WOW! Gosh, Charles! That place looks so beautiful to say the least! So serene and peaceful! Many many many thanks for the recommendation! I am adding this distillery to my travel bucket list!

Hi CP! I think the spelling depends on the country in which the whiskey is produced. I have really gotten used to spelling it as whiskey, as I got acquainted with American brands (such as Jack Daniel's and Jim Beam) first (damn yanks! ), before getting acquainted with Scotch. Interestingly, it is spelled as whiskey even in Ireland! More about this quirky little aspect, here: http://www.whiskyforeveryone.com/whisky_basics/whisky_or_whiskey.html

Drat and double drat! I've missed the birthdays of so many wonderful people, this year, but I want to redeem myself by saying: Many Many Happy Returns of the Day, Deb! Hope you have a wonderful day ahead and get to relax with some great music!

Thanks Charles! This whiskey was a very nice surprise. I highly recommend it, especially for occasions such as a family picnic. It was everything that I look for in a whiskey. Light, crisp, fresh, acidic and lemony! I also really loved that emerald green shade of the bottle for two reasons. The first being the colour and second being the fact that if a whiskey's bottle is green, then it emphasizes the fact that the whiskey in question, has little or no artificial sweetener!

Oh, never mind! I figured it out!

Beatles' Cavern Club Tape Found After 53 YearsRecording of Some Other Guy was made a month before debut single launchedA tape of the Beatles performing in Liverpool’s Cavern Club has been found after 53 years. The recording of Some Other Guy was made in September 1962 – just four weeks before the Fab Four’s debut single Love Me Do was released. TV producer Johnnie Hamp found the reel in a desk drawer, and plans to auction it for charity next month. It was made because a crew had filmed the Beatles in the Cavern for an appearance on Granada TV’s Know The North – but the sound quality was so poor that an overdub was required. The show was never aired due to legal issues, but band manager Brian Epstein asked for five acetates to be made because he was so pleased with the tape. The only known one of those raised £16,000 at an auction in 1993. The reel is to be sold by Adam Partridge in Liverpool on November 5. This week the only management contract signed by Epstein and all four Beatles reached a price of £365,000. Their first-ever record contract, for the Tony Sheridan And The Beat Brothers recording in 1962, raised £48,000 in September. Source : http://classicrock.teamrock.com/news/2015-10-02/beatles-cavern-club-tape-found-after-50-years

Got together with some other whiskey enthusiasts last night and experienced my first taste of 'Black and White' Blended Scotch Whiskey. I was feeling a bit hesitant to try out this brand as it seemed pretty inexpensive in comparison to more well-known counter parts such as Chivas Regal and Johnnie Walker. But I guess I was in for a pleasant surprise! I really enjoy my whiskey neat but I did put in a few drops of water, in order to really accentuate all the flavours as much as possible. The 1st taste was very sharp and the whiskey itself seemed very fresh, acidic and citrus. I could taste hints of lemon, honey and even a smattering of toffee! It's a great whiskey for the summer, I think! Hope to graduate to single malts next year!

Saturday Night Whiskey Retreat! Enjoying my first glass of some Scotch Blended Malt Whiskey with some Whiskey enthusiasts, like myself. The brand in question is Black and White. Will post my impressions of the blend, in a little while on the Bon Appetit thread

Quick question. How on earth do you transfer (as in possibly copy and paste) another user's post from one thread into another and quote that post? I could have sworn that I have seen some posters do it!

Hiya Andy! Glad to see you too! I really don't mind audio-books. Of all the developments that have occurred in this excessively digitized age, audio books are something that I do like. In fact, with the right narrator, it can become quite an entertaining experience!

Hi Patrycja! It's great to be back! I love the smell and feel of printed books! It gives you the same satisfaction as having a physical copy of music albums (as opposed to mp3's). And nothing can beat the absolute bliss that one experiences while curling up in a quiet corner of your home, with your favourite book! No need to worry about battery power. No need to worry about experiencing symptoms of 'Computer Vision Syndrome'. No pesky notifications regarding subscription fee payment. No need to constantly adjust the zoom in / zoom out settings. And then there is the issue of scrolling (can be an absolute pain with a tablet)! Back in 2012 and 2013, much to my chagrin, I came across quite a few articles (either on blogs or different news papers) making ridiculous declarations about the 'death' of the printed book (it is IMO, as ridiculous as saying that the concept of the album is dead), but I now find reports stating that vinyl sales and printed book sales are being driven by folks belonging to the 18-35 age group! Looks like there is hope, after all!

