Green Onions

Whenever I go to the grocery store, specialty food store, warehouse club store, farmers market... well you get the idea,  one thing I always look for is big fat green onions.  

From the Dekalb Farmers Market in Atlanta GA



The onions you see in the picture here are not particularly fat.  They are a little bigger than I usually see in most stores, but still not that great.  The other day, I found some Vidalia Onions that I would classify as great big fat green onions.  They were not the typical Vidalia Onions that you see that have been dried and look like a normal onion with dry skin around them.  These were next to the leeks and  tiny, tiny green onions and were under the sprinkler system of the local Stop & Shop store.  I bought them and have since eaten them.

As an aside here, Vidalia Onions from Vidalia GA are usually best bought in May.  These onions need to be harvested and dried in large warehouses for many months before they are perfect.  When I lived in Atlanta, the business I managed actually owned a Vidalia farm and every May the two brothers that ran it would drive up to Atlanta and deliver boxes of onions to me--I was pretty much in heaven.

By now you probably have figured out that I LOVE onions.  I eat a lot of onions.  When I was a kid, I used to eat onions like others ate apples.  I don't do that any more--although I am not sure if it is because my stomach couldn't tolerate it or if I am saving the rest of people I interact with from an onion aroma.  I hate to think of what I smelled like as a kid.

Anyway, I'll keep searching for the big fat green onion that will make my salad perfect.



Shorts

Today is April 15 and will only reach a high of 54 degrees.  Tomorrow 49.  I don't care--the calendar says it is time to wear shorts, regardless of what the weather brings.  You folks living in the perpetual warm areas of the country (and you know who you are) don't ever need to think about this.  For you all the only decision making is which pair of shorts to wear on any given day.

Well, Linda just bought me a bunch of new shorts.  (I actually have a whole drawer full of shorts already---but they seem to have all shrunk over the winter while doing nothing but hanging out in my dresser).

Anyway, Linda bought me some new shorts and I decided that April 15 is a good time to start wearing them--regardless of temperature.  So, my after work clothes today will be the new green shorts... or maybe the brown ones... or maybe...

Traffic Patterns

Drive Home

Did you ever notice, on your routine drive to work, that there is a 'sweet spot' of time that gets you to work in the shortest time with the least amount of traffic?  For me, it's about 6:40 AM.  Most times, if I get on the road then, I can make it into the office in about 25 minutes.  I am about 19 miles away, traveling on I-95, so that's a pretty nice ride.

But, if I leave the house at 6:45--forget it.  The ride could be 45 to 50 minutes.  There are routes I can take to the office that keep me off I-95, and while a more scenic drive because they take me along the beaches of Long Island Sound it is a solid 45 minute drive when I am off  the freeway.

Going home in the afternoon, it is usually a 45 to 50 minute drive, which is why I am writing this BLOG today.  It is going to be about 5:05 PM as I leave the office today... let's see how long it takes me to get home.

I'll let you know!

Home now... 38 minutes!  Nice!

Winter Over?

Tonight I was updating some pictures on my website http://www.brucesherbow.com/ and one of the pages I updated was the CT page with photos from the long, tiring and very snowy winter.  And I was thinking how glad I was that winter was just a memory in these pictures.

Not so fast!!

It was cold, dark and rainy/snowy today... Tomorrow is April 1 and the forecast is for Mother Nature to play April Fools on us... mid 30's and rainy/snowy.

I am supposed to go fishing on Greenwood Lake in NJ on Saturday--weather permitting!

QR Codes

I have been playing around with QR codes.  These are Quick Response codes that look like  I made this code that you can scan with the correct scanning software on your smartphone.  See what happens!

Oliver and Technology

Grandma (Linda) and I live 1,000 miles from baby O.  There are many ways to think about this; it's a 16 hour car ride, a two hour plane ride (6 to 8 hours if you add in getting to the airport in NY and from the airport in Atlanta) or there is no distance at all.

No distance because of technology.  Yesterday Linda created a recording of Patty-Cake and a few "Hello Oliver, it's your Grandma" comments and within minutes Jessica was playing it for him.  The report we got back was that Linda's voice caused him to coo like, well, like a baby!

While I tend to think of this as magical, many of you experienced Grand-folks have probably been using Skype, Apple Chat and other technology to stay in touch for quite some time. 

And what about pictures?  When we were raising our children in Madison, WI, we took a picture a week of Jackie for the first few years and sent them off to Linda's Mom, so she could see the progress Jackie was making.  My mother-in law sure loved getting these each week, 4 or 5 days after the picture was taken.  Well, we are getting pictures of Oliver everyday!!  Thanks to technology, I'll be sitting in my office and no matter what is going on, in the sometimes tense work a day world... I can stop and smile when I see Baby O!

Gotta love this technology!

Palladia

I recently discovered a television channel called Palladia.  Tonight there is a three hour special highlighting Fender guitars called The Strat Pack: 50 years of the Fender Stratocaster.  This was originally released in 2009.  On stage at Wembley Arena in London, stars such as Joe Walsh, David Gilmour, Amy Winehouse,The Crickets... and many more.  Naturally, I am recording it as I suspect I'll want many viewings.