Did you have to send them our way? Complaining about this on Sunday as I was driving along the Pacific Coast Highway. It's 55 where you can't see the sea so why are you going 40 and then FFS why speed up when the speed limit drops to 35?

So once again on my work this am, and as it has been the last few days, foggy. However, this morning it was WICKED foggy and the sun wasn't up yet. I come up onto this overpass which is the exit and entrance for the interstate and here are two cyclists with their wussy little red lights anemically blinking, bold as brass as if on a quiet country lane, I'm shaking my head, thinking REALLY? You couldn't have waited another 30 minutes until it would be starting to get light? Then, bam, 1 mile further down the road are these 2 idjits jogging. I don't know if it was a convention for fitness folk but truly people use your head, because it won't do you a damn bit of good to have a good looking corpse lying by the side of the road.

Really. Some people have no sense at all

Joggers wearing all black on my unlit subdivision after dark are a pet peeve of mine, but the other night there was one wearing reflective shoes, gloves and jacket and a bright bright LED light on their hat and RUNNING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD! I wanted to pull over and say thank you....

At least they had the lights on. I take the dog for her evening constituional about 10pm, and theres a bloke that's started tanking round our subdivision every night about the same time on a tri-bike, dressed all in black, with no lights on. His bike is really quiet - he's in total stealth mode....Scares the bejeesus out of the pooch every time, and that has a very obvious knock on effect on me!

Cooking!

In the UK, all the major dry ingredients are measured by weight, whether g or oz. Liquid and seasonings by volume (ml, fl oz or teaspoons). Eggs by their shell.

Over here, the major dry ingredients are measured by volume (cups) and only butter is done by weight (stick or multiple of 4 oz). A large egg here is the same size as a medium egg in the UK.

When you have a collection of recipes going from old family ones (Imperial, oven in F), school and uni (mix, gas oven and electric non-fan oven), recent UK (metric, fan oven in 'C) and now American (cups, electric non-fan oven) this means that any time in the kitchen needs a maths session to work out what's going on.

Weight is easy to remember. Eg, if a pie recipe calls for shortcrust pastry, then that's an easy case of half fat (plus a smidge) to flour scaled up or down as required (eg 225 g flour/125 g butter). Or Victoria sponge is 2 oz butter2/oz sugar/2oz flour per egg, scaled up to however much cake you're making.

But give me a recipe in American I can't work out what's going on because sugar and flour and cocoa all have different densities, 1 cup flour =/= 1 cup sugar =/= 1 cup cocoa. It's doing my bloody head in.

I have had to admit defeat, buy some cups and follow American recipes as written. Moderate success but still trying to get some UK recipes to work, mainly because the flour over here is different....

I did the opposite when I lived in Europe,

We never had a problem, living in England or here.. we simply have a full array of US and UK measuring jugs, cups and spoons etc AND a British kitchen scale with imperial & metric, and use whatever set of measures in the recipe at hand. As for flour, we just stick with King Arthur.

So many things continue to irritate me to the very core. Should be another good year then . Including, but not limited to ...

- sick people
- school buses
- speed limits
- hippies
- people who call vegetables 'veggies'
- anyone under the age of 30
- people
- hipsters
- stupidity
- mysticism
- fundies
- conservatives
- my wife's ****ing awful hacking cough
- not being obscenely rich
- sleeping in this morning

Utopia would mean an end to your mission in life.

I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

(But please do not just throw it into my driveway in a plastic bag).

Good thing religion exists then - the one thing that pretty much guarantees we'll never achieve Utopia

This is my newsletter

Is it a weekly or monthly newsletter?


(just so I know when to duck when you throw it in anger)

Oh don't worry, one can't be hurt by the sub-ether

My peeve right now is trains

Trains that block the crossing when I am on my way home, train drivers that sit on their horns at 2am and wake me up (and I don't live very close to the tracks either) trains that decide to uncouple and re-couple tankers at 4am and wake me up...


I hate trains