Author: Irks and Quirks

You know you love food when…

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I don’t know about you, but I’m that person who wakes up today and wonders what’s for dinner tomorrow. An unnecessary amount of my day is spent thinking about food. I love food. I love eating food, I love talking about food, I love (and it’s not weird), watching people while they eat their food (…it’s……research, not…weird, Jessica. Research). In fact, now that I think about it, the majority (and by majority, I mean all) of the significant relationships and friendships I have ever had were founded on food because, all the best relationships just are. And I feel like I don’t get to talk about food and eating as much as I would like, and it’s just not fair when I stop to think about it…which is more often then I’m willing to admit publicly. The thing is, a love of food causes problems. You start to assume other people feel the same way you do, and it’s a nasty shock to the system when you realise this isn’t true. I once worked with …

When life gives you lemons…

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Well heeeello there my dear reader! And how have you been keeping yourself these wonderful few months? Hopefully the answer is extremely freaking fantastic! Now, if there’s any chance you noticed (and I like to think you did because who doesn’t like to feel special?), there hasn’t been a blog post in a little while, (and if you didn’t notice, well…that is just hurtful, and I just…can’t…with you right now…(queue unnecessarily dramatic guilt-inducing sobs as I re-evaluate our “relationship”)… …anyway. So, what the damn hell happened? Well, both the long and short of it is that life personally delivered me an epic ass whopping and failed to include any returns, refunds or exchanges info in the package.  So, I’ve been dealing with that unwanted gift while trying to stay sane (think, needing to find a new apartment, possibly needing alternative employment if the new place is too far from my current job, and dealing with a very physical stress-induced illness which my doctor says he can’t really treat since its psychosomatic… so (and I quote …

So, I’m sometimes arachnophobic…this post contains talk of spiders…

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*(Please note…this post is more of a long and oddly-worded question…)* Okay, hands up if you aren’t afraid of, or actually like spiders…! Good…good. Now, if your hand is up, keep it up and very slowly (but without dawdling) move to the back of the room. And by ‘move to the back of the room’ I mean check yourself…take a good long hard look at your life and realise you need to re-evaluate several things, we can’t trust people like you here. Having said that…I may or may not be joining you. I don’t know yet. See I’m terrified of spiders and as you would expect get panicky and lightheaded when I see them…except for those times when I’m not terrified of spiders, and I’m fascinated by, and will happily manhandle them. Confused yet? Ok, good. There I was minding my damn business laying on the sofa watching ‘The Good Place’ eating Nutella straight out the jar – you know, just your standard Saturday breakfast routine, when a tiny blur of motion caught my eye, …

10 random things about me…

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Um, ok. I am not very good at these types of posts, (and, also, I’m kind of hoping no one will notice that I’ve been just a smidge…uninspired about what to post this time around…so…we’re just going to calmly move on…). You know what it’s like when someone asks you to say something about yourself, and your mind just goes completely blank as if you haven’t been you your whole life and know yourself better than anybody else? That’s what this feels like. And so it is that before I’ve even started typing thing number one I’m at a loss. I’m just going to let my fingers do the work and hope for the best. I get unnecessarily irritated when people sit next to me on a near empty bus. Seriously, what is your deal anyway? Isn’t it just simple Bus Etiquette (or is it a London Transport Thing?) to not sit/breathe next to (or immediately in front of…or behind of…or to the left or right of) another human on public transport unless the other …

Yes, I’m bitching about exercise…again…

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I promised myself that this year…this year…I would find an exercise/workout routine I liked. Because then (I hypothesised optimistically and prematurely) I wouldn’t be able to make excuses about not keeping fit. You see, I hate exercise with passion. So much passion, and if I could bottle up the passion that I actively put into hating exercise and unleash it into every other aspect of my life, I would probably be the richest most incredibly successful person on the planet…but then I’d have no excuse to not work out…and I simply refuse to accept that life, so… To stay true to my promise to myself, I’ve been trying new things. So far, I’ve tried: Workouts at a piss-poor time in the morning with a friend in the local park. This ended abruptly when she had the nerve to catch an attitude with me because I stopped for a large hot chocolate with whipped cream and a croissant 10 minutes into the session……the warm up session……but honestly, it’s not my fault, it’s Pret’s fault for being …

