Need a winter respite from the heat? Miss that special time of the year of gingerbread cookies and peppermint candy canes? If so, this is the game for you. As addicting as Spore Cubes, we bring you Santa Balls.

You switch the candies and cookies to make rows, and score points by getting three in a row. Oliver the Elf keeps track of the points and will juggle the pieces if you need a helping hand. Enjoy!

http://www.afunzone.com/kewel/santaballs.htm

If you hear about something you're not sure about (especially in your e-mail), check it out with the site below. They have a search engine that will help you quickly determine what's real and what's not. Additionally, it's a cool site to browse through.

http://www.urbanlegends.com/

Going somewhere new and exciting for Memorial Day? Or just need to make travel plans for that summer vacation? Well Virtual Tourist can help you make those plans, all you need to do is enter a zip code, a keyword, or click on the map to choose your travel destination.

If you choose to use it continually, you may want to get a membership (don’t worry it’s free). This site gives you travel accommodations, tourist traps, dangers, must see activities, restaurants, night clubs, banks, and much more. A site that truly makes traveling easy.

http://www.virtualtourist.com/

Interested in the Hubble Space Telescope? Well now you can find out all about it at the Hubble site. They have a News section where you can read up on the latest news on the telescope. You will also find a gallery with pictures, and even a screensaver section. Then there is a Discovery section which covers the various discoveries made with the telescope.

There is also the Sci-Tech section talks about the actual making of the telescopes and gets down to well the nuts and bolts of it. You might enjoy the Edu-Space and Fun sections as well. They more geared towards the kids but are still interesting.

http://hubble.stsci.edu/

Welcome to Netives, a place to relax and have some fun. What kind of fun am I talking about? The kind that can only come from playing a game. Here at Netives, you can play Gems, Invasion, Jroids, Jalaga, Marbles, Speed Marbles, and Wormz.

And best of all its free. You just pick a game, read the instructions if you need them, and then click "play". The game loads and you are on your way to hours of fun. For those you who like Spore Cubes, you’ll want to try your hand at Marbles. For anyone who enjoys Tetris, have fun playing Gems. All in all, enjoy!

http://netives.com/Games/index.njsp

I bet you’re wondering a what a chiasmus is. I had to look it up in the dictionary before I found it explained on this site. So for those of you who don’t know what is, here is the definition.

Chiasmus: A reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases.

An example of a chiasmus is “Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You” Dr. Mardy Grothe.

A very interesting site devoted to language. My best suggestion is just to surf around this page. It’s really neat.

http://www.chiasmus.com/index.shtml

Better Homes and Garden brings you arrange a room. You’ll need the shockwave plug in to play with this one. You click on the start button and get ready to arrange. Follow the easy steps and you shouldn’t have a problem.

After the plug-in loads you should come up with a grid on and a list of objects. Drag the objects onto the grid, place them where you want them, and click info to change size specifications or rotate the objects. Now you just play with Arrange-A-Room, till you find the configuration you want and you can see how your plan will look. Tada!

http://www.bhg.com/bhg/category.jhtml?catref=cat20006

Freecell

This one is for you card game lovers. Freecell is a game that comes with windows, but is hard to beat. This site lets you play Freecell with better chances of winning this addicting card game. You just need to think of an unusual name and password and login, there’s not any registration either.

You can even play tournament Freecell, and they post the "streak of the day" list of those who won more than once. There are instructions for those you who haven’t ever played Freecell too. I'm headed back to the game now. So go ahead, give it a try.

http://www.freecell.com/

Travel and Tourist Information

This is the neatest travel site I have ever been to. I got to the site and chose destinations - then you pick a region or country, I chose the United States. Then you pick a state, I clicked on Massachusetts. Travelago goes into great detail about the state and then gives you selected cities to choose from. They even have a huge multimedia library of videos for you to view.

This has to be the best way to check out a possible vacation destination. You can read about the town you’d be visiting as well as watch a video on the location. You can also find out about attractions, tours, siteseeing, events, and theaters in your travel destination. Take a look at this before you make your summer vacation plans.

http://www.travelago.com

Ah, Mentos the freshmaker. Well the makers of the Mentos mints have also come up with a neat little game. It plays like Pacman, only instead of it being Pacman and the ghost you have Freshman and the Garlic Girls – how nefarious.

This does take a little while to load, but after that it runs fast. You use your arrow keys to play, and don't worry - it’s not as addicting as spore cubes. So be the Freshmaker and don’t get kissed by those Garlic Girls… Enjoy!

http://www.mentos.com/freshman.html

Yes, I know it’s May, but this is an interesting article talking about the planets aligning this month. You'll be able to see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter - the five brightest planets in the night sky throughout the month of May. So pull out your telescopes and enjoy the view.

This site has not only the dates and locations of where the planets will be but pictures as well. So for those of you who are like me and can only pick out the Big dipper in the night sky – the pictures here will help you out too. I can’t wait too see them. Start watching your night skies.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/ y2002/24apr_relax.htm

Not for the faint of heart- but a little bit of Friday fun. This game plays like Hangman only you’re guessing legal terms instead. One term that was in the game I played was Eggshell Skull.

Eggshell Skull is defined as: A hypothetical medical condition used to illustrate the idea that you are at fault when you injure someone, you are responsible for all the consequences whether you could have foreseen them or not.

They even give an example of how the term is used in court. The example for the Eggshell Skull is as follows: If you cut a hemophiliac who begins to bleed severely you are then responsible for whatever happens to him even if you didn’t know the injury would be so severe.

All in all I found it be a entertaining as well as educational game. Enjoy!

http://www.nolo.com/sharktalk/sharktalk.html

Meet Mr. Skeleton, your skeletal model and playmate at this site. Here you can make him walk, drag his limbs, or watch he and his buddy walk across the screen. This is a really neat site that fits most age categories, and is way better than Biology class on bone structure any day.

You start off in drag mode where you can experiment with the way the body moves by clicking on the circles with plus signs near the top of the page. Each one moves a different part of his body.

You can switch over to walk mode, he’ll walk across the screen then. You can have more fun in this mode by customizing the way he walks, just click on the little box next to the words “Walk Designer” and this will give you the tools to change the way he moves.

Click on the drag button to drag Mr. Skeleton back to his starting position, then slide the controls until you have them where you want them and drag him back across the screen. It’s really neat and you can see how your body really moves in different positions.

Have fun, and play nicely with Mr. Skeleton!

http://www.vectorlounge.com/ 04_amsterdam/jam/wireframe.html

Would like to know what your name is in Japanese? Well, now you can. It’s simple with this little name generator. The only requirement is that you have your JavaScript enabled. You put in your name, and click the button that says, “Tell me my Japanese name!”

I'm "Amande". If you put in Steve you get "Sutebe".

You may also want to check out the other games and calculators at this site, they have a neat age counter that tells you how long you’ve been alive, and when exactly your next birthday is. Have Fun!

http://www.rcs.k12.va.us/csjh/japanesename.htm