bobmacliberty

Works both ways. She has many interests that put me to sleep. Fortunately, we have a few things that we both like.

That YouTube channel, The B1M, is a great follow. They post once a week or so about major construction projects happening around the world. Some very impressive stuff. Micheline also has no interest.

All of this talk about NYC/Times Square reminds me of something I saw the other day that amazed me. The famous Palace Theater in Times Square was recently raised 30 feet in the air. THE ENTIRE THEATER. A Doubletree Hotel was previously built around and over the theater. A new development group is going to change the hotel and put more commercial space in the first 3 floors, below the raised theater. The outside of the theater will have a massive (even by Times Square standards) video screen. Two large doors built into the middle of the screen can open to reveal a stage where performers can play to people out in the street. While the outside of the theater will look very modern, the inside is being completely remodeled to its former glory, but with state of the art technology behind the scenes. Should be impressive once complete. This is probably old news to those of you who live near there, but I had no idea it was happening. It's amazing what you can do with enough money. Video here for those who are into that kind of stuff.

I spent a week in San Jose, Costa Rica for business 4 years ago. I never made it to the coast, but the area where we were was beautiful and the people were great. I have a friend who lived there for more than 10 years (with his wife and kids) and was very happy there. I'd love to go back for a vacation. Pura Vida!

Gorgeous.

I decided to just let Amazon bring it to me tomorrow: Amazon.com : Monin Ginger Syrup 750ml : Everything Else

I just clicked on a link to a review I did in 2016 and it worked just fine, other than my pictures being stored in Photobucket at the time that now have watermarks on them. It's the Adventure review in my signature if you want to see if it's just a problem on your end.

Oh yeah...forgot about Rory. Hope he's doing well in the new house. I did some research a year or so ago and I probably would choose the Kamado Joe over the BGE for the reasons that you stated.

This could replace a Miami Vice as my frozen drink of choice. Off to get some ginger syrup!

I thought you upgraded to the XL BGE. Or did you upgrade from medium to large? Still debating if I should get one. Looks like fun, but not sure I'd use it very much. Probably would be an expensive backyard ornament.

I use the light label...94 proof. The black label is only 70 proof. Actually, the label on my bottle is a promotional label, but still 94 proof. Showing the promo label and the light label on my "spare" bottle below to ease OB's concerns. He seemed to be worried that I might run out of Kraken. 😁

We used to have a bar on our old dishwasher and kept towels there. We did bump into it a few times and decided to go with a recessed handle this time. I installed a towel bar inside the cabinet door below our kitchen sink. Took a little getting used to but all good now. Micheline actually prefers the cleaner look of not having the towels be visible.

Mai Tai, round 2... I picked up some Appleton Estate Jamaican Rum to make a Mai Tai, rather than the Bacardi Silver that I used yesterday. I went to a different liquor store but still could not find true Orange Curacao, so I stayed with the Cointreau that I have. The taste with the Jamaican rum is so much better, and it looks more like the Mai Tai that I'm used to. Of course, I floated some Kraken on top. I also garnished with half a spent lime shell and a sprig of mint...a traditional garnish that is supposed to look like an island (the lime shell) with palm trees (the mint sprig).

That was me. This is almost the exact time of year that we were there. Best weather in the country, 50 weeks of the year. 🤪

The pronunciation of orgeat helped me also, so that I could ask in the liquor store and appear to know what I'm talking about. I would have otherwise pronounced the end of the word as eau (like the french word for water, or eau de cologne)

Thanks for the link. Of course I used Kraken (is there any other choice 😁) but I used it as a floater on top of the base drink, which used light rum. Without the floater, the drink was too light in color, so I ended up mixing in the Kraken to make it a little darker. Next time, I'll use a mix of an Anejo Rum and the Kraken. Grand Marnier would definitely be better, but I only had Cointreau. I'm on the lookout for some Pierre Ferrand Dry Curacao since that's what the original recipe calls for. I'll post here how the improved version works.

We have the KitchenAid with third rack and love it. The third rack is very useful. It's amazing how much more you can pack into it. The left third of the upper rack hold shorter glasses, the middle third holds taller glasses laying on an angle, and the right third holds flatter utensils in a removeable tray. We have a few tall glasses that are just slightly too long to lay down on the top rack but they fit well standing up in the middle rack. The right part of the middle rack, under where the flat utensils fit in the top rack, is about 9 inches high and can easily hold tall glasses or large bowls. They have nice clips for holding wine glasses in place. The middle rack can easily be raised or lowered a couple of inches to give more height in the middle rack, or more height in the bottom rack for large things. Most of all, it does a great job of cleaning and has a ProDry feature that gets rid of most of the remaining water that tends to gather on top of glasses/mugs. In case you haven't seen this KitchenAid web page, it does a good job of showing how the third rack works, including some videos: FREEFLEX™ Third Rack Dishwasher | KitchenAid There are only 2 drawbacks to the KitchenAid in our opinion. First, it's a little louder than our old Bosch. You can barely hear the KitchenAid running, so it's not really an issue, but the Bosch was so quiet you couldn't tell if it was running. Second, the full cycle with the ProWash and ProDry settings takes almost 3 hours. It's faster running on other settings but we just leave it on the "pro" settings all the time. Neither of these drawbacks are a problem for us since we time delay the start to the middle of the night.

