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May 20, 2007
Beaujolais
Beaujolais is a great spring/summer/fall red wine - fruity and bright but not "sweet," it's full of flavor but not heavy. It's good for sipping on its own, and pairs nicely with a wide range of summer foods, including grilled chicken, lamb, seafood, sausages and vegetables. It also goes well with salads, chilled soups, and other warm weather fare. In the fall, the Beaujolais Nouveau arrives just in time for Thanksgiving, and is a fabulous choice for the traditional turkey-based feast.
Here's a summary of Karen MacNeil's take on this fun varietal:
Beaujolias is made from gamay groups grown in the southernmost part of Burgundy, France. 39 villages have the right to the designation "Beaujolais Villages." The grapes from these villages are considered superior. Even finer quality are the "cru Beaujolais," coming from just 10 villages where the granitic soil is ideal for the gamay grape. These villages are: Fleurie, MOrgon, St.-Amour, Regnie, Chiroubles, Moulin-a-Vent, Chenas, Julienas, Cote de Brouilly, and Brouilly.
Louis Jadot, Georges Duboeuf and Kermit Lynch are top producers of this wine.
I buy the Nouveau every year, and each year it's a little bit different. It's always a close cut for Thanksgiving, because the release date (by law) is the third Thursday in November, giving it just a week to make it to the states in time for the holiday. Thank goodness for air freight! The '05 Nouveau was just luscious, full of fruit, not overly sweet, just delightful. The spring release of the '05 Beaujolais Village was also very good. I've had both the Louis Jadot and the Duboeuf. I like the Duboeuf better, but not for any specific reason. I've had three differnt cru's, all by Duboeuf, and each was fabulous.
Even though it's an import, Beaujolais is extremely affordable - from right around $8 to $16 or so for the finer cru's. Certainly worth a try if you haven't before.
Posted by cageyer at 02:51 PM | Comments (1)
May 15, 2007
ABD
Not a clever title, but one I'm proud to announce. I had my oral exam this morning, and my committee has passed me into the ranks of PhD Candidate. Wheee!
I'll have more to say, but for now we'll just let this sit.
ABD.
Posted by cageyer at 12:24 PM | Comments (4)
May 08, 2007
Clean house
For the first time since we moved here last summer, this house is clean. (Well, okay, not the entire house, because I still haven't ventured to the basement to make sense of that space, and I'm still ignoring the god-awful blue bathtub with the cheap-o shower doors that all look like soap scum was their primary decoration). We had a lovely birthday party here on Sunday for GR's youngest, and we needed to clean. So here's how I spent the end of last week, right up to the hours before the party:
Vacuum the living room carpet.
Shampoo the living room carpet.
Sprinkle living room carpet with copious amounts of baking soda to relieve odor of wet carpet smelling vaguely of wet dog.
Vacuum living room carpet again.
Vacuum the rest of the main floor.
Wash all the hardwoods on the main floor (first time since moving in - what a relief that is!)
Clear and clean the spiffy new countertops in the kitchen.
Clean the stove.
Run the stove-top grates and the floor cleaner parts through the super-wombat power cycle of the dishwasher. Express dismay when they come out as if they hadn't been washed and super-spiffy dishwasher doesn't appear to have functioned correctly.
Clean the bathroom.
Clean all the windows on the main living floor. Notice that despite wearing my arm out, they are still full of streaks the sun magnifies by 100.
Do laundry. Actually put laundry away.
Wash dog beds.
Clean up guest bedroom after last month's sleepover.
Dust amazingly dusty surfaces in the bedroom.
Wash interior glass surfaces. Notice that when the sun hits them, they look worse than before I started. Reconsider the cleaning solution.
Mow the lawn, using bagger to avoid grass clippings tracked into house during party. Haul very heavy bag full of grass to back fence multiple times.
This list doesn't count the stuff GR did during the same period.
But! and this is a valuable but - the house is clean. It now requires continual upkeep, but at least that daunting task of getting it done after so many months of neglecting it for other things is now behind. Just in time for spring.
Sigh.... spring. Catch it while it's here, cuz as we know it won't last long.
Posted by cageyer at 08:43 AM | Comments (0)
May 01, 2007
Class(es) over
Today was the last day of my WRT 195 classes, which are also the last face-to-face classes I will teach for Syracuse University. And that means that I am now free of the classroom for a good 16 month stretch. It's a pretty exhilarating feeling, when I think about it. There is so much attached to that presence in the classroom, as either a student or a teacher, that it feels like a giant relief not to have to face it for awhile. I have so many things I want to be doing, to be writing about, to be researching to write about, and maybe now that I am really on self-structure I'm excited about being able to do all of that. I kept my teaching journal up this semester, something I usually overlook. I think that was because I felt like it wasn't a good semester. I'm not sure whether it was because my classes ended up being so small, or if it was because the students were so disinterested, or if it was because I was so caught up in my exams, but nothing felt natural, or even comfortable. I always felt like I was trying too hard and getting little back. That's unusual for me in a classroom.
In other news, for those who are interested in such things, I received word that I passed the written portion of my exams. Whoo-hoo!
So now, it's on to the conversations, and the oral hearing, and the diss committee formation, and the prospectus, and the writing, and the beginning of the job search, and the teaching portfolio, which will need a major revision at this point, and getting the letters and so on and so on.
And I find myself thinking about where that next job will be. And hoping that it will be somewhere that I can be and do all the things I've been telling myself I can be and do when I am somewhere else, and still let the life I've built here grow. Not such an easy bridge to cross, now that the time is here to start across it.
Posted by cageyer at 05:51 PM | Comments (1)