kochleffel

I was supposed to embark from Venice in 2021 but the cruise was changed to Ravenna and then cancelled. Coincidentally I'm at the Fenimore Art Museum this morning and there is an exhibit of depictions of Venice by American artists. There's also "North by Nuuk: Greenland After Rockwell Kent," contemporary photographs by Denis Defibaugh. Since many Dailyites have visited Greenland here are a few. The first looks like a watercolor but isn't.

Yes, it's the Library of Celsus. What currency did you have to use to pay the fine? If a genuine fake was 15, I wonder how much a fake fake would be. Or would a fake fake be genuine? On SR 80.

I haven't been in Copenhagen in many years but look forward to it at the end of this month. Since the Oosterdam is at Kusadasi, here's a photo from Ephesus. My college roommate was kicked out of school in Germany when he was 8; the teacher said that left-handed children were ineducable. His father went to the school brandishing his doctoral diploma from Göttingen and pointed out that *he* was left-handed. Thinking of Jacqui and Shadow. A very sad situation.

You can visit the Russian Orthodox Cathedral and the Bishop's House on foot once you're in the village. Go to the Russian Bishop's House first -- it's free but the NPS issues timed tickets for the upper floor. Also note that the trail between the totem park and the Raptor Center is sometimes closed because of bears. The Raptor Center can also be reached by town streets but it's a less pleasant walk.

Arrived in Cooperstown around 5:00; opera at 7:30.

I've been thinking a lot today about plans and preparation for the Denmark-Norway cruise at the end of this month, but what I should be thinking about is a trip to Cooperstown this weekend for the Glimmerglass Festival. The weather has cooled significantly, so it probably won't be blazing hot in the opera house -- no A/C -- as it usually is, although one year it was uncomfortably cold -- no heat, either -- with ushers offering blankets to frail elderly people and many others rushing to the gift shop to by sweatshirts. That could happen this year, as it will be 49° overnight on Friday. I'm staying longer than usual this time, so most days I'll only be attending one performance and will be able to have dinner in a couple of restaurants. That's difficult when attending two performances. The repertoire this year is Carmen, Tenor Overboard (a new take on Rossini), Taking Up Serpents and Holy Ground (two new, short operas), The Sound of Music, and The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson, about the founder of the National Negro Opera Company. It's a 900-seat theater, with all seats less than 70 feet from the stage. Cooperstown itself is a small village, the county seat of a mostly rural county, that has a lot of tourism, although the greater part of it consists of visitors to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Thus, there are quite a few pizza and spaghetti joints, plus some good restaurants, an art museum (historically it was a rather wealthy village) and a farm museum that is interesting to visit (once). From where I live it's a drive of about 2.5 hours.

The Junior Cat says that it's OK for dogs to have one day a year to be spoiled. Her species will settle for the other 364.

I've heard the term for s'mores, but usually it denotes oysters wrapped in bacon.

I sometimes buy Shiraz but haven't had that one. Wirra Wirra? The same grape is grown in the U.S. as Syrah and there is a good one from Walla Walla. "Check out which Washington wine just landed at No. 2 on Wine Spectator’s prestigious Top 100 list for 2017 — Syrah Walla Walla Valley Powerline Estate 2014 ($45)." https://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/a-washington-syrah-was-named-second-best-wine-in-the-world/

I've been napping with the Junior Cat, who asks whether she qualifies as an International Cat. She was born in Massachusetts.

Two years ago this month, when most travel was impossible, I rented a cabin west of Oswego overlooking Lake Ontario. In downtown Oswego, I spent some time watching the operation of the lock.

My almost-Maine coon cat, who was long-haired and double-coated, got into every suitcase. I think he wanted to make sure I arrived at the destination with a sufficient amount of cat hair, that is, about enough to make another cat.

I once asked a rabbi whether it was required to forgive someone who didn't want to be forgiven. She said it wasn't, but that it might be good for one's mental health. My town is on a river that is a tributary of the Susquehanna, and this weekend I'll be at the headwater of the Susquehanna, Otsego Lake in Cooperstown. I would happily make salmon with spinach if I had any salmon. I haven't been to Ponta Delgada, and the transatlantic itinerary I have booked for next year doesn't call there. I'm in a significant amount of pain after officiating at two services yesterday, and under orders from the gastroenterologist not to take ibuprofen, any other NSAID, or most anti-inflammatories for a while, because of post-colonoscopy bleeding risk. And my acupuncturist is driving around Norway in an RV. A thread on another site is discussing how many of us, in two years without travel, have forgotten how to pack, so here's a reminder.

Is that the right photo, or the right formula? I think that a drink with those ingredients would be brown.

I would try one of the air-fryer steak recipes if I had a steak that was suitable. I used to work across the road from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London and once officiated at the wedding of a Coast Guard officer (assigned to the base, not the Academy). The wedding was a complicated business because Connecticut requires that the license be issued by the town in which the ceremony takes place, and it was hard to determine which town that was. But what really annoyed me is that the ceremony started about an hour late because the bride and her sister weren't satisfied with her hair and makeup, and by then the guests were pretty drunk. We're having severe thunderstorms and they seem likely to continue through Saturday. I avoid all the forums for luxury cruise lines, because I know that I'll never book on any of them. I was even reluctant to participate in the Celebrity forum, but when I was making a booking on Celebrity - for a cruise that was eventually cancelled - people in the forum were friendly and helpful. Before the cancellation, however, I was worried that my clothes might not be good enough, a neurosis that I acquired through working for a nonprofit organization that had a very fancy rummage sale, where no clothing donations containing so much as a molecule of polyester were allowed, and almost all my clothes, not only for travel, were easy-care fabrics.

