London 2024-5

Last minute London Trip

December 27, 2024 to January 3, 2025

Hotel: The Hoxton Shoreditch

Used United, flew out business class and back in premium economy, both flights were early morning flights. No problems either way.

Christmas decorations were still up.

Saturday:

• Fabrique for Cardamon buns (disappointing)
• Foyles Books store on Charring Cross Road, bought books
• Trafalgar Square Christmas Market (Disappointing)
• Waterstones books at Trafalgar square, no books bought
  
• Mariage Freres Tea shop in Convent Garden, yes teas.
  
• Outdoors stores in same location, nothing gained
  
• Twinings Tea Shoppe on the Strand, more teas
  
• Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese Pub for lunch, a Samuel Smith pub, no TV, no music, only ever ate and drank in the cellar bar. Burger was good, scotch egg was not. 
• Dinner at the Piehole Shoreditch, great pies.
  

Sunday:

• Visited Spitalfields and Trueman Brewery markets, Brick lane and Redchurch street.
  
• Very good Sunday Roast at The Hawksmoor Spitialfields
• Walked Regent Street, shoes bought at On Flagship store
• Purchased Tea at TWG at Leicester Square

Monday:

Wedgwood at the V&A

Moorcroft Coffee set at the V&A

 

•  V&A museum in the morning, started at the top. Furniture, Ceramics and Glass, British Architecture.
  
• Lunch at the Hoop and Toy pub, Steak and ale pie, Cod Goujon sandwich and Rockin Rudolph cask ale were all good.
• Afternoon Fawlty Towers play at the Apollo. Excellent, quite enjoyable
• Bought books at Waterstones Bookstore on Picadilly. Big store, very crowded.
  
• Dinner at Marugame Udon near Liverpool Street station. Cafeteria style, but very good.
  

Tuesday: New Years Eve

Piccadilly Arcade

Elizabeth Tube entry at Liverpool Street

• Took the Elizabeth line, new and not very crowded, fewer stops.
  
• Bought more books at yet another book store, Hatchards on Picadilly. Somehow got an extra book added to our bag here. No discounts here unless you count the free book. Smaller more cozy book store.
  
• Pasta class and dinner at the Pasta Academy. Made pasta and learned a tip or two.
  

 Wednesday: Only rainy day

• Twist Museum at noon near Oxford and Regent streets. Interesting optical illusions.
• Lunch at The Coachmakers Arms pub. Steak and Ale Pie and fish and chips were very good as was the Allsopp's Best Bitter cask ale. Tried the Angel in the Field pub, but no food till 6PM.
  
• Visited the Wallace Collection. Has a large Armour collection and not crowded.
  

Optical Illusion at the Twist museum

 

Thursday: Sunny but cold.

•  Visited the Wellcome Collection, exhibit on slavery, prisons, plight of women and plantations, very saddening.
• Walked to Novelty Automation, crowded with family and friends playing the crazy arcade games. Got a free token to watch an automata.
• Walked to the Huntarian Museum, but it was closed.
• Lunch at the Cittee of Yorke, another Samuel Smith pub. Steak and ale pie was good and had Old Brewery Bitter cask ale. Has top be my favorite pub.
  

 

 

2024 Recap

 On the whole retirement is going really well. I have a weekday schedule that includes exercise, financial education and reading. I'm not adverse to taking an afternoon nap and enjoy puttering out in the yard or down the basement. Always have something to do and always planning the next trip.

Good:

• Poughkeepsie CIA trips January and June (40th Anniversary)
  
• January Cassoulet at Westtown Fare and Restaurant in NY
  
• Cousins over (2/18 and 5/26)
• A new roof in April excellently installed
  
• May Trek Travel Bike Tour through the Loire Valley
• May Trip Extension to Munich to see family
• Daughter and Granddaughter 2 week May US visit (Zoo, Children's museum, bubbles and cousins) 
• Multiple Conference House Pavilion outings
• New Bikes, Trek 29ER Marlin Gen 4 with disc brakes and a Verve 3
  
• Summer and Fall Biking Mondays, New Springville Greenway, Fort Wadsworth to Cedar Grove paths and Bloomingdale Park.
  
• August San Francisco trip to see The Young One.
  
