Grapes

 

As part of my fruit bowl that my wife kindly prepares for me in my U food work pail (actually more of a zippered, nylon cloth rectangle) today I have a cut up peach some cut-up pineapple and both red and green grapes.  The fruit is very good.  But, it got me thinking about grapes in general.  

Grapes occur in a large array of styles and sizes... from deeply purple to almost black in color, through reds, an occasionally russet or orange grape, and green grapes.  Their shapes are typically either spherical (globular) or ovoid (almost egg-shaped, or as I typically refer to them.... "football shaped").  

I have also noticed that the color and shape differences do correlate to very distinctly different flavors and textures to the grapes.  My palate's own preferences tend to be quite pronounced in regards to grapes, although I do eat whatever my wife may give me:

• Universally for me, I find spherical, red grapes to be consistently very delicious and textually pleasant.  Their typical skin is thin and delicate, and their flavor is robust and sweet.  
• On most occasions, I find all varieties of green grapes to be rather bland and mostly flavorless.  The rare exception occurred this past weekend when my wife and I were grocery shopping and saw these absolutely beautiful, VIVIDLY green, spherical green grapes.  They had samples and I ate one.... and it was by far the very best green grape I have ever tasted.  We bought a supply of them on the spot.  Even though I have not done so yet, I plan to investigate the packaging more to discern if they are a specific variety or type that I will then remember, or if it just happened that we received a batch of green grapes that were harvested a the right time to reach the pinnacle of their flavor at our grocery store.  
• Generally, I am not fond of "football" red grapes.  Almost universally, they tend to have tough skin, and there is usually a bitter component to their skin as well that I am not fond of.  Also, in many cases these red "football" grapes have an odd, almost gelatinous aspect to the heart of the grape interior that I am not overly fond of as well.  
• Grapes of darker hues (purples, black, etc) and the orange-ish/golden grapes we have sometimes stumbled across have been (to me) rather bland as well.  The darker purple grapes often have that similar "odd, gelatinous" aspect to their interior that I am not fond of. 
• And, even though I eat "seedy" grapes when that is what I receive, I do prefer seedless grapes more.
  

Again, I eat whatever grapes my wife gives me.  But, I do have a biased preference towards the spherical red grapes and these new (to us) vivid, spherical green grapes. 

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PCS - remains at 7.  I am sure my pipe talk bores many of you to tears at times, and perhaps that means I should just shut my trap about them.  If shutting up about them would perhaps make me think about them less, that might be helpful for me.  Yet, I know even if I do not talk about them, that does not actually change my THINKING about them.  In my journal here, even though it may be dull as dry toast crumbs to hear.... I try to put onto this electronic "paper" as accurate a portrayal of my thoughts and feelings as my tapping fingers can write out.  Thoughts of pipes and pipe tobaccos, and thoughts of smoking my pipes do permeate my mind, so I put it down here..... even if it is boring.

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I ran 13.3 miles (~21.4 km) this morning.  When I reached mile 10 (~ kilometer 16.4), I decided to give myself a challenge, and pretend I was just starting a "5K Road Race" where I attempted my very best to run as fast as I possibly could for that distance.  I had in the back of my mind, the idea to check what my time would be in that already "tired" state of having ran 10 miles before trying to accomplish a race pace.  I did this, because, I think it was probably in the Summer of 2019 where I actually did enter and run a 5K road race that was near my locale,  and I came in SECOND in my age category (old duffer)!  With the pandemic, I have not entered another official race since, but I am thinking of trying one 5K in August, and I wanted to see what my "5K time" would be.  I ended up being quite pleased.... my 5 K time today was about 15 seconds FASTER than my official time at that previous race.... and I had ALREADY RAN 10 miles (~16.4 km) before I started to time this 5K pace!!!!!   So, if I do enter this race, I should have a relatively ok time.  And, who knows.... I may potentially be able to earn a medal in the old duffer age group! Regardless, I will at least get a t-shirt commemorating the event.  

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Still cleaning and reorganizing my laboratory.  But, I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  I have made a helluva lot of progress, and the new organization is going to make a lot of the training of my newer research students a whole helluva lot more streamlined and probably more fun as well!

PipeTobacco