Jour des Croissants

An entire day devoted to everybody's favorite rolled, leavened variant of puff pastry - the elegant, the dainty, the saturated fat filed, Croissant. Has ever a snack had a sillier name?

It was pretty much a continental version of pie day here. Emma kindly remembered croissants and jam and distributed them generously. I could get used to this. Dave rather controversially produced a bagel, though, to give him his credit, he did eat both bagel and croissant.

James has apparently stopped off at Tescos to buy his entire form class croissants - that's 30. Fortunately, there's a sale on.

Amazing: Blackburn with Darwen Primary Care Trust celebrate Croissant Day in the usual fashion.

Fun at Work Day 2008

Yep - we opted for Adobe Illustrator tennis. Ah - the fun. If you count swearing at your computer, and repeating the same process again and again all day fun, then I had a blast. I had so much fun at work, I stayed there for 12 hours. What a stupid day.

As Dave rightly points out here, it was also Bubble wrap Appreciation Day (oh these days are hard to keep track of). Fortunately, I was given the gift of a cup today. More importantly, it was wrapped in Bubble Wrap. In fact, the inevitable popping was the most fun I had all day. Hurrah.

Burns' Night

I blame the whiskey.

I'll be willing to bet that lots of New Years' Resolutions have fallen by the wayside by now. But I'd also guess that few people found themselves stood in the booze aisle of a supermarket, forced by their New Years' Resolution to buy a bottle of whiskey. Sadly, they were all out of small bottles...

James & Emma were kind enough to play host to our Burns' night celebrations. These took place strictly abiding to the format proposed by the font of all knowledge: Wikipeidia. I emailed precise instructions of the necessary speeches to all involved. Unfortunately, the night was nearly sabotaged by some faulty break pads and an impounded car in Kwick-Fit, but at least 4/5 of us made it.


As host, James gave the welcoming speech, followed by the Selkirk Grace. Then it was time for the Pork-a-Leakie-Cockie, sorry, Cock-a-Leekie soup (the Waitrose Whiskey was already having it's effect - made from a blend of some of Scotland's finest whiskeys).

(NOTE: James' plaster cast of his foot created during a school experiment designed specifically for 'Measure Your Feet Day').

Emma made sure that the Entrance of the Haggis was a grand affair. To the tune of bagpipes, the Haggis arrived on a silver platter, and was carved with expertise befitting of a lady of such a prestigious Scottish heritage.

By far the most terrifying moment of the night was when my napkin fell off my knee and I thought, for a horrible minute, that my kilt had fallen down.

The neeps and tatties were duly served. James' loyal toast mentioned such great Scots as Alex Salomon SMP, Alley McCoist, Mel Gibson, the deep fried Mars bar, and Michelle Mc M-Anus. Emma W. delivered the speech of the immortal memory, we all ate cheese and buscuits (from the Mull of Kintyre) and drank Irn Bru. Emma receited her favourite Burns Poem (...a wee sleekit cow'rin' tim'rous beestie) and I was responsible for the Toast to the Lassies. (My original) attempt:

It's true we know that Burnsey has a passion for the lassies,

A carnal lust for bottom and bust that life ne'er surpasses,

An' after all a hard days toil, ramblin' on the grass n heather,

For all he ached was jus' his lassie, in the altogether,

An' so you see the lassies here, all of whom called Emma,

Their grace and beauty shining bright, does leave us with dilemma,

To keep them close, to admire and tosast, and satisfy our wishes,

But alas not so, they'll have to go, and finish off the dishes,

But before they go, men, stand and then, please slowly raise our glasses,

And help our host, to make a toast, to these beautiful bonnie lassies.

Things began to blur around Emma's reply and endless Scottish music. An Impromtu Old Lang Syne signalled the end of the night. I must admit, on the short walk back to the car, it was a very windy night to try out a kilt for the first time.

Three Days in One

I had grand plans for today, which is Compliments Day, Opposite Day and Beer Can Appreciation Day. I imagined standing on a street corner with a beer in my hand hurling abuse at passers by. But actually, it's done nothing but confuse me - I can't trust anybody anymore (they may be telling me the opposite of the truth) and I really haven't mastered the art of the 'fore-handed compliment'.

