kochleffel

On this date in 2015

USGS: magnitude 4.7 at 10:23 a.m. EST, 7 km NNE of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey.

Sweet potato hash would have been welcome this morning, but Door Dash never showed up. I would have wanted the vegan one, because I dislike eggs that aren't fully cooked. I would skip the cocktail. For an off-dry Riesling, Three Brothers First Degree of Riesling. They also bottle Second Degree and Third Degree, which are progressively sweeter. I have been to Norway but not to Bergen. Johanneskirken would be St. John Church, not St. James. My plan to do the Webex conference from a comfortable chair with my iPad failed. Webex would only let me sign in as the host, which I was not, and I had to switch to my desktop computer. That, followed by three hours of class on Zoom, left me in enough pain to interfere with sleep. I think we just had a slight earthquake. There was a bit of s-n-o-w on the street when I woke this morning. It had stopped but the forecast is for rain after 1:00. I want to get to Aldi before that, and then I need to work on the presentation that I'm scheduled to give on Thursday. The topic is ethical issues in New York electrification.

Green beans are the only leftover I have, and I'll probably eat them for lunch, with a veg burger. OK on the drink. No Albariño grown here AFAIK, so I might substitute a Grüner Veltliner, perhaps from Fulkerson's. The s-n-o-w didn't materialize, but has been rescheduled for tomorrow. Rain will probably begin around 1:00 p.m. A difficult afternoon coming, with three hours of class on Zoom preceded by an hour's conference on Webex. I don't have to participate actively in the Webex conference so I have in mind to follow it from a lounge chair, on my iPad mini.

It's not likely that I'll find a rainbow today, as it's raining hard and this is likely to continue until it turns into s-n-o-w tomorrow. Lemon-garlic steak and green beans would be OK with me, but I have only the green beans. The pseudotini sounds even more pseudo than most. Interested in the wine but not sure. Very little boxed wine made in the FL so I might consider Chateau LaFayette Reneau's Roaring Red.

If it weren't enough for the news media's attempting to create alarm about the eclipse -- not the eclipse itself, but the tourism -- now they're taking up "cicada-geddon." Two different broods of cicadas will emerge this year. Because one is on a 13-year cycle and the other a 17-year cycle, this hasn't happened since 1803. But they're hyping it as if it will mean twice as many cicadas all in the same place, which isn't the case. The 13-year brood is in the southeast, and the 17-year brood is in Illinois. There might be a small area of overlap. https://apnews.com/article/periodical-cicada-invasion-bugs-everywhere-locusts-evolution-e57f708cdcf144a20fe8f694e95b5d44

The only thing I've seen said that Britbox UK and Britbox International have seen separated. Britbox was founded jointly by ITV and the BBC, but now ITV has sole ownership of the UK service and is folding it into its larger streaming service. BBC has sole ownership of the non-UK services such as US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Rabbit, rabbit, over much of the country the rabbit will be sopping wet today. No charcuterie boards, please. It's a fad that I don't understand, and since I don't combine meat and dairy and don't eat pork, a bit of a nuisance. The hue might be the best thing about the drink. For the wine, Gold Seal Blanc de Blancs. I had a very hard time getting to sleep last night, not from pain but from mental activity. Eventually I slept soundly, just not enough.

The IRS website says that my refund has been approved and the money will be in my bank account by Wednesday. The New York refund posted yesterday.

That's what I recommended when a colleague cut his scalp on an overhanging palm frond in Jerusalem.

My advisor in college was a medievalist but I don't think he would have appreciated being hugged. I might have eggs and spinach today, but more likely in the form of shakshuka. The drink would be OK. The wine is a Rhone blend and only one of the three varieties in it grows here, so I would substitute a Syrah, maybe the 2022 from Hector Wine Company. A misguided recipe in one of the major newspapers, published on the east coast, insisted that one had to use tepary beans. That's from a different species than most of our common beans; it's typical of Mexico and the desert Southwest, because it will grow with very little rainfall. I don't know what bean variety the peoples of my region used, but it certainly wasn't that, and tepary beans are very difficult to obtain. The recipe was more on point with suggesting hominy instead of unprocessed corn, because nixtamalization makes the nutrients more available. My injury is improving, but I think it will hurt for several more days. I slept well but that was a case of better living through chemistry.

