TampaYankee

I like this post. It deserves more than just a 'Like This' button click. IMO it is the best, most relevant post BBB ever has made to a topic, not to slight any of his other contributions but he is right on here in spades. Apologies or not, this is an adult view of how to manage one's presence on the internet and in forums.

I want to live on an exotic beach at the foot of inactive volcanic mountains where it is cool in the summer and temperate in the winter, free of hurricanes, tsunamis and snow; close to a gay friendly metropolitan center with theatre, museums, restaurants, boy bars and a good international airport nearby. The cost of living is inexpensive. I would have included more specifications but I just woke up.

Gives me a new appreciation for the word 'severe'. I now know what Romney meant when he said he was a 'severe conservative'.

I suspect they are ok if you are not too picky about flavors. These knock-off syrups are never quite the same as the originals.

Can a man get get older and whiter than this. GOP, truly the party of.... HIs legacy... 'The Old White Man's Guide to Keepin' Em Barefoot and Pregnant'.

You can say that again!

Always figured you'd end up in the gutter.

Great to hear about the festival and your renewal with old acquaintances. Thanks for sharing your enthusiasm and experience.

Let me add my congrats to the newlyweds, relatively anyway. Best wishes and it is great that your own state finally recognizes you now. Also, don't think you'd fit the Kansas lifestyle so don't worry about them. They are too busy making wheels out of stone.

Here are a couple of real ones...

Yes, these low turnout elections can be a bit of a wild card sometimes. Gomez was an attractive candidate. His only shortcoming was his politics. I guess the Mass Tea Party has lost some of its energy and commitment.

12 old words that survived by getting fossilized in idioms By Arika Okrent | The Week – Fri, Jun 14, 2013 "Sleight of hand" (not "slight of hand" as it's often misspelled) helped the Middle English word "sleight" survive obsolescence English has changed a lot in the last several hundred years, and there are many words once used that we would no longer recognize today. For whatever reason, we started pronouncing them differently, or stopped using them entirely, and they became obsolete. There are some old words, however, that are nearly obsolete, but we still recognize because they were lucky enough to get stuck in set phrases that have lasted across the centuries. Here are 12 of those lucky words: 1. Wend You rarely see a "wend" without a "way." You can wend your way through a crowd or down a hill, but no one wends to bed or to school. However, there was a time when English speakers would wend to all kinds of places. "Wend" was just another word for "go" in Old English. The past tense of "wend" was "went" and the past tense of "go" was "gaed." People used both until the 15th century, when "go" became the preferred verb, except in the past tense where "went" hung on, leaving us with an outrageously irregular verb. 2. Deserts The "desert" from the phrase "just deserts" is not the dry and sandy kind, nor the sweet post-dinner kind. It comes from an Old French word for "deserve," and it was used in English from the 13th century to mean "that which is deserved." When you get your just deserts, you get your due. In some cases, that may mean you also get dessert, a word that comes from a later French borrowing. 3. Eke If we see "eke" at all these days, it's when we "eke out" a living, but it comes from an old verb meaning to add, supplement, or grow. It's the same word that gave us "eke-name" for "additional name," which later, through misanalysis of "an eke-name" became "nickname." 4. Sleight "Sleight of hand" is one tricky phrase. "Sleight" is often miswritten as "slight" and for good reason. Not only does the expression convey an image of light, nimble fingers, which fits well with the smallness implied by "slight," but an alternate expression for the concept is "legerdemain," from the French léger de main," literally, "light of hand." "Sleight" comes from a different source, a Middle English word meaning "cunning" or "trickery." It's a wily little word that lives up to its name. 5. Dint "Dint" comes from the oldest of Old English where it originally referred to a blow struck with a sword or other weapon. It came to stand for the whole idea of subduing by force, and is now fossilized in our expression "by dint of X" where X can stand for your charisma, hard work, smarts, or anything you can use to accomplish something else. 6. Roughshod Nowadays we see this word in the expression "to run/ride roughshod" over somebody or something, meaning to tyrannize or treat harshly. It came about as a way to describe the 17th century version of snow tires. A "rough-shod" horse had its shoes attached with protruding nail heads in order to get a better grip on slippery roads. It was great for keeping the horse on its feet, but not so great for anyone the horse might step on. 7. Fro The "fro" in "to and fro" is a fossilized remnant of a Northern English or Scottish way of pronouncing "from." It was also part of other expressions that didn't stick around, like "fro and till," "to do fro" (to remove), and "of or fro" (for or against). 8. Hue The "hue" of "hue and cry," the expression for the noisy clamor of a crowd, is not the same "hue" as the term we use for color. The color one comes from the Old English word híew, for "appearance." This hue comes from the Old French hu or heu, which was basically an onomatopoeia, like "hoot." 9. Kith The "kith" part of "kith and kin" came from an Old English word referring to knowledge or acquaintance. It also stood for native land or country, the place you were most familiar with. The expression "kith and kin" originally meant your country and your family, but later came to have the wider sense of friends and family. 10. Lurch When you leave someone "in the lurch," you leave them in a jam, in a difficult position. But while getting left in the lurch may leave you staggering around and feeling off-balance, the "lurch" in this expression has a different origin than the staggery one. The balance-related lurch comes from nautical vocabulary, while the lurch you get left in comes from an old French backgammon-style game calledlourche. Lurch became a general term for the situation of beating your opponent by a huge score. By extension it came to stand for the state of getting the better of someone or cheating them. 11. Umbrage "Umbrage" comes from the Old French ombrage (shade, shadow), and it was once used to talk about actual shade from the sun. It took on various figurative meanings having to do with doubt and suspicion or the giving and taking of offense. To give umbrage was to offend someone, to "throw shade." However, these days when we see the term "umbrage" at all, it is more likely to be because someone is taking, rather than giving it. 12. Shrift We might not know what a shrift is anymore, but we know we don't want to get a short one. "Shrift" was a word for a confession, something it seems we might want to keep short, or a penance imposed by a priest, something we would definitely want to keep short. But the phrase "short shrift" came from the practice of allowing a little time for the condemned to make a confession before being executed. So in that context, shorter was not better. View this article on TheWeek.com Get 4 Free Issues of The Week