While I was amused by the Elephant in the Pharmacy (it was hiding in the hygiene aisle by the way), I squarely blame Opposite Day for my confusion - it's sucked my mind. I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that the opposite of a dog is NOT a cat (I think it's an 'anti-dog'; it probably exists on some inconceivable plane).

Complimenting people was the highlight of the day (but those cans of beer waiting in the fridge may yet trump that). I received several reports from people enjoying being nice (for a change). Although to be fair, it was thanks to Opposite Day that everybody went around trumpeting how easy their work was and that they were feeling particularly 'bogged-up' with how much they had to do.

So before I leave, may I tell you just how lovely you're looking today - I'm not off home to crack shut some cans of anti-beer...

Opposite Day

While trying to write a rather dull essay I decided to investigate today's "days". When googleing Opposite Day I discovered an American Art Rock band "Opposite Day". Describing themselves as art rock for animals I have spent my morning listening to songs such as Elephant in the Pharmacy, Brilliant Animals and Middle of the Street.

http://www.oppositeday.com/


Just look under the bio section for the 'classic' songs!
A novel way to celebrate opposite day! Now on to compliment and beer can appreciation days!

Measure Your Feet Day

It's almost too bizarre to be real, but it is. I read on the internet that "the best time to measure your feet is the end of the day" because they swell. Nice.

We took 5 measurements: shoe size (UK), foot length, longest toe length, width (at widest part) and height (measured at the junction with the leg).

Length was most correlated with shoe size (r=0.949, n=7) followed by toe length (r=0.787) and foot height (r=0.410). My second toe is longer than my big toe - while freakish, I'm told it means that I'm good in bed. An interesting negative correlation exists between toe length and foot width (r=-0.429) - can anyone explain this?? Time for a grant proposal...

The graph below shows the relationship between shoe size and foot length. The regression line shows several interesting points;

• An increase of 1 shoe size affords you an extra centimetre in length (or 0.944 cm to be precise),
• One might hypothesise that since the two females plot below the regression line, that ladies' sizes are slightly smaller than mens'. This may be a ploy by cobblers to help them to feel better about their humongous, gargantuan feet,
• Ian's shoes are too big for him. He needs to drop down a size. Failing that (and bearing in mind the hypothesis presented above), he could just wear girls' shoes.
  

Figure 1. The relationship between shoe size (UK) and foot length (cm) measured from heal to toe with a standard transparent shatterproof ruler. The best-fit regression line y=0.944x-15.94 is displayed along with 95 % confidence intervals.

Anyone for Pies????

Sometimes these observances really aren't too difficult. Welcome to Pie Day. A Pork Pie as a mid-afternoon snack, and a quick trip down to the bakery yielded pies for lunch.

Note "Tasha two-pies" there on the right.

Dave's Pies were greedier than his belly (he insisted on having a 'Pasty-chaser'), also myself and Tasha were victims of an accidental pie-swap. We finished off with an apple pie each (exactly one month out of date - classy).

Hugging Day

Embracing the year seems to involve plenty of actual embracing. My day has been one of multiple hugs.

Statistically, this is the most depressing day of the year. Though I remain unsure as to how 'statistical' that is, they seem to have nailed it - it hasn't stopped raining yet and there's talk of a global recession. I can only think that's why Hugging Day was declared. Details can be found at http://www.geocities.com/hugging_whining/Hugging.html
I'm especially amused by their suggestions of 'How to Celebrate Hugging Day', particularly
"Make or rent a bear costume and visit children or senior adults as a 'Bear Hugger'."
I'm also very disturbed by this guy: http://www.hugnation.com/
There's definitely a limit to how much people should hug.

A brief review of my Hugging Day suggests that it has spread joy. It's also made me look like a complete nutter, with all the restraint of the sort of deviants housewives throw rotten vegetables at. In the kitchen this morning, my housemate Mark looked very confused when I hugged him (it was a very long hug). His response, sadly, was to check that his watch was still there.

I found that 'hugging politics' exists. Having hugged several people, you feel obliged to complete an full 'higging circuit' of the entire room. This reached a head (literally) when my office mate put me in a headlock and attempted some form of yogic/wrestling move that left me feeling dizzy for quite a while. My squash partner also instinctively resisted my post-match hug by placing his hand firmly on my chest and demanding an explanation.

