Grouchy is as grouchy does!

An end and a fresh start...

2011-12-31T18:19:00.003-05:00

As 2011 comes to it's inevitable end, I have to take a few minutes and reflect on it, and what I have done, and what I will be doing in the future. Has this been a bad year? Nope, not at all. Yes, bad things have happened, but bad things happen every year, it's all a matter of degrees and how we decide to let them affect us.

The bad of 2011, I lost my Gramma Hubler. I loved her dearly, and family reunions will never be the same, but she is shed of her stress and pain, and I like to believe that she is where she expected to be. Maybe not the same place that I will end up, yet she was a woman of her convictions and I am sure that she made it.

Lost my job, got a new one, and then was let go from there for lack of work. Ok, pick myself up and move on. I could have gone back to work any number of times doing stuff that I hated doing, but I decided that it was time to do something that I wanted to do for a change. So, turned that around and now I am in school learning the trade that I wanted to learn 25 years ago. Refrigeration. Halfway through the course and I know I'm on the right road, because I am enjoying every day, and taking a few minutes here and there to help make the guys around me into better techs. Teaching tools and skills to guys who have very little experience in the field. After 30 years of working in various service industries, this is where I finally get to specialize and find my niche.

Been basically broke since I lost the second job, but at the same time I have managed to keep myself afloat with some photography. I still love taking pictures, and I still hope to make it a true livelihood someday, but for now I will continue to do it as a hobby. The goal is to use my newest skills to support the photography, and build me gear collection. Newer and better tools to let me use my talents to their limits.

Love is still something that I often feel is out of my grasp. I'm single, but always perpetually looking with wistful dreams at someone in my life. This year I have a focus, but I know that the time isn't right for her to feel the same way about me. If she ever will. I don't really care, I have become used to being on a one way street, going the wrong way. As I have said to myself and other people, what I care about most is that SHE finds happiness. I guess that's love too.

I still have a pile of friends, and people that I care about, and who seem to care about me. These are good things in my life. Family too, that supports my silliness, and encourages my creativity. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next chapter holds.

In 2012, I have some goals, I won't go so far as to call them resolutions, I don't have that kind of task commitment! Goal 1) is a decent job in the field that I am studying now. I would like to ultimately end up working in a commercial refrigeration company doing grocery stores, storage facilities and manufacturing process cooling, but for now, any job in the industry, to give me experience and a foothold is all I am shooting for.

Increasing my Photography skills, both in usage and in editing/enhancement. I want to get better at feeling how the lens will alter my own perception of a scene and making the adjustments to bring what I see into the picture. I want to capture more emotion, and keep finding better ways to show off the people that I shoot doing what they do best.

I would like to be out of debt by the end of 2012. I'm nearly there to be sure, and I have to keep from digging another hole. Some of this part is based on employment, but with full time employment at a decent wage, I should see the previous hole filled in and the shovel tamping it down before next fall. A long way off to be sure, but every week gets me a little bit closer!

On my health front, I really do need to get my weight under control and get rid of some of the excess. Not only to help keep myself out of the family diabetic circle, but also to help keep my joints and bones healthier. I seem to be pretty lucky to this point in my life, I haven't damaged much in my body other than skin, but being the size I am isn't good for so much of me, and I need to try and keep what I have in good working order!

That't about it for today, the end of the year, a few short hours away from 2012. I hope all of you who may read this have a great day, and an amazing year. Dream of good things, and then go make good things happen.

been a while...

2011-08-24T16:44:00.003-04:00

Just looking at the date of the last couple of posts and I realize that I have not been content, yet I have also been very quiet. I'm not sure why I have been quiet, maybe it has been a general feeling of uselessness, or perhaps the need to vent has been largely taken up by Facebook. These Interwebs have a way of sucking me in from one page to another and before I know it my whole night has been wasted. Now the day has too! But I progress... yup that's right, I said the word I wanted!

So since my last post, for anyone who cares or mayhaps didn't know, I have been unemployed, re-employed, and re-unemployed. Now I am collecting some weekly benefits from the state as I get myself together to get me some new edumications. I've long wished to get into building maintenance, and I am going to get my state certification to make me much better hire-able in said field. Why Building maintenance, you may be asking yourself, and it's actually a kinda easy answer. First, I like the fact that it's a multidisciplinary field, I can be a plumber, an electrician, an HVAC tech, a carpenter, a safety tech, a painter, and a landscaper. I can do indoor and outdoor work in the same day. I'm not stuck to a machine and I can walk around. B) While I like being a machine technician, it is often a high stress job because there are constantly people harping on you about getting the machine running so they can meet some deadline or another. And Lastly), it's a job that should afford me some time to pursue my true interest which is Photography.

As for the photography, this spring I went and got my DBA, so I am considered a legit business. The next step of course is to get a tax number and start worrying about actually collecting and paying taxes, but please, baby steps. Besides, I need to be much better at math, and I'm not really. Have been taking pics though, and having a great time doing it. As with any business that depends on other people's input, sometimes waiting for customers to get back to me is the hard part. Elbow joggling and email stalking may become a part of my stock in trade. It's always interesting how people want the initial work ASAP, but then when it comes time to select the final product, they hem and haw forever. Oh well, I guess that's part of dealing with the general public. I need me a business manager, or at least someone who likes doing the business side of things. I'm SO much happier doing the creative part of the process. Practice helps, and the more practice that I get, the more confident I feel setting up shots with clients. I enjoy working with people, and trying to find that little bit of their soul that peeks out from their smiles. Sometimes it's not the easiest thing to do, because people can be really guarded, but when those moments show up, man, it's like magic.

Speaking of magic, I have that obsessive feeling again. There is someone in my life that I want to know better, and it is like pulling teeth to get close enough, or to get some time with her. She is definitely a busy lady, and I understand that, but at the same time if the universe would cooperate just a little bit, it would be nice. I know how my mind works, and maybe I'm seeing something that I want to see as opposed to what is really there, but I sense at least a little interest. While this isn't always in my favor, it is definitely in hers. Have I told you about my curse? Well, here it is, I have this odd thing in my life, where it seems that whenever I find a girl, (lady, woman, you choose!) who is actually interested in me, within a matter of weeks she will meet the guy whom she will end up marrying. To my knowledge only one of those couples is not still together, and I suspect that she wasn't as interested in me as she acted. That being said, I have been a little touchy about pursuing anyone that I am interested in, because it so often ends with me heart broken. Now I have found that one who fits my oh so persnickety tastes, and I just want the chance to try and woo her, and it seems like the roadblocks are starting to pop up left and right. It's funny how I came to be interested in this amazing lady, but at the same time it's truly an organic thing too, so I'm sort of trusting my senses here. Without being to specific since I don't want to embarrass anyone here, (besides myself, and what have I got to lose?) when I first met her I was not much attracted or interested, there were (are) a couple things about her are completely against everything that I believe in in my life. BUT, the funny thing is that as I got to know her through talking to her occasionally and listening to her family talk about her, I realized that she was way more than that first glimpse that I didn't care for, and when I had the chance to talk to her along the way, I found myself unexpectedly drawn to her. Now I would love to really try and win her over, and it seems like it's gonna be a chore. Well, you know what "they" say, if it's worth having, it's worth working for. I'm thinking that she is definitely worth working for. Time will tell. remember when you were a kid and you would do stuff that was gross to impress the opposite sex? Yup, I did it. I am not a huge fan of steamed clams but because she offered, I ate one. Felt like a little kid asked to eat worms, but you know what? For her, it was worth it! Now what? Guess I have to dig out my romance hat and see if it still fits. Been so long I'm not even sure if I remember where I stashed it!

have to answer...

2011-03-23T21:26:00.004-04:00

So a friend of mine has a blog, and She wrote this post... (click the colored words to find the original post)

RE: Guess what, I know why people act like jerks.

Here's the comment that I tried to leave last night and ended up having to write all over again!! This time I am keeping it where I can find it until I know you will have a chance to see it.

In general I agree with much of what you have said, But I must argue with you about using Elvis as and example, not because I am any particular fan of the Big E, but because he never bought drugs from anyplace but a licensed pharmacist. You see, he never took a drug that wasn't prescribed by his physician. So while he was indeed drug addled and addicted, he was continually under a Dr.'s care and he never took anything that was considered to be an illegal drug. He was known to drink occasionally, but he wasn't a drunkard by any extant of the imagination, according to all that I have ever read about him. Now Instead of Elvis, lets talk about some real Icons of American Music, Johnny Cash, George Jones and Hank Williams, These men have well known and documented drug and drinking problems. One of them died before he ever had a chance to redeem himself, while the other two lived long enough to not only redeem their lives, but to go on and thrive in a clean life. Sadly, it is the state of Celebrity that they are given special treatment. The talented and the gifted will be allowed leeway that the general public would not, why? Perhaps it is the implicit understanding that with genius comes flaws, and a certain amount of eccentricity. But what about today's society and the 24 hour news cycle?

In a day when the media feels the need to fill 24 hours of the day with "news" they focus on things that are popular, rather than the things that really matter. Ratings are king, they sell eyes and ears, and they put up what draws eyes and ears. The more they can draw in, the more they can charge the advertisers. You of all people should know that. So when the world is falling apart and our hearts are tired of being wrenched by dead families in Japan and the Middle East, and the shock of flag draped coffins has lost it's zing, they jump right back into the celebrity "news" Charlie Sheen, Mel Gibson, and Lindsay Lohan, or whomever has done the new thing that is getting attention on TMZ. TMZ is the source for MSNBC, CNN and Fox News when it comes to that type of thing. The truth is that too many people in American actually take pride in the fact that they can't speak a second language, identify most foreign countries on a globe, or name their congressional representatives. These are things that actually matter, but they would much rather know who is driving in the race this weekend and what their standings are in the fantasy Baseball league. Is it any wonder that we elevate assholes?

A great author once said that the end of any great society is in sight when the people would rather have cake and circuses than worry about what happens in the halls of their government. We are at that point, and more and more people are becoming enamored with the circus, so the clowns will take center stage, and they are certainly the jerks of society.

Sheeple and the Hoax

2010-12-27T21:53:00.001-05:00

One of the greatest things about Social Networking, (Facebook) is the ability to spread a message quickly through the network. Even TV has to struggle to keep up with the speed of this amazing conglomeration of friends, fans, family and assorted hangers-on. Raising awareness, raising money, and simply raising spirits are all easily accomplished with the amazing thing that is Facebook. It is a powerful tool, made even more powerful by the very people who use it.

Power comes with a certain amount of responsibility. The people behind Facebook do their part trying to keep the users safe from the Loonies out there in the cybersphere trying to cause problems. Mischief Makers, and hackers, those that would create malicious viruses, and those who would steal our data and identities. Yet there is another responsibility that we can't depend on anyone but ourselves to exercise, and we must get better at wielding this responsibility.

