Sweet Potatoes & Margarita

February 22, 2025, at home

Bagels & Biscotti

My wonderful wife baked this morning (February 22, 2025, at home): Homemade Sesame Bagels and Homemade Almond Chocolate Chip Biscotti.

Today Is ...

Every two weeks for one day, my religion (Gaudiya Vaishnavism) forbids me from eating beans and grains. My religion also always forbids me from eating meat, fish, eggs, onions, garlic, mushrooms, red lentils, and chocolate. (I am not strict with these tenets.)

February 21, 2025, at home

I would like to profusely thank my wife and my mother for being my stalwart caregivers. I am still recovering from six surgeries: 1 heart, 2 chest in 2022; 2 spine in 2023; and 1 right ankle in 2024. Also, many thanks go to my many doctors and the many nurses who have helped me. I am still unable to walk, but I hope that will change.

February 21, 2025, at home

I particularly like chocolate-chip pancakes, but blueberry pancakes are OK, too.

February 21, 2025, at home

I enjoy the occasional sticky bun.

February 21, 2025, at home

Stuffed Peppers

This evening, my wonderful wife made baked bell peppers stuffed with mild Italian sausage and Israeli couscous.

February 20, 2025, at home

Aileen Santos

Cherry Pie & Muffins

I love a big piece of cherry pie with a large scoop of chocolate ice cream nestled next to it.

February 20, 2025, at home

I really don't like muffins. I like English muffins, but that's a different category. (I also like crumpets fried in butter.)

February 20, 2025, at home

Expanded Blog Title

I expanded the title of my personal blog. The new title is "Quizzical Sojourns 2: Observations and Practices of a Self-Proclaimed Bohemian and Optimistic Nihilist." I added "... and Optimist Nihilist."

https://quizzicalsojourns2.blogspot.com/?m=1

February 19, 2025, at home

Optimistic Nihilism

I have been this way for almost my entire life. Yes, I first started as a self-professed nihilist in the 1980s, when I was in my 20s, probably from reading the writings of German philosophers (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Hesse). It gained strength in the 1990s, when I realized that working hard does NOT provide me with anything substantial and that life really does NOT have any meaning. My nihilism continues to this day, and it will continue. Actually, I have been pessimistic about it, rather than optimistic. What I really am is a fatalist, which means "believing that people cannot change the way events will happen and that events, especially bad ones, cannot be avoided." I found that the results of my actions never aligned with my actual actions.

February 19, 2025, at home

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/15r7nzr5P2/

Us As Suncatcher

Delivered today (February 19, 2025) is a gift I recently ordered for my wife (and for me) for our 19th wedding anniversary on February 4, 2025. The cartoon version of us on the (acrylic plexiglass) suncatcher was adapted from a photo that was taken on our wedding day (inset photo).

Chocolate Mint Day

My favorite flavor of ice cream when I was a young kid in the 1960s was Howard Johnson's mint chocolate chip. I still love the combination, especially York Peppermint Patties, which I will eat today.

February 19, 2025, at home

Today Is ...

My favorite wines are: Italian reds, especially chiantis, and Austrian (NOT Australian) whites.

February 18, 2025, at home

I remember eating this a few times throughout my life.

February 18, 2025, at home

"A" and "B" batteries are no longer available in the United States, but are available in limited quantities in certain parts of the world. "B" batteries are still being used in Europe, but they may be discontinued soon. I remember using "A" and "B" batteries for my toys when I was a young kid in the 1960s.

February 18, 2025, at home

Stuffed Shells: Dinner

My wonderful wife made pasta shells filled with ricotta cheese with tomato sauce and shredded Italian cheeses.

February 17, 2025, at home

Aileen Santos

Today Is ...

I do like my wife's sautéed cabbage, either red/purple or green. I also like the pickled red/purple cabbage in the jar. Of course, coleslaw is a favorite of mine.

February 17, 2025, at home

One of the many reasons why I have been a lifelong Republican, and more recently a MAGA Republican, is because of the compassionate characteristic of Republicans and the Republican Party.

February 17, 2025, at home

R.I.P. Lorna

Today (February 16, 2025), we remember and honor my mother-in-law, who passed away on this date in 2011.