Hi Dd! It is great being back here! "10 Ribs" is a beautiful song to start your day with! It sure makes the "Presence" companion disc extra special!

^^^Gee, you sir, are really making me blush! What made me happy today was saying hello and talking to old friends on this forum, after months! The second event that made me happy today, is buying and setting up my new, lightweight HP laptop and the fact that I am getting a free upgrade to Windows 10! My old laptop was 6 years old and was slowing down and producing many Blue Screen errors!

Hi Emily! It is nice to be back!

A Thing of Beauty. A Joy Forever. Pure Perfection. The above expressions IMHO, describe the song that I am listening to, right now:

Old people gone wild!

I used to have a Facebook Account but in the recent past, it became 'Selfie Central', so I just deactivated my account and haven't looked back since.

A slice of Blueberry Cheesecake with Raspberry Coulis. It sure is bliss!!

I have always wondered what all the hullabaloo is about e-books, Kindle and paid subscription services such as Scribd! Personally, I can't stand e-books. I am near-sighted and the computer / device light gives me a headache while trying to read and I am one of those people who loves and craves enjoying time alone, curled up with a good book and I can't bare to look someone in the eye and tell them that that my so-called 'book collection' is just a bunch of PDF files stashed in some remote folder on my computer! My mom on the other hand, is a paid Scribd subscriber! Hopefully, the entire process of printing books will not become a lost art! I do however feel hopeful with regard to the future of printed books : The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From DeadBy ALEXANDRA ALTERSEPT. 22, 2015 Penguin Random House last year doubled the size of its distribution center in Crawfordsville, Ind., to speed up book distribution. Credit Five years ago, the book world was seized by collective panic over the uncertain future of print. As readers migrated to new digital devices, e-book sales soared, up 1,260 percent between 2008 and 2010, alarming booksellers that watched consumers use their stores to find titles they would later buy online. Print sales dwindled, bookstores struggled to stay open, and publishers and authors feared that cheaper e-books would cannibalize their business. Then in 2011, the industry’s fears were realized when Borders declared bankruptcy. “E-books were this rocket ship going straight up,” said Len Vlahos, a former executive director of the Book Industry Study Group, a nonprofit research group that tracks the publishing industry. “Just about everybody you talked to thought we were going the way of digital music.” But the digital apocalypse never arrived, or at least not on schedule. While analysts once predicted that e-books would overtake print by 2015, digital sales have instead slowed sharply. Photo Steve Bercu, co-owner of a bookstore in Austin, Tex., where 2015 sales are up 11 percent, and profits are the highest ever. CreditIlana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times Now, there are signs that some e-book adopters are returning to print, or becoming hybrid readers, who juggle devices and paper. E-book sales fell by 10 percent in the first five months of this year, according to the Association of American Publishers, which collects data from nearly 1,200 publishers. Digital books accounted last year for around 20 percent of the market, roughly the same as they did a few years ago. E-books’ declining popularity may signal that publishing, while not immune to technological upheaval, will weather the tidal wave of digital technology better than other forms of media, like music and television. E-book subscription services, modeled on companies like Netflix and Pandora, have struggled to convert book lovers into digital binge readers, and some have shut down. Sales of dedicated e-reading devices have plunged as consumers migrated to tablets and smartphones. And according to some surveys, young readers who are digital natives still prefer reading on paper. The surprising resilience of print has provided a lift to many booksellers. Independent bookstores, which were battered by the recession and competition from Amazon, are showing strong signs of resurgence. The American Booksellers Association counted 1,712 member stores in 2,227 locations in 2015, up from 1,410 in 1,660 locations five years ago. “The fact that the digital side of the business has leveled off has worked to our advantage,” said Oren Teicher, chief executive of the American Booksellers Association. “It’s resulted in a far healthier independent bookstore market today than we have had in a long time.” Publishers, seeking to capitalize on the shift, are pouring money into their print infrastructures and distribution. Hachette added 218,000 square feet to its Indiana warehouse late last year, and Simon & Schuster is expanding its New Jersey distribution facility by 200,000 square feet. Penguin Random House has invested nearly $100 million in expanding and updating its warehouses and speeding up distribution of its books. It added 365,000 square feet last year to its warehouse