My week of customer service pissiness…

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Is it just me…or is customer services in some parts going to hell? It’s been one of those bad service weeks, where trying to accomplish a simple task – like paying a bill, or buying groceries, was unnecessarily complicated. These are some examples of the crappy service I received. Trying to pay a bill: Advisor: [picked up after only 2 rings] Me: [silently, and somewhat prematurely thinks: oh goody, this is going to be easy, whoop whoop!] Adviser: good morning, my name is Danny, how can I help you today? Me: [somewhat brightly] hi, I’d like to pay a bill please Advisor: [unnecessarily perkily] certainly! I’ll just take you through some security questions and I’ll get that sorted for you, can you just confirm your full name and address please?[queue name and address confirmations, and a bonus 10-point security question quiz thrown in absolutely free] Advisor: and you are the account holder? Me: yes Advisor: ok…thank you for getting through security…oh! [brief pause, and scarily rapid typing sounds ensue] I can see here…it’s been a …

4 Things I learned during a clear out…

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As you know spring is just around the corner, and I figured I would get an early start on the spring cleaning thing. You know, like a pre-spring-clean spring clear-out before the post spring-clear-out spring clean (OK, I admit that sentence was completely unnecessarily, but it was fun to type, so don’t judge me).  And the way I decided to do it, was to dump all of the junk from my wardrobe, all the closets and cupboards into a giant pile in the middle of my living room floor, because I didn’t think I had that much stuff (wrong!) and I figured it would take me maybe an hour max to get everything sorted (double wrong!) and then I’d sit back and relax in my new clutter-free minimalistic space with an insane sense of smugness/enlightenment, while I silently judged all those who choose to surround themselves with unnecessary junk. Soooooooooooooooo. A week after I started, the way it ended up was a little bit different from my dreamy imaginings. I mean really, who knew dumping …

Carrot Cake Cupcakes…

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I love, like LOVE cake. Especially when it’s homemade – I mean, really and truly if there is a person out there who doesn’t love a fresh-out-the-oven cake, I don’t want to meet them (unless it’s to tell them how wrong they are). Carrot cake is a personal favourite, so I figured I’d go right ahead and share a little carrot cupcake with cream cheese frosting recipe. Before you get into it, here’s what you should know: I have NO idea how many calories are in this thing…! I don’t think of edible things that way (sorry…?). But it’s safe to say, it’s probably not low calorie, or low fat, or massively healthy. It’s cake! It’s a treat. It’s not like you’re going to eat the entire batch by yourself (unless you are…not gonna judge)…so…let’s be sensible about it mkay? Great! This recipe made me 24 cupcakes. Ingredients: 250g self-raising flour. 200g light brown sugar. 200g caster sugar. 60g ground almonds 300g grated carrots X2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 350ml vegetable oil 4 medium eggs X1 …

10 more things that ruin a good book…

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If you’re a bookworm, you know the truth. That reading is basically an adrenaline fuelled, high-octane sport. And as with any extreme sports, it has its high points and some low points. For example, (and before you read this, please read the previous ‘Things that ruin a good book…’ post)…here’s some (more) things I think can ruin a good book. Being unable to find a comfortable reading position: The book is roughly the same size and shape as a cinderblock, and you refuse to download the eBook, because no matter what people say, it’s just. Not. The. Same. So, you end up hunchbacked on the sofa while your knees go numb from the weight of the book, then you try to read it laying down on your front in your bed, book propped on the pillow, chiropractor on speed dial, then on your back with the book in the air, where it betrays you by promptly falling on your face, knocking your glasses off and poking you in the eye even though you’ve shown it …