• Sumo tournaments
• Le Tour in July
  
• Snug Harbor Pruning lecture
  
• Greenbelt Native Plant Center volunteering (5/19, 6/18, 8/3, 10/2, 11/6, 11/14, 12/6, 12/10)
  
• Outings with friends to NYC to see elephants, The MET, Blue SI, Brick Farm NJ
  
• Fabulous 11 day trip to Iceland in October.
• Whole family home for Thanksgiving
  
• Spur of the moment New Years trip to London
• Read 53 books
• Watched all 53 Rupert Davies, 1960s Inspector Maigret BBC TV series.
  

Not So Good:

• PT in Q1
• Summer of Dahlia, a big disappointment, poor flower blooms (Pacific Jewel, Genova, American Pie) and bugs
  
• Iceland Northern Lights viewed with the naked eye, not as vivid as seen years ago in Alaska
  
• Phil Liggett retires from Cycling commentating
• new gutters, disappointing installation quality

Downright Evil: 

• People voting for a Celebrity President again
  
• Project 2025

Projects and Fixes

• 19" rack shelves for 2 bins of misc "I could do something with this" stuff
• repaired Sponge Bob clock
• repaired freezer door latch
• installed 5 new ethernet security cameras (wires inside walls) prior to new roof install
• Basement wall crack fixed, no longer leaking
  
• made Subaru bike carrier brackets
• Window insert for Portable AC in Nook window
   
• Solder repair for Patrice's copper birdbath
   
• Shortened new bike handlebars from 29" to 27"
   
• Hardware Cloth gutter guards
   
• Food Vacuum sealer tubing repair
• Collar ties and sistered rafter ties added to garage, one at front and one at back
   
• Sign stand for Santa on Vacation sign
  
  
  
  

2024 Books Read

 Most books read in a year, second most was in 2020.

 Murder in old Bombay by Nev March started in 2023, finished in 2024 so I won't count it here.

1. Oranges and Lemons, Christopher Fowler, Peculiar Crimes Unit book #20
2. Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie
3. Black Run, Antonio Manzini, Italian Alps and Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone.
4. Man with the Silver Saab, Alexander McCall Smith
5. Marked Man, Archer Mayor, Vermont Bureau of Investigation agent Joe Gunther 
6. Devil's Delight, M.C. Beaton 
7.  The Benson Murder Case, Philo Dough
8. Night Train to Lisbon, Pascal Mercier, strange and interesting, 2 stories in one. Third reading.
   
9. The Raging Storm, Anne Cleeves
10. The Old Knives,  Olen Steinhauer
11. Vendetta, Michael Dibdin (MD) Reread the Zen series this year
12. Bruno's Challenge, Martin Walker
13. Full Circle, Andrew Smith, A Doctor Who story, reread
    
14. The Face of Evil, Terrance Dicks, A Doctor Who story, reread
    
15. Dead Lagoon, MD
16. Monsieur Pamplemouse Afloat, Michael Bond (MB)
    
17. Martin Walker Short stories, just so so.
    
18. Antidote to Venom, Freeman Wills Croft
19. Cosi Fan Tutti, MD
20. A Long Finish, MD
21. And Then You Die, MD
22. Blood Rain, MD
23. Medusa, MD
24. Back to Bologna, MD
25. End Games, MD
26. Maigret's Pipe, Georges Simenon (GS)
27. Frozen Assets, Quintin Bates, Icelandic Detective Story
28. A Rich Full Death, MD, Not in the Zen series
29. Ramones, Carl Cafarelli
30. District VIII, Adam Lebor, Budapest murder mystery
31. Do Polar Bears get Lonely, New Scientist book, DNF
    
32. Saints of the Shadow Bible, Ian Rankin (IR), Inspector Rebus
    
33. Knots and Crosses, IR 
34. Mortal Causes, IR 
35. The Naming of the Dead, IR 
36. Maigret Enjoys himself, GS 
37. Maigret in Vichy, GS
38. Mr. Pamplemouse on Probation, MB 
39. Still Life, Louise Penny (LP), Three Pines mysteries 
40. A Fatal Grace, LP 
41. The Cruelest Month, LP
42. A Rule Against Murder, LP
43. And Then Came Paulette, Barbara Constantine
44. The Hangman, LP
45. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien, read in Iceland
46. Maigret Travels, GS
47. Pietr the Lett, GS 
48. The Brutal Telling, LP
49. A Christmas Resolution, Anne Perry
50. Deck the Donuts, Ginger Bolton, too wordy
51. Bury your Dead, LP Takes place partly in Quebec City and made me want to visit.
    
52. Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien, Slower read than "The Hobbit", got tired of reading it towards the end. Highly unlikely that I will move on to the next in the series.
    
53. A Trick of the Light, LP
     

Iceland 2024

Iceland

We had an excellent 11 day trip with Odysseys Unlimited "Exploring Iceland" in October 2024.

Our Hotels:

All the hotels were clean and had plenty of room

Hotel Selfoss (2 nights)

Fosshotel Myvatn (2 nights)

Siglo Hotel (1 night)

Hotel Husafell (2 nights)

Hotel Reykjavik Centrum (2 nights)

Waterfalls: (foss in Icelandic)

Skogafoss

 

Seljalandsfoss

Dettifoss

2 kilometer round trip walk over rough terrain to get to Dettifoss

Hraunfossar (fresh water springs flowing out of porous layers of lava rock)

Gullfoss (see 2 men in bottom left corner of photo for scale)

Scenery:

Structures:

 Iceland's main religion is Lutheran, they have one Catholic church and one mosque.

Church in Reykjavik, first morning

Church up hill from Vik. Looks different in the TV show Katla.

Church in Husavik

Baccala Bar in Hauganes, the best Fish and Chips in Iceland.

Turf houses in Glaumbaer

Outside the Blue Lagoon spa.

Slide Rule Basic Operations

 

 Never thought about how a slide rule worked cause I always had a calculator, but inherited a slide rule from my dad and then found a pamphlet on slide rules when cleaning out my father-in-laws work shop.

So I added learning how to use a slide rule to my list of things to do when I had more than 8% of my weekly hours free to investigate interesting interests.

 My slide rule has 6 scales, C, D, A, B, C1 and K. Scales B, C and C1 are located on the inner sliding section of the slide rule. I have not used C1 or K yet and may never. Slide rules also are supposed to have a third piece which provides a sliding section containing a hairline crossing perpendicular to all the scales. My slide rule was missing this and so I used a paper clip as a pointer. There are other variants of slide rules for different specific functions.

The scales have an index or starting point on both the Right Hand (RH) and Left Hand (LH) ends of the slide rule. If you can't find the answer, the other index is to be used.

Multiplication:

To Multiply 7 x 5, for example

1. The C scale(bottom scale of the internal sliding section) right hand index is first set to 7 on the D Scale (bottom scale on the base of the slide rule)
2. The hairline is set to 5 on the C scale.
3. The result of 35 is read off the D scale at the hairline.

There are explanations about logarithms as to how this all works, but to mechanically multiple, you don't need to know that.

 Division:

To divide 5 by 4,

1. Set the hairline to 5 on the D scale
2. Slide the C scale so 4 aligns with the hairline.
3. read the result of 1.25 at the C scale Left Hand Index
   

 

Finding Cubes:

 

To find the Cube of 20

1. Set the C scale Left Hand Index to 2 (20)
   
2. Set the hairline to 2 (20) on the B scale
3. Read 8 off the A scale
4. Adjust the number on the A scale to get 800
   

Finding Square of:

Finding Square Root of: 

1. To square a number, look at the number on the D scale and the corresponding number on the A scale using the missing hairline device. The number 3 points to 9, the number 5 points halfway between 2 and 3 which is interpreted as 25.
2. To get the square root is just the reverse.

 

 

 

2023 Maple Mead

Started on September 4, 2023 and racked to 5 bottles on September 25, 2023. Was happy with the amount of mead generated, a gallon is too much to drink and I don't know that many people to foist homemade mead upon. Only one review so far, expressed an opinion that it was stronger than the 2022 batch. It could be that the Mead is still too young.

September 4, 2023

Make 2/3 cup maple syrup from ½ cup water and 1 packed cup maple sugar.

2/3 cup maple syrup is equivalent to 5.3333333333 oz.

 

Original recipe was 2lbs honey and 12.5 oz of maple syrup, 1.6 g yeast and 0.5 g yeast enhancer.

Halved is 1lbs honey and 6 oz maple syrup.

 

Ingredients

·      1/2 Gal water, 8 cups

·      1 lbs Honey

·      3 oz maple syrup

·      60 grams maple sugar, about 1/3 cup, err on more?