I've always been partial to the The Firm. I think that's the first Grisham book that I read. I remember really enjoying The Partner, The Pelican Brief, and The Rainmaker as well. It's been many years since I've read them and I don't know how well those books would work many years later...I'm guessing they would still be great. I haven't read them yet (Micheline has) but the Camino Island and Camino Winds books were supposed to have been inspired by Amelia Island. There's a book store in our downtown area that is supposedly the book store from Camino Island. John Grisham's Ode to Amelia Island – Garden & Gun (gardenandgun.com)

It's happy hour, so time for some drink experimentation of my own. Micheline and I honeymooned in Hawaii and had a Mai Tai just about every night before dinner. The taste was amazing. I've had Mai Tai's in several other places since then, but they never tasted quite as good. I always thought that was just because everything in Hawaii on a honeymoon is going to taste better. After doing a little research, I found that there are several variations to the Mai Tai recipe, with some using various fruit juices. Those are typically sweeter and might be the versions that I didn't like. The original recipe only contains lime juice and relies instead on rum, orgeat, and orange Curacao. I bought some orgeat syrup at my local liquor store (it's a non-alcoholic sweetener made from almonds and orange flower water) and had most of the other ingredients at home (substituting Cointreau for Orange Curacao since it's hard to find). I used light rum as the base rum rather than golden rum, so the final product was lighter in color. Next time, I'll get a bottle of Anejo rum, which should make the cocktail more amber in color and punch up the taste a bit. It was still pretty tasty with the light rum. Here's the recipe that I followed for anyone interested: The Original Mai Tai – A Couple Cooks

I'm interested in what you think about going solo. Do you know anyone else on the cruise?

I think you'll be very happy with the new one. Lots of similarities to the old one...in a good way. We don't go to the movie theater very much anymore, mostly because Micheline has short legs and the seats are very uncomfortable for her (unless the theater has reclining seats). The new Top Gun though is worth seeing on a big screen with a great sound system.

Just got back from my first visit to a new dentist here. What a pain (figuratively and literally). It took a couple of hours to do all of the paperwork (where it seemed like I entered my name, SSN, and DOB at least a dozen times), get x-rays, and get fully checked by the dentist. Every little thing they found wrong was noted and I was offered a treatment plan. It felt a lot like they were trying to "upsell" me treatments that I didn't need. I then tried to schedule an appointment for a cleaning and they had nothing available until August. Sigh. After thinking about it a bit, I've concluded that they were just doing their job, and doing it thoroughly. They didn't really push any treatments on me...just making me aware of what they found. That's really a good thing. And my old dentist in Ohio was the same with difficulty scheduling cleanings in the short term. The office here called me back soon after I got home with a cancellation opening in a couple of weeks, so they got me in fairly quickly. From there, I should be able to schedule new appointments every 6 months in advance fairly easily. I'm going from having the same dentist (28 years), the same dental hygienist (10+ years), and the same receptionist (25 years) in a fairly small practice. We all knew each other by name, new about each other's families, etc. I now will have a new practice with 3 dentists, numerous other people poking and prodding me, and an office with 4 woman banging away on computers. This dentist gets great reviews and I'm sure everything will be fine once I get used to the change. It might take a minute though.

It still doesn't make sense to me that the recipe would have both Bacardi Silver and Castillo Silver...they're basically the same thing. Since Castillo also makes a gold rum (aged longer than silver with a more refined taste) and a spiced rum, I'd guess that it would be one of these 2. I looked at a bunch of web pages for a Turtle Krawl recipe and they all just say Castillo rum...except for one. That recipe called for Captain Morgan's, which is typically a spiced rum. It could make sense that the Castillo should be a spiced rum so that you'd have a mix of light (Barcadi), spiced (Castillo), and dark (Myer's). If you substitute the Kraken for the Myer's, you'll be adding some spice from the Kraken, so maybe use a gold rum for the Castillo?? In other words, I have no idea. 🤪 Let us know what you figure out. Experimentation is fun.

Walk off! Congrats to Owen. Behind every good little league baseball/football/soccer/hockey (especially hockey) player is a parent with very good laundry skills.

I don't know why they'd include two different brands of light rum, so I'm guessing the Castillo is either their gold or spiced rum. Either way, I agree that the Kraken should only be used instead of the Myer's. But it definitely SHOULD be used instead of the Myer's.