Page Turner

...FWIW, I used to be able to roll a joint while steering with my knees, over on the 395 hwy on the eastern side of the Sierra, headed for Mexico. Probably not the best practice, but I was the only car as far as the eye could see. I have matured, and were I doing it today, I would pull over and stop.

...the original Moosewood cookbook also has some hippie type vegetarian recipes that are tasty, like broccoli casserole (in case you need something for a covered dish supper, at church.)

...there is a long list of stuff I cook pretty regularly here out of the "Greens" cookbook. It has been reprinted numerous times, and ought to be cheap, used. It was from this book that I first learned to make pumpkin soup (but I use a much sweeter winter squash instead of pumpkin.)

...almost all of the California Rhone wine blends I've tasted have been outstanding wines, here is a link that mentions the original Rhone Rangers. For a while, in D.C., I was involved with a woman who had spent enough time in France, growing up abroad, to get me hooked on Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Then, cruelly, because of some problem with the exchange rate with Euro to dollar, or some other BS, I could no longer afford to buy and drink it. These guys came along in the '80's and saved me. Otherwise, I probably would have had to drink Zima, like @Randomguy. That would have been awful.

...is it this stuff ?

...arsenic is good for Covid prevention, Ralph. You just need to get the dosage right.

...most of the pinot noir wines labeled "pinot noir" (thus containing a certain large percentage of those particular grapes) that I've encountered here are made with a medium dry finish. But the only way you'll find out is to drink and taste it. If it's too dry for you, the characteristics you mention are often found in the various merlot wines here. The finish as either dry or less so is controllable by the winemaker, so it's tough to predict whether you'll enjoy your bottle. But all those things you mention are achievable with this grape, I think. I wouldn't give up on pinot noir after tasting only one bottle of it. My tastes eventually turned more toward wines made by blending, so they are usually labeled with some invented name like "Really Good Red", or "Essential Red Blend", because they don't have enough off any one grape variety to be legally labeled with one grape name. There was one guy over just across the county line in Sonoma county here who grew that grape (a color sport called "pinot gris", and made wine from it 30-40 years ago, when I first got to California. But he died, and I think whoever inherited the vineyard and winery got wiped out in a fire over the past few years. It's an interesting grape, and during the heyday of Cabernet it didn't show up very much as a varietal. I'm told it's harder to grow, and produces lesser yields per acre. People used it for blending, mostly I think. Then for a while it showed up a lot as "white pinot", where they filtered out the skins after the crush. That stuff was the stuff that didn't age well, and was often a little sweeter. "Gamay Beaujolais" is actually a California developed clone of pinot, out of UC Davis nearby. That used to show up a lot for a while, but I don't know about the current situation. Anyway, the sum of my experience and knowledge indicates that you should taste yours, maybe with a nice meal of roast chicken and some early Spring vegetables, like spinach salad, or sugar snap peas and roasted potatoes. The End.

...can you give an example or a description of what sort of wine taste you prefer ? Pinot noir grapes end up in some pretty good red wines here in California. But @Randomguy prefers Zima, so we all have different tastes.

...in the late 60's and early 70's, at least in California and most of the US, all those women would have been hippie chicks anyway.

...they are modelling fashions from a clothing line for preppy sorority types called "LoveShackFancy". I only posted the photo and link to give @Randomguy something else to be horrified by. Those are the girls I never got to date, because I was poor and somewhat unkempt. Except maybe the years when I was a single, buff firefighter in my 30's. But even then, it was a struggle to take them seriously. Which is probably wrong of me. There is no real experimental proof of my theory that good looking people never develop their full intellectual capacity, because everything comes too easily to them. Maybe that's the research I should focus my remaining years on ?

...hair on your palms is not normal, man.

^^^^^from today's NY Times. This is why you need to read it.

US Life Expectancy Declines for 2nd Year in a Row

...they find dead people along the American river, in areas I travel by foot or bicycle all the time. It is true I don't walk to places I stay overnight any more. Maybe this is why all the homeless guys I see here have cell phones ?

...it's all the brotherly love. That stuff gets tiresome after a while, and you just want to be left alone.

...you are presuming I have a current cell phone, and that's a fallacious assumption. There are many forms of GPS connected locator devices. I just picked another one at random. I just do not want people to get the idea I'm reachable. That would lead to all sorts of misunderstandings, not the least of which is the oft heard, "Why do you always keep your phone turned off ? Why don't you return my messages ?"

...there is no way you will ever convince me that you playing your collection of Frank Sinatra songs, (including some of the earlier, more obscure stuff you don't hear every day), while flying on an airplane, is some kind of moral crusade, on the level of voting rights for women and the elimination of separate but equal schools for children. And I like Frank Sinatra songs, for the most part.

...they profile the returns. Intuit knows, generally, what the triggers are, and will advise you on the odds of your return getting flagged. But yeah, SE income/expenses/profit and loss is one area they used to look at. But generally they look at it for people they feel are poor enough that they cannot effectively mount a legal defense, or afford the best in professional tax accounting. Normal pukes who get the majority of their income reported on official forms from banks, employers, investment firms, etc. , directly to the IRS, rarely trigger audits. I used to know a soman who had ben an auditor for the IRS. She was a sweet person in daily life. I never saw her at work.

...I used to go hiking and backpacking in the mountains here (and in the Appalachians) to get away from people and the accompanying distractions. It would be counterproductive to carry along a cell phone. The only places I could be truly alone would then be areas with no reception. I'm just not following your logic here. I'd rather invest in some proven technology, like an emergency locator beacon, if I were worried enough about my ability to stay out of trouble. SPOT GEN3 SATELLITE GPS MESSENGER TRACKER-NEW

...those people next door were kind of in a state of shock.

...let's all join in a rousing chorus of that old Southern gospel hymn, "I'll Fly Away".

...why do you hate firemen ?

...thank you. The emergency response business provided me with a reasonable steady income, and paid for my house. Without this sort of thinking in the general populace, all that would have been impossible. You have reminded me of the genius who used gasoline as a floor stripper, and his cousin, who rigged up an old water heater tank as his pressure reserve tank for an air compressor. That was one of the funniest things I have ever seen, with that water heater tank sitting in the top floor bedroom of the house next door, with daylight streaming in from the hole in the roof.

...but some of us will die in prison, like Charlie Manson.

...this is the music he listens to in flight: