Team Science Brioche

[Chris]

I know. Banks don’t care here either. I doubt I’ll get my money back but there you go. How’s the reading coming along?

[Chelsey]

Oh no, I did manage to get mine back. I have finished two books and am working on three others. The reading is going well, I have knocked out a major chunk of my audiobook today and am hoping to finish a physical book tonight. I read multiple books at once so I tend to mood jump around and then finish several at once.

[Chris]

I usually do that, Chelsey. Swap around depending on my mood haha.

[Laura]

Chris wrote: "I know. Banks don’t care here either. I doubt I’ll get my money back but there you go. How’s the reading coming along?"

That's why we use a credit union! We've had problems once or twice, and they always give us back the money as a "loan" while they investigate, and then it's all taken care of!

[Laura]

Chris wrote: "I usually do that, Chelsey. Swap around depending on my mood haha."

I usually do that, too. Right now I'm trying to complete a particular challenge in AMMP, the White Elephant one, that was extended until the end of this week. So I'm really focusing on one book at a time.

(If you look at my "currently reading" shelf, it might call me a liar. But one of those is my audio and 2 are the books I'm reading to my kids - we homeschool, and I love getting good literature in them!)

[Chris]

Well, good news! I have managed to get my money back.

What the scammers did was take two lots of £2000 from my account, give it to customers of mine (luckily, I know both of them very well) and then tell them that he had pressed the wrong button on his laptop/pc and could they return the money to ‘my’ account number (which was his account number).

One of my customers told him he would ring me first to confirm before sending it back so I managed to get that back straight away but the other said she was busy and just sent it back, without even checking or looking at the account number. When I told her that wasn’t my bank account number she was nearly in tears and I could hear her voice trembling. I felt so sorry for her. She rang this morning to say that she had rung her bank to reverse the transaction and luckily the bank managed to do just that. I still hope the bank pursue this though and try and get the guy(s) but I doubt they will pursue it. At least I can sleep tonight now! Haha

[Chris]

By the way Laura, wouldn’t you have to pay Credit Union the loan back plus interest if they didn’t recover your money?

[Laura]

It’s not a recovery. Banks and credit unions in the US are insured by the federal government!

[Chris]

Ah! No such luck here. Govt. couldn’t care less.

[Laura]

After the stock market crash in 1929 a lot of banks closed. Out of the process of fixing that came the FDIC, Federal Depositor’s Insurance Corp.

[Chris]

Finished Neverwhere!

I've added my next book Just One Damned Thing After Another onto the tracking spreadsheet. Just a quick question. If a category has more than one option, ie author name and title, shall I add both or just one of them?

[Laura]

Only 1 is needed.

[Chris]

Ok. Thank you.

[Jennifer]

Hi everyone. Sorry I'm behind on my books, real life is once again getting in the way of my reading but I'm still squeezing in what I can.

[Chris]

Don’t worry. Same here. How dare life get in the way of our reading! 😂

[Laura]

Jennifer wrote: "Hi everyone. Sorry I'm behind on my books, real life is once again getting in the way of my reading but I'm still squeezing in what I can."

Chris wrote: "Don’t worry. Same here. How dare life get in the way of our reading! 😂"

We're still in a hotel! Hopefully the power will be restored at our house by the end of this week. But I don't think our insurance adjuster is feeling optimistic, because he just approved our hotel stay through the end of next week, just in case. :(

I'm reading, but my audio listening is all messed up, because my kiddos are here all the time. We homeschool, so they are super bored right now. The pool was closed for cleaning until today. :)

[Laura]

Okay, team. With the probable coming of a mini-challenge around the end of this week, I thought I'd update you all on our status and find out how the color card books are coming.

Of the difficult numbers, we have finished all the 7s & 8s, and only have one 5 left. We also only have three Reverses left.

We have one hand completed, and four hands that only need 1 more book. We have another three hands that only need 2 or 3 more books.

For the color cards we have:

Red 9 - Eli
✔ Yellow 6 - Chelsea
Yellow 2 - Jennifer
Green 7 - Egle
Green 0 - Melissa
Blue 2 - Tatiana
✔ Blue 1 - Chelsey

Additionally, our Wild Draw 4 (which has to duplicate one of these) has been completed.

The captains have been asked to have spreadsheets updated by tomorrow (probably for the mini-challenge), so it's fairly accurate that we are currently in 8th place.

[Chelsey]

I I haven't started my yellow 6 but planned to finish it by the weekend or early next week.

[Melissa]

I haven't made much progress on my green 0 or have been reading much of anything for that matter haha but Im coming up to a long weekend and plan to spend a good chunk of it reading. So I'll have that one finished and most likely another book to contribute :)

[Jennifer]

I am about halfway through my Yellow 2.

[Laura]

Sounds great, you guys!

[Eglė]

Tough for me with my book as it is not that catchy as I thought :( will try to finish it by the end of the weekend

[Jennifer]

Do we get credit for any and all completed hands this year or do they have go by numerical order again (eg. can't get credit for completing hand 3 until hands 1 and 2 are completed)? Ugh....I hope that makes sense...I am having problems getting the words in my head to come out correctly.

[Chelsey]

I finished up a book that fit the last 5 today! I will try to focus on my last color book and books that fit reverses now.

[Laura]

Jennifer, they have to go in order. But if there’s a problem near the end of the month we can rearrange. But I’ve played every year, and there was only 1 year we didn’t complete everything.

