To post or not to post

Not being a modern day version of the bard himself, I'm no Shakespeare that's for sure, I just dump out what's going on in my brain and a blog entry is just a lengthy feature version but with no structured beginning, middle and end.

It's been an interesting past week.  I created an event on the singles group that I'm on to go to a pub quiz and we had a newbie join us for it.  Not that I've been in the group that long but I've been to a few of these and still remember my first ever meet so I could take an educated guess as to how the person could be feeling.  But its just the little things I think that make it much more comfortable for a first-timer.  Meet the person at the entrance to the venue / pub, buy them a drink bring them to the table and introduce them to whomever is there already. But definitely, and this is a biggie for me, make sure there's enough seats at the table for everyone.  Its hard enough going to something for the first time when you don't know anyone and people are just nattering away amongst themselves but if there's no spare seats left? Its potentially like you don't have a space for that person at the table.  OK sure its quickly alleviated by getting an extra seat and parking it, but the initial "where am I going to sit?" can seem a tad daunting to some.

Putting yourself on the radar
It took courage / guts for that nervous newbie to come along to an event on their own but I like to think that we all made them feel very welcome and they were comfortable once they'd sat down.  The poor lady had a bit of a baptism by fire as she sat next to yours truly, but she's not been corrupted too much.

I remember previously talking to her over FB messenger, me being Mr Jibber Jabber / spammer in there and her telling me she was too nervous to post (I'd recently been told by a member of the admin team that I had a rather large amount of posts / comments in the previous 28 days, so I'm definitely no stranger to posting whatever goes on in my random mind - but I digress) as she was nervous about what people might say / think / comment.  She didn't want to put herself on the radar so to speak, but I didn't understand where she was coming from.  That Thursday evening though I definitely understood where she was coming from as earlier that day I made a comment....

No, I didn't also add a photo to that as that would have just been nasty.  Now that's one of my facets of "wrongness" in that there is gross humour in there.  Some found it funny, i'm sure some read it and said nothing but not everyone did to which it received a comment in that I really didn't need to post on every single aspect of my life.  So, after a mini exchange with that person and someone else that ironically hopped on the proverbial "Dave bashing" bandwagon I decided (even after showing it to a member of the admin team) to remove the post from the group purely because I didn't think they needed to be hassled.  Plus, there definitely was point and case of putting myself on the radar for all and sundry to comment on.

The one thing that I found quite funny though, and this is me definitely laughing at myself, is I was told to, and I quote "Keep it relevant" (I don't have a great memory, I just have the entire exchange screenshotted, is that a word?, on my phone because I sent it to friends that got a good laugh out of it.  Now, for you that know me, I just do not keep anything relevant.  Being a member of a snowboarding group on Facebook I have an idea as to how to "keep it relevant" in there.  But honestly, on a singles / social group, I stand a less than zero chance of understanding what on earth is relevant.

I went through previous posts by others just to see what they would post about, but its such a scattered subject list, weather, mechanical problems, gardening, a high street being shut because of emergency services so I'm guessing I was just "too random" :-)

But still, I will always be me and keeping it relevant is not something I'll ever really adhere to.  OK sure, I can on occasion, but for the most part I'm as random in real life as I am online.  So, lets raise a (shot) glass, here's to keeping it irrelevant

Adult "treats"
So it was payday last week and I decided to "treat" myself to a set of Scoville saucepans that I'd been eyeing up in Asda the last few months.  Before then I had the wok, a frying pan and a griddle, and they are seriously amazing and not extortionately priced neither.

I made the conscious decision to finally do it when even basic things were welding themselves to the side of the current set of saucepans even with constant stirring.  So now I do have the complete set and that should do me for absolutely years now providing I look after them well enough, which for these things just means washing them WITHOUT using a scouring pad or anything abrasive.

When I went to Asda that Friday and had my trolley loaded with stuff, that was when I found out there was a small issue with Visa that was affecting, well, everyone in Europe and Asda.  Apparently though Asda was having problems processing anything above £30 but the lady said she'd just split my shopping up into multiple transactions.  I pointed to the box of saucepans and said "Good luck as that on its own is over £30".  I did try to suggest that I only take half the Scoville set and she charges £30.  But she didn't go for me taking the pots and pans and Asda keeping an empty box...

The cinnamon challenge
Its been done so many times on YouTube, my favourite being shown below by GloZell...

So, Claire F and I decided to give it a go.  Fortunately Claire shops in Costco and happened to have a metric tonne of the stuff in her kitchen.  We both knew we weren't going to do a ladle of the stuff so settled on a tablespoon of it.  I guess if you average it out then we had a level tablespoon but I definitely had a bit more of a heaping on my spoon than Claire did. 

We prepped in the kitchen, so that meant eye wear was removed and glasses of water on standby, phones were put out of the potential "blast"zone, then we put the spoons in our mouths.  Obviously the challenge is to just swallow the ground cinnamon.  Claire managed to hold the cinnamon in her mouth for at least 1 second before bellowing out a cinnamon cloud like some sort of dessert dragon.  I managed to hold mine in my mouth, but I had nothing.  There was zero moisture in my mouth!  I've honestly never felt anything like it, ever.  It had felt like my lips were stuck to my teeth, there was a dry paste formed around my gums, and my mouth was drying out even more by the second.  At the point when I started to cough out clouds of cinnamon I would had sworn that the insides of my mouth made the Sahara desert seem like the Amazon rain forest.

It doesn't burn so I'd say if you fancy a laugh and are not allergic to cinnamon, then give it a go, even if just to experience the sensation yourselves.  Do keep a glass of water on standby just in case.

We've decided to try another challenge, this time to consume a pot of Colman's English mustard.  The loser drinks a raw egg.  Yes, there are worse forfeits that we did think of but I'm not going to put them in here because, well....