I've been in court lots of times. I was the court reporter in our local magistrates court for about a year. Wonderful job - like watching a whole day of soap operas. There was the woman fined for keeping Shetland ponies in her kitchen, the father fined for punching the upstart who copped a feel of his teenage daughter at her birthday party, the businessman who bought his way out of a driving ban by paying a huge fine, but wore Tweety-Pie socks under his sober business suit... all recorded in detail.
I haven't had a drink since a glass of red wine last Monday. It's about time... (it's a bad idea to drink when I'm cooking - things tend to go wrong - and I cook every night.)

I could do those math problems by hand, but it'd take too long before I head off to bed, so the computer calculator is it.
142857x7=999999, 25641x39=999999, 1369863x73=99999999

A bunch of nines . . . how about a bunch of bananas?

Hello? Anybody there?

Currently trundling through a landscape that looks like an infrared photograph. All the green stuff is completely white. No snow but the thickest frost I've ever seen.

Currently blasting through the going-away-for-Christmas-but-bringing-back-friends-for-New-Year cleaning. Veeeerrrryyy slow thaw going on, but it's good to know that it's warm enough for the salt and grit on the roads to work.

[KS] I assume Niblet Woofles is the one in the middle, holding Valerie Bridget and Briana.

Santa in middle. White and tan dog (as reindeer) is Niblet. Black and tan dog (as Santa) is Woofles. Valerie, Bridget, and Briana are not in the picture.

My absence was enforced by 'the weather'. A couple of weeks ago a small but nasty storm decided to travel across my little bit of territory. In the process of doing so it deposited about 75mm of rain and hailstorms the size of a florin in about half of an hour. Regrettably it also targeted me with lots of high voltage sparkly things. The aftermath was somewhat sobering, even though I was quite sober at the time. At two in the afternoon it became as dark as it was at eight that evening (I checked) and then IT happened. Casualties so far have all been computer related/connected. Computer: fried; hard drives: fried; back ups: fried; UPS: fried; modem: fried; router: fried; weather station: suspect (i.e. yet to be proven).
Oddly enough - and I'm assuming that the telephone line was the ingress for this devilish behaviour - the two telephone lines and the various devices attached survived unscathed. Even the ADSL filters exhibit normal behaviour. The circuit breaker in the 'fuse box' dropped out and, at least to date, no other damage seems to have been inflicted.
I am now using a new bright and shiny computer thingy (I hope that my insurance company will come to the party else I'll be skint).
Circumstance now dictates the use of Windows 7 (although I suppose I could install my original XP) which, despite all the media praise, I find rather odd. Is it possible that I am becoming a Luddite?

(Dujon) That sounds pretty dreadful and ironically it's the kind of weather that I like. If not the telephone line could it have been caused by an induced current from a nearby bolt of lightning. Was your house nearly struck, for instance? Some people I know disconnect everything computer-related if there's a storm about, something I regard as a bit chicken, like hiding under the table, but it might have worked. I don't know. It wouldn't have made any difference if the damage was caused by induced currents.
Meanwhile, we've had the coldest December for over a century but it's now slowly relenting and it felt positively balmy outside tonight with a temperature of 2°C and light rain. It should get a bit milder still in the next few days but the average will still be below 0°C, over 5° below what it should be. Good riddance to December, as ever. Gloomy, cold and miserable with the steaming dog-turd of Christmas as seasoning. Let's do a restart and have a new year.

Oddly, despite the temperature having risen 10°ree;C in the past week, it actually feels colder in my flat now than it did then. I suspect that a number of people in the other flats are away and we're not getting the benefit of their heating. Also ours was just left on a 'stop the pipes from freezing' setting while we were away, and I think it's taking some time to warm the walls back up. Beautiful old stone buildings - donchalove'em? And we're moving into a bigger one!

[Rosie] Induced currents? I would say that that is quite probable. The circuit breaker dropping out also indicates either some imbalance in the power circuit or an outright over-current surge. I suspect both. The weather station seems to be defunct - in the sense that it's not reporting any wind data and will not 'talk' to the computer via its com port. The anemometer is, of course, well above the roof (it is 12 metres above ground level).
[rab] I understand your coolness. When Mrs Duj and I bought the property in which we now reside it had been unoccupied for three or four months. Unlike your own home ours is just a simple brick and timber construction and would not, I assume, have the same heat sink properties as a stone building. In our case the house can still be cool but simply living in the place makes it far more comfortable than it was when it was deserted.

