kochleffel

"This is Steve. Steve takes Voquezna." must be the worst advertisement currently running on streaming TV.

I didn't know the history of National Borinqueneers Day, but I sort of recognized the reference because a Riqueño restaurant here is called Boricana. The goat-cheese chart with Swiss chard sounds interesting, and I can get chard. I might like the cocktail, once. For a red blend based on Bordeaux varieties, Millers Cove Red from Keuka Spring Vineyards, $25. I haven't been to Oranjestad but it's in my itinerary for December.

I learned a new term in German this afternoon: Eierlegende Wollmilchsau. It's a pig that also lays eggs and gives wool and milk.

Lentils and curry are each OK with me separately, but on the mind's tongue they don't taste good together. No on the drink. Since the wine is a blend of unidentified varieties, I'll go with a Finger Lakes blend from hybrid grapes, i.e., grapes that have some ancestry in species native to North America as well as vinifera varieties: Lakewood's Long Stem Red, a blend of Baco Noir, Dechaunac, Leon Millot, Marechal Foch, Frontenac and Vincent, at $12. Cozumel was in an itinerary that I cancelled once.

I survived giving the presentation. To be clear, I'm not at all afraid of giving presentations, but I had predicted objections to the principal conclusion: that it is morally permissible to allow a certain amount of environmental degradation in order to prevent a much larger amount. However, the questions were about cryptocurrency (why I think it's an environmental hazard) and whether forests are ever cut to build solar farms (no, it would be too expensive).

A sheriff's deputy who was gravely injured (skull fracture and brain bleed) in a foot chase of a suspect through a parking lot here about two weeks ago and airlifted to a trauma center has been released to rehab. He had an honor guard of dozens of law-enforcement officers and almost the entire staff of the hospital (many on the upper tiers of the atrium).

I need to clean up my pantry, but with an acupuncture appointment and a class presentation this afternoon, it won't happen today. I'm nervous about the presentation, because I think some of the other students will disagree strongly with my conclusions. I haven't recovered from the time they criticized my religion for allowing meat even though all of theirs did, too. I've often cited the Alice Roosevelt Longworth quotation. Her father (Teddy) is supposed to have said that he could govern either the country or Alice, not both. Not sure about the flatbread. No on the drink. My father used to buy vermouth that came with a certificate from a former Pope. There is actually a Finger Lakes sweet vermouth, from Method Spirits, not Pope-endorsed.

The vegetarian stuffed cabbage would be OK with me as long as it's not stuffed with real vegetarians. More seriously, I might like the filling more than the cabbage, but stuffed cabbage is OK. I don't like stuffed peppers--I think that peppers need to be sautéed, not baked. Pass on the drink. For a Pinot Noir rosé, Dr. Frank's 2021 is sold out so let's buy Thirsty Owl's 2023 and cellar it for a while. I'm feeling a lot less pain from the fall 12 days ago, but as the most severe pain subsides it is allowing me to feel the other injuries. The bruising is spectacular but all concealed by clothing. Yes, I have arnica gel. The main (i.e., only) project for today is to finish the PowerPoint for the presentation I'm giving in class tomorrow. That entails some video editing, which I don't enjoy at all. Referring to yesterday, might the bullfighter be named Jenkins?

https://www.arcanobarcelona.com/en For a group, they offer two or three set menus, but each menu allows choices within courses, and they require a deposit.

I was just relieved that it was the day and not the menu.

The meal would be OK. Once for a lunch at the synagogue, I made something similar and tried to trick everyone by using smoked cheese, so that they would taste as if they might contain bacon. Yet another pseudotini. For the wine, the Dry Riesling by J.R. Dill that I mentioned on March 28 and still have some of in the refrigerator. I awoke to sunshine. Weather.com said that today would be the last day this week with any sun and that it would cloud over in the afternoon, so right after breakfast I headed out to Experience the Beauty of Nature. This is Taughannock Falls, the highest single-drop waterfall east of the Rockies. This is from an overlook with road access. I hope to have enough mobility by next week to take the path to the pool at the bottom of the falls, just out of view in the foreground. This was #6 of the required 10. I also awoke to two complaining cats, but I have no idea what about. It is very rare for DaVinci to say anything; Mona Lisa is the spokescat.

The US Army Corps of Engineers has announced a plan to restore some more ship traffic at Baltimore by the end of the month. The plan is to open a 35-foot by 280-foot channel, which would accommodate roll-on/roll-off and container-on-barge traffic, but not "boxships" (intermodal container ships), and only one ship would be able to use it at a time. It's deep enough for RC Vision of the Seas and the Carnival Pride, but if traffic is limited, they may not get any priority. The temporary access lanes already opened are only 11 and 14 feet deep.