The reason that we can spread a message so quickly is because we have easily grasped the "copy & paste" method of status updates. In many cases this has been a boon, spreading Amber Alerts across the world in a matter of hours. Getting out the message that Dragons are dangerous, (or that they like you with ketchup!) thanking our mothers and step-mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters and every other family member that we want to butter up. We can raise awareness of anything and everything that we think needs the awareness of raised. Sometimes we get carried away and forget that not everything we read is the truth, and before we know it we have become part of a problem rather than a cure.

There are far too many people who get their kicks by starting and spreading misinformation and trying to scare society in general, and far too often they do it so sneakily that nobody bothers to check the facts. The facts are the biggest thing that most people forget. They can read a post that includes the words "on the news" or "from a reliable source" and never bother to check for themselves whether something is true or just some knucklehead trying to start a panic. When we are sitting at our computers we literally have the WORLD at our fingertips.

Snopes.com, Facebook security, and at least a dozen other websites specialize in finding the facts of any crazy "news" story that crops up online and spreads like wildfire because people copy & paste without ever looking for backing facts. No matter how outlandish something seems, if people read the words that their friends post and "saw on the news", they will copy & paste into their own status with all urgency and never look back. They feel that they have done a great service to society and never bother to see if any of it is true. Sometimes it's harmless, but other times, it throws a giant monkey wrench into something that was going so well, and doing some good.

The best example of this happened in the first weeks of December. According to a story on ABC News a group of friends in Greece ( the Mediterranean country not the town or city) decided that it would be fun to try and subvert their Facebook profiles and replace their usual pics with cartoon characters. This morphed into something with people trying to raise awareness of child abuse. So by putting a cartoon character in your profile picture, and copying and pasting the status one would be "joining" the cause. Even for those who did no more than read the status updates and see why suddenly, all of their friends had cartoon profiles, there was a little good being done. In the follow-up stories there was a notable spike in donations to child welfare causes over the second week of December, over and above the normal rise associated with the holiday season. Cut to the second Monday of December and suddenly there appears in the statuses the message that The cartoon characters are "a ploy by pedophiles" to snare children with their friend requests. It was "on the news" and "seen on TV". But it was nothing of the sort.

In fact what DID make the news was that the campaign had actually had the effect it had intended, raised awareness of child abuse and neglect. As cited above there was a spike in charitable donations world wide towards child welfare charities, yet all it took to dry this thing up, was the mere mention that it was a ploy by pedophiles. Within hours, in fact probably 5 times faster than the original "Change to a cartoon" Status, there came the wave after wave of the warning, all caps and screaming that it was "ploy by pedophiles". The hoaxsters know the buttons to push. In a matter of a day, all the good that was done in two weekends of cartoon characters was washed away.

18 hours after I first saw the "pedophile" update, I finally found the debunking of the hoax on Snopes. But it was too late, too many people had already seen the hoax and jumped on the band wagon, without ever doing their own research to verify the source of this "TV News Show" where this story supposedly broke. The Sheeple had fallen for the Hoax, again.

I can't blame people for being cautious, but what I do blame them for is being cautious in the wrong way. These days of 24 hour news channels have made people live in fear. What once upon a time would have been a regional story at best, lost hikers, parental kidnap, high speed pursuit, or anything that might make the local TV news is now blasted nationwide in a matter of minutes, especially on a slow national news day. Every story gets it's own graphic and trumpeting lead in. Teasers into the commercials, and shots from every angle, inside and out, up and down. Society has become the lookouts for "the next big story." Cellphone video makes the 6 o'clock news and gets picked up by CNN and MSNBC and FOX News. The stories are picked apart and analyzed by any expert who wants to make a few bucks and a little screen time. We are NOT the better for it. We panic at the slightest provocation, looking for a bogeyman behind every bush, and if we can do our part we feel that we have done right.

But our part is to be responsible with the power that we have, taking a few minutes to look for a few facts to be sure that we are sharing the truth with our friends and family. THAT is doing Right.

Where did the year go?

2010-12-01T21:19:00.002-05:00

So here it is, the first of December, and my birthday is fast approaching! 43 this year,sure don't feel like I'm that old. Somewhere in the back of m=y mind I guess I'm conscious of it, but the rest of the time I feel like I'm still in my 20's and just learning how to live. Then I see the kids in the fire hall or the bar, and I know that I have so much more experience. It's not really doing me that much good in general, but it does give me the smarts to stop drinking way before I get into hangover territory. Haven't drank myself unconscious in years. maybe that's what I need... nah. I can live the rest of my life and not miss being on my knees in front of a toilet bowl heaving the last bits of mucus out of my guts because that's all that's left!

SO, what have I done with my life this past year, let me see if I can take some stock. I have realized that I have a talent and I have decided that it is what I will pursue for the rest of my life. Looking for some satisfaction in the work I do. I am a photographer. I may not be the artist of Adams, or Freytag, but I know what I want to do, and I know how to get there. I have to learn how to conduct business. That';s something I have never really had a hand on, but it's something that I know I can learn. So the goal here is to learn how to make a living with my photography, whether it is selling prints or doing senior pics, family portraits or even school sports. There is a living to be made with it, I just have to figure out how to do it. As I learn the mechanics of taking consistently good pictures, I am also figuring out how to market my particular sill set. It can't happen overnight, but it will happen.

Still single. Haven't really had much luck in lady-land. Not really for lack of trying, but more for a lack of dedication. I have become so used to being alone and being rejected that I just don't seem to enjoy the search like I used to, and I don't follow the opportunities. There have been a couple of chances, at least I THINK they were chances, that I just walked away from. I may be just so far out of practice that I don't know how anymore. I did figure one really important thing out about myself though, when I meet someone who is single and I am aware of that fact, I do and say stupid things right away. I never get the chance to be the smart and witty guy that I really am. I put way too much pressure on myself, and I try to impress instantly and I screw it up in a big way. I realized it when I was introduced to a friend's wife recently. Because there was NO need to try and impress her to try and get her to see me a second time, I was my natural sweet self and I made a great first impression. so it's in my own head, I just have to learn to control the "stupid Impulse" a little better. Secondly, I am still single because I have no place that I would like to take a girl. Can't take her home, and don't want to hang out all night someplace stupid, like a bar or Tim Ho's.

Joined the Fire Dept. as a social member. That means that I don't run into burning buildings! I get to hang out and drink beer with the guys who do! I joined for the opportunity to take pictures of firefighters in action. I have been to one fire scene this year, and many training sessions. Not really that unhappy that peoples houses didn't burn down. In fact I can only thing of three structure fires that dept was involved in, and I was nearly first on the scene for one of them, and none were in our home district, all in neighboring areas. But I have been having fun getting to know new people and leaning new things. I have become a fixture at bingo, and the ladies there love me! I actually enjoy the time I spend there, because I get to talk to people and hear some gossip about the town. I have fun selling raffle tickets to the customers, and calling numbers. I get to make a few jokes here and there and get people to laugh, so all in all that's pretty cool.

Working again as a DJ. Still sitting with the decks. Well, not really! These days all my tunes are in the computer. I still have to run a mixing board, and pick and lay out the song list and keep people happy, but The pile of gear is a lot less these days! I'm not running all over hell and back to get gear and to do shows, I work one place with their gear and that's all I have to do. It doesn't pay as well as the other way, but I still get paid for doing a pretty easy job.

Debt. Man, I got myself into a hole over the last few years, and I had to make it bigger before I could make it smaller. Learned a WHOLE lot of shit about the credit card system this year, and if I knew in January what I know now, I would be SO much farther ahead in my pursuit of financial freedom. Live and learn I suppose, but at this moment I don't have a shred of credit. If I don't have money in the bank, I don't have any to spend. and sometimes that ain't easy. But I keep plugging away, and fingers crossed I may be ahead again in another year or so. Look at this post next year and see where I am!!

Health.... I don't know, the weight is back up, and I am not feeling as good about myself as I would like. I have been having the hardest time with controlling my eating. I have been binging something fierce, and I think I know why, but knowing the reason and stopping the behavior are 2 different things. Every day I wake up and start over and some days I do really good, and some days I do really bad. Sadly, the bad days are out numbering the good ones. I really believe that the biggest piece of the solution puzzle is going to be a place of my own. That's going to be at least another year, until I get my truck paid off so that I can put that money towards rent. I'm sure that by the time I have the truck paid off it will need something major and will take all my spare money again. Like my life always seems to go, but I am looking in that direction at least. I don't know if my waistline can wait another 10 months, but I'm gonna have to try. I just don't see any solutions sooner than that.

This year overall? I going to say that the positives seem to outweigh the negatives, but it's really a delicate balance. Something small could tip the scales. I hope things stay positive.

Life's little annoyances

2010-09-22T22:59:00.002-04:00

Well judging by the title, one might think I'm in a grumpy mood, but truthfully, that's not the case. I have been too far gone from myself in the last few months to even know my own mind, and I'm not sure why. I have been busy, and bummed and broke. Some of that isn't new, seems that I have spent most of my life broke, but then unless you're born with the silver spoon, you did too! I guess broke is a subjective thing, because we all look at it based on our own experience. To some broke is about being able to do whatever you want to do, and to other broke is about being able to eat, so in that respect I guess I'm just not happy with my ability to Purchase and provide amusements. I am working on clearing up some of my excess debt for two reasons, One is so that I may finally be able to work on getting my own domicile of some sort or another, be it an apartment, or finally building my house. The second is so that I can get some more Photographic equipment, to go towards living my dream of becoming a professional photographer.

The bummed I am certain has 2 reasons, one is my simple loneliness in the love department. Being alone is nice for many things but when you want to share stuff with someone and there is nobody around to do it with, .... Second, bummed is because I am in serious need of a vacation and yet I don't have the time and money to take one. I'm not even meaning a trip to Europe ( as much as I would LOVE to go) just getting out of state for a week would give me a GREAT new outlook on life. There is one other bummed too, but I think it's about my overall frustration with my situation. I have gained weight like a pregnant elephant! I have nearly put back on all that I lost last year. in fact in the last 2 months I have gained nearly 15 pounds alone. last weekend I finally got disgusted enough with myself, and I have lumbered back up on the wagon and I am monitoring my carb and overall caloric intake. So it's a daily struggle to get a handle on my crazy appetites and cravings.

I know that part of the frustration comes from being lonely, and another comes from lacking my own place. I think they are linked though because I don't have the privacy to bring someone home. Oh well....

Man I should write something...