I can't speak to this particular lady, only my experience including what I see on the shelves today. However, I do take exception with her remark that oak had become a fad in recent years. That is untrue. Oak has been used for centuries in France and was adopted in the California and Washington State wineries on start-up. However, oak in white wines is used predominantly in Chardonnay. So it was in France, so it was everywhere else. Most other whites see only light oak or none, eg. Chablis & Sauvignon Blanc. Maybe some newer wineries are trying to oak-up other white varietals recently, I do not know as I do not buy whites except in a blue moon on a good recommendation. Oak is not a recent fad even if oak chips are. In my experience oak seems to mellow and round the high notes harshness and give it a vanilla note and a lower note tannin backbone which is what you probably do not like. As for wine over a bed of oak chips, I first encountered this maybe 20 years ago or so. I was not a fan at all. Very strange taste and bouquet compared to what I was used to. I do not believe that wine in stainless steel over oak chips rushed to fruition in three months can compare favorably with wine spending one or two years in a breathing oak barrel left on its own in a cool dry cave or the equivalent. Many people do like the less oaky whites. Those I knew were not fans of most reds, generally. Whites probably outsell reds today as many females are drinking whites casually at home or when out, while their male counterparts probably imbibe beer.

A travesty. The country and democracy moves backward five decades.

Voting Rights Act Section 4 Struck Down By Supreme Court Read all about it... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/voting-rights-act-supreme-court_n_3429810.html

I subscribed to Wine Spectator for more than a decade back in the late 80's early 90's and found them an invaluable source of information. Not only did it inform me of yearly releases but gave me background on different countries and regions within countries a well as varietals -- taste, growing conditions and regions of best production. I scored many great values based on their recommendations. Eventually, I got buried under all of the back editions. It also accepted more advertising so that I felt it had been discovered by 'too many' giving me the sense that its flavor had moved somewhat from judge to 'advocate' in some of their recommendations. That and the fact that their best benefit to me of revealing unknown modest-priced gems waned as prices increased in general and other information outlets also were spilling the beans on what few gems were to be found in the current market. I also felt pretty confident in my own knowledge of the subject and my ability to seek out information on the internet as well as networking with a few friends and family to keep abreast of the better local offerings. If I were a novice I would consult WS and other wine info outlets even with the changes I think WS has undergone over the decades These outlets are still a great source of knowledge about wine in general and new offerings presented every year. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

I drink reds almost exclusively anymore. I always favored them by a large margin but I did drink whites much more twenty years ago. Today one is much more likely to stumble across a modestly priced decent red than white IMO, even though there are a few exceptions, almost by accident it seems. Most modest-priced whites are fit only for marinating goat and treating sink clogs, again IMO. The taste on the tongue is likened to fingernails on a chalk board -- good for waking one from a semicomatose slumber like a smack upon the face, or... for clearing the sink drain. 'My white' is aged in oak to impart hints of vanilla and a buttery, chewy style with a strong backbone and lower notes with lingering after-notes that continue to charm the tongue. Most of what is produced today is thin textured pineappley higher notes. One of the differences is the amount of time spent in oak barrels. That costs money and takes more time which also costs money. That is not to say that there are not good examples out there of the new style but be prepared to leave a limb behind at your wine store because most vintners price the better whites as if they are extremely proud of them, and frankly, they are a big gamble to the buyer. I receive no satisfaction from paying big for a bad wine, whatever the label.

