h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Now, see, my petty hate is that I've read all of those books and now have to wait until the new one comes out - hardback in 2010 which means I'll have to wait about a year & a half for the paperback

Deb

Zips on the side of dresses: as well as being able to reach the darn thing, you have to get the angle of your hand right to exert enough pulling power. And use the other hand to hold the fabric together so the zip doesn't catch. I find that very difficult with either the right or left hand.

Aaaahhhh! Without those awkward zips, how else would us chaps have the opportunity to be perfect gentlemen Perhaps I'm just being old fashioned

"he's definitely missing books 1 and 2 of Thursday Next"

I read all of them from the library

"my petty hate is that I've read all of those books and now have to wait until the new one comes out - hardback in 2010 which means I'll have to wait about a year & a half for the paperback"

You see my PH would be that he's taking the series too far if there's another Thursday Next story. I really thought he'd tied the ends up in the last one. I'd like to see more of the Nursery Crimes ...

Judging from the Jasper Fforde website, Shades of Grey isn't a Thursday Next book after all:

http://www.jasperfforde.com/nextbook.html

The one after that will be, however. I do agree another Nursery Crimes book would be good, I loved both of them.

Deb

New PHoD ... joining a dual carriageway that is about 1.5 miles long and get stuck in a queue of traffic within the first 200 yards ...

Driving along behind some woman who decides to let all the traffic in front of her get 500 yards ahead (empty space) so she can shout across through her passenger window to her two mates in their car in the other lane ...

Then the ultimate kicker ... getting to the end of the carriageway to discover that there was no actual reason for the delay ... other than the workman have left their series of warning signs out saying one of the carriageways is closed and everybody will need to get into the inside lane ...

15 minutes to drive 1.5 miles ... grrrr

come monday, i will not see my laptop til FRIDAY because it's getting fixed.

My laptop is currently on a field trip with my little sister.

Since she's managed to lose my torches, calculators, and anything else I've lent her for previous field trips, I'm a bit nervous about that...

Petty & pedantic hate of the day: people who use 'of' instead of 'have'. So far today I've had an email telling me an invoice "should of been paid" and I've just read in another Ask thread "...they should of..."

I know they sound alike when you say them because most people say 'should've" but, oh, how it annoys me!

Deb

I second that, Deb!

Current petty hate: drop-down lists that put "Germany" under D in English, or under G in German.

Or under either in French?

Dodgy café staff re-using coffee grounds.

The woman in my team who keeps asking if we're going to each do a bit of the project, or 'work on it all together'. How else can one do a project but split it up into tasks and assign the tasks to people? Does she think that six of us huddled around one computer is going to be an efficient method?

Newspapers that can't differentiate between:-

What is in the public interest, and,

What interests the public.

PP

Basalt Maria, I feel your pain! Fingers crossed for the safety of your laptop! I’m nervous my own laptop could come back wiped or something... but that’s worst case scenario.

Next time, you should tell her to buy one for herself.

She can't currently afford one, so I hope she realises she'd have to be able to afford a replacement if she loses it... Come to think of it, I gave her my old desktop, too.

(I'm just Malabarista anagrammed, by the way. The confusion should clear up by Sunday when we all go back to normal.)

Overcompensating for winter by cranking the heater up to 90-degrees. I don't want to stop being unbearably cold by being unbearably hot!

Journalists, who should know better, who want to use the word "breathe", and spell it "breath". Makes me want to kill everybody. Is that petty enough?

Oooh, I hate that one.

In a similar vein: people who say a horse rides somewhere. The horse doesn't ride. The rider does.

And I'm about to stop buying a horsey magazine I read simply because they have one author who tries to use different expressions for horse - fair enough - but every other instance where the animal is mentioned, it's called a "four-legger". It really gets on my nerves.

A two-squared trotter