2010-07-21T23:01:00.002-04:00

I have this damn blog and I haven't been writing in it much lately I haven't been too creative feeling in the writing phase at least not here anyway. I have been writing on Facebook, why? because I have Friends there who will see my stuff!! I like to write, and I like to do other stuff too, the problem lately is that I am much more busy with my other stuff. The other reason is that my ire hasn't been rised up much lately. Mostly because I have found a certain disgust with humanity and I have resigned myself to the fact that most of them are surrendering braincells and free will simply because they either don't know enough to think on their own, or they are willfully ignorant. Anyway, I just needed a post to keep my stuff active!

Meanings...

2010-06-09T21:31:00.002-04:00

I have to laugh. People can read the same exact words and take them completely differently. Seems like some see them for what they are and some see them for what they want them to mean.

Any language has connotation, and simple phrases can mean many different things depending upon who says it and how they say it. The spoken language is rife with the easy double-entendre, and many people assume the more risque meaning. But that's not even what I was speaking of in the first place. I love facebook, because it is so easy to misunderstand what someone means in their updates. You really come to realize just how many people can't spell, but not only that, how few have a true grasp of their own language. How do they expect the world to take them seriously in the need to use English in America, when they can barely use English effectively themselves?

I was never really a grammar guru, unless someone was actually trying to sound intelligent, then I was always glad to help. I have always been proud of the fact that I can speak properly when I need to, but I also love to mangle the language on purpose. Sadly, too many people mangle the language completely oblivious to the fact that they are doing so. I'm entirely too lazy today to find and post examples, but one of my pet peeves is the current usage of the phrase, "All of a sudden..." entirely too many people are beginning to say, "All the sudden..." Absolutely incorrect, and the most annoying thing going right now. The other one that is killing me, is in the written language, when people say the word "Should've," ( which technically isn't really correct either as it should be "should have") and then spell it as "should of". It kills me!!

Oh well, sadly it will only get worse. "Idocracy" is more premonition than comedy.

The eulogy I wrote for my Gramma.

2010-05-04T23:03:00.001-04:00

Mary Louise was born on April 19th, 1924, and she lived for 86 years and 8 days. That’s 31 thousand, 400 and 19 days. Humanity marks time in many ways, from the tiny nanosecond to the Earth changing epoch. But the most prescious time that we have, is our lifetime. Because we can only remember the one that we are living.

Mary Louise, Was, Is, will always be, my grandmother, and I will always remember her as Gramma. But she was far more in her lifetime than just Gramma. She was Daughter, sister, Aunt wife, Mother Grandmother, Great Grandmother and even Great Great Grandmother. All those things, plus she was also known to many more as friend. She truly lived a Lifetime.

My gramma was a woman who’s life could have filled many lifteimes of an ordinary person, but Mary was rather extraordinary. She didn’t take the easy way out, and she didn’t give up. Born in the roaring 20’s she saw the great depression, and studied her way through World War II. She became a Nurse, and married Grampa Oliver and raised a family. Not seperately, but at the same time. In a time when most women gave up their careers to be homemakers and mothers, she kept her career and took care of her family too. She didn’t have a womans lib agenda, she just knew that what she and Grampa wanted from their life would require hard work, and she was never afraid of it.

She gave the world her time, her love and 4 amazing children. One of them, my father. Mark, Barbara, Danny and Steve. Each one a testament to the woman that she was. Mark, independent and strong willed, Barbara , Loving and devoted, Danny adventurous and hard working, and Steve clever and dedicated. All of them Intelligent and informed, they found their way in the world using the tools that Mary and Oliver had given them. Each in their own way finding sucess and enjoying their own Lifetime.

Mary Spent 40+ years as a Nurse at Strong Hospital in Rochester. She touched so many lives in some of their darkest hours, and she always brought a little light. She cared about her patients and her co-workers as well. I remember Gramma in her nurses uniform, all crisp and starched, cap on just so, and her crepe soled shoes, always spotless. ( which wasn’t easy in a house full of kids and dogs!) I remember sitting in a hospital with her some years ago and she commented on the lax dress code of today, and how nurses no longer wore the starched whites and caps that they worked so hard for in her day. She told me that it was one of her proudest days when she recieved her nurses cap, and to her it was better than a tiara, because she earned it.

I know that in her lifetime, she found many smiles, because one thing that Mary loved was to laugh. She had to have a sense of humor to live in our family anyway, because without it she probably would have just gone nuts! We are lucky in this family that our Gramma wasn’t camera shy. We have pictures from so many occasions, and in so many of them she is laughing at something that one of us had done. Whether it was making rude noises or sly comments, we gave her plenty to laugh at.

Gramma had her foibles too, and who can blame her, Nobody is perfect after all. She hated rodents, especially mice and rats. during the first winter after Grampa passed I came to stay with Gramma and help her out. One of my duties was to put out rat poison. I told her that I didn’t mind doing it, but that the little buggers would probably die in the walls and stink up the place, but she was adamant, She said she would rather smell them rotting in her walls than Pooping in her cupboards! I came home from work one night and found all the lights on in the house and the TV going, but no car in th driveway. When I got to the house there was a note on the door that said “ I’m at ma’s, come and get me after you clean out the mouse trap behind the stove.” When I got to Great Gramma’s house to pick her up, she told me that she was watching the evening news when she heard the trap go off, and she stood up and put on her coat and grabbed her purse and walked out the door! She wasn’t gonna be in the house where she knew there was a mouse twitching around under the stove!

When I think of Gramma, I have so many memories that I barely know where to begin, but certain things stand out in my mind. Being a little kid an gramma giving me a bath in the kitchen sink. Gramma making pancakes on a sunday morning at the farm. Gramma never sitting still during thanksgiving dinner. I remember sitting with her in the twilight waiting for the first star to appear, and trying to see who would spot it first. I think she won more times than I did. Gramma always had some candy stashed and other tasty treats around.

One Lifetime. It’s probably one of the most valuable measures of time that Humanity has.

I know that in her lifetime she touched many lives and I truly believe she made each one better. In my memory she will always be laughing and smiling. I hope that she will be doing the same in yours.

My Gramma...

2010-04-28T20:59:00.000-04:00

Today the world lost a pretty cool person. My Paternal Grandmother passed away this morning in her sleep. She had been sick for a while now, and while it was something that we have been preparing for, it was still a shock when it actually happened. A woman who was born in the Roaring 20's and was a child of the The Great Depression, She was a college student during World War II and became a mother to 4 Baby Boomers. Three sons and one daughter gave her a full house and a full plate, but not only that, she was also a RN. She worked at one of the biggest Hospitals in Rochester NY for Over 30 years on top of being a mother and wife. . That barely scrapes the surface of who she was, and Let me tell you all, she was something!

My Gramma was a cool lady. Even when she didn't fully approve of what you were doing, she would give you the respect of letting you make your own mistakes. I spent a good portion of my early days living under her roof, and in later years I even spent part of a year living with her as an adult. She had her quirks, but she was a tough lady, and she didn't put up with crap she didn't like.

When I was a kid, her and my grandfather owned an old farm in Allegheny County (NY) and while they didn't raise much more than some chickens, the occasional pig and plenty of dogs she was still "Farm Gramma" to me for most of my childhood years. I always looked forward to going to Farm Gramma's house for a weekend, or better yet for a week in the summer time. Gramma always had things around that I liked, she had a bag of ballons in the buffet in the dinning room. She always had sliced cheese in the fridge, and Ice cream in the freezer. In the summer time she always had a plentiful supply of little jars to put fireflies into after my cousins and I captured them. Gramma's house was where we all went for Thanksgiving dinner and she always put out the relish tray at noon, so we could snack on gherkins and carrots and little chocolate mints while we waited for the turkey to be done. We always had to clean off the dining room table before we could set it for dinner. I am sure that I inherited my "flat surface syndrome" from her and Grampa. Gramma was a good cook, but she never trusted her memory for recipes, she ALWAYS used the cookbook or the recipe card, and she measured everything precisely. But she always had consistent results! She made the best custard and lemon meringue pies. She made great tasting biscuits, even if you could knock someone out with one if you threw it at their head! Gramma always had time to explain stuff to me.

It's funny the things I remember about Gramma. She hated rodents, especially mice. When I was living with her, I used to work a couple of late shifts during the week, and I wouldn't get home until after midnight, so usually she would be asleep in bed and most of the lights would be out. Well, one night after setting out mousetraps in the afternoon, I got home from work and as I pulled into the driveway, I see that every light in the house is on, and her car is gone. So I head for the house and I found a note on the door, that said, " I am at Ma's house, come and get me after you empty the mousetrap behind the stove!" She had been watching TV in the living room when she heard the distinctive snap of the mousetrap. She immediately got out of her chair, grabbed her coat and purse and walked out to the car. She never paused to turn off the TV, or any lights. She hated mice that much. When I put out poison for the mice and other vermin, I told her, they will eat the poison and then die in the walls and stink up the joint, and her answer was that she would rather smell them rotting in the walls, then know they were alive and peeing and pooping in her cupboards! She had her limits!!

A few years ago she suffered a mild stroke, and while it didn't take away her motor functions, it did affect her short term memory. It was heartbreaking to spend time with her, because we could have the same conversation five or six times in an hour. She loved to read the newspaper, and she had to dog-ear the pages so that she would know that she had already read them. Sometimes that didn't help, but it was always new news each time she turned the pages!

I will remember every day that I spent with her, every holiday, and special occasion. Every car ride, and each lesson that she taught me. The skinned knees and the scraped knuckles. Cuts and bruises bandaged and tended. I will remember the spankings that I definitely deserved, and sleeping in the beds that slid apart in the night. Her crisp sheets, and the warm, comfy quilts that she made for us. I have pictures of her that I will treasure. and memories that make me laugh. Stories that I will be telling until I get to see her again. Gramma will be missed, but she will live on with me far as long as I have breath.

SO... Dear Gramma, I love you, and I'm sure gonna miss you. You were the best Gramma a guy could hope for. XO

what life has in store...

2010-04-18T22:34:00.004-04:00

we are born, we live, we die. Everyone follows that basic path in life, but some of us fill the middle part with so much stuff, that it seems like they have lived 3 lifetimes. Other people, well, let's just say that they complain more about what they don't do than what they actually do.

Yes, I am one to complain, but I am also one to go and do too, so I fall somewhere in that middle ground. I like to try new things and see new places, and sometimes even meet new people. At the same time, I am limited in what I can accomplish because of financial or time barriers. Usually the time barrier is based on trying to overcome the financial barrier, but still! So that said, I have found that sometimes it is not the things that we go out and seek that bring the most fun, or satisfaction. Occasionally it is the surprises in life that are really the best things.