I read the start of today's thread before going to the supermarket, so I bought some not-real-ice-cream sandwiches (I'm lactose-intolerant). The day started with a telehealth appointment to review my test results, which I had already seen. No further tests required for now, just a repeat sometime next year. Trash and recycling taken out after that. I understand the desire to isolate before major travel, and I wish I could do it. However, I have tickets for the Glimmerglass Festival, in Cooperstown, for the weekend after next, two weeks before the cruise, and I'm scheduled to officiate in the synagogue the last weekend before.

Is the Cruise Planner completely defunct, or is this just another example of Royal Caribbean's superior IT? Using Firefox, I have an item in the shopping cart, but I can't check out. At the last stage, "submit payment," it fails with "Error 405: Request method 'GET' not supported." This is not a problem with my credit card -- it happens with cards from a variety of different banks. RC has always had trouble accepting payments from Firefox logins, but not always with this message. It has been this way for at least a month. For other Cruise Planner operations I've had to start over in Chrome -- but now Chrome can't load the Cruise Planner at all; it demands logging in or creating an account even though I'm already logged in, and keeps looping back to that. The same thing is happening in Microsoft Edge. The cruise is 27 days away, so it's not a matter of its being either too early or too late.

Neither chicken wings nor lasagna is in my plans for today, nor any sort of fish chowder, and I never eat tiger. Dinner will be pseudo coq au vin, made with boneless chicken thighs, with which I'll drink a boxed Pinor Noir from California. I was exhausted yesterday and accomplished only attending the funeral of a man at whose Jewish wedding I was a witness six or seven years ago -- he and his wife had been married in a civil ceremony 19 years before. The funeral was a rather long service at graveside, with military honors, in 90° weather. Since March 2020 we have held funerals only at the graveside, with rare exceptions when the burial was to be far away.

Not a New Zealander, but there are non-stop flights on Air New Zealand and on United, which uses San Francisco as a hub for transpacific flights. They are both in Star Alliance and they code-share, so each also lists the other's flights.

The Junior Cat welcomes Shadow even though Shadow's ancestors probably chased her ancestors while they (her ancestors) were busy saving civilization in Egypt. I was home from the colonoscopy by 11:00. The warnings about powerful sedation and needing to be driven home and escorted into my house were overdone; I was conscious throughout and knew everything they were doing, but with enough medication on board not to care, or to object to their choice of music. I had a light lunch and went to bed, having been awake all night. However, I'm heeding their warning not to drive until tomorrow, so dinner had to be made from what I had on hand.

The Missouri Botanical Garden says that, in frost-free areas, it can grow to 15 feet, but in St. Louis, where it would have to be brought indoors for the winter, 5 to 8 feet would be typical. Other sources say that it's not a good plant to overwinter indoors, and if it continued to grow the ceiling height would be a problem. Are you growing it at the edge of a pond, or in a wet setting?

The Ropa Vieja from yesterday is on my radar, although I'd make it with beef -- I like mushrooms, but as the main ingredient they would upset my digestion. I've had Tres Leches cake and wouldn't order it again. The alternative suggestion would suit me better but today's menu is apple juice, chicken broth, and ginger ale, plus a quart of some noxious solution at 5:00 p.m. and another quart at 2:30 a.m. I hope I don't sound too enthusiastic. I got the blood draw uneventfully yesterday and had the result by bedtime -- improved enough that maybe no additional tests will be needed.

For travel that includes both hot and cold conditions -- summer travel to Alaska, the Faroe Islands, the Alps, or going between home and the airport for winter travel to a warm climate -- I rely on a packable down-alternative vest that I add under a rain jacket. People often say to take fleece for cold conditions, but fleece is less packable because it doesn't compress at all.

Nor for me. When I make shakshuka, I cook the eggs separately. I wouldn't mind some Palatschinken, although actual dinner tonight is fake chicken on a bed of real spinach. I taught my adult Bible class this morning; we completed II Samuel and read in I Kings as far as the death of King David. My only other accomplishment today was to drag the daybed, delivered early this morning by Fedex, into the garage before rain started. I was grateful that the driver leaned the box against the center post on the front of the garage and didn't lean it against one of the doors or lay it flat on the ground. I'll take it upstairs (piece by piece) to assemble after I get the bed out of the guest room. I bought the daybed early because it's become so common for things to become unavailable before I get around to purchasing them. The rescheduled blood draw on Monday has gotten more annoying. It's for a specialist consultation a week later, but now the other hospital group has requested a blood draw before I have a colonoscopy on Wednesday. It's not required for the procedure but is needed for a research program. The annoyance is that each hospital requires the work to be done in its own lab, so it may mean two blood draws at different locations on the same day. The Junior Cat also needs a blood test and I console myself that at least mine doesn't have to be drawn from the neck, which is usual for cats.

Wasted trip to the blood-draw site. Half the people in the waiting room weren't wearing masks -- required by state regulation here -- or had them pulled down, and I rescheduled for Monday.