[Jennifer]

I've had the same experience but was just curious. I have a tendency to hit it harder the second half of the month after the mini-challenge comes out.

[Chelsey]

Hey guys the mini challenge has been posted. We can count any book finished after the countdown ends in roughly 10 hours. Obviously read on your own time but if you are close to finishing a boom and you can hold off until those 10 hours are up, it will help us knock off books for the mini challenge and get us some extra points!

[Laura]

February Mini Challenge

I've made a copy of the mini-challenge spreadsheet to our tracking spreadsheet, so feel free to put your books down where they fit, but if they fit somewhere else, please note that!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Creativity is the name of the game for this one, so think outside of the box. Got mountain peaks on the cover of your book? That works for Peak. Got diagonal lines on the cover of your book? That works for Diagonally. Basically, if you can justify, we can use it!

Found the word, but in your book it's plural, or is split into two words? No problem, that works!

First off, for 30 bonus points, we need to come up with a recipe for Science Brioche! Any ideas? Or how to take a recipe for a regular Brioche and Science it up?


Second, there are words/numbers underlined in the mini-challenge recipe for Astral Pavlova. These are the things we need to find:

Numbers can be page count, series, publication date (day, month, last 2 digits of the year). The numbers with 3 digits will need to be either page count or series number.

1
2
3
6
12
24
120
270
300


Words can be:
There are 5 categories:
word in title
word in text
colour of book cover
item on cover
colour of item on cover

airtight
bananas
circle
cold
cornflour
diagonally
dry
eggs
electric
glass
gloves
kiwifruit
lady
limes
moon
orange
passionfruit
peaks
pen
plate
pure
sharp
shredded
spoon
starfruit
stomach
sugar
thickened
touch
vanilla
white

[Laura]

I've got for Stomach; for White, 3, or Sharp (those claws!).

What does everything think about for Cornflour (which is Corn Starch to us Americans). Does the yellow look right?

[Laura]

What about something like this for our recipe? Brioche pie, because the Pi makes it math, which is close enough to science for me! :)

Filling tweaks?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/br...

[Chelsey]

Laura, I think that works for Cornflour. I think that's great for a recipe! Keep it simple. I should finish Ready Player One and The Great Pretender tonight. Ready Player one has eggs in the text multiple times and The Great Pretender has Diagonal lines on the cover.

[Jennifer]

Do you think "...Margaret Stead, fellow Kiwi, fellow traveler..." would work for kiwifruit?

[Jennifer]

I think the recipe looks great!

[Jackie]

Recipe looks good, Laura.

I've got a book coming up with 300 pages.

[Chris]

Would cold and corn flour work for blue? Cold as in blue is a cold colour and cornflour blue eyes although it is spelled cornflower blue?

[Tatiana]

The cover of testaments is lime green so that might work for lime...

[Tatiana]

Also the cover of I know why the caged bird sings is orange so that can work for orange..

[Laura]

Chris wrote: "Would cold and corn flour work for blue? Cold as in blue is a cold colour and cornflour blue eyes although it is spelled cornflower blue?"

I was thinking the same thing at first, but it turns out the recipe doesn't actually call for Cornflower, but Cornflour, which is what we in the United States call Corn Starch. I know the Uno Pixies are Australian and European, so I'm not sure where exactly it's called Cornflour and where it's called Corn Starch, but the color we want is actually yellow. My book above should work.

ETA: Blue should work for cold, as long as it's a cold blue. :)

[Laura]

Jennifer wrote: "Do you think "...Margaret Stead, fellow Kiwi, fellow traveler..." would work for kiwifruit?"

Let me check in the Captain's Group.

[Laura]

Jennifer wrote: "Do you think "...Margaret Stead, fellow Kiwi, fellow traveler..." would work for kiwifruit?"

I think it's going to be accepted, so I'll put you down for that one.

[Laura]

Purple enough for Passionfruit?

[Laura]

So, I was going to put this one down for White, but what do you all think? Electric?

[Chelsey]

I deft think that is purple enough but you could also take it as passion on the cover, if we don't explicitly need the fruit part. I think electric would work. I think white is going to be easy because there are so many covers with some white on it but thats just my thoughts.

[Laura]

Yeah. My brain skipped right over the lightening on that cover. :)

[Chris]

I've nearly finished Just One Damned Thing After Another. I should be done by the end of the weekend.

My next book is going to be The Sisters Brothers . I've added it to the spreadsheet under moon. Could this be considered for vanilla as well, as the moon is a vanilla white? I put down that it could also be considered for 'lady' as sisters are ladies.

[Laura]

Chris wrote: "I've nearly finished Just One Damned Thing After Another. I should be done by the end of the weekend.

My next book is going to be The Sisters Brothers."

I think it would work for Vanilla or White as well.

I'm going to put Just One Damed Thing After Another down for Peaks since it has mountain peaks on the cover.

[Laura]

Okay, Starfruit. How creative is too creative? I have a book with a bunch of alien men who have come to earth. Going with the saying that they are "from the stars", do you think we could justify them as starfruit, you know the fruit of the stars? :)

[Chris]

Oh! So we can add books we’re still reading?

[Chris]

I think you’d better check on the Starfruit one, Laura. That may be a bit too creative! Haha.

[Laura]

Yes, anything started since the beginning of the challenge and finished after the start of the mini can be used.