in Crawfordsville, Ind., more than doubling the size of the warehouse. “People talked about the demise of physical books as if it was only a matter of time, but even 50 to 100 years from now, print will be a big chunk of our business,” said Markus Dohle, the chief executive of Penguin Random House, which has nearly 250 imprints globally. Print books account for more than 70 percent of the company’s sales in the United States. The company began offering independent booksellers in 2011 two-day guaranteed delivery from November to January, the peak book buying months. Other big publishers, including HarperCollins, have followed suit. The faster deliveries have allowed bookstores to place smaller initial orders and restock as needed, which has reduced returns of unsold books by about 10 percent. Penguin Random House has also developed a data-driven approach to managing print inventory for some of its largest customers, a strategy modeled on the way manufacturers like Procter & Gamble automatically restock soap and other household goods. The company now tracks more than 10 million sales records a day, and sifts through them in order to make recommendations for how many copies of a given title a vendor should order based on previous sales. “It’s a very simple thing; only books that are on the shelves can be sold,” Mr. Dohle said. At BookPeople, a bookstore founded in 1970 in Austin, Tex., sales are up nearly 11 percent this year over last, making 2015 the store’s most profitable year ever, said Steve Bercu, the co-owner. He credits the growth of his business, in part, to the stabilization of print and new practices in the publishing industry, such as Penguin Random House’s so-called rapid replenishment program to restock books quickly. “The e-book terror has kind of subsided,” he said. Other independent booksellers agree that they are witnessing a reverse migration to print. “We’ve seen people coming back,” said Arsen Kashkashian, a book buyer at Boulder Book Store in Boulder, Colo. “They were reading more on their Kindle and now they’re not, or they’re reading both ways.” Digital books have been around for decades, ever since publishers began experimenting with CD-ROMs, but they did not catch on with consumers until 2008, shortly after Amazon released the Kindle. The Kindle, which was joined by other devices like Kobo’s e-reader, the Nook from Barnes & Noble and the iPad, drew millions of book buyers to e-readers, which offered seamless, instant purchases. Publishers saw huge spikes in digital sales during and after the holidays, after people received e-readers as gifts. But those double- and triple-digit growth rates plummeted as e-reading devices fell out of fashion with consumers, replaced by smartphones and tablets. Some 12 million e-readers were sold last year, a steep drop from the nearly 20 million sold in 2011, according to Forrester Research. The portion of people who read books primarily on e-readers fell to 32 percent in the first quarter of 2015, from 50 percent in 2012, a Nielsen survey showed. Higher e-book prices may also be driving readers back to paper. As publishers renegotiated new terms with Amazon in the past year and demanded the ability to set their own e-book prices, many have started charging more. With little difference in price between a $13 e-book and a paperback, some consumers may be opting for the print version. On Amazon, the paperback editions of some popular titles, like “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt, are several dollars cheaper than their digital counterparts. Paperback sales rose by 8.4 percent in the first five months of this year, the Association of American Publishers reported. The tug of war between pixels and print almost certainly isn’t over. Industry analysts and publishing executives say it is too soon to declare the death of the digital publishing revolution. An appealing new device might come along. Already, a growing number of people are reading e-books on their cellphones. Amazon recently unveiled a new tablet for $50, which could draw a new wave of customers to e-books (the first-generation Kindle cost $400). It is also possible that a growing number of people are still buying and reading e-books, just not from traditional publishers. The declining e-book sales reported by publishers do not account for the millions of readers who have migrated to cheap and plentiful self-published e-books, which often cost less than a dollar. At Amazon, digital book sales have maintained their upward trajectory, according to Russell Grandinetti, senior vice president of Kindle. Last year, Amazon, which controls some 65 percent of the e-book market, introduced an e-book subscription service that allows readers to pay a flat monthly fee of $10 for unlimited digital reading. It offers more than a million titles, many of them from self-published authors. Some publishing executives say the world is changing too quickly to declare that the digital tide is waning. “Maybe it’s just a pause here,” said Carolyn Reidy, the president and chief executive of Simon & Schuster. “Will the next generation want to read books on their smartphones, and will we see another burst come?”