kochleffel

Several years ago I heard a talk by a man who had discovered the Buchenwald camp. He was in the Signal Corps and was supposed to set up a radio link to General Eisenhower's headquarters in France, but his Army unit was in a valley with poor radio reception. He headed up a hill to look for a better spot for an antenna, and found himself at the gate of Buchenwald. He had never spoken about it in public before, and said that he never would again.

The 27th of January, the date the United Nations adopted in 2005, is Holocaust Memorial Day in the largest number of countries, but not all. In 1951 Israel set its commemoration for a date in the spring chosen because of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and called it "Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day." In Austria it's 5 May, the anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen camp, and in France it's 16 July, the date of the Vel d'Hiv Roundup of 13,152 Jews in Paris in 1942 before their extermination at Auschwitz. The meal would be OK, the cocktail not so much. I drank plenty of Rioja in Spain, but the grapes it's made from don't grow in the Finger Lakes. I might substitute Dr. Frank's Saperavi, a grape native to Georgia. I was at Argostoli on the Norwegian Jade in 2022 but can't locate pictures.

This would be a good case for small claims court. National companies often don't even show up, resulting in a default judgment, but a judge would probably accept your testimony and photo evidence.

Old curse: "May you have but one tooth in your head, and it be aching." Re: customs, I've noticed when returning from cruises that all they want is facial recognition. I haven't been asked about purchases since 2018, but I've read that you probably won't be unless you're on a watch list or a foreign merchant has reported a dutiable purchase. I'm not an environmental educator, but I teach a lot about environment and I'm taking a course in environmental ethics. I would probably pass on the soup and definitely on the cocktail. For a Sauvignon Blanc, Glenora 2021. I haven't been to Punta Arenas. I am certainly not an expert on the Council of Trent, but I believe that it also decided that otters were fish. I do know that in the Archdiocese of Detroit, muskrats count as fish during Lent. Some churches hold muskrat dinners, and one priest told a newspaper that eating muskrat was definitely a penance.

The original sense of A Room of One's Own Day was probably more pointed than we tend to think of now. It stems from an essay of that title by Virginia Woolf, based on lectures that she had given at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at the University of Cambridge, in 1928. The theme was the necessity of intellectual independence, freedom of expression, and economic expression for women. A Room of One’s Own Day was established to be an annual event on the anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s birthday on January 25, 1882. The day is meant to celebrate not only a person’s ability to have their own room, but also for a woman specifically to be able to find her own space in the world to work as well as to enjoy herself and have access to her own income. https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/a-room-of-ones-own-day/ I would enjoy some herb-roasted chicken, but not the garlic one since garlic is one of the things I have to avoid for the time being. I wouldn't mind a screwdriver cocktail, either, but I'm exhausted by the never-ending arguments on social media about which type of screw head. Exactly what I think about the people perpetuating the arguments cannot be posted. Korbel Extra Dry was my go-to for a long time, although I never managed to persuade my doctor to diagnose me with a champagne deficiency. I haven't been to the Seychelles.

Another pseudotini! But I might actually like it.

I grew up with salmon patties, but they weren't baked. I especially liked the G&T at the Seaview Bar on the Oosterdam. For a red blend, Flatt Rock 2018 Red Blend. (The rock is Flatt, not flat, because that's the owners' surname.) Strangely, I've never visited Haifa. Royal Caribbean's break and pastries are exceptionally good, and I feared that I'd gain weight on the cruise. It turns out that I lost weight. On the food topic, ever since a galley tour on the Serenade of the Seas, in 2019, I've been curious about where ships are provisioned from. On RCI, except for fresh produce and dairy products, everything was supplied from the United States, regardless of where it was produced. For the 2022 cruise from Copenhagen, I was looking forward to Danish butter, but the butter was all Dutch. On the Anthem this year, sailing from New Jersey, all the butter was still Dutch. FWIW, on the Oosterdam, sailing from Barcelona, the butter was Dutch but the milk was from, or at least packaged in, Luxembourg. My course for this semester starts tomorrow. That's a week late, and to save time, the professor asked us to introduce ourselves in an online forum. It's for credit, ungraded; everyone gets 5 points for writing anything at all by 11:59 p.m. tonight. So far only half the students have written anything.

I am not having a Dry January, but I was almost abstemious on the ship (didn't have a beverage plan): one glass of wine most nights at dinner. Twice out of eleven nights I had two. But since the time from this weekend until the stitches are removed in February will be dry, I'm having a glass of wine or a cocktail every evening this week, which I don't usually do at home. Tonight it's the Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire that I opened on Saturday.

I've had allergic reactions to the adhesive on bandages, too. I try to remove them at the earliest possible moment, but for you that time is probably still in the future, so if you can stick with some that you're not allergic to, it will be for the best.

My handwriting has never been good. I attribute that mostly to lack of coordination, but partly to the Palmer Method and, more generally, the change to roundhand script in the nineteenth century. It was intended to be more uniform (for clerks), but is contrary to human anatomy; italic script is more natural. No idea what the soup would be, but I would like soup today. I've just rescheduled a medical appointment because of the weather. It would have been a 30-mile drive over a winding, hilly, two-lane road, and the weather is snow and freezing rain. The medical group's website accommodates rescheduling because of weather, so I didn't have to wait until the office opened. I might like the cocktail, but probably only once. For a Cabernet Sauvignon, maybe Goose Watch. I haven't been to the UAE.

I hope that this can be resolved quickly.

