simont | (no subject)

I have clearly become more mature and self-controlled since I was eighteen.

I can tell this because that was the previous time I had half an hour of sleep in a night due to insomnia. At the time it put me in such a bad mood that when I got up I had a temper tantrum, hurled a hairbrush I'd had since childhood across the bedroom, broke it, and spent several years trying to find a replacement that worked nearly as well.

Last night I had half an hour of sleep again, and all it left me with was a steely determination not to take any nonsense from anyone today. Which probably worked out well, since British Gas sent me another fictitious bill yesterday so I had to ring them up this morning to argue some more. After browbeating them with a pageful of facts that I'd carefully collected since our last frank exchange of views, they agreed (again) that they were wrong and I was right, and promised (again) to send me a revised bill which made sense. I don't feel 100% confident that they'll actually do so, given that they didn't the last time, but it's something to hope for at least.

So here I am at work regardless, brain mostly made of cheese (and not even nice cheese – perhaps that plastic cheese-alike you melt on top of beefburgers), rather hoping that I can find something to do today which won't require me to think very hard. Perhaps I'll empty my inbox, or something like that. I fear I might not manage to get to the Calling tonight either, which is a shame, but if I'm going to fall asleep then better to do it at home…

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a steely determination not to take any nonsense from anyone

Yay! :-)

not even nice cheese – perhaps that plastic cheese-alike you melt on top of beefburgers

I tend to buck the trend and use nice mature cheddar personally..

I find mature cheddar doesn't taste quite right on burgers if it fails to melt properly; I suspect plastic-imitation-cheese is specifically designed to have a low melting point for this purpose.

That said, I found some thinly sliced Port Salut in Sainsburys once which seemed to work rather well; I don't think it melted properly either, but it didn't seem to matter so much.

From what I recall, the blue cheese that Red Robin (http://www.redrobin.com/) used one burger was perfectly adequately melted - it wasn't quite as goopy as processed cheese is expected/required to be, and was quite nice.

Red Robin: thanks! I must try them out. It transpires that there's a couple near us.

That's serious insomnia.

Plastic cheese-alike: be careful of what gets called "cheddar" in the US.