley" backwards, just for a bit of variety.
*** Yes I KNOW it's spelled incorrectly.  Look, I didn't write the thing!
Witness Protection Programme, not Winnebago Purchase Plan, as the first sends you afar and the second is a car.
^ Bad neighbours!  Wicked neighbours!