I have found that when I am open to new experiences, I find them. Whether it is trying new things, learning something new, or simply meeting new people. Everyday that we walk this planet, we have a chance to try something new. It's simply a matter of making s different choice than you have made before. Step outside of your usual rut and find something different. Have you driven by a particular road for years, and always wondered what down it? Take a few extra minutes on your way home some afternoon and see. Maybe you will find a park or a pasture, or someones flower garden that makes your day. Have you always wanted to travel but can't afford it? Maybe take the time to learn the language of someplace that you want to visit. You don't have to become fluent, but open your mind and perhaps find some friends who speak that language and practice. You will find a new way of seeing the world when you can describe it in a new way.

As a photographer, one of the things that we always try to do ( at least good photogs anyways!) is try to see things in a way that is unique and interesting. There are somethings in this world that have been photographed so many times that you may never have a chance to get a unique pic, but if you are looking for it, you just may find it. How many pictures have you ever seen of the Eiffel Tower in the fog? SO if you're ever in Paris and it's a foggy day, Go take that picture, you may just have the coolest picture ever! And all because you were open to something different.

We are on this planet for a relatively short time and while there is much debate about what comes afterward, the one thing that we know for sure, is that most people only remember one life at a time. Since we only get one chance to remember it, we may as well have some fun with it!

Crazy stuff

2010-04-08T23:02:00.003-04:00

I never know what my life is gonna show me, and sometimes it surprises me. For many years I have guarded my credit rating like a fiend, scrimping and saving to make sure that I got my credit card bills paid on time. I have spent way more than I should have and then worked mad overtime and second and third jobs to cover the bills. On top of that I have been paying finance charges for nearly 25 years now so I guess the companies have made their money back from me and a pretty nice profit too. Last month I gave it up. I let the bills go delinquent and enlisted the services of a debt settlement company. I took the harshest road I could and went for the 2 year payoff. The sad part is that for the last couple years I have been trying to consolidate my outstanding debt and get it paid off, but nobody wanted to help me that way, they were making way too much off the finance charges. Now that I have gone off the reservation they are all telling me about these consolidation deals that they will offer me. Too late dick wads!! Tired of dealing with it all so now you can take what the agency will negotiate, and I am sure that it will be significantly less than I would have paid had you helped me when I was first asking. I never wanted to do this, it just turned out to be the way to get the end that I needed. I have cut up the credit cards and now if I can't pay cash. I don't get it. Pretty simple and it feels good. It will take a while to get used to the lack of plastic for any little thing, but in the end it will be better for me. Good riddance!

Lesson in Focal planes

2010-03-17T20:00:00.005-04:00

Ok Little brother, and anyone else who happens to read this blog, I am giving lessons today! This lesson is about Depth of focus and the art of photography, If you look at this first picture you will notice that pretty much each stem of the Crocus shoots pictures are in sharp focus. This is what many professional photographers would call "snapshot" it's a pretty picture and the subject is in focus, but to the professional, the pictures is cluttered and has no attention drawing point in it. Go ahead and click on it and see a bigger version of it to study it a little bit.
Now we come to the next picture and you will notice that there seems to be a huge portion of it that it out of focus, and indeed, there is. What has happened is that the depth of focus has been shallowed out to the minimum of the lens set-up. Because it isn't a specifically designed "macro" lens, the minimal depth is about 1.25 inches, rather than millimeters, however it is what I have to work with so it will do. As you look at the picture you will notice that the very front stems are in focus, from the ground to the tips. Both the foreground and the background of the picture are out of focus and the eye is naturally drawn to the sharp field. The Camera has not been moved from the first picture, only the F-stop has been changed thereby narrowing the focal plane. Go ahead and click on it and study the larger version for a minute or two.
Now we come to the 3rd picture and this time the focal plane has been shifted to the center of the group. Again the eye is drawn to the sharply focused stems in the center of the field. Notice that the white stripe in the center of the bent stems is in clear focus, making it very easy to identify these stems and the blades of the Crocus plant. Would you have as quickly noticed that in the first or second picture? Maybe, but probably not, and now there is now doubt what you are looking at, because it was brought to your attention by the selective focus.
Now we come to the last picture where the focal plane has been moved to the back of the group. Does it do anything special to the picture, other than making the front really fuzzy and the tips in the rear sharp? Not really, because there is really nothing in that area to show. So why show you this picture? Because it shows you that you weren't really missing anything from the other two. Generally it is quite expected to soften the areas of macro pictures that don't have any specific details to look at. The goal is to direct the eye of the observer to the interesting parts of the picture and keep them from wasting time on the useless background.
I hope this gives you a better understanding of the uses and desirability of the soft background in photos. I also hope that perhaps you will take notice of it and how it is used in the pictures you see around you day to day. There are many places where it is desirable to have perfect, crisp, clear focus throughout the entire picture, such as landscapes and forensics, but for Portraiture of specific artistic subjects, sharply focused pictures are a detriment.

Peevish

2010-03-12T20:11:00.003-05:00

One thing that drives me nuts is when people screw up their own language, especially when they do it thinking they are correct! I don't mind it when someone knows better and simply makes a point of mistakes, in a joking manner. Like when someone pronounces "scissors" as "skissors", or when they pronounce the "k" in knife, knee or knob, that is funny and obviously a purposeful mispronunciation . What drives my nutty however, is the misstatement of a normal everyday expression, and there is one in particular that has been bugging me lately and it seems to be getting worse.

For all of my life there has been an expression using an adjective, to express surprise, and the expression is, "All of a sudden..." Somewhere in the last few years I have noticed various people using the misstated expression, "All the sudden..." Apparently it began as the slight misstatement, "All of the sudden..." but somewhere along the line people began dropping the "of" from the expression and they have managed to bastardize an already bastardized expression! What the hell is wrong with saying it correctly? Drives me nuts!!

Now the other thing that I have been thinking about lately has to do with relationships. Specifically, how people treat each other in them. I have been noticing recently that many people in long term relationships treat each other quite poorly. It is odd to me how the behavior that we wouldn't tolerate in strangers, or even our friends, we let our "lovers" get away with regularly. We often let them walk over our feelings and treat us with near disdain, and disrespect. Yet, if the people that we called friend treated us with half of the same disrespect we would drop them from our lives and probably never talk to them again. However, when the person that we share our life with treats us this way, we give them chance after chance, and yet they do it over and over again. If you caught a friend lying to you on multiple occasions, you would walk away from them and find new friends. If you found your friends stealing from you, you would not remain friends for very long, still, time and again those that we "love" are allowed another chance. Stupid people. If you can't be friends with someone, how can you fall in love with them? I just don't get it!

Give and take...

2010-02-22T21:44:00.003-05:00

Reading Facebook recently I have come across a lot of friends and acquaintances who are having trouble in their relationships, in some cases it is with new relationships, sometimes it's an old one. Sometimes it is a boyfriend or girlfriend, and sometimes the husband or wife, but whatever way it goes, it always seems to come down to honesty and communication. Somebody does something that they know they shouldn't be doing and then tries to cover it up, or lie about it outright. Here's a little something I have learned over the years....

If anyone wishes to have a strong and lasting relationship, they must first be honest with themselves about what they want and what they expect from their relationships. If you don't know what you want, or worse yet, don't know what you are bringing to a relationship, then you have a terrible chance of having a successful one. Unrealistic expectations are also another problem. The world is not a romantic comedy where you have witty repartee and funny arguments, make up and live happily ever after. Don't get me wrong there really can be a happy ever after, but this doesn't mean that you don't have to work at it and grow. Many people believe in the old adage that opposites attract, and in truth they do, but in general, they aren't good matches, the same as you don't wish to have a partner who is the exact same person as you are. So what works? Complementary couples.

No, I don't mean that you have to always compliment each other, ( but it sure doesn't hurt!) what I mean is you need to find someone who fills in your weaknesses. Are you great with faces and names, but not so good with jobs and families? You need a partner who remembers those types of details but may not be necessarily good with faces. You become a team with all the details covered. Are you great with people, but have trouble standing up for yourself when you need to be a little assertive? You need to find someone who knows your limits and is willing to stand up for you when you can't, yet won't take advantage of that very same weakness. Do you like to walk in nature and look at the birds and the trees, you need someone who likes to walk in nature and look at the flowers and the critters, this way you can both enjoy nature and you will see danger from above, while your partner will see the danger from below. This way you are a stronger pair than either of you would be alone.

Of course you need to have somethings in common too, you have to be comfortable with certain aspects of a relationship. Big ones, including sex, family structure, child rearing, if you differ greatly on these then your relationship is gonna be rocky. Sex is HUGE, because if one partner wants it all the time and the other would rather not, then sooner or later the unsatisfied partner is going to look someplace else to get what they aren't getting at home. Then they lie about it, usually. This is a place where honesty is extremely important, because being incompatible in the bedroom will never be a great relationship. So if your partner is a horny little dog, and you are happy with once a month, get it out in the open and get a grip on what this really is gonna mean. If you don't want to get it on with your partner, then be willing to let them get it someplace else with the understanding and agreement about safety and discretion. This seems like an odd thing, but think about it, without the agreement there is lying and sneaking around and when the truth comes out there is harsh words and hurt feelings and a huge emotional mess. If you were upfront in the beginning, you would have a much healthier relationship in the long run. And less stress. Sexual differences cause more stress in relationships than money or in-laws!

Family structure, who wears the pants? Who makes the BIG decisions, and how are they made? Do you work together or is one person in charge of the house and the other in charge of the vehicles? Do you decide you want something and then whine and wheedle until you get it? It really doesn't matter what your particular system is, as long as it works for BOTH of you. You have to agree on this set up, because if one feels like the other is taking advantage, or working against them, they are not happy and sooner or later it bubbles to the surface as anger and again, harsh words and hurt feelings. Hurt feeling do more to damage a relationship than any other single thing. As much as we are supposed to be able to forgive and forget , we get the first one, but the latter is much less likely. It gets filed away in the hurt bank and it builds interest and you can be sure that it will come back when it is least expected. Not good.

Child rearing is another big one. A child is smart, and they can quickly learn that if mom and dad don't agree then they can be played against each other. Discipline, responsibility, chores, grades, you name it and kids will figure out how to play parents against each other when their parents don't agree. A united front by parents gives kids a solid home and that is the best thing in the world for kids. And what is good for the kids is good for the parents too.

Life is hard enough and Love is even harder, and if you want it to work, you have to go into it with your eyes open, and contrary to popular belief, you have to keep your eyes open, and keep each other honest. Without the Honesty to yourself, you won't be honest with your partner, and eventually it will all fall apart. I have heard people say that in every relationship there is a reacher and a settler. Nobody should ever settle in a relationship. You will never be truly happy if you settle for what you think you can get. Don't be in a hurry and know yourself, then you will be able to find your second half, and the person who you can be truly happy with.