Can’t stop coughing? Persistent cough has made this virus season exhausting. Some doctors say lingering coughs are worse than usual this winter. Others say post-pandemic patients are just more aware of coughing. https://wapo.st/3Sojsb7

Once, in a model Seder, I had to tell first-graders that red horseradish (colored with beet juice) wasn't made from real horses.

Business Communication Day reminds me of when I taught business English at Katharine Gibbs, the white-glove secretarial school, in Boston. By the time I taught there, white gloves were no longer required, but I was required to follow, and enforce, the school's dress code. Connecting with yesterday's special day, he told me that I had to wear socks, but they could be any color or pattern. I often roast broccoli or cauliflower, and the two together are my favorite vegetable dish for the Passover seder because they don't have to be cooked at the last minute. Today's cocktail doesn't call itself a martini, but it is one, just with an onion instead of an olive. So there, pseudotinis! For a red blend, I'll again suggest Fulkerson's, made with the Noiret grape, developed at Cornell. I haven't been to Ushaia. Writing about the cocktail and the wine brings to mind that Saturday is the last day I'll be able to drink any alcohol for about three weeks, and today is the last day I can take ibuprofen. I still have a productive cough, but I'm no longer coughing uncontrollably. Yesterday, in a Zoom meeting, I typed everything I needed to say into the chat pane, because I couldn't finish a sentence without coughing. The area west of here, south of Buffalo, has frequent forecasts for bands of snow.

I had a hard time understanding cheesy socks because I was working on my grocery list and thought first of food, not of gimcrack merchandise. Rapini pasta would be pasta with broccoli rabe (or broccolini as the marketers are trying to call it), which I don't like. If I made the recipe, I'd substitute real broccoli. Might like the cocktail. (There is an updated version that adds coffee liqueur!) I have a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc open but it's from the Loire. For a Finger Lakes SB, I'll suggest a new one, White Springs. It's sold out at the winery but may be available in stores. I haven't been to Singapore. This morning I managed to sleep until 5:00 a.m. I'm feeling a little better and have a load of laundry in the dryer, but I'm going back to bed in a few minutes. The Talmud contains a lot of peculiar medical advice, but doesn't recommend butternut squash or even know that it exists. Other than the grocery pickup, I need to do reading for my course, since the first class is Thursday.

Does it count if the person ostensibly watching has, in fact, fallen asleep? That would be me.

I should have ordered butternut squash curry when it was on the MDR menu.

Curried chicken stew would be OK with me, but I'm actually having black beans with rice. The cocktail would also be OK. For a Moscato, there's one from Fulkerson. I haven't been to Bari. I'm feeling somewhat worse, I suspect because of waking up at 4:00 a.m. and not getting back to sleep. It's started to improve this evening. I need almost desperately to buy groceries. I'll probably order for curbside pickup.

I got home around 4:00 p.m. Now, I was driving out of the Cape Liberty garage at 8:05 a.m. and the driving time from there to here is about 4.5 hours, so why did it take more like 8 hours? First, the traffic congestion in New Jersey on a weekday morning is beyond belief; I had embarked on a Sunday. Second, I wanted to stop at Total Wine to stock up for my temporary duty as bartender here. Cape Liberty to Total Wine in Totowa should be 30 to 40 minutes. It took more than 90, with satnav sending me on the most circuitous routing imaginable. It is entirely possible that a more direct route would have been even more congested. Eventually I had to stop, both to drink coffee and to hold my aching head. It's always confusing to shop at Total Wine, even though I've been to that store several times before. However, it's very easy to enter I-80 from there. Satnav wanted me to take NY 17, which might have been slightly faster, but I didn't relish driving through the Catskills at this time of year. I needed to listen to a webinar that started at 12:15, so I stopped again just before that and signed in on my phone, using Bluetooth to play it through the car's audio system. It was interesting enough that I barely noticed where I was driving, which I appreciated it because the route on I-80 and I-81 is boring. Around 2:00 the car started exhorting me to take a break. I don't for an instant believe that it cares one way or another about my safety; I think it's just trying to protect itself. But I stopped again for a late lunch, and before continuing changed into my hiking shoes. WeatherBug claimed that there would be 8 inches of snow on the ground at home, which I didn't believe, either, but there was enough that I appreciated the tread of the hiking shoes. A consideration in provisioning for the temporary Bev Dept duty is that I won't be allowed to drink at all starting January 28, for 10 to 14 days (from two days before the Mohs surgery until the stitches are removed). Thus, I will be getting a head start.

@StLouisCruisers I can’t be sure that it was the same passenger, but yesterday morning the ship was in an unfavorable location for a medevac, but this morning ought to have been in range of Charleston.

There were no further pages for blood donors, but this morning a passenger was evacuated by helicopter.

MDR seating and serving tonight are [redacted]. It’s a formal night and I think that two things happened. First, people who might have eaten in the WJ but wanted to dress up all came to the MDR, while people who didn’t want to dress up just came as they were. Second, people stayed longer than usual at their tables. Anyway, my regular table wasn’t available and I was given one at the junction of two traffic paths, which makes me jumpy. At least, being on my own, I could choose the side of the table with a post behind me, so there aren’t frail or drunk passengers clutching at my shoulder as they lurch by.

I’m starting to feel better even though this hasn’t been available.

Swiss chard is one of my favorite vegetables. I would want it to be served with something, but not bacon. A little while ago there was a page for blood donors. I’m not eligible right now, but they were seeking a different type, anyway. I fled from the coffee bar on deck 4 to the Bionic Bar on deck 5 because there is a shopping event on deck 4 and it’s like Filene’s Basement. The Bionic Bar is permanently closed.

Kat had already changed it by the time that I got here, so I was wondering what you all were talking about.