To avoid such akwardness, I created me a sign. It worked a charmer - people love thinking that they are getting something for nothing. The sad news is that the last hug of the day was promptly sick in her hands, rushed to the toilet, had an asthma attack and was last seen being carried out on a stretcher to an ambulence. There endeth Hugging Day.

Penguin Day in Sheffield!

My Penguin made the long trip from Scotland to Sheffield to celebrate Penguin Day. He thoroughly enjoyed being my racing mascot - and he brought me good luck I was won my race! Although I did chicken out of taking my Penguin onto the podium!

Penguin Awareness Day

Very good penguin research Mark, that is the correct answer. I didn't know the bit about aeroplanes. Just been watching Billy Connolly visiting penguins at an aquarium on Dave, I'll be well impressed if they put that on deliberately.

Penguin Awareness Day

Penguins are bloody hardcore for southerners.



We started watching 'Happy Feet' not long ago. We lasted 10 minutes. What a load of complete bol**cks. We switched off at the bit where it was revealed that each penguin has it's own 'heart song'. Also, Kate revealed that she has March of the Penguins on DVD so we watched that instead. The graphics were much better.



A bit of research has answered the black back/white front question. Biologists call this counter-shading; it means that when the birds are swimming they are harder to see from both above and below, allowing them to hunt fish and avoid being eaten by seals. A few years back, there was a report conducted as to why penguins living near runways often fell over backwards whenever a plane flew over, with some people suggesting that they just watched them fly overhead and lost their balance. But actually they are hiding their black bits and comoflaging themselves on the snowfield with their white fronts - they obviously see the airplanes as a threat which is crazy because they live nowhere near Heathrow.



I am now very aware of penguins. Especially when I get picture messages like this from Emma:

penguins

Just to let everyone know that penguins are a group of flightless birds found in the southern hemisphere. They inhabit all latitudes, from the tropical Galapagos islands to the frozen wastes of the Antarctic; the emperor penguin (the largest species at up to 1.1m tall) breeds on the Antarctic pack ice, while the royal penguin and the king penguin breed on sub-Antarctic islands. In contrast, the little penguin, or fairy penguin, which stands at just 40cm, is found around the coasts of Australia and New Zealand.

Penguins are superb swimmers; they have lost the use of their wings for flight and these have instead become flippers, which enable them to move at high speeds underwater in pursuit of their fish prey.

Can anyone tell me why penguins have black backs and white bellies?

Thesaurus Twenty-Four Hour Period

I brought my huge Thesaurus into work today (so big that there's no page numbers: nobody wants to count them).

It's been a rather verbose, circumlocutory, diffuse, garrulous, periphrastic, pleonastic, tautological or (as some might say) wordy day. It's left me quite befogged.

I think this email exchange represents today rather well:

Emma:
Hey Mark,
Hot and spicy evidence attached! I also have the required material to celebrate Penguin day on Sunday – I will bring to coffee!!

Mark:
Thanks, ta, cheers, ingratiations, gratituities…

Emma:
Remorsefully, I intended to utter:
Ciao Mark,
Blistering and fiery verification fastened! In addition I boast the obligatory objects to rejoice Penguin day on Sunday – I shall resolve to transport them to coffee!

Time to bend the elbow for a hop juice, swipes, wallop, carouse, hit the bottle, revel, tipple, wassail, quaff a snifter...

What's for Tea?

As of this moment, today - International Hot and Spicy Food Day, is my favourite day of the year. It's better than weekends and bank holidays, better than my birthday and even better than day 1 on the OMM (but only just). For me, every day is hot and spicy but today is special because there is legitimate reason for this insanity.

Indeed 'Insanity' is one of the sauces I could have been sampling on this day. See http://www.davesgourmet.peachhost.com/ct_CGhotsauces.htm

Unfortunately I didn't get round to buying some. To add to this problem, I've run out of my 'Death' sauce and so will have to settle for 'Holy Shit' this evening. Hence, it's going to have to be Chicken Jalfrezi with a shit load of sauce and a Scotch Bonnet chilli added to the mix. A tough decision, based on the fact that i've got all the ingredients for a super hot Mexican Chilli at home, maybe that'll have to wait to the weekend.