A surprise for Natalia...

2010-02-08T20:48:00.003-05:00

Beautiful lady! You know I am thinking of you often, and I wish for you to be able to reach me directly anytime that you wish, so I am leaving my email address here for you today. troll@marksrv.com I would be very happy to hear from you much more often and to be able to write to you much more often as well. Please use it well. You may also use this to find me on Skype, which would be a great way for us to be able to talk.

Here is a picture that I took last night, of the sunset!

For Natalia,

2010-02-06T14:27:00.003-05:00

I know that other people will read this, and that is fine, But this post if directed at one person in particular, the beautiful Natalia! I am happy to share everything with you, and for that reason I have this link to my other public gallery So that you may see more of my pictures. I hope that you will take a few minutes and perhaps you will sign up on Facebook and then we can talk much more often and not need to use the agency and their expensive services. I believe that you have enough command of English and I have enough of Russian that we will find our meanings no matter what. I will be looking for your messages very soon!

trying again...

2010-01-27T19:16:00.003-05:00

Once again I am off and running on the weight loss trail. Heaven only knows how well I will do this time around, but I am trying again. Last year I didn't start until April, and I managed to lose close to 65 pounds before the summer was done. This year I am already working at it, albeit a little bit slower.

Sometime in October I tumbled off of my wagon and fell face first into a Large Pizza, it took a while for me to surface and swim through a few bowls of Nachos and pasta, but I have arrived back at shore, and now I am trying again. Immediately following Thanksgiving my pops was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Not really surprising since it runs in the family. He has changed his eating habits quite well, and as much of a pain in the ass it is for me, I am happy for him because he is improving his health. Why is it a pain in my ass? Because it seems that with his new regime of portion control and carb counting, he uses more dishes each day than any four people and I do the dishes around here. Secondly, it seems that no matter what I wanna make for my dinner, his comes first and I have to wait to use the kitchen. Pain in the ass. Oh Well.

Now for me, I have been trying to figure out what exactly it is that causes me to binge so uncontrollably, and I have come to the conclusion that I am, 1) an emotional eater, 2) an addictive eater, 3) a frustration eater and, 4) a social eater. I rarely eat just because I'm hungry, I do happen to eat when I am bored, and I put that under the frustration heading. I also never eat just until I'm full, or just have something in my tummy, I seem to gorge. I eat until I'm feeling stuffed like a bloated hippo. I guess it is because food never refuses my advances. No matter what I look like, what I think or what I have just done, food doesn't judge me, refuse me, or make me feel bad about myself. (While I am eating it, after words I may have a little guilt) So I eat because it's easy.

Easy is gonna kill me if I don't pay attention! The easy food is the worst food for me, and yet I can't seem to get enough of it most of the time. I have to start judging myself when I eat. Once again it is portion control and exercise that is going to help me through this. My goal is to lose 90 lbs. from my current weight. Today I stood on my shipping scale and I saw my weight at 310 lbs. That means when I am where I want to be, I should be somewhere in the 220 lb. neighborhood. I KNOW I can get there, but Man it is gonna take me some real work and discipline.

I'm up for the challenge, because it will make it a lot easier to take pictures, to sleep at night and maybe to find the love of my life. ( I could find the love now, but I want to be a better version of me before I do! )

Discovering my gift..

2010-01-17T22:29:00.005-05:00

I don't know if it's true or not, but I have been told that I have a gift for photography. I don't see it so much as a gift, but rather a drive. I constantly feel the need to capture something that I see, in a way that will make it interesting. It doesn't always work, so I go out and see if I can do a better job with it. I don't really know if I will ever be completely satisfied with the results that I get.

I guess you could say that I am driven to do it better each time. Sometimes this means by getting better equipment, and sometimes it just means finding a new way to see it. One of the things that the professionals and the critics say consistently is, "see it differently". and what they mean is that if you can get an image of something in a way that hasn't been done before, then you have something interesting. One of the best examples of this would be the Eiffel Tower. How many different ways have you seen pictures of the Eiffel Tower? Daytime, nighttime, holidays, in the rain, in the sun, at sunrise, at sunset, from the top, from a plane, from a helicopter, from the bottom, in the snow..... and so on and so on. In the 100 or so years that the Eiffel Tower has been in existence, it has been SO photographed that it is nearly impossible to come up with a new way to get it. Reflected in a window? Yep. In the background of a cafe shot? You bet! Try as you may, you will not find a unique way to photograph the Eiffel Tower, however, simply finding a way that YOU like can be all it takes. Do you want to see it backlit with the setting sun? Then this will be your picture, perhaps you get the chance to see it when the clouds are so low that they obscure the top, then you have something that perhaps not many people have done. Truthfully, most unique picture opportunities came along by happenstance rather than good planning. The photojournalists who have managed to get those particularly memorable pictures were not the ones who planned the best, they just happened to be in the right place at the right time with their gear ready to go.

Sure they have a great body of work behind them ( or in many cases still to come), but the truly iconic pictures of the ages are just pure luck. The Execution on the streets of Vietnam, the photographer turned a corner and saw the interrogation happening, he lifted his camera just as the commander pulled his pistol and stuck it to the head of the saboteur. Dumb luck, and he has said so more than once. Sports shots? the guys catching the ball in the end zone, the perfect contact punch from ringside? All Luck. Yes, there is skill and practice in the way the camera was set and loaded and held, but you can have a million technically amazing shots in your files, but it is a fluke of timing to get the "perfect" picture.

I have been entering pictures in various contests this past year, and once I enter I then have to keep looking through the other entrants. Every contest seems to have at least a dozen or so pictures of certain iconic places in the world. If it is a nature, or outdoors geared contest, there is always the pictures of The Grand Canyon, Arches National Park, Yellowstone and Yosemite. I will not argue that these aren't awesome amazing pictures. Technically wonderful shots that show beauty and grandeur. They are also Common. Everyone with a camera gets something similar. I am just as guilty of submitting common shots, but I am trying very hard now to study the previous contests and the winner and to see if I can find something unique to submit. A common submission is a rainbow, usually from a rainstorm backed by the gunmetal gray storm clouds that spawned it. There is the occasional waterfall rainbow too, but I think I have found an interesting twist on the theme, I took a picture of a waterfall rainbow as it stretched over gorge wall covered in ice and snow. I don't recall seeing this particular style done before. Now I have done it! There are often various pictures of state and national parks, showing the big attractions, the waterfalls, the geysers, and the lakes, the trees or the wildlife, but what about the historic structures inside the park, in a way that they are rarely captured? Stone picnic tables in winter covered in snow and tree shadows. Something that isn't seen as often. It is built on spectacular colors or a once in a lifetime scene, but rather the way that it is, when nobody is around. People don't get to see this image, because they aren't there to see it. The question though is can I make that image compelling?

To show the tables in the snow is not really enough is it? How about a series of tables set in a tableau that makes them appear as steps on a hill? Covered in snow to resemble mushrooms? In the same place they are every day of the year, but surrounded by virgin snow? Does any of this make the image of something as mundane as picnic tables seem compelling? I hope it does, because it is what made it compelling for me!

In the end it comes down to who is looking at the picture and how it makes them feel. One day it may move them, and the next they may find it to be pedantic and a waste of time. That is the nature of art, what moves one person is nothing to the next, and yet we all keep trying.

Getting inspired...

2010-01-07T21:38:00.002-05:00

I look at the blank page and wonder if I have a thought in my head. When I read the newspaper in the morning hundreds of ideas flood my brain, and If I could sit and write at that moment I would have a days worth of typing to accomplish, but after the working day is done, my mind is tired and the ideas have all faded away. I read the editorial page and I get incensed at the ignorance of the people who write to the editor, yet when I am ready to sit down and write my own piece, My brain is dead. Global warming Yep I have thougts. Terrorism? yep Got lots to say there, Politics in general, yeah I'm sure I could make a fool of myself, but when the TV is on, and my head isn't into concentrating.... No good will come of it!

So I will try again in a few days when I feel like concentrating, I can turn on some tunes and let my mind do what it wants to do!

the ups and downs on 2009...

2009-12-30T20:07:00.003-05:00

As the year winds down and the final 24 hours approach, I am trying to decide if this has been an overall good or bad year for me. There have been some nice highs, but they seem to have been balanced by some pretty dark lows. I will admit that my lows haven't been nearly as bad as some peoples. I haven't lost anyone in my family to date, and I still have my own health, so what I consider a low right now, is still pretty good in the big picture. So let's take a look....

A few of the "ups" in my year, I finally bought a new DSLR camera, and a lens for it. I love them both so far, and I am looking forward to getting years of use from them. They have already begun to get me noticed at least locally, and in a good way. Ups!! Through the summer months I managed to shed nearly 65 lbs! I was feeling better, and enjoying the lighter feeling in my step and my bearing. definitely an up! I have been writing more and looking at the world from a new perspective overall. I can't really describe the new world view, but It seems to be slightly more positive overall. I see possibilities in stuff that I haven't noticed before. Especially photographically. I have found in my brain a true goal for myself, that is actually achievable, so I will consider that a definite up. I got to see my brother this year! Haven't seen him in a few years and it was way cool to have him around for a little while. Tried Spaghetti squash for the first time, both growing it and eating it! Yummy! Have reconnected with old friends and acquaintances on facebook. That's a little it of a double edged sword, but I will get to that later. That's the first few that come into my mind, I almost wish that I had kept a list this year!! LOL Oh yeah, I have been helped in the paying of my health insurance this year!! That's a biggie!

So now some of the lows, the biggest one, finding out that My gramma has cancer and it is beyond being operable. So It is only a matter of time in how long it will be before we lose her. That sucks. Buying my new camera and lens... Making it REALLY hard to pay my bills. I spent way more than I should have, and now I have to pay the associated bills, so That camera better really start paying off in he next few months or I'm gonna be buried past my eyeballs in debt! At least I'm not gonna lose a house over it like some people, so like I have said, in general my downs aren't all that bad. I haven't had a real vacation in a few years. I have been constantly at work every day that I should be for almost 2 full years. The best I have done is a 3 day weekend, and I usually end up working at least one of those days! I haven't progressed on my goal of getting my own home.

As they come to me from now on I will be adding and subtracting.... so let's see...

Got a new Lawn Mower...+ spent more time in my garden...+ Got to ride my motorcycle quite a bit this past summer...+

Started gaining weight as the weather turned cold...- kept gaining weight...- not getting enough exercise in the cold weather...- joined facebook and now people that I would rather NOT find me keep finding me...- Realized that I HATE my current cell phone and I can't upgrade for another 5 months...-

OH Yeah a BIG plus... Found some of my cousins from my Mother's side of the family and at least one of them is REALLY cool! +++

Yeah there are a million little things that make up all that is my year, and I guess that overall I think it was a good year. So I'm gonna chalk this one up as an overall winner. So long 2009, I'm glad I got through you without too much problems when compared to the rest of the world.