Happy new year to all!

It's 1/1/11!!!

That's 1derful!

Happy New Year, everyone. So far so good - friends over for dinner on NYE, followed by fireworks just outside the house - as did everyone else in the street. Together, they all made a fantastic display. And last night, an authentic Chinese meal, made by one of our lovely houseguests, who brought a box of cooking kit with her on the ferry over from England so she could cook for us. Five dishes... and all of it scrumptious. I cooked the rice - and made some strawberry ripple icecream with the last of last summer's strawberries from the freezer. Roll on spring...

Anyone home? Me again... first day back in the office for me this morning (it means leaving home before the sun is up, but I caught sunrise along the motorway - most spectacularly red for half a minute or so before the partial eclipse which made it all dark again) and apart from my PC forgetting to show me the server where all my work is stored, I think everything is exactly as I left it, almost three weeks ago. So... how was it for you?

yep, everything in my office is exactly as I left it last night :-)

Not all of us can find a full-time job! (and I had to forego a week's leave in October because of a magazine deadline and add the days off onto my Xmas leave - which did rankle a bit as I was denied an autumn trip to England!)

It's still a Bank Holiday here!

No Uni until next week. Bloody lazy are us students. I decided to take a trip to London. Will be visiting a certain crescent, although will avoid the transport museum, as it is overpriced.

Do strawberries have nipples? BTW I didn't know banks could go on holiday.

If there's something catching, I think I need to stay away from these forums and Gier's posts. They are quite crazy!

Isn't it lovely and warm today! 12.3 degrees already, and it's not even 11am :-)

I went out on an errand without a coat this morning. 10C here in Zuid Holland - balmy!

I have been knocked sideways by the 'flu. Lying in bed MCing on my mobile.p

[Software] Is a 'mobile p' the same as a gazunder?

Software, did you eat any Spam while sick?

[Giertrud] Never touch the nasty stuff. I saw Spamalot on Broadway in one of the pre-opening shows. Got real cheap tickets and had a great time!

Burns night tonight - hope you're all practising your 'Address to a Haggis'.

I forgot. I was shopping for shoes on Ebay. I haven't yet seen a haggis on sale in the Netherlands.

[Pen] It's OK, there's still time to go out and kill a sheep.

I tried vegetarian haggis last night, which was nicer than I feared. Might try the real thing next year.

[INJ] They only keep'em as pets here. I can't actually buy lamb in our local supermarket. Fools...

[Pen] Easier to catch one then.

Weekending. Belated Christmas gift giving at sister-in-laws this evening.

Has no-one really had anything to say in the past week? Hmmph! Not much to report here and no real plans for the weekend - but a MAHOOSSIVE basket of ironing to do.

That's what rugby matches on the TV are for.

And make it more of a chore than it needs to be? I'd prefer a spaghetti western or WW2 film...

Nah, sport's more efficient to iron to. You can hear from the commentary whether it's a bit you really want to be watching and if you miss anything significant they'll almost certainly repeat it.

Ironing? What's that? In the states, it's the Super Bowl this weekend. Lots of handegg.

Mmm . . . sounds like it could hold a lot of pretzels.

(pen) I'm building a telescope. It has a 5" lens that someone gave me but of course you have to mount it, as Andy Gray would say.

The weather is lovely here, now that it has stopped raining. For the moment.

Im just going to say something so KagomeShuko's portrait of Father Christmas finally disappears off the top of the page.
This may involve gratuitous line breaks

or even spurious paragraph breaks
but who cares?
In other news, it's fair in Rotterdam this morning - sunny, blue skies, 8C, and the hellebore in the garden is about to bloom - for the first time in 2 years.

It worked!

Now you can go fishing by crushing the hellebore and throwing into a pool. I am unreliably informed this will 'stun' the fish.

A quick bit of market research. If you went into a cafe/bar at lunchtime for a panini, what filling would you want?

If I went in just once then probably something in the Ham & Cheese line - if I went in regularly I'd want a selection. Last Saturday Mrs INJ and I shared a Mushroom and Gorgonzola and a Tuna Melt.

