kochleffel

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.

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?