kochleffel

Either of the dinner suggestions would have been OK with me, but what I actually had was Gruyère cheese from Switzerland, slices of cucumber and red bell pepper, Chardonnay from Israel, and a baked potato. The only thing I know about Toulon, which may or may not be accurate, is that Arlette Van der Valk was from there. FWIW, the current Van der Valk series on television is getting on my nerves, because except for the name of the title character and being set in Amsterdam, it has nothing to do with the Freeling novels. Furthermore, Arlette isn't in it; Van der Valk is single. A colleague in Massachusetts reported that there had been a squirrel in the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah. Since then they've caught it in a live trap. It's a variety of squirrel that most people would call an opossum. I keep remonstrating with people at ours not to prop doors open, because there is a family of skunks living at the back of the parking lot.

I was booked to get one yesterday at a pharmacy but didn't feel completely well, so I tried to reschedule it. The first date they would offer was October 29. Another pharmacy has appointments every day next week and I scheduled it there for a week from today.

I stayed there and liked it.

FYI, I saw a report that Jim Cantore had been knocked off his feet, on the air, by a falling or blowing branch. When the anchor asked if he was OK, he replied, “I’m fine. I’m fine. You just can’t stand up. I’m going to let you guys look at the pictures.”

The building I work in is heated by gas-fired boilers and they are very reliable. An oil-burning boiler, which my house in Connecticut had, tends to require more service. Don't worry specifically about thermocouples since forced-air heating systems have them, too. One thing to know is that hot-water heat raises the temperature in the house more slowly than forced air would. If you use programmable thermostats, you'll want to set them to raise the temperature in the morning an hour or so before you get up, not five minutes before. On the other hand, the house will also cool more slowly, so there won't be the sensation of alternating hot and cold as the furnace cycles on and off.

I'm happy that some here have received good news. The discussion of preparations and evacuation made me think of my preparations, which are pretty minimal. A generator doesn't make as much sense here, but I have a camp stove and lithium-battery lanterns, and can charge my phone from the portable jump-starter for the car. I need to get more shelf-stable food, partly in case of being snowed in. I've now cancelled the January cruise: the travel arrangements were messed up, I wasn't excited about any of the ports, and I especially didn't want to be on a ship with a vloggers' convention. I do want to take a vacation then and I'm looking at some other cruises, but won't book for a while. One that might work is the Celebrity Reflection from Fort Lauderdale.

I was on the Jade in May, and on the Gem (sibling) in 2018, and had very good experiences on both. You may feel that the MDR food isn't quite as good as HAL's, but some of it is very good; it's just that some of the always-available menu choices are, imo, below par. Your booking may include some specialty dining. There are more shipboard activities and the entertainment is more extensive, but there is nothing like the Lincoln Center Stage. NCL's ordinary coffee isn't good enough to call mediocre and I was a frequent visitor to the Java Café on deck 7. If you have a balcony or higher cabin you will have, or can request, a coffeemaker.

A cat-sitter once got the Senior Cat in Charge hooked on catnip, and I thought I was going to have to send him to the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage.

I have tahini on hand but no miso or squash. I think that dinner tonight will be bok choy and vegan sausage, but I'm not sure. I have too many different vegetables on hand, courtesy of Misfits Market -- next time I will order fewer -- and most of them don't seem like they'd play well in the same meal with any of the others. I've cancelled the flights for the January cruise and will probably cancel the cruise as well. If I don't, rebooking the flights would cost less than before, because the original routing created a broken fare that is no longer possible. The Junior Cat is sad about the lioness in the National Zoo, and from last week, about the lioness in the Erie zoo. She is also peeved about getting no gefilte fish for Rosh Hashanah.

That's how it looks on the map that I just checked: passing across Florida heading to the northeast, then turning north-northwest and crossing over eastern Georgia and the western Carolinas, toward eastern Tennessee.