[Phil] Generally, anything containing no cheese and not full of glop. Sweet Chilli Chicken, Ham and Piccalilli and Smoked Mackerel and Salad are the things I've had recently at a cafe I often go to for lunch at the weekend. The Ham (when they have it) is proper ham, of course, not vacuum-packed water-filled slices of reconstituted mechanically recovered meat. The Piccalilli might also have been homemade, not poured from a jar of clonmult.

[Raak] Salad in a panini? I assume that Phil's intending these to be served hot, whereas your suggestions sound like excellent sandwich fillings.

Marvellous Raak. I love the "BECCLES (pl. n.) The small bone buttons placed in bacon sandwiches by unemployed guerrilla dentist." It reminds me of two things about my younger sister. She had a throry that you only get those buttons in bacon when there's a Labour government. She also had a lot of difficulty one weekend evening in the pub (many years ago, of course) when a handsome young man told he he was an 'armydentist'. She tried to fasten the two words together, like 'taxidermist', and couldn't understand what the job was.
Re; panini ham'n'cheese is the default filling, but I'd also go for perhaps hot roast beef with wholegrain mustard, and the smoked mackerel sounds good too. Can you lift the lid afterwards to stuff some watercress in?

Some colleagues of mine had to go on a trip to Flums (a town somewhere in darkest Switzerland) recently. The name seemed horribly familiar for some reason, but I couldn't think why I might ever have heard of the place. Eventually I tracked it down to the Meaning of Liff. FLUMS: Women who only talk to each other at parties.

Interesting from the responses I've had so far, here and elsewhere, that no-one has suggested anything vaguely Italian (with the exception of funghi con gorgonzola).

[INJ] Now I think of it, the Smoked Mackerel one was an untoasted baguette, but the Sweet Chilli Chicken is a toasted panini, and includes some lettucey things and chopped gherkins.

[Phil] I suspect it's because the Italians would never take cheap bread and squish it between hot plates to make it palatable, let alone consider it a delicacy. It's a rather recent lunch-comestible-vendor's invention.

[pen] Neither would my favorite Norwich café. Only the best ciabatta!

panino

[rab] thank you

[Phil] Brie, bacon and tomato is a personal fave when I'm feeling evil.

[pen] I used to get my lunchtime panino/i in a food court in Dublin, cooked by Italians. They had a choice of 4 each day, and were various combinations of parma ham, bresaola, aubergine, olives, mozzarella, basil, pesto, sundried tomato etc. Always delicious, and great with a large espresso.

[Phil] If I was feeling mean, I'd point out that you may have just described immigrants selling a bastardised version of what Dubliners might consider foreign food. But I'm not. I'm just hungry. It's the last of the proper British pork chops tonight (ie more than 4mm thick), when the windy miller finally gets home.

Anything that doesn't involve potatoes and/or coleslaw counts as foreign food in Ireland :-)
The reason I asked in the first place is that I have a "Panini Grill" which does great toasted sandwiches, but I want to take advantage of the lunchtime panini market. My personal preference for fillings seems to be miles away from what other people want/expect, for which information I'm very grateful.

[Phil] I'd suggest going round a few of your local coffee shops just before lunch time and see what they have most of on their shelves. You can be sure they've done the research. The only difference about your trade is that you could probably go a little dryer and saltier.
Mind you this definitely sounds like 'teaching your grandmother'.

[INJ] This assumes that supply = demand. There are at least two canteens that I've encountered that would run out of certain things very quickly on a daily basis and never increase their order of those things. You could even ask 'Do you have any more X?' and they would say 'No, they always sell out really quickly'...

[Phil] Geez, Phil, are you running a pub or trying to make your eatery some sort of 'up-market' restaurant with fancy names for ordinary dishes? Surely a panino is just a bread roll into which, like a couple of bread slices, you can insert anything you damn well like? What's wrong with marketing a 'Salad Roll' or an 'Egg and Bacon Roll'?

[Dujon] In order: Yes and no; yes; and nothing. I just found the article interesting
I'm revamping my menu, with an eye on relaunching the food side of the business to create some lunchtime trade in the area. Everyone's feedback has been very useful. We already do sandwiches and toasted sandwiches, but I've found that people charge a bit more for something that doesn't come in traditional English white or brown bread; more importantly, people seem willing to pay a bit more, for something that doesn't really cost any extra to produce if it's in, say, ciabatta rather than two slices of fantastic, locally baked bread.