A few mint julips or Mississippi muds in you and I bet you are the life of the party, lamp shade and all.

Ewwwwww....... As for the Klein article, its April 1st somewhere or was when printed. Got to be.

Retirement cured that.

I haven't read the article and I have my own experience to go on. I suspect that many people may not be able to discern the flavors and aromas in wines. Many people do not even like dry wines and can't get past that. What I do know from experience is that I have tasted the following notes in many many (grape) dry wines that I have consumed over 40+ years -- not all in the same wine by any means and not every wine had least one. Some wines can portray little more than wetness and a mysterious taste if any, but those are mostly restricted the very low priced bins usually -- not to damn all low priced wines. choclolate cherry blackberry leather tobacco tar oak vanilla butter pineapple grape juice (rarely) pear gravel grass vinegar I have had wines with various floral and fruity bouquets, as well as oak, leather, tobacco and even barnyard bouquets. I demurred on the barnyard offering. Probably just a very bad cork and mold rather than a non-fruit fortification. (yikes) I have had others share these experiences as I often do not drink these types of wine alone but with a meal and family or friends. I'm not a wine snob as my usual fare is Paisano, a cheap delicious California jug wine that serves my everyday purposes. But in the past I have cellared as many as a dozen cases of wines at a time from around the world, more than a few rated 90+ (too often disappointing on maturity for such ratings). I have no doubt that some cannot discern these wine qualities and that they convince themselves they do. I also expect that even so-called experts may disagree on some wines. As for me, I've been drinking wine so long and from so many sources with so many disappointments that I have few expectations upon opening a wine, especially in the last ten years, especially based on price. One wine that surprised me just recently, enough to make me shell out for half a case, which I rarely do in retirement, is: Four Vines, Old Vine Cuvee, 2009, Zinfandel, California $12 - $14 dollars most places. If I were still drawing a regular paycheck I would have purchased at least two cases for the cellar. I'll let those who have an opportunity to try it determine for themselves the tastes and aromas this beauty offers. One more point, as far as telling plonk from grand cru, I do not disagree with that in general, but from the point of view that in many cases little separates the quality of wines. There are many formerly great vineyards trafficking on their reputation that just no longer deserve it. Definitely true in France and also true in California, Washington State and Australia, as some former greats have become so-so, but try to demand the money they got in the past. That is the nature of wine as a business, and distributors and many retailers aide and abet it because money is money. Finally, I expect the same type of article could be written for coffee or vodka or myriad of other products that rely on the senses to evaluate. Those article would be just as true and just as false as I suspect this one is. I know I said finally above but... I don't knock studies in general and I don't know anything about this study to knock it other than I don't share it's sweeping conclusion on the face of it. However, all studies are subject to some level of corruption no matter how much care is take to not corrupt the study. It all comes down to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the very act of trying to measure something or observe a process effects the outcome producing some difference from that which takes place without measurement or observation. Take for example these experts who differ on their analysis. Putting them under a microscope induces a psychological stress which may even produce physical stress that might alter the sensitivity of their senses. They are putting their 'rep', their knowledge and expertise, on the line publicly for people to scrutinize. Most sports and entertainment stars, even business stars usually have to have their 'head in the zone' to succeed at the levels in which they compete. If they don't have their head in it, well... Just look at women's gymnastics as an example. As for me, I'm under no pressure when I drink wine. I have nothing on the line, no stress to send cortisol flowing through my system. I sit and drink and notice whatever my tongue and nose detect. I'm in a relaxed state. My results are unbiased by outside forces or measures. No one else told me what to expect or quizes me as to whether I pass or fail. I just taste what I taste, real or not. That leads to the question of what is reality where I will not go. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is very real. We have to live with that and do the best we can because observations and measurements are very necessary. Just be aware that interpreting results may not always be as straightforward as it seems or should be.

Have you googled 'Texas Small Claims Court Procedure'? That might be a good start.

Welcome back KYTOP. Good to hear from you. I agree that KY is a beautiful state.

More for the hardcore... Let your fantasies soar. Bon Appetite.

Count me in to, Chuck50, wherever you are . Happy Birthday