I will attempt to let our readers know the outcome. Hopefully my lack of preparation (not getting in the essentials) will not spoil today's (and tomorrow's) enjoyment/pain(same thing!).

I hope everyone enjoys their evening and remember - ????

The Chilli King

International Hot & Spicy Food Day

Blimey.

I started the day with the best intentions. This morning, first thing (oh, you should have seen the Hat Hair) out of the cupboard came the tandori powder, the chilli powder and the Nando's "Hot" peri-peri sauce. They stood there on the kitchen counter next to the toast I was spreading jam on and I simply couldn't bring myself to do it. Breakfast is no place for chilli. So to make up for it, I spread a layer of peri-peri on my ham salad sandwich for lunch.

It goes without saying that come lunchtime, I had forgotten all about it and had the fright of my life. It was an unusual combination... not necessarily unpleasant.

While I fell way short of any designer chillies, I did arrange to go to a curry house tonight. Eight of us made it.

I feel a little let down that only 2 of us went through with our promise of pulling a "I've just eaten spicy food face". Still, James made up for it...

I waivered over my choice of a "medium hot" Chicken Tika Brinjal. (I've never heard of it either). It was very disappointing. As spicy as frozen yogurt sprayed with a fire extinguisher. Or maybe I killed all my tastebuds at lunch.

Tweed Hat Day

A day as epic as this, requires a hat of equal grandeur! So here it is. Tweed.





Happy hat day everyone. May it bring glory and prestige to all who celebrate her.

Hat Day!!

MET Office Forecast: flood warnings, persistent heavy rain across all of the UK. Sounds like a perfect day for a hat!!

Hat Day really kicked off at morning coffee...

Best Hat Day ever.

Everybody feels good in a hat...

Some people insisted on joining in as news of Hat Day spread faster than lice on Hat Day...

You have to wonder where some of these hats came from

Early January Days

Hi Mark & Adam here blogging on the balcony from Portugal.

Festival of sleep day (3rd Jan) was very well timed. After staying up until 6:45am on New Years' Day and catching an early flight on the third, a lie-in was always on the cards. Let's hope all these days are so approporiately placed.

Humiliation day (3rd Jan) was slightly awkward. Everything we do here gets stared at, particularly swimming in the sea (it's not THAT cold!). But we did make a minor spectacle by attempting to play Charades in the middle of Luz town centre through the frosty window of a bus stop: just a stone's throw away from the site of the Maddie fiasco. Oh, and then after a few 10p lagers, we played the rude version of 'Call my bluff' (no prizes for guessing what that was called, but you only have to change one letter). Unfortunately, when researching these obscure rude words, the wi-fi internet connection dropped out (can't complain, we were stealing it from a B&B across the valley) and so we just made up some of the filthiest rude words imaginable. Poor innocent Seonaid nearly cried when attempting to explain, in filthy detail, the definition of a 'Schumpofter', the scent of a 'Lesopher' and the unfortunate affliction of 'Lardimumpers'.

Trivia day (4th Jan) was a huge sucess. Everybody contributed 6 pieces of trivia, one for each standard Trivial Persuit topic. That's 60 questions. We had to come clean that the 'Call my *uff' words were fake when the definition of a 'Firker' made it into a Science & Nature round (it involves bored Australians and the nearest tame marsupial). Oh, and my knowledge of breeds of rabbit is significantly improved, thanks to Olivia. I can now name one.

Getting the year off on a happy funny note

Always start a New Year with a laugh.

So here's yours. For free I hestiate to add.

A woman announces to her friend that she is getting married for the fourth time.

"How wonderful! But I hope you don't mind me asking what happened to your first husband?"


"He ate poisonous mushrooms and died."


"Oh, how tragic! What about your second husband?"


"He ate poisonous mushrooms too and died."


"Oh, how terrible! I'm almost afraid to ask you about your third husband."


"He died of a broken neck."


"A broken neck?"


"He wouldn't eat the mushrooms."

New Years Day

Oh horrible.

Very rarely can you spot the exact moment when the night started to go wrong. but i think it was definitely when we mixed the 'Stan Ternent's Breakfast'...

But it's what you're supposed to do on New year right?