I went outdoors for the Dark Show, but all I can report is that it grew dark enough for neighbors' outdoor lights on photocells to turn on.

The outdoor temperature has fallen 2 degrees in the last ten minutes. The latest weather forecast says that rain will start any minute now.

Yesterday I noticed that my county has erected temporary signs telling eclipse visitors how to get out when they're finished, and I saw reports of very heavy traffic northbound in New England. Today the traffic seems to be within the capacities of the highways, but I-87, the Northway (to the Adirondacks), has a very large number of accidents and breakdowns.

When I lived in New England, I always attented the Town Meeting. One year a question was raised about the absence of a line in the police department budget for deer officers. I was puzzled, because the town was full of deer but I never saw any indication that the police department took any interest in them. Being from the Middle West, I did not understand that the questioner meant D.A.R.E. officers. (The reply was that full-time officers did it as overtime, which was reimbursed by Federal funds.) The chicken might be OK but I don't love artichokes. Absolutely NO NO NO on the drink. Carménère is one of the original six grapes of Bordeaux, but after the phylloxera plague in the 19th century, it wasn't replanted there. It was supposedly rediscovered in Chile, but had also been planted in California before the outbreak. It dislikes cool, wet springs and wouldn't thrive in the Finger Lakes, so I'll go with another of the original Bordeaux grapes that does, Cabernet Franc, the Fox Run Vineyards 2022. Like Carménère, Cabernet Franc is low in tannins. BTW, I have a Carménère in the wine rack, but it's from Israel. I'm getting ready for a trip to Wally World but will be home in time for the eclipse. Although it will be 98% here, there probably won't be much to see--it's sunny now but that isn't predicted to last.

Here's where I was.

There is a story that W.C. Fields, asked how he liked children, replied "Parboiled."

The English teacher in me requires saying that healthy classic potato salad would be potato salad made from healthy classic potatoes. I don't think you would want to make potato salad from diseased potatoes. They mean healthful but I'm not sure that any potato salad is all that healthful. Today's pseudotini is perhaps the most pseudo so far. No boxed Chardonnay in the FL, but for a bottled one, Blue Waters Chardonnay from Swedish Hill Winery, an atypical light Chardonnay. I have been to Leipzig and visited the Thomaskirche--the organ of J.S. Bach's time is no longer there--but Munich was where I heard a performance of the St. John Passion. It's sunny today and I'll be heading out later for my course assignment to experience the beauty of nature, on which I'm way behind. It will almost certainly be completely clouded over during the eclipse tomorrow. I had thought about buying a strong neutral-density filter in order to photograph the eclipse, but concluded that the odds were too poor.

He stopped making concert appearances in 2018, and died in January of this year.

It was less full than I thought; filling the tank took 10.9 gallons (out of a possible 13). I've been watching more programs on the Roku than usual, and I'm getting really annoyed with the repetition of the same advertisements, especially the ones for Southern New Hampshire University. I don't mean to disparage it -- I know very little about it -- but the name makes me think of the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, where Peter Schickele claimed to be a professor of musical pathology. I'm also tired of the seasonal, but currently constant, spam emails exhorting me to file my taxes for free (or not) with one website, service, app, or another. I've already received my refunds.

Charlie the Tune day and Twinkie Day are just silly. For Drowsy Driver Awareness Day, does it mean that drivers need to be aware that they could be drowsy, or that everyone else should be aware and stay out of their way? We had air-fryer rotisserie chicken on March 16 of this year. I ridiculed it at the time, but Lenda pointed out that in addition to basket air-fryers, there are others that are like ovens and can have a rotisserie attachment. I think I'd rather have the Irish whiskey straight, or on the rocks. Many Finger Lakes wineries grow Syrah, but very few grow Teroldego. One that does it Red Tail Ridge, which blends it instead with Cabernet Franc, Blaufränkisch, and Lagrein as Rebel With a Cause. My car's gas tank is about half full, but I should buy gas today, because it's the last day for redeeming supermarket points.

The first time that I felt an earthquake, I was in what was technically a bell tower. I say "technically" because it wasn't a very high one; I was in a room at about the third-floor level. It was a college building, and some months later a psychology professor built a research project around it, using a questionnaire that asked "Do you remember the earthquake? Without looking anything up, what day, date, and time was it, and where were you? How do you know this?

A little s-n-o-w was falling when I left Aldi, but the temperature was 42­° and it had stopped falling before I got home, a 7-minute drive. Then a few minutes of sun before the sky clouded over again.