This is my favorite photo of her and me. My wife snapped it on July 13, 2008, in a coffee shop in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, when the three of us were on vacation, visiting my wife's family and friends in and around Toronto. I particularly like that she is small and is holding a big cup, and I am bigger and am holding a smaller cup. She also has that "Kilroy was here" thing going on.

She always encouraged me to become a better person with each passing day while accepting me each day exactly as I was. For that, I thank her again.

Lorna, you are sorely missed. Of course, we also immensely miss my father-in-law Bob.

February 16, 2025, at home

Today Is ...

OK, where is my favor? LOL

February 16, 2025, at home

My favorite candy is chocolate-covered marzipan (sugared almond paste).

February 16, 2025, at home

Today Is ...

Today (February 15, 2025) is Singles Awareness Day. National Singles Day is in September and is listed as celebrated on the 22nd, the 24th, or the 26th.

I was without female companionship from age 20 to age 40 (February 1982 to November 2000) and not by choice, so I have been quite intimate with the (good and bad) aspects of single life. (Please, no pity.)

During my lifetime, I was rejected hundreds and hundreds of times by women. This includes 414 rejections by women in a period of 18 months with a video dating service in New Jersey in the mid-1990s, when I was in my mid-30s. Almost all of these women said "unattractive" was the reason for not wanting to meet with me for a date. I was able to go on a few dates, but when around 400 women described me as "unattractive," I will admit that I started to believe it. 🙂

Several years after I stopped doing the video dating, I read in a newspaper that a man was suing that dating service to get his money back because there weren't enough Jewish women from which to choose. LOL 😁

When I moved to Florida in 1998, I constructed a personal ad on America Online (AOL). It attracted my future wife. After dating her for about five years, I was finally able to get married for the first and only time on February 4, 2006, which was 22 days before my 45th birthday.

My wife and I recently celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. On November 10, 2025, we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of our first date. I dated my wife for so long because I was waiting for her to dump me. Obviously, she never did.

I must say that it certainly was worth the long, difficult, heartaching, heartbreaking wait during my romantic 20-year-long "dry spell." My wife is absolutely wonderful, and I am definitely blessed and fortunate to have had her in my life for so many years. I think that being alone for such a long time has made me appreciate her even more.

February 15, 2025, at home

When I was a kid in the 1960s, I liked those spiced gumdrops.

February 15, 2025, at home

My wife is from Toronto.

February 15, 2025, at home

R.I.P. Dad

Today (February 14, 2025), I pay homage to my father, who passed away at the age of 62 on this date in 1997. His birthday is August 30, 1934.

This is a photo of my dad and me in December 1974 at the house of my Great-Aunt Rose in East Orange, New Jersey. I was 13 years old.

It is difficult to comprehend that he has been gone for 28 years. I still sorely and immensely miss him. He died on his mother's birthday - she passed away on May 22, 1977, at the age of 78 - and the day after the birthday of his sister, who turned 89 years old yesterday.

My dad was cremated. Half of his ashes were interred at Breslau Cemetery in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York. (The original name of Lindenhurst was Breslau, named after the city in Germany.)

The other half of his ashes was scattered into the North Atlantic Ocean from a U.S. Navy ship. Dad served 22 years in the Navy and retired at the rank of Commander. He was a few months short of Captain. He served on a ship in the 1950s, transporting DPs (displaced persons or, as he called them, delayed pilgrims) after World War II from Bremerhaven, Germany, to New York City.

My father had a twin brother named Wilbur who died in 1935 at the age of 9 months due to spinal meningitis.

Also, today marks 38 years since the passing of my wife's grandfather.

February 14, 2025, at home

R.I.P. Nana

Happy Birthday to my paternal grandmother (February 14, 1899 - May 22, 1977). You are sorely missed.

February 14, 2025, at home

Today Is ...

Today (February 14, 2025) is National Ferris Wheel Day.

PHOTO: "Wiener Riesenrad" (online photo) ... See below for explanation.

I have two memories of Ferris Wheels:

1. I remember the time when I was a kid attending the St. Rocco's Feast in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, in the early 1970s, when I was around ten years old. That was the church of many of my maternal family members. I went on the Ferris Wheel with my cousin Phil and his wife Jacqueline. I was seated between them. The wheel stopped when we were at the top. Phil started rocking the seat back and forth, and laughing. Jacqueline screamed, "Phil, stop it." I was a little scared, but I was laughing, too. That is a fond memory from my childhood.