I actually made sautéed chicken last night! It was supposed to be on Sunday but I forgot to take it out of the freezer in time. I use a recipe from Julia Child's very first television series. This time I did the very un-French thing of putting sliced carrots in the skillet with it, because I like carrots better when they are cooked with something else (or roasted), instead of being boiled, and I had a lot of carrots on hand. Rosh Hashanah services were great, especially the music. The rabbi is a gifted musician himself, there is a talented cantorial soloist who is working hard at learning liturgy, and the volunteer choir was the largest it has ever been. My Torah reading this morning seemed to impress the gullible, but in fact it contained a fair number of errors, all corrected, partly because the script in the scroll we were using isn't very legible; I don't know the text completely from memory and have to look at the words, which is the way you're supposed to do it. I started a subscription to Misfits Market last week, and the first order came today. It's supposed to save money and prevent waste, but I'm not sure that it does either one. It may work well for me anyway, because it's very strong on produce and I tend not to buy enough, or sufficiently varied, fresh vegetables. Their system populates the shopping cart on a specific day each week, and then there's a period of more than 48 hours to review it, change the order, or cancel it.

Rosh Hashanah is actually tomorrow (and Tuesday for some of us), but the religious day begins at sunset the evening before. The Junior Cat is hoping that there will be gefilte fish for dinner, but she's going to be disappointed. I have no formal role in the services until Tuesday morning when I'm scheduled to chant Torah. The reading is from Genesis 22, the binding of Isaac. There is no good explanation why it is the reading for Rosh Hashanah. The only obvious connection is that the denouement involves a ram caught by its horns in a thicket, and on Rosh Hashanah we blow the shofar, which is made from a ram's horn. (However, the really large ones used for dramatic effect, and sometimes better sound, are made from kudu horns.) However, if a rabbi has no other ideas, it provides a sermon topic. I'm lactose-intolerant, but mozzarella tends to be low in lactose, since most of the lactose ends up in the ricotta cheese, which is a byproduct of the same process. I think that Sherlock Holmes preceded Einstein by saying not to learn anything that one didn't need to know, because it would crowd out something more important. On the other hand, a friend who teaches chemistry says that most of the scientists who made important discoveries had great stores of information in their heads, and he thinks that internalizing lots of information helps to make associations that otherwise wouldn't be obvious.

As far as I know, there have been no more covid cases in the synagogue. It's still possible that some, probably much-vaccinated, have such mild cases that they haven't tested, but I'm less worried than I was. Our rabbi has family in Nova Scotia and received a first-hand report from them, but I don't know details. Years ago I stayed in a cottage on Cape Split on the Bay of Fundy but I've heard nothing from the owner. There are lots of wild rabbits here and I suspect that the Junior Cat would hunt them if I let her. She likes fish but would want someone to catch them for her, because she would hate getting her paws wet. She has no opinion about Cherries Jubilee, but I would like some.

Yes. I have one and have used it that way. It's not as fast as the iPad mini -- pages are slower to display -- but it works well enough.

And generates its own electricity!

It was breaking my arm just before Thanksgiving one year that prompted my first cruise booking -- starting physical therapy at the end of December led me to cancel a winter vacation. I had been thinking before that about booking a Baltic cruise, but April is too early for that and the one I booked was on the Mediterranean, from Rome. Lo and behold, shortly before the cruise, I dislocated the other shoulder (with a rotator-cuff tear that wasn't discovered until later). There was time for a consultation with an ortho doc, who said that I could go if I used a wheeled bag and checked it for the flight, and carried a cabin bag small enough and light enough that I could put it overhead with one hand. I also got one session with a physical therapist who gave me exercises to do during the cruise, one of which required using a long stick to push the injured arm with the other one. For that, since a telescoping hiking stick wouldn't fit in the wheeled bag, I took a carpenter's folding ruler.

