Author: doug

The weather this week was great! I ate my food-truck lunch outside on the Greenway two days in a row.

I found myself in possession of 4 different bottles of rye whiskey. So naturally, the thought that came to mind was “double-blind taste testing!”. We had 6 friends over and Lis poured into lettered glasses.

The results: the Icelandic rye I brought home from our trip was the youngest, and showed it. Somewhat disappointingly, the mass-market brand (Bulleit) beat out two smaller producers (High West and Putnam), though not by a lot.

If you can make a Negroni with rye and call it a Boulevardier, I’m sure there’s a name for a Perfect Manhattan made with gin instead of rye. I’ll report back.

I bought a small, cheap water bottle to keep in the car since my old one is too tall for the cupholder. Yeah, water bottle, I’m not sure you’re real 304 stainless steel either.

I’m in California this week for work. Flying in, the fog over San Diego made for a nice view.

New (to me) car: 2022 Polestar P2. Fully electric, all-wheel drive, and a hatchback car not a crossover or SUV.

Today I made a King Arthur recipe of the Icelandic dark rye bread we liked so much when we were there. A good facsimile!

The new Newton Senior Center is coming along. It’s projected to open in fall 2025, just in time for Lis and me to start taking advantage of its programming.

 

This geyser is not actually Geysir, the one for which all other geysers are named. That’s been dormant since around 2000. This is its neighbor, Strokkur, putting on a show for us and various assembled tourists.

We took a short hike to the edge of Svínafellsjökull Glacier, which you can get right up next to. When we were there the fog was flowing down it like water, and up over the neighboring hill.

In this picture you can also see how the sandy slope appears to be layered on that hill. This is caused not (as I suspected) by repeated ash from volcanoes, but because the land thaws out and slides annually, forming a pattern like tree rings that’s common on a lot of the similar hills we saw throughout our trip.