I'd probably like the chicken, and green beans go well with chicken. No, no, no, no, no on the drink. For the wine, Damiani Bollicine. Actual dinner tonight is Cabernet Franc, a grilled cheese sandwich, and fruit. Yesterday I fell as I was getting up from my desk, landing hard on my rump. It was very painful during the night and I got up at 2:00 a.m. for pain medication. It hurt so much then that I thought was starting to faint -- I'm prone to syncope, or as an ER doctor put it, Fainting Goat Syndrome -- and had to sit down in the nearest chair for half an hour before continuing back to bed. It's less bad today. I went to the synagogue this morning; several lay women were leading the service and did very well. It was my first time attending in person since December 30. I didn't cough much.

My usual wine shop is a Mom and Pop business, and when I was last there, Mom was at the cash register. I could eat the vegetarian version of the salad. No on the drink, not only because of the name but also because of the way it would taste. For a another Bordeaux blend, Keuka Spring Millers Cove Red, which has been awarded Best in Show and Best New York State Red Wine three times. A relative bargain at $24.99. I want to visit Greenland but I have no reason to think that I ever will. I've had a shopping list for Target for a while, but this morning it became urgent when the 5-cup coffeemaker broke. It considerately made the morning cuppa before giving up the ghost.

Gothenburg person?

Dinner tonight was broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots from a frozen bag, followed by New York cheddar with local wine. The wine was a new one for me, a dry Riesling from J.R. Dill on Seneca Lake. For tomorrow I have another J.R. Dill wine that will be new, a Cabernet Franc. Riesling and Cabernet Franc are probably the best varieties for this region.

I would want the salad to be mostly carrot, jazzed up with a small amount of radish -- even though I grow radishes, I don't like them in concentrated doses. I would be willing to try the drink, even though I don't trust liquor flavored to taste like something else and I think it might be better with vanilla rum instead of vanilla vodka. The wine is a Bordeaux blend, so I'll suggest a Meritage, the 2020 from Sheldrake Point. It's a relative bargain at $35. I would add the start of the Crimean War in 1854. It accomplished little for anyone, and the ostensible provoking issue had already been resolved, but it gave us the beginning of modern nursing with Florence Nightingale, plus "The Charge of the Light Brigade." The last surviving veteran was a tortoise named Timothy, the mascot of a British ship, who lived until 2004.

One of the articles about the closure of the Port of Baltimore said that it could lead to shortages of automobiles, steel, and tofu. I knew that Baltimore was a major port for car imports, but tofu?? It turns out that any tofu shortage would be in Asia. Baltimore is also a major port for the export, not import, of tofu.

You've probably noticed the warnings on HAL and other cruise-line menus about meat that is not thoroughly cooked. A post today on social media says that ground beef that is not cooked to well-done is unlawful in Canada: the person ordered a medium-rare burger in Ontario and was told that well-done is the only legal way they could serve it. Someone else said that, in the United States, Five Guys follows the same policy. In the US, the CDC says that ground beef should be cooked to 160° F., which is well-done, but it's not law. The concern is that grinding mixes bacteria from the outside to the inside, which doesn't happen with steaks or roasts. I so seldom eat in restaurants that I have no recent experience with this.

They are becoming more sociable, but strictly on their terms. Mona Lisa joins me upstairs at bedtime and lies next to me until it's time for her next patrol of the house; DaVinci gets into my lap whenever I sit down to watch television. The other day I was watching a report about cat hoarding and advised him not to watch, but he seems to have no interest in the actual programs. (Fergus liked shows with lions, and Sasha liked any with small, squeaky animals or birds.) They agree that the service in this establishment is awful, just awful.