I love Christmas, BUT...

2009-12-23T20:27:00.002-05:00

Ok, First let me say that I'm not a scrooge by any means, but there are a few things about Christmas that drive me nuts. They are easily remedied, but highly unlikely to be so. If this is the season of giving why is everyone so freaking greedy? Driving aggressively in the parking lots for crying out loud! Your THERE, take it easy, things will go smoother and you will have less of a problem when you stay calm and take your time. Ever notice how moods are just as contagious as yawns? When you cut someone off in the parking lot, they get pissed, and then they will do something rude to someone else and before you know it the whole dang store is in an ugly mood, and nobody has a merry Christmas.

There was a story this past week, that was just the opposite, A couple paid the tab for a group of diners at a restaurant and then split with not a peep. This lucky group then paid for another table, and left, before the day was over almost 30 such incidents occurred. How cool is that? Just like a bad deed spreads the crappy moods, so do good deed spread the happy moods. Getting into a store and simply using a little of the courtesy that you were taught as a kid makes a big difference in the day of others. A simple please and thank you, or simply saying "Excuse Me" when walking among too close store aisles can make the day just a little more pleasant.

Don't you hate it when people walk right in front of you when you are looking at things on a shelf? most of the time they walk by like you aren't even there, and it's annoying. I always acknowledge that they are there and excuse myself when I have to step in front of them. Generally, this small courtesy makes a difference, because I often hear those same people doing the same thing later on. I often can't say whether they have done it before or not, but I know that they usually do it after, and that's all that matters to me.

How about not budging in line? A very simple thing here that takes 2 parties to pay attention, when you are standing in line, make it obvious that you ARE standing in line, don't dawdle 5 feet back from the next person, get up there and close that gap. This is a 2 fold thing, because without the gap, nobody will be able to line jump, and secondly it will show people where the line actually is. And when the lines stretch out across the aisles, don't just shove through with your cart, again, say excuse me, and allow people to move. Impatience breeds impatience, and when the stores and roads and parking lots are crowded, impatience is the last thing that we need to deal with.

Anyway, those little things can make a huge difference in peoples days. Not only at Christmas, but surely, every time of the year.

The "Friend me" paradox...

2009-12-14T22:03:00.003-05:00

Ladies and gentleman I wish to present to you an interesting phenomenon, that I have begun to refer to as the "friend me" paradox. This is a situation in which the classmates from your school wish to "friend" you on Facebook, whether they were ever actually your friends in school or not. I could not understand the reason that someone whom I haven't talked to, thought of or even wondered about in over 20 years would wish to have me on their friend list, and yet here they are. 25 years ago they couldn't be bothered to help you pick up your notebook when you dropped it, they teased you relentlessly, or worse bullied you, and now they wish to be your "friend". The people who spent what seemed to be their every waking hour making your life miserable through your whole childhood and teenage years, now wish to be part of your life, and way too many people just let it happen. Why? Is it about the connection to the past, the nostalgia, or is it because you want to find out if their life is now better or worse than yours?

So think about it, if you're on the great social networking site known as Facebook, then you have run into the dilemma of whether to "friend" someone whom you know, but would never truly consider a friend. You can "ignore" them, and hope that they let the matter drop, and you don't actually run into them in person, (and then have to explain why you ignored their friend request) or worse yet, they continue to pester you with friend requests until you finally relent and confirm the request. If the second ( and more common) result is what has happened to you, then you face a new problem, that of actual communication.

Now that you have "Friended" ( interesting how the dynamic English language is adapting to technology) this acquaintance, you have to decide how much you wish to allow them into your life. Depending on how much you actually use or share on Facebook, you may have no need to care, but if you're the kind who shares loads of info, then you may have to tinker around with individual settings, a pain in the ass, but a necessary evil.

There is also the "friend of a friend" thing, a situation that makes the online forum like a crowded room, and one conversation can be overheard by many groups. Do you want your family to see the conversations with your college buddies? How about your friends from the bar? Should they know about your sister's divorce or your brother's colonoscopy? Yet soon everyone that you have on Facebook knows everything about everyone that you know on Facebook.

You need to make some separations and set some limits. Yes, it makes it harder for the various groups to listen in to your various conversations, but it can help to keep your lives separated. The last thing you want is for your work friends to get wind of your fraternity high jinx, and get word to you boss about the time you got photographed sucking a goats teats! Not the best situation for advancement in the office! The real question becomes what do you want to do with your Facebook?

Do you wish to make/find friends? Do you wish to advance your business or career? Do you wish to keep up with family and friends from your past? Each one of these pursuits is what Facebook was designed for, yet in many cases they really are mutually exclusive, and so one MUST take the time to make the appropriate settings so that these worlds don't overlap and cause problems with each other.

And a last thought...There are many types of people who use Facebook ( or any other social networking site) but they can generally be divided into 2 basic groups, those who will clutter your wall with gifts, requests, quizzes and games, and those who will share words and thoughts and things that actually have personal meaning to them. And many are the opposite of what you might suspect!! But that's a WHOLE 'nother Rant!

Motivationally speaking...

2009-12-09T22:11:00.002-05:00

Motivation is an odd thing, as some people only need the smallest amount of motivation to tackle the largest projects, and then there are other people ( like me) who need HUGE amounts of motivation to tackle even medium sized projects. I have always wondered where some people get the drive they have to do the things that they do. Why torture your body to run a marathon? Why put your life at risk to climb to the top of Mt. Everest? The old saw, "because it's there," or "To prove that you can," are cute, but what do they really say? If I want to stand on top of Everest, I'm gonna find a WAY easier way of getting to the top, it's just my nature. Doing something hard has never been the thing that draws my attention, at least not physically hard, I do like a mental challenge. I have always been into puzzles, crossword, jumble, cryptograms, I live that kind of stuff, but I see it as keeping the mind sharp and the mind is what you need most when your body is beat up from running marathons and climbing mountains.

Obviously I bring up motivation, because I am looking for mine again. I am not sure what has cause me to lose my motivation for losing weight. I still want to get down, but for some reason I have lost my willpower and I seem to be on the verge of a binge every day. It's a fight, constantly to keep myself from just diving head first into a wheel barrel full of chips and dip, or skinny dipping in a pool full of big macs. The siren call of sugar is torturing my dreams and I don't know why. I am fighting a losing battle lately and It is really beginning to take it's toll. Chocolate, and hard candies, all manner of potatoes and breads just calling my name softly in my dreams. Sometime around the beginning of October, I binged out. I knew it was wrong and I did it anyways, and I have not recovered myself from it. I don't know why, and now the Holidays approach fast and furious, and I am sure to eat way too much of the wrong things for the next few weeks. Do I wait until New Years to Try again. Or do I simply take it day by day.

I know that I am a food addict, and that when it comes down to it, I am pretty powerless over food. The worst part of the whole thing is that My dad is now on a diabetic diet, and It would be the best thing for me to follow as well, because it is what works best for me to lose weight. I don't know why this is so hard for me.

I will search and see if I can find my motivation once again. I know it's here somewhere!

Crazy crap, fun stuff., and who knows what else...

2009-12-06T21:46:00.003-05:00

SO my blogging has been a little sporadic lately, but I feel guilty about it!! I have been concentrating so much on photography and editing stuff, and making up stupid status updates on Facebook that I let the blog go dormant for much longer than I want. If the TV is on I'm distracted and I just don't have the concentration to write. I wanna write, but seems like my subjects are all kinds of scattered in my head, and my coherence level is way down. So anyway, here is what I have been doing lately...

Thanks giving has come and gone and it;s already December, and Christmas is approaching fast, but first comes My Birthday. No major date this time just 42 years. Never believe it. I don't FEEL 42, and I sure don't think like I'm 42. Oh well.

Thanksgiving turned out to be another interesting holiday. There is this odd little quirk in my family that people get sick around Thanksgiving, and Gramma stayed true to tradition. She ended up in the hospital with a tumor on her ovary. It was so big that it was blacking her ureter and so the Docs had to put in a stint to keep the kidney functioning. Ok that's not too bad, but the tumor.... turns out that she is what appears to be stage 4 cancer, it has affected her kidneys, her lungs and her liver so far, and the news isn't all in yet. 85 years old, and she suffers from Vascular dementia due to a stroke she suffered a few years ago. The family is in an uproar, because Uncle Steve ( the one who lives with her and is her main caretaker ) wants to get her Chemo, and we all feel pretty strongly, ( and Gramma did to when she had all of her marbles before her stroke) that she doesn't need or want chemo. It is so hard on a body that it is more likely to sap what strength that she has, and so diminish her quality of life for the time she has left that it will be torture. With her dementia and her lack of short term memory, it is likely that she will never fully understand why she is in such pain and discomfort. When she had all of her faculties, she made it known with her healthcare proxy and her DNR that she considered chemo to be extraordinary measures and she didn't want them taken should she get sick and it wasn't caught early. She watched Grampa die of Pancreatic cancer, and she spent 35 years working in one of the Best hospitals in the state, and she knew what she was saying, and asking.

So here was Gramma in the hospital, and Dad and I come home and along the way dad tells me that he doesn't feel good. Ok, I can drive, as we are getting off the Thruway, he tells me just take him to the hospital. Turns out he was a few minutes away from falling into a diabetic coma! His blood glucose was up over 600!! No wonder he was feeling faint!! His blood ox was low and his pressure was down along with his heart rate. Man!! Don't let Gramma get all the attention!! So he spent 24 hours hooked up to an insulin pump, and a few more days in the hospital as the Docs assessed his response and taught him how to test his levels and change his diet. Our house is changing and now Pops is eating much more like Me. More veggies, Less fat, and actually watching carbs like a fiend. We may be able to share more meals again! I just wish it hadn't come to this point to get him back on the healthy train.

Taking Pictures, Pictures of everything I can find. Bands, people, kids, nature, scenery. I take pictures of whatever I can find to interest me. I learn from my mistakes and study my pics to see what I like and what I don't. I like to think that I am progressing, but sometimes I think I am a little static in what I am doing. Perhaps I need some more inspiration, or maybe I need to find the thing that I like. I will find out eventually.

Family and future, don't know which one will make my life more interesting, but I hope I find out sooner than later.

What have I done?