2. I remember the time when my wife and I took a ride on the giant Ferris Wheel called the "Wiener Riesenrad" at the Prater amusement park in Vienna, Austria. (I had already been on the wheel on previous vacations to Austria.)

You can see all of Vienna and beyond from the top. It had compartments that could hold many people, but I think they only allowed about twenty people in each for safety. It's 64.75 meters (212 feet) tall and has half as many compartments as it did when it was constructed in 1897. The removal of half of the compartments was also for safety. It was the world's tallest extant Ferris Wheel from 1920 until 1985.

February 14, 2025, at home

I do like chocolate-covered marzipan. I will enjoy some today. However, it is in the form of a bar, not as individual round candies.

February 14, 2025, at home

Happy Birthday To Aunt Doris

Happy Birthday to my Aunt Doris (my father's sister), who turned 89 years old today (February 13, 2024). Here we are at her house on Long Island, New York, on June 30, 2007.

Aileen Santos

Today Is ...

I do have a fondness for tortellini.

February 13, 2025, at home

I like the occasional sharp cheddar.

February 13, 2025, at home

Plum Pudding

February 12, 2025, at home

Solo: Phil Manzanera

Today (February 11, 2025) is National Guitar Day.

My favorite guitarist is Phil Manzanera. He was the guitarist for the band Roxy Music (years active: 1970–1976, 1978–1983, 2001–2011). He was also the guitarist for the group The Explorers in the 1980s with fellow Roxy Music saxophonist/oboist Andy Mackay, plus Manzanera has recorded many solo albums.

In this video of his live solo performance of his solo song "Sphinx," you may recognize Ray Cooper on tambourine; he was the percussionist in Elton John's band in the 1970s.

https://youtu.be/s5JyqHWts0w

Guitar Solo: Stranzinger

Today (February 11, 2025) is National Guitar Day.

I have to share my favorite live guitar solo with you (by Reinhard Stranzinger). The song is "Weit, Weit Weg" by the Austrian singer-songwriter-musician Hubert von Goisern.

https://youtu.be/BSPVdFggVy4?si=xZcz7X7uDjokNGO5

Today Is ...

I will be eating one (or more) mini York Peppermint Patties today.

February 11, 2025, at home

Who is your favorite guitarist? Mine is Phil Manzanera. I also like George Harrison and Frank Zappa.

February 11, 2025, at home

Today Is ...

um-brell-a: what you put on your head when you go out when it rains ... (That's an "in" joke.)

February 10, 2025, at home

Today Is ...

My favorite pizza topping is pickled capers. I also like to mix-match pepperoni, eggs (baked on top), artichoke hearts, fried eggplant, Gorgonzola cheese, and the occasion anchovy. I am partial to New York-style, but I also love St. Louis-style.

February 9, 2025, at home

My bagel preference is sesame. I haven't technically eaten a bagel with lox and cream cheese in quite a while. However, I have somewhat recently eaten a bagel with lox spread which is basically the same thing.

February 9, 2025, at home

No To Super Bowl

Football is just so absurdly boring. I never watch it. However, I AM happy that during today's Super Bowl, millions of people will be watching Elon Musk's commercials. I'll just watch them later on YouTube. Plus, Carl's Jr. is bringing back its bikini model burger ads.

February 9, 2025, at home

Today Is ...

Today (February 8, 2025) is National Boy Scouts Day. I was a Cub Scout when I was a young kid in the 1960s. My mom was even a den mother. Our pack (Pack 99, when I lived in Babylon, Long Island, New York) disbanded after a couple of years, and I never pursued the Boy Scouts. Also, in the 1940s, my father at age 13 was the youngest Eagle Scout in the United States.

My Unpopular Political Opinion: Girls are allowed to join the Boy Scouts, and girls/women are allowed to join boys'/men's sports teams, so trans-women (men) should be allowed to compete in women's sports. Please, no double standards. One standard is perfectly OK.

I have been a Men's Rights Activist since the early 1990s, when I was in my early 30s. These days, I am mellow in this regard, but I still fight the good fight for men's rights and father's rights.

