A vegetarian meal

It was the firm's Christmas meal today, and ever-mindful of Partner being vegetarian, the director organising it had requested a vegetarian meal for him.

He'd had breakfast at the appointed venue recently and said it was pretty good, so he had high hopes.

First course was minestrone, and when he asked, he was told it was made with vegetarian stock. So far so good.

The main course, was potatoes (mashed), potatoes (sauteed), and a potato (jacket), carrots and peas. Er, that's it.

Partner likes potatoes but even he was slightly overfaced. It is surely not beyond the creativity of someone working in a kitchen to come up with something a little more inventive than three different types of potatoes and two veg.

For example:
*buy a pot of hummus and serve with salad, raw veg, and pitta bread or even toast
*get a couple of veg samosas from one of the Indian takeaways and add those
*or felafels from a Moroccan shop
*or even a veggie burger from the supermarket
*or stick a few veg on skewers and make veg kebabs
*or as a last resort, that old staple from about 20 years ago or more - an omelette - in the days when the only thing people could think to cook for vegetarians was an omelette.

There must be many more easy examples of cheap fast vegetarian food but these were just the first few off the top of my head. Thanks to the firm for trying, they ordered in plenty of time, so it shouldn't have been that difficult.

But dear me. Why are we still being treated like such second-class citizens?

Arse of the Week Award

First prize goes to the totally ignorant inconsiderate driver on Queensway on Saturday afternoon who seemed to think
a) it was necessary to speed, and
b) specifically speed through puddles and splash passers-by.

In fact, not just splash passers-by, soak them. Throw water right up the back of my coat, all down the back of my trousers so they were soaked inside and out, and my boots as well of course.

It took two days for the boots to dry out, and I don't know how long it would have taken the clothes, but I chucked them in the tumble dryer.

Now listen, you arsehole in your small go-fasty goody. I am not walking because I am too poor to afford either a small new car, or a large old one. I am walking because I like to do so, because I see no need to drive around Gib unnecessarily, and if I don't wish to walk I will get on the bus.

I am not some poverty-stricken urchin from subsidised housing or someone living in controlled rented accommodation. I am almost certainly far better off than you, and probably was at your age too. So you can just stop treating me with such disrespect because I happen to be on two feet and not on four wheels.

You are rude arrogant selfish and totally lacking in respect for people. If you hadn't been going so fast, you might have heard the abuse that I shouted at you.

Second prize of the week, ie runner-up, was awarded yesterday. As the boots were wet, I have been going out in training shoes.

On trying to put them on yesterday I was puzzled to discover the laces seemed to be stuck underneath. To a huge wad of chewing gum. Which did not seem to want to come off.

Quite honestly, when I do my trainers up, I do not want to be reminded of what someone I don't know has been chewing in their mouth. Nor do I want to walk round picking up every piece of dross on the street that sticks to the gum on the sole of my trainer. If you want to chew gum, arsehole, put in a bin when you have finished with it, not on the pavement. Ignorant git.

Third prize..... Nope. There isn't one. Fortunately there aren't too many arses in my life.

Printer/scanners - HP Photosmart All-in-One

So on going away for my holiday, I disconnected the printer and the computer, via the USB cable. Turned everything off at the switch (just in case) even though we have surge protectors. Put computer - laptop - away carefully.

I have done this before, I might add. Come back, reconnect everything, all working fine. This morning, decide to scan something in. Oh. No. Scanner and computer not having a bar of it. Won't print either. In fact, despite being about two centimetres away from each other, they apparently are unaware of each other's existence.

What is really really really annoying, is that I had this problem a couple of months ago. At the time, I uninstalled the printer software - HP Photosmart C5280 All-In-One - and reinstalled it. Again and again. Of course every time I did this my printer apparently wasn't supported by the installation. Er why not?

It was, over a year ago when I bought it and worked perfectly well then. So I emailed HP support and got no response. There was nothing on the website - that I could find - that was remotely relevant. Mostly geared towards PCs and Windows anyway. Note to HP - way to go. Alienate any potential Mac customers. Don't bother making your on-line chat with a technician compatible with the built-in Mac browser - Safari.

Still annoyed, somewhat later, I emailed HP again to point out their guaranteed 24 hour response had not happened. Some days later in fact. At this point I did get a reasonable response from someone asking what my problem was as they didn't have a record of it. It was hardly a helpful response but at least it was a response which was more than I had received so far.

But then Irritating Partner finally decided to take a week's holiday and started by instructing me to buy a memory stick, back everything up and reinstall my operating system. OK, so I knew I should be backing up stuff anyway. Just needed a bit of motivation. But with arse duly kicked, I trotted off to the shop, bought the biggest memory stick they had, and backed everything up. Very fast. Impressed really. Not half the chore I expected.

Next step, obliterate everything, gasp, gulp. And reinstall Mac OS X. Which didn't take too long. Lo and behold. We were up and running again. Reinstalled everything off the memory stick. No probs there either. Finally, fingers crossed, reinstalled the HP printer software. *Yay* That worked too. So what the fuck is wrong with it now???????? In approximately two weeks, why has it taken a hissy fit again?

This will be the last fucking time I EVER buy anything with an HP tag on it, I can say. There had better be a good response coming from the support centre. (It hasn't arrived yet, needless to state). Tips, advice or helpful comments from anyone who has any idea what on earth to do, would be more than welcome. You might even warrant a job with HP's technical department.