2009-11-17T21:54:00.003-05:00

Can't figure out what I have done to stop the weight loss... but I know it can't possibly be the food I'm stuffing in my face! Heck no, half of that food is twice as much as I need!! LOL I have no idea why I have no freakin' control lately, I try as I might but it seems like these last few weeks I can't keep food out of my hands. Sweet, salty, spicy, cheesy.... I just want to eat and I can't seem to stop! Am I pregnant? I don't think so, need a partner for that don't ya? Enough is enough, I need to stop stuffing shit down my pie hole and get off my ass. The cold weather doesn't help! I don't want to be out in the dark and the cold doing much, but It needs to be done, and when I can show a net loss for the week, I will be happy, but right now I have been on a climb, and it needs to stop!

Don't bitch if you don't participate!

2009-11-11T22:23:00.002-05:00

Once again I have seen a letter to the editor in the local newspaper crying about how the person and her husband refused to vote in the recent election because there was no candidate that they felt they could vote FOR. Why, oh why, do these piss poor citizens continue to express their poor logic? Simply abstaining from voting is not going to do ANYTHING except allow your opinion to go unheard at the local polls. And then you have the gall to write a proud letter to the paper and say that you didn't vote! The very reasons that you have chosen not to vote are the same reasons why you SHOULD vote!! You didn't like the candidates.... Then WRITE IN the candidate that you think should be on the ballot. If you can't think of anyone, do what I do, write in " None Of The Above" signaling that you are not happy with any of the choices or possibilities.

One of the things that REALLY annoys me about the election process is when a candidate is shown on more than one line of the ballot. Why is the same person listed as a Republican, a Conservative and an Independent? If you're a Republican you SURE aren't an Independent. This is one of those things where you just can't be both. So people cast their ballot on the Independent line... so what? The Republican still wins, and nothing changes! Half the time these candidates are the incumbents to boot! WTF!!! I have participated and by the sacred Internet I'm gonna bitch.

The more I think about it, the more I feel that the None Of The Above line is becoming a necessity in the American Electoral process. The system has become so stacked and slanted that a true grass roots change is nearly impossible, and it seems that there has to be some new method of change instituted . The founding fathers gave us the mechanism within the constitution to adjust our process and to adapt to the climates of the unforeseen future. They knew what history had proven, that change was inevitable and there needed to be a way for the laws of the land to adapt with the times or the law would not last and hold. 200 years ago our constitution was quite unique in it's formulation, and today it stands as a model for fledgling democracies around the world. But we need to once again prove that we are a leader for a reason and we need to show the world once again that we can change and find a way to make the system work again as it was meant to work.

The system was meant to be, of the people, By the people and FOR the people, and today it seems that it no longer is of, by or for the people. We need to bring the system back to it's roots, when the politician wasn't a lifetime career, but a part of a man's life. The farmer or shopkeeper did his turn in the government, and then went back to his real job. A lifetime politician was a king or a queen. Royalty and aristocracy were the only lifetime politicos. They served at the will of the people, because a good revolution could always change the balance of power. There was a time when the governing were rightfully fearful of the governed, but today it is quite the opposite. The money is the power in America today. The rich businesses, the banks and insurance companies hold the true sway in government, and the average person , the voter, has only the power to pick one of the money's choices and one is as bad as the other.

None Of The Above could truly bring about the needed changes, but what Politician has the courage to do what is right, instead of what is politically expedient?

I am actually running!!

2009-10-28T20:00:00.003-04:00

So in my quest to increase my activity level in the cooler weather, I have begun trying to run at least a portion of my daily circuit! So today I actually ran 1/4 of it!! 1/8 at the beginning and 1/8 in the middle! ( plus a short shot at the end!) which for me is astounding! I am hoping to keep it up, (despite the shin-splints) and perhaps before the year is out I will be able to actually run my whole circuit! That would be absolutely amazing and perhaps it would make me wish to increase my circuit! Who knows? Miracles DO happen! LOL

The weight watch...

2009-10-26T22:48:00.003-04:00

So I made great progress for quite a while then in September I plateaued at 65 lbs down. I could live with it for the most part, but still have at least that much more that I want to lose. That said, somewhere along the line I have begun to lose ground!!

SO I have been trying to figure out what triggered my gain. I Think it is a combination of pent up cravings and a recent feeling of rejection, coupled with stress of my current financial situation, and the normal autumnal metabolic slowdown that is normal for my race, and add to that the loss of my free fresh vegetable source and You have a recipe for me gaining weight. It is too darn easy to spend money on cheap food that is bad for a body than to get the produce that is good for you, but costs way more so you can't buy as much!

I realized today that I have spent way more time on my butt the last few weeks too, so I have to redouble my efforts to get some exercise, and Today I actually gave running a little try. Nothing spectacular, just a few 50 yard jogs, with some fast walking, but it got the heart rate up and that's the important part.

I need to keep my attention on what I eat so that I DON'T eat too much. Gotta stop the snacking, which has snuck in, and get more active. Gotta push! No more screwing around!

The feeling of rejection is over a few people that I have talked to about doing some pictures of them. Sadly they have been rather non-responsive, and I guess that they have decided that they aren't interested.

as a Native American I can tell you for a fact that our metabolism tends to hit a natural slow-down in the autumn. Suddenly we all seem to start gaining weight. depending on the body type and lifestyle anywhere from 5 to 15 pounds can pile on in short order.

My veggie garden is done for the season and so now I don't have the unlimited veggies to eat every day, my starch intake has gone up nearly exponentially! Gotta quit that mess!

Keeping the faith!

Death By Taxation...

2009-10-26T19:41:00.001-04:00

Have you ever heard the cliche, " The only sure things in life are death and taxes."? the truth of the matter is that it is most likely that the death was caused by taxes! Why do I say such a strange thing, you may be asking. Well, recent events have given me an interesting take on this phrase.

Every person in the world who has ever punched a time-clock has dreamed of being rich, retired or their own boss, doing what they love, and not answering to anyone but themselves. It's a great dream and those who achieve it are generally glad that they did. Mostly...

The retired and the wealthy have different agendas than those who become their own bosses. Those who opt for self-employment learn a lot of things and one of those things is that if you can't keep your own books, you need to find someone trustworthy to do it for you. Many a business venture has bitten the dust because the people keeping the books and handling the finances were either dishonest or incompetent. The product was good, and the service was excellent, but the money didn't get where it was supposed to go, and eventually the discrepancies caught up with the business. Sometimes it is creditors, but sometimes it is the taxman himself. Yep, The I.R.S. Uncle Sam.

Some uncle he turns out to be, let me tell you. Do you know that if you owe taxes that the I.R.S. can seize your assets? They can go directly into your bank account and take the money that they think you owe them. With not so much as a "heads up" that it's coming out. They get into your account and pull out the funds. Doesn't matter that you have checks written on the money in the account. It means nothing to them. So what happens? Well if you don't have money to put back in that account, those checks are gonna bounce sky high, and you know what that means, your gonna be getting calls from all of the people that you wrote those check to and they are going to want their money, NOW!!!

This compounds an already big problem, because now you owe even more money that you don't have because not only will your bank charge you for every check that bounces, but everyone who has one of those checks will be charging you for the fees that THEIR banks charge them! How the hell does this help anyone?

Now I'm not talking about a multi-million dollar business here, I'm talking about a small fry business man who answers his own phones, and does his own inventory and still talks to his suppliers on the phone every week. If he is lucky he has one or maybe 2 employees who know every cent he spends on the business and are happy to do without when the times call for it. This is a guy who takes a cut in his own pay so that his employees can continue to get their full pay when things are slow. This is a small business in every sense of the word, and these are the people that truly make America work. They are the ones truly living the American Dream.

The taxman cometh, and with him the death of a dream. So this is why I would like to try and collect $1 from 5000 people in the next month. I know a small businessman who is looking down the barrel of the I.R.S. gun and if he can't pull some money from thin air he will probably lose the business that he has built up over 20 some years of blood, sweat and sacrifice. The problem is not of his making, but it is his responsibility. And so I would like to try and help him.

He did everything right as far as he knew. And he made the calls and asked the questions and everything he did was right as far as he knew, and as far as he was told. But then earlier this year he finds out that there was something not done correctly three years ago and since the I.R.S begins fining from the start of the problem rather than when they notify you about it, the bill has grown to be quite hefty.

Why would you help? Hasn't everyone at one time or another dreamed of being a hero to someone? They say that you can't fight city hall, and it's true, you have a better chance of pushing you head through a concrete wall, than winning this type of argument against the I.R.S. But with the help of the heroes of America it is possible to help one Little person with a big-ass problem. All it takes is a little spare change. who doesn't have a dollar to spare? The lose change in your couch cushions, under the floor-mat of the car, or in the ashtray. The change from your coffee break for a day or 2 adds up to a dollar. With one measly, little dollar you can help one guy keep his dreams alive. All I am looking for is for 5000 people to give up the cost of one McDonald's cheeseburger. The difference in the cost of a large coffee to a medium. A regular value meal instead of a super-sized one.

I believe that there are enough people out in the world who can do this. I believe that there are enough people out in Facebook-land who can spare a single dollar, this month, and help one guy keep his dream alive. How many times have you given money to a cause, and never known where it goes? Never see what it does? Here is a chance to give to a cause and every penny goes to the cause. There is no agency taking bits and pieces out of it. And here is the kicker, if I get MORE than is needed to cover this I.R.S. fine, I will donate the rest to a very worthy charity in Rochester NY. called "Wease Cares for Kids". Another worthy cause that gives 100% of all donation back to the community. What could be better than helping out one person? Helping one kid!

So what do you say, People of Facebook? Friends, friends of friends and friend- friends friends.... Go viral and make something cool happen!!! Just $1.

Karl White
14485 Puzzey Rd
Albion NY 14411

End of the season...

2009-10-24T22:34:00.009-04:00

So the fall is upon us and it is a week until Halloween, and this week I put my motorcycle away for the season. It's always a bittersweet thing to do, because I wish that I could ride year round.
Not so much because I love riding that much, ( but I really do!) but because it is MUCH cheaper on gas than driving my truck. So I put the fuel stabilizer in the gas tank and got all my stuff out of the back pack, and put my helmet in its storage bag. Then I cleaned the floor where I was going to put it, and worked it into the back corner of the shop. There it will sit for the winter, taunting me, with the promise of spring and what we will be able to do in the coming spring. In the middle of January while the wind is howling outside the doors and the driving snow is piling into sculpted drifts across the driveway, the bike will sit quietly in the back of the shop, and I will look back there and think of the spring that is to come, and of the adventures past. My motorcycle will be the dream that keeps me from giving in to the depressions of February, and get me through the last snows of March. When we get the warm weekend in April I will get it out of the corner and take it for the first ride of the spring and the feeling of freedom that comes from the wind and the road and the shifting of the gears will give me dreams of the hot, hazy weekends of summer and riding along through the NY terrain.