February 8, 2025, at home

I used to occasionally fly kites at the beach when I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s. My preference was and still is the box kite.

Many thanks go to my mom for getting our kite up on that blustery day at the beach in the 1960s, when my dad and I didn't have success.

February 8, 2025, at home

(There is a reference to Iowa in this somewhat long post.)

For about 14 months in and around 1997, I covered commodities trading, specifically the futures and options trading of "Softs" (coffee, sugar, cocoa, cotton, orange juice, and occasionally whole milk) from the New York City bureau of a wire service called "Futures World News," also known as "FWN." We broadcast more than one thousand stories every day via satellite to traders in 93 countries from our bureaus around the world.

I covered those five main markets in real time, writing 13 to 16 stories every day, plus one weekly feature story. I covered two exchanges in New York City and one exchange in London. Our bureau was directly across the street from the World Trade Centers, so I would occasionally visit with the traders on the trading floor (on the second floor) before the day's trading began. I also covered weekly money-supply meetings at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

(I cross-trained for a couple of weeks on "Energies," specifically crude oil, natural gas, etc. Unfortunately, I never got to train on "Forex" ("Foreign Exchange," meaning monetary-currency comparison), or "Metals" (gold, silver, etc.), both of which I preferred to cover because they are the more glamorous markets.)

FWN had various bureaus throughout the world, specifically in New York City, Chicago, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Tokyo. All of the hundreds of stories written throughout each day from all of these bureaus were sent to copy editors in our main office in Waterloo, Iowa, where they were edited and then broadcast via satellite to traders all over the world.

(We also published the monthly magazine titled "Futures," but I was not involved with that.)

February 8, 2025, at home

Today Is ...

Today is National Periodic Table Day.

I have enjoyed chemistry since I was a kid, and I even studied it in high school and at university. I retain an interest in it to this day.

While I ultimately became a journalist, I was quite fortunate in the 1990s to land a job in New York City where I could indulge my love of a topic that has interested me since I was a young kid in the 1960s playing with my chemistry set. From 1992 to 1996, I was a Reporter, Writer, Editor, and Researcher for an international weekly magazine on the financial and technical aspects of the chemical industry. This included agriculture chemicals (fertilizers), petrochemicals (aromatics and aliphatics), pharmaceuticals, flavors, fragrances, plastics, paints, coatings, oils, fats, waxes, surfactants, and more.

Yes, I'm a nerd ... and proud of it.

I am honored to have worked for one of the oldest publications in the United States. The magazine, initially titled "Oil, Paint, and Drug Reporter" and titled "Chemical Marketing Reporter" ("CMR") when I worked there, was first published in 1871. Shortly after I moved on, it was renamed "Chemical Market Report."

I still laugh at the title of my first position there: Oils, Fats, and Waxes Editor. It was my job to cover such products as castor oil, grease (both yellow AND white), and carnauba wax from an industrial standpoint. I was later promoted to more complex coverage areas: Flavors and Fragrances Editor, then Heavy and Agriculture Chemicals Editor, and then Market Research Editor.

I rank this job as my most favorite job since I became a journalist in 1982 partly because, as I still sometimes jokingly say, it made me appear smarter than I actually was. Also, my groundbreaking story on tung oil as a natural industrial lubricant in its infancy was cited in USDA and EPA governmental reports. My writings were also cited in a university student's doctoral thesis.

While I was working for "CMR," I sent a copy of the magazine to my former university chemistry teacher from the early 1980s with a letter to let him know that I never lost interested in this subject and that chemistry was my professional life at that time. He wrote back, thanking me. He told me that a teacher usually doesn't know how far his influence on his students will go. He also mentioned that he had never heard of tung oil.

February 7, 2025, at home

Today is National Bubble Gum Day, the first Friday in February. When I was a kid in the 1960s and early 1970s, I chewed lots of Bazooka bubble gum. I especially liked the Bazooka Joe comics that came with it. I also chewed the gum that came with baseball cards. I occasionally chewed the gumballs from vending machines.

February 7, 2025, at home

I sometimes like Fettuccine Alfredo, but, technically, it isn't Italian.

February 7, 2025, at home