Cellar Scribblings

[CellarDweller]

Hiya BetterMost friends.

Tomorrow is Friday!  And Payday! 

Work is starting to get better, I think I have all the stuff that was due by 6/30/2011 finally finished as of yesterday.

Today's travel destination:

Gota Canal, Gotaland, Sweden.


Cruises on the canal conecting Goteborg on the North Sea and STockholm on the Baltic glide through Sweden's scenic heartland, among the 100,000 lakes that comprise its lake district





How funny!  Our resident Swedes are in Canada, and my calendar says we need to be in Sweden!

[CellarDweller]

SOudns like it'd be quite a sight!

Hiya Kelda!  Yes, it does sound rather exciting.  I've google searched for images and found quite a few beautiful ones.

Would like to hear more about this. What did you do? Did you start to get the shakes? When the power goes out, it's sort of like a Stephen King novel!!

I don't mind the dark, and it was still early when the power went out (only about 7:00) so it was still very much light out.  The first thing I did was go to the power box to see if any of the switches were flipped in the wrong direction.  When they weren't, I went upstairs and looked outside.  All the other houses were dark, and the traffic lights were out, so that's when I new the whole city was out.  After that, I went through the house to make sure all the air conditioners, lights, fans and other things were turned "off" so when the power came back on, we wouldn't have a surge.

I went to the kitchen and had a bowl of cereal for dinner and then sat on the porch until the power came back.

[brianr]

When I lived in the Mountains, west of Sydney, and we had a thunderstorm (quite common in Summer) there was 50% chance of a blackout as lightning hit the electricity lines somewhere so I probably had over 2 dozen blackouts per year. The problem was having to go and reset all the clocks throughout the house. It was a nuisance at dinnertime or the time for TV news. I never thought of having cereal. I did lose a modem once when lightning hit the pole outside my house so always turned off and pulled out the plugs on my computer etc when storms were around or I left the house. Also when working and it went off during the night I would wake and see the radio clock blinking and have to get up and check my watch before resetting the alarm.
In the 18 months of living in New Zealand I have only noticed 2 or 3  thunderstorms and no blackouts so that is a relief.

[CellarDweller]

Hiya BetterMost friends.

It's Friday!  It's pay day!



Who has good plans for the weekend?  Anyone?  I'll be going out to dinner with a friend tonight, and then a BBQ with more friends tomorrow.  I'll be making white chocolate brownies for dessert.

Today, I'm hoping for a quiet day!  All three of the people who I help are out of the office, so today I hope for a "clean my cube" day.

Today's travel destination:

Les Baux-de-Provence, Provence-Alpes-Cote D'azur, France.


Les Baux, a splendid medieval town and citadel, sits high on a windwept plateau over-looking vineyards and thousands of olive trees.  From stone houses along its narrow, climbing streets, local craftsmen sell their wares to a steady stream of customers.

[CellarDweller]

When I lived in the Mountains, west of Sydney, and we had a thunderstorm (quite common in Summer) there was 50% chance of a blackout as lightning hit the electricity lines somewhere so I probably had over 2 dozen blackouts per year. The problem was having to go and reset all the clocks throughout the house. It was a nuisance at dinnertime or the time for TV news. I never thought of having cereal. I did lose a modem once when lightning hit the pole outside my house so always turned off and pulled out the plugs on my computer etc when storms were around or I left the house. Also when working and it went off during the night I would wake and see the radio clock blinking and have to get up and check my watch before resetting the alarm.    In the 18 months of living in New Zealand I have only noticed 2 or 3  thunderstorms and no blackouts so that is a relief.

Wow, that's a lot of blackouts!

We've had a few over the years, but none of them were the result of thunderstorms that I can recall.  Most of them were during heat waves, when too much power was being used.  The entire town would lose power, and eventually come back.  We once lost power for about 4 hours or so.  In total, not really all that bad.  There have been towns that lost power for well over a day.

[dejavu]

Hi, Chuck!  Hope you're enjoying your weekend.

We had a lot of lightning (and heavy rain) here as I was driving home from the airport last night at about 8 PM, and when I got home, I noticed that my kitchen stove and microwave clocks were flashing, as was the alarm clock in the bedroom.  But I don't know when the electrical outage happened, or how long it was out. 

It probably had nothing to do with the storm, since I also saw orange cones down at the corner of my street which may mean that a construction crew knocked the power out briefly.

It was kind of eerie, driving on I-95 with the sky almost black, seeing one big bolt of lightning and then having the sky lighting up all around, off and on, for the next ten minutes.

[CellarDweller]

White Chocolate Brownies:

6 tablespoons of unsalted butter
8 ounces of white chocolate (or one cup of white chocolate chips)
2 eggs
1/4 cup of sugar
1/2 tablespoon of vanilla
1 cup of flour
1/2 cup of semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350.

Grease and flour an 8 inch square baking pan, or line with foil.  Melt butter and 4 ounces of the white chocolate in top of a double boiler over hot water.  When melted, remove from heat and add the other 4 ounces of white chocolate, stir to blend well.  Set aside.  Beat the eggs and sugar until pale and smooth.  Add white chocolate and butter mixture, vanilla and flour.  Beat just until smooth.  Add semisweet chips and stir by hand, being carefull not to over-mix.

Pour into prepared pan and bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  Cool on a wire rack, cut into squares.

My own little "twist", I melted some of the excess white chocolate I had and drizled them over the top.

[Meryl]

Dayamn, those look tasty!  

[CellarDweller]

7/31/2010 I got that awful phonecall that told me I had lost one of my friends, one of the guys who "adopted me" as a little brother.

Rich, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of you.

I miss our phone conversations, our laughs, our talks, our visits.

I will always remember that our last phone call together, we ended it with "I love you!"

Miss you!

[Kelda]

(((Chuck)))

We miss him too. x