One of the things that drives the average NYer nuts is snow removal. I'm not one to worry so much about it, because I have the tools for the job. I plow the big open parts with my 4 wheeler, and for the walks and drifts, I have a great snow-blower for my garden tractor. It works great for opening up drifted in areas that the wheeler can't blast through. Between the two pieces of equipment, I have to shovel only a very minimum, and usually only the stairs that I can't exactly plow!

But before winter gets here, there is still the autumn to enjoy, and in Western NY one can never tell what the season really holds in store for ya. From golden trees and fresh cut fields, new green showing in the field of winter-wheat and the piles of pumpkins glowing various shades of orange in the farm markets, every turn is filled with colors and scents and dreams.
Halloween parties loom and the thoughts of what costume to wear, do you dress as a pirate? Maybe a Pimp or a gangsta. Whatever you chose, you can pretty much count of at least 10 other people having the same Idea! It never fails, the more original you think you are, the more likely it is for someone else to have the same exact thoughts. The only difference is in the execution. Details are the key. The more detail you put into the costume, the more likely you are to win the prize at the party! The fall wouldn't be complete without a few haunted hay rides, and a trip to the Maize Maze. And, what about a visit to the cider mill? One of my favorite things about fall, is the promise of some fresh apple cider. Coupled with some fresh, warm donuts and it's just about as close to heaven as a guy can get without a broad in the room with him! Fresh apples too, nothing like a fresh, crisp apple crunching with it's sweet/tangy taste reminding you of the difference between the store-bought, storage apples and the orchard-fresh apples.

One of the best things about fall in NY is the colors. The pumpkins, the straw bales, the Indian corn, and the trees. The foliage in NY can be so diverse and amazing and each year I find something that just stuns me with it's brilliance. Sometimes it is the neon-orange glow of a Maple tree in the sun, and sometimes it is a particular shrub that glows in crimson. When the day has been rainy and dreary and you look out at the world and it all seems grey, the sun can peak out from behind the clouds and light up a Birch tree, it's white trunk catching the golden cast of the sun, and the leaves of yellow looking like little drops of gold shimmering in the sudden sunshine and it will lift the spirit like any good drug. But it's not a drug, and if you're smart you will grab a camera and take a picture of that perfect scene. You never know when you will see it again, and preserving it is the best we can do. I am always amazed at how you can look at a row of trees and one can be bare while another has barely changes colors and one looks like a super hero decked out in gaudy colors waiting for the chance to take to the sky on a wing and a prayer looking to rescue someone from a dastardly villain. And they do rescue us, at least for a little while, because the color that they show the world give us an appreciation of the work that nature does. We can see the colors and be reminded of the cycles of nature and that we are privileged to be able to witness it again. Each fall, I look at the colors and I am happy to be here to see them again. Just as I am happy to get through the winter and see the return of the spring blossoms. I know that the gray skies of winter are coming, and so I appreciate the colors of fall all that much more.
Each season has it's place in my heart. I may complain about each one, but that is one of the privileges of living in Western NY, we get all the seasons every year, even if we get three of them on one week!! But the truth is that I have a choice and I wouldn't live here if I didn't truly love each season for it's individual pleasures. I have lived n the south and I know what it's like to wear shorts and a t shirt on Christmas day, and to tell the truth, lights in a palm tree just aren't the same as the standard fir tree decked out and smelling up the house with it's oily pine scent. The same as the warm spring breezes of April aren't appreciated as much when you haven't suffered through a blizzard in February. And as the fall does what it must, I can appreciate all that it has to share with me. ( Even if our summer did suck!)

Charity for the rest of us!

2009-10-14T21:17:00.001-04:00

Remember when you spent too much money and to make the months rent you would throw a party and charge by the head, so you could get together enough money to pay the rent? How many times have you been to a fundraiser for some charity organization, or for someone who is in dire need of some financial assistance? Ok, now take these two ideas and merge them into one thought. Perhaps the time has come to throw a few " get someones ass out of hock" parties!!

The idea is this: throw a party like any fundraiser for charity, charge at the door, do 50/50 raffles, and some door prizes. But each person will have the chance to be the beneficiary of the party. by putting their name in the fishbowl along with one bill that they must apply the money to. Somewhere near the middle of the party the name is drawn. On Monday morning the deposit is made in their bank account and the check is written to the designated creditor. This person then must attend the next party for the next name drawn from the bowl. In order for it to work, each winner must continue to help the cause. One may not win and then not help the next party. no selfish bastards allowed!

If by some miracle of the divine winds, someone is not in need of assistance, they may put in the name of somebody that they feel is deserving of the assistance. These days there are far too many people who are on the edge, and helping a few of them is a great idea. Why do you have to be sick to get some help? why not help some of the working stiffs who are barely making it?

It sounds odd, but for most people, just getting one big bill out of the way, could free up the finances enough to make the ends come together again and keep the knee breakers from knocking on the door.

So who's in? and rememeber the bigger the party, the bigger the benefit!

None of the above...

2009-10-11T20:36:00.004-04:00

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me. None of the above.... What the heck am I talking about, you may be thinking. Well, let me elaborate.

I am talking about the ballot, to be specific the American election ballots. If you vote, ( and you really should!!) you know that in far too many cases there is no opposition to the incumbent candidate, and so they win by default. But what if you don't want the incumbent to continue in this position? What if they have managed to rig the system ( this is not a conspiracy theory, look up "gerrymandering" in the dictionary) so that they can pretty much keep their office until such time as they decide to give it up? Well, then we have no recourse except to continue to fight a losing battle to try and get these slackers and losers out of office with candidates that have no chance of winning against the stacked deck.

So why not a "None Of The above" slot on every ballot in every election? For every office up for vote, there should be the possibility that none of the candidates truly meet the community standard, and therefore we should not let them win simply by default. Give the American people back the power of the voting booth. Rather than a race when there is no actual race, it is up to the politico to be responsible and do a good job, because we can actually vote them OUT of office without the need to vote someone else in. Of course this would mean that there must be occasional times when there is nobody to do a particular job. Depending on the job, this could result in either a new election, with completely new candidates (anyone voted out by the" None of the above" vote would be automatically barred from running again for at least 2 election cycles.) Or perhaps the job is eliminated, thereby saving the local coffers the expense of the salary. Another possibility is that the duties of the eliminated position be spread around the local government offices. Not all government jobs are essential after all! ( Especially elected ones!!)

The important thing here is the chance to make REAL change in a government that has become far too bloated and ineffectual for the people whom it is supposed to be serving. By adding the "None Of the Above" Slot to the ballot, we would no longer have to make the choice of the lesser of 2 evils, and therein lies the true possibilities of change.

Until we have the choice to actually say, " no", we will not settle, we want better choices, we will continue to get screwed over by the system that we want, and expect to help us.

100 posts...

2009-10-06T21:28:00.002-04:00

I was looking at my post count and I realized that this is # 100! Wow, if my teachers could only see me now!! To be honest it has taken a little less than a year for me to get here, but That's ok, It's not like I am changing the world here, I'm just venting a little piss and vinegar and sharing my views of the world. Sometimes I have something really important ( to me) to say, and other times I just feel like rambling about a variety of topics. But looking over the last years posts I notice that I have hit on a few topics more than others. Travel, religion, politics, and family to name a few right off the top of my head. Friends seem to come up a few times, as well as the future, the past and technology. I have hit on topics of entertainment , death and food. Education and taxes seem to have a few big mentions as well. So I guess that I hit on the things that most directly affect me, and the people in my life.

Number 100. It seems like I should be looking deep and trying to find some special, deeply meaningful topic to get all philosophical about, but the truth is that I don't have anything really pissing me off more than usual today, and since I haven't taken any great pictures so far this week, I don't even have any of those to share. I'm working alone this week, so it seems that coming up with great topics is a little beyond my mental capacity with all the other things on my mind.

I guess that thing that is most on my mind right at this moment is coincidence. It's like when you have been saving that particular thing for some unknown theoretical future use, and then you finally throw it away, and then 2 days later you find the perfect use for it! Some people call it irony, but it's mostly just annoying. Ask anyone who deals with inventory, the longer something has been on a shelf, the more likely that the day you sell it, there will be 4 more people looking for that very piece. It seems to be the oddest force in the universe, Coincidence. If you are waiting for a delivery, and you have to use the bathroom, the delivery shows up at the exact moment that you get your cheeks planted on the toilet seat! right? You know that it has happened to you! It's a matter of the phrase, "It never fails!" and it seems to hold true more times than not, like when you are in a hurry, and what happens? You get stuck behind the slowest person on the road. Some people call it Murphy's Law, the old adage that whatever can go wrong will go wrong, but in truth that's not really the case. The fact is that even the things that can't possibly go wrong, will go wrong at the most inopportune time. If you have looked at every possibility, then you must look for the impossibilities, because they will be the things that will bite you on the ass. A friend of mine used to have a great saying, "You can't win the lottery, but you'll get struck by lightening!" I have always loved that saying, because it is such a truism, you can be sure that if it is a one in a million chance for disaster, it will happen, but if it's a one in a million shot for a happy ending, you will miss for sure.

Life deals lemons so much that we have come up with the old saw, about making lemonade. It's a coping mechanism, just like most of the best cliches are. Life is imperfect to say the least, and too many of us spend too much time worrying about the things that we can't control, trying to live with the illusion that we can take control. We are nothing more that the results of our choices and our circumstances. Each choice we make, brings us to another choice and so on until hell freezes over. In the end we can do what we can do and nothing more, but we continue to try and harness the wind. It's in our nature to try and gain control, even when we know that we can't. Some of us figure out that the best we can do is hold on and ride, and follow life wherever it leads us, and those are the happy people. I hope that I am one of the happy people when it's all said and done.

Ah Fall...

2009-10-01T22:04:00.002-04:00

The aptly named Season of Fall is upon us and the leaves are doing their part, and beginning to fall from the trees. The colors are emerging from their summer camouflage of green, and the edges of the forest are beginning to look interesting. The Virginia Creeper is hanging in crimson drapes across the landscape and the purple grapes are showing in the vines. Along the roadsides and in the fields the goldenrod is turning, first brown, and then fluffy white with seed fuzz. The purple asters and tiny daisies are fading away and slipping into their seed faze. The Corn fields are quickly losing the green hues of summer and the stalks are drying out and turning that soft tan color that signals the coming of Halloween. Orange pumpkins lying in the fields are being gathered up and brought to the roadside stands to be oohed and ahhed over by eager children anxious to carve their jack-o-lanterns and put on their masks to go trick or treating. The mornings are crisp and the days are cool, soon the frost will kill of the annual flowers and the perennials will be going to sleep. The Apple trees are loaded with fruit waiting to be picked and the cider mill is ready to squeeze. Soon the flavor of fresