Hypermiling Thai Mussels

541 THC 03
W/E 15th August 2009
Hypermiling Thai Mussels


“Would it be disrespectful to blow my nose on your nation’s flag?”
That is the question I asked in a shop in Oslo, Norway a few years ago.

This week we’ve been dealing with weasels but not to jinx things I am holding forth on the info flow here. I just have to say my wife is the best negotiator I have ever seen in action!

Marsha (Ma-in-Law) and I went out to celebrate Elena’s birthday at Zero Degrees in Reading on Wednesday. It’s a brewpub that I almost worked for before getting the gig and buying in to The White Horse Brewery.

Okay so I ordered a Thai curry not truly realising it was under the banner of mussels on the menu. I got a pot full of mussels that had Thai curry sauce poured over them. Fantastic! They were awesome. I did wonder at one point if you could eat the barnacles on the side of the mussel shells, like a tasty side-treat.

Any other night I would decline but it was Elena’s birthday and she asked me for a tour of the brewery in the building. I had not seen the brewhouse before but it wasn’t too hard to figure out. What was hard was getting my slightly inebriated tongue around the usual schpiel and my slightly polluted brain to get the order of things right.

Julianna said “you’re a nincompoop” the other day. Where did she get that from?

Heard an interesting podcast the other day about hypermiling. What’s that? It’s all about getting as many miles as you can from each litre (US citizens and pre-decimal Brits change that to gallons) of petrol (diesel/gas). For instance, if you are going to stopped somewhere for longer than 7 seconds (i.e. a traffic light or a drive-thru) you should turn your engine off. One thing it said was you should try not use your brakes and should look ahead at what’s happening way in front of you in traffic. I thought for years my dad was trying to impart his advanced driving skills to me. Now I realise he was actually teaching me frugality.

Our garage got broken into Friday night last week. You know what they stole? No, I don’t either, seems like they didn’t steal anything. Had to buy a coupla new locks though.

I camped out in the tent in the garden on Saturday night, in one respect it was for the neighbourhood watch aspect but mainly I love camping in the garden. Two of my wished for scenarios are as follows:
1) It rains and rains and rains, the tent starts to leak, I have to give up and go inside the house.
2) It gets so cold, I have to give up and go inside the house.
Why? All those years in the Army Cadets when I was cold or wet (or both) and out camping in the middle of nowhere there would be many times I’d wish I could give up and get inside my own bed. I’m just realising the wishes of a past me.

Any action on the burglar front? Fifteen times I heard someone in the garden outside the tent! Or it may have been hedgehogs.

“What have you got there Julianna?”
“My snap crap”
(Snack trap a little pot that has a rubberised lid that is like one of those 1970’s tea-towel holder – quite a good thing to have (a good example of the tea towel holder: www.jonco48.com/blog/Dogend_20towel_20holder_small.jpg and the snack trap www.snacktrap.co.uk/ ))

I borrowed Zoe Heller’s “Notes on a Scandal” audiobook from the library and “read” it the other day on a drive up to Titanic Brewery in Stoke-on-Trent. I was somewhat compelled to read on as it sounded like an afternoon play on Radio 4 (BBC), all plummy British accent and everything sounding frightfully frightful. When I finished it I was left feeling “that’s it?”. Wrong book for me, gimme Scott Sigler any day.

“You’re a he and I’m a she” – Julianna telling me how it is.

Ma-in-Law Marsha works like you wouldn’t believe, her batteries are still tip-top full! I’m running on empty.

So the Mission for the 541 THC (The Handkerchief Challenge)…I left Norway feeling slightly empty and definitely without a Norwegian flag handkerchief.
I know that the government keeps telling us to blow our noses or sneeze on to paper tissues and then dispose of them straight away (Swine-flu n’ that). That seems almost deforestational to me wouldn’t it be better to whip out a British Union Jack flag?

So I’m trying for 52 handkerchiefs, each with a different country’s flag on, and I need your help. We are going old school on this one. I haven’t even looked if it is possible to buy national flag handkerchiefs. That would be far too easy.

So there are some rules to keep this challenge true and forthright (and we all need a bit of that in this day and age don’t we?):

1) Each handkerchief has to be a representation of a single country’s national flag.
2) I cannot buy any handkerchiefs to further the collection. (How convenient eh?)
3) Any handkerchief has to be sent by someone who has been to the country whose flag it is representing OR knows someone who lives there.

(We are running a two degree of separation rule here. I don’t necessarily have to know the person but YOU have to know the person).
4) The handkerchief does not have to be made in the country its flag is representing. (Let’s face it, chances are it’ll be made in China, extra points if it’s a Chinese flag made in Mexico)
5) The handkerchief needs to be photographed by the sender IN the country it is representing (or by the person the sender knows in that country). All pictures (sender holding hanky and me receiving hanky) will be posted at www.thehandkerchiefchallenge.blogspot.com/ and in an album on my facebook profile.

All handkerchiefs are to be sent to

Mack
The White Horse Brewery
3 Ware Road
Stanford-in-the-Vale
SN7 8NY

Props

My Cousin Lora:
“We're off to Algonquin for a week, rented a Ranger's Cabin. The weather has sucked ALL SUMMER, so fingers crossed.”
So it’s not just Britain that has sucky summer weather! Canada too.

Terri Anderson has been clearing out old boxes too:

“The end result was that I spent most of one day listening to such gems as:
Neds
PWEI
Carter USM
Jesus Jones
Wonder Stuff
Chapterhouse
Lush

etc. etc. you get the picture. Also some really not so good things like, oh I dunno, Sultans of Ping. Why did I spend money on that??!”

Why did anyone spend money on that? Now, Where’s me jumper?
I can’t figure out whether I should be proud to say I saw every one of the above bands (bar ..Ping) live or whether I should be ashamed. Nah, Hollocks I’m proud!

Have a Great Week,

The Mack Daddy