Federal refunds are a lot slower this year. When I was doing tax prep, it typically took just 11 days.

Yogurt would add lactose, so the suggestion wouldn't be my first choice. No on the drink (pineapple juice). I think that all Sauvignon Blanc is light, so I might substitute Grüner Veltliner from Fulkerson's. The grape is the characteristic variety in the Danube valley; in a blind tasting some years ago it ranked ahead of Chardonnay, although they are different enough that I don't know how a blind tasting would have been possible. I haven't been to Falmouth in the UK, or in Jamaica. I haven't even been to the Falmouth in Massachusetts, although people I know ran the College Light Opera there for many years. I fear that this could be some of us.

For the 1976 election I was a precinct sheriff in Indiana, which has quaint names for the poll workers. The sheriff's job is to keep order, especially to prevent electioneering inside the precinct and a certain distance outside. My colleague from the other party, perhaps because starting work at 6:00 a.m. had affected his medication schedule, had a seizure and had to rest for a while. During that time I had to eject a would-be campaigner from my own party. The other precinct workers were the clerks, who handled the voter lists; judges, who pushed the button on the side of the voting machine that allowed the next person to vote (easy at a general election, but in a primary it required care to press the button for the correct party), and the inspector, the person in charge. There were pairs from opposing parties for all the jobs except inspector, who would be from the majority party in the precinct. I had that job a few years later and had to go outside at 6:00 a.m. and p.m. and announce in a loud voice, "Hear ye, hear ye, the polls are open/closed!" The Jewish practice of mussar teaches that our purpose is to be of service to others, and tried to develop personal qualities that help that. I suppose that the lasagna roll-ups could be made with lactose-free cottage cheese, but I wouldn't bother. The drink would be OK, maybe only once. For a Bordeaux blend, maybe Hector Wine Company's 2020 Essence, at $30.00. It's from Sawmill Creek, the warmest microclimate in the Finger Lakes. Do these count as "in flower"? My garden is in a microclimate that is colder than the average for this region. I have a webinar in ten minutes. I'm undecided about the rest of the afternoon.

Bedding-in for peace sounds like a publicity stunt. You'd have to be a celebrity for anyone even to notice. I will wear a cap with the Greek flag today. I might like the suggested meal but it's another that I couldn't make at home. No on the drink. For the wine, Hermann J. Wiemer Cuvée Brut 2018, newly released.

No shrimp ever here, but I'd like Roy's alternative. I'll be ready for it around 6:30 p.m. No on the pseudotini. There is still no Tempranillo in the FL so I'll counter with Dr. Frank's 2021 Amur, a grape originating in southern Siberia and northern China. News of the animal world: -- Last week JFK Airport had to call in help from the Department of Environmental Conservation to remove a seal from the runway. A local radio report from Oneonta struggled to figure out how a seal would get to JFK Airport. I guess someone there failed geography. -- A photographer in Texas got a photo of a bobcat leaping up and capturing a heron in flight. More at https://petapixel.com/2024/03/18/once-in-a-lifetime-photo-of-bobcat-pouncing-on-heron-mid-flight/?fbclid=IwAR2dXlpN7OOYNyMFy4mmmiszijJii77iDwJp9dbCqZu_RaGMrK1g6N4cs0w. Today there's a Purim wine and beer tasting at 2:00. Drinking is traditional at Purim but wine and beer tastings are not; the organizers are so concerned that someone might become tipsy that they want to cut people off after two ounces (of all wines or beers combined). For what they are charging, I think they need to offer tastes of everything plus a full glass of one, at least. Then there's a Purim play, "My Fair Esther." It's nine days since I filed my income-tax return and I'm starting to get antsy about the refund, seeing as it's the first time in a couple of decades that I'm getting one. IRS has a website that can track the processing, but a lot of the time it isn't working. Caption: You better open another bottle of wine--I'm about to start deducting household expenses.

Spacehook = the social-media site whose cruise groups are not allowed to be mentioned on CC. The group I administer isn't about any form of travel, though.