Broccoli quiche

I had some leftover broccoli and a package of duck gizzards that were close to their expiration date, so I decided they would make great ingredients for a quiche. It helped that I have about a dozen eggs just sitting in the fridge wanting to be eaten.

My Saturday lunch: quiche and salad. Yum!

So I threw together a crust, sauteed some onions, and grated some cheese. It was a good activity to keep me busy all morning, along with emptying the dishwasher and doing other things in the kitchen.

The bread lady has been bringing me a ficelle since Ken's been away. I don't need a whole baguette, so the ficelle (about half the size) works well. It's not the same quality bread as the baguette tradition that we normally get, but it's just fine.

It's still darned cold here. Well, not cold if you live in Siberia, or in other polar regions. But our weather feels more like winter than spring. I don't like using more heating oil. Normally the heat goes on for an hour or so in the morning this time of year to take the chill off before the day warms up. But there's not been much warming up and I've had to run the heat longer than I like. Hopefully this week's coming change will set us on the right track.

Not much to report

Friday was a cold, wet, gray day. Dreary, gloomy. A real downer. I didn't do much. I balanced the checking account. I made lunch (leftover meatloaf with french fries). I emptied the fryer and loaded the parts into the dishwasher. I poured the used oil into bottles for recycling.

Things had begun to dry out, but now it's wet again. Great mushroom weather.

Otherwise, I'm just hanging out, watching television (cooking shows, tennis, documentaries), tooling around on the internet, and walking Callie. Most of the chores on my list are best done in nice weather, and well, we're not having any at the moment. The good news is that the long-range forecast for next week is looking more like spring. Let's hope it's accurate.

Another chore done

I cleaned the refrigerator. This is only the second time I've taken everything out to clean the inside. The last time I did it was in 2009. The fridge will be ten years old in June. Does that make me bad? Oh, Martha Stewart does not live in this house! Please notice that there is no "before" photo.

All the shelves and bins came out for cleaning. Now it looks almost new again.

This is one of the many chores I've set up for myself to do while Ken is away. In addition to housework (vacuuming, dusting, doing laundry, etc.). So I feel good about getting this, at least, done. I want to wash windows, but I will wait for better weather.

Follow that plane

A number of you asked about the web site I used to track Ken's flight on Tuesday. There are a bunch of tracking sites out there, but the one I use most was recommended by a friend a few years ago. And it's been improved lately to include coverage of the US, which it didn't do very well at first.

A screen shot of Ken's Tuesday flight over upstate New York. His is the red plane. Click to aeronate.

The site is called Flightradar24.com and it's chock full of cool, nerdy features. You can enter the airline and flight number of the plane you want to follow and it will highlight that flight, or you can just click on a random plane to follow it. You can also filter to see only the flights of a particular airline, or see only the flights that use a particular aircraft. And on and on. It's a live view and the planes move across the screen in real time.

In the screenshot above, you can see Ken's flight (US Airways #787) highlighted in red, with the path (that traces the route all the way back to Paris) behind it in purple. The sidebar on the left gives some details about the flight along with a sample photo of the aircraft. You can clearly see how Ken's plane is fourth in a line of international flights over New York's Finger Lakes. Each plane is identified by call sign and origin/destination codes (settings that I selected). The plane just in front of Ken's is a Delta flight from Rome to Atlanta. It's following a United Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Washington Dulles, and the big plane in front is an Air France flight from Paris to Washington Dulles (it's a big double-deck Airbus A-380).

The site offers an option to download Google Earth to work with what they call the "cockpit view" that simulates the view from the plane using Google's map and satellite imagery. That's a lot of fun. You can zoom in and out around the world and watch the planes go by. I've even used the site to identify the jets I see going over our house.

Flightrader24.com is a great site and I highly recommend it!

Periodic puppy pics

Here's the Cal-gal out on the vineyard road the other morning. She actually turned to look at me when I had the camera ready.

Callie at sunrise on the vineyard road.

Ken is now in North Carolina. If you read his blog you are up to date. I tracked his flights on the internet. That's so cool. One of the sites I use has what they call a "cockpit view" that uses Google Earth to simulate what the pilots see out the cockpit window. That was a lot of fun to watch as Ken's plane headed out of Paris toward southern England.

I will be working on my list of chores over the next couple of weeks. I've already crossed a thing or two off the list!

Train woes

Ken had a ticket on a train out of Blois at 11:57 Monday morning. The best laid plans. When we arrived at the station about a half-hour before departure, there were trains posted as late on the board. Ken's was listed as on time, but after about five minutes that changed to late, too.

There's Ken pulling his suitcase along toward the Blois train station.

 
The station personnel made an announcement that people going to Paris should get on the train going to Orléans, leaving imminently, and then change to a Paris train there. We hurried out to the platform to find the train and someone to ask. Things were a little (but not too much) confused on the platform.

Ken's train pulls out of the station. He had to change trains in Orléans, about a 45 minute ride up the river from Blois.

Ken verified with an agent that he could board this train with the (non-refundable, non-alterable) ticket he had. So he did. He found a seat and we waited (me out on the platform) for the train to pull away. It left about fifteen minutes late, but fifteen minutes before his scheduled train would have left.

Bye, bye!

He called me from Orléans to say that things there were a mess; there was a problem on the line between Orléans and Paris, and he might have to wait an hour or two before a train could leave. The staff served little boxed lunches to people waiting.

This is a good reason for not trying to take a train to the airport on the day of departure. Ken was not in a hurry and not in danger of missing his plane. He got the first train out to Paris then on to the airport and to his hotel without having to stress about making the flight. He'll probably blog about it when he gets a chance. I'll be tracking his flight which is scheduled to take off later this morning.

Bon voyage

Ken leaves today for a trip to the US. He'll be visiting his mom and other family members for a couple of weeks. That leaves me, Callie, and Bert at home. I should get a little more exercise than normal with two walks a day while Ken's gone.

A bit of brick embedded in the vineyard road.

I have a whole list of chores I want to get done, but some of them require a bit of warm weather. The forecast is not great, but we'll see how it goes. At least we're having some sun now.