·      0.8 grams Yeast, Mead M05 Mangrove Jack

·      0.25 gram Di-ammonium Phosphate, yeast enhancer

 

Equipment

·      1 gallon jug

·      Air lock

·      Long thermometer

·      1 cup measure

·      2 cup measure

·      Large metal pot to sanitize things in

·      Metal Pot to hold ½ gallon plus of water, 8 cups

·      Pot to mix honey, maple stuff and water

·      Funnel

·      Large Metal spoon

·      Metal skewer to stir in jug

 

Instructions

 

1.     Sanitize all your equipment using as per the instructions on the packet.
Note: Never use bleach! Bleach will react negatively with the fermentation process.

2.     Warm honey and maple container to make pouring easier.

3.     Put 4 cups of warm water in a pot, measure out about 2 lbs of honey and mix with the warm water in the pot.

4.     Mix the maple sugar in a measuring cup and dissolve.

5.     Mix in the maple syrup.

6.     Pour honey/maple/water mix into 1 gal jug.

7.     Add additional 4 cups of water to fill to just about half of the jug and stir/shake.

8.     Use a thermometer in your gallon jug. Continue when the temperature is between 65 and 85 degrees.

9.     Add your yeast enhancer stirring gently until dissolved.

10.  Pull out about 1 cup of must in a two cup measure and pour your yeast in and stir gently. Let it sit for about 15 minutes or so. When it starts to foam, gently pour back into the jug. Close jug and install airlock.

11.  The mead will start fermenting after a couple of hours. You will see the airlock start bubbling. Keep the jug in a place between 65 and 85 degrees and let the yeast do its work. This could take 10 to 20 days.

12.  When the air lock bubbling slows down dramatically, rack the mead into your bottles using the siphoning tube. Be careful not to siphon up the sediment on the bottom of the jug.

 

 

 

2022 Mead (Honey Wine)

Started first Batch of Retirement Mead on 10/30/2022, the Mead received adequate reviews from multiple parties. It was a bit harsh initially, but mellowed with time.

Had attempted to make Mead years ago, but it was more of a haphazard effort and the results were not memorable.

Ingredients

·      1 Gal water

·      2.8 lbs Honey

·      1.6 grams Yeast, Mead M05 Mangrove Jack

·      0.5 gram Di-ammonium Phosphate, yeast enhancer

 

Equipment

·      1 gallon jug

·      Air lock

·      Long thermometer

·      1 cup measure

·      2 cup measure

·      Large metal pot to sanitize things in

·      Metal Pot to hold 1 gallon plus of water

·      Pot to mix honey and water

·      Funnel

·      Large Metal spoon

·      Metal skewer to stir in jug

 

Instructions

 

1.     Sanitize all your equipment using as per the instructions on the packet.
Note: Never use bleach! Bleach will react negatively with the fermentation process.

2.     Warm honey container to make pouring easier.

3.     Put 4 cups of warm water in a pot, measure out about 2 1/2 lbs of honey and mix with the warm water in the pot.

4.     Pour honey/water mix into 1 gal jug.

5.     Add additional cups of water to fill to just above neck of jug and stir/shake.

6.     Use a thermometer in your gallon jug. Continue when the temperature is between 65 and 85 degrees.

7.     Add your yeast enhancer stirring gently until dissolved.

8.     Pull out about 1 cup of must in a two cup measure and pour your yeast in and stir gently. Let it sit for about 15 minutes or so. When it starts to foam, gently pour back into the jug. Install airlock on the jug.

9.     The mead will start fermenting after a couple of hours. You will see the airlock start bubbling. Keep the jug in a place between 65 and 85 degrees and let the yeast do its work. This could take 10 to 20 days.

10.  When the air lock bubbling slows down dramatically, rack the mead into your bottles using the siphoning tube. Be careful not to siphon up the sediment on the bottom of the fermenter.

 

 

10/30/2022 1^st Batch

Racked to 9 Grosch swing top bottles on 11/14/2022

Added 1 tbs honey to one bottle in December, tasted too sweet on 1/17/2023

Added 1 tsp honey to one bottle on 1/20/2023 - better, could be more sweet

Added 2 tsp honey to one bottle on 02/??/2023 - maybe 1 tsp was OK