I'm not sure that they've even been informed about the exposure, although I'd bet that almost everyone has heard through the grapevine. There has been discussion all day about whether to inform the entire congregation so that members could choose virtual attendance before they have driven here, some from an hour away, but I doubt that it will be done, either. I'm on an advisory committee but it's only advisory.

I don't know much ASL but I have a little acquaintance with special signs used for Jewish liturgy, because the mainstream sign could be confusing or misrepresent the concept. (There is great resistance in the Deaf community to signs devised by people who are hearing, and I am not certain that all of these are accepted.) For example, the standard sign for "hallelujah" is the sign that more commonly means "celebrate," so some interpreters sign it in liturgy as "praise God," the actual meaning. The standard sign for "amen," a rubber-stamping motion, is slightly similar to the Israeli sign for "kosher," so could be confusing, while the standard American sign for "kosher" is the letter K plus the sign for "clean." We have a bit of a crisis in the synagogue, not related to sign language: there was a Sisterhood (women's club) meeting earlier this week, and the next morning someone who attended had a positive covid test. Others who were exposed could be in prime condition to spread it at Rosh Hashanah services, which are Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The Junior Cat is behaving and eating normally, to the extent that she ever does. This is supposed to be my day off, but I'm working.

You might be interested in this report on the new, faster trains Amtrak is having built not so very far from where I live. https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/22/amtrak-acela-high-speed-trains/

It's somewhat hard to find rentals with automatic transmission in most of the world. I particularly want one in the UK since it is hard enough to drive on the left without having to shift with my left hand.

This morning the Junior Cat asked for food! She didn't eat as much as I hoped, but more than she has at one time in the past week. After that she went upstairs and hopped onto my bed, her favorite napping place when the house isn't cold (when it is, she has a heated bed). She seemed to want me to join her, so I did for a while. Today I have a Zoom interview for a research project on caffeine reduction, then an acupuncture appointment and, in the afternoon, an online meeting sponsored by NASA to communicate research to artists and educators.

The Junior Cat has been more active yesterday and today, and more like herself, but has stopped eating again. I'm not sure whether she's taken a set against the prescription food, or whether the anti-nausea medication she received in sub-q fluids on Thursday has worn off. I'm more and more inclined to cancel the western Caribbean cruise at the end of January before the final-payment date, which is October 1. I'm not enthusiastic about the ports or the flight arrangements, or about the vloggers' convention, and my last winter cruise on that line was disturbing, not because of the cruise line or the ship, but because of the other passengers. (Fall and spring cruises since then on that line have been OK.) Because the airline has changed its schedule at least four times, I believe that I can get a refund of the air fare.

The Junior Cat woke me at 5:00 a.m. and for a moment I thought that she wanted to watch the Queen's funeral, but I remembered that she has no interest in television except when there are small, squeaky animals or birds. She purred next to my ear for about 15 minutes, then hopped off the bed and visited the litterbox. She returned to hiding, but not very well, since I could see her. I pulled her out at 10:00 and she ate some solid food on her own. For the Britannic participants, a butterscotch pudding in the U.S. is what you would probably call a blancmange: milk boiled with sugar and starch, plus flavoring.

I have been to Livorno, once, not happily -- I lost my wallet in Florence (not necessarily to a pickpocket; I could have dropped it or left it on the counter after making a purchase), and I thought that Pisa was boring. I happened to have my passport and an ATM card from a different bank with me, but later I had to call that bank from Mallorca because, although it let the first withdrawal through, it then locked the card. During the call I broke the frame of my glasses. If you ever need to buy Superglue in Spain, it's called Superglue. I'd better go easy on wife appreciation since it would be someone else's wife. Most stuffed shell recipes don't work for me, because one or another of the ingredients is something I don't eat, but here's a vegan recipe that would be OK: https://nosweatvegan.com/vegan-stuffed-shells/. Grüner Veltiner is always OK with me. I don't really appreciate coconut. The Junior Cat ate on her own this morning, after I took her to the food dish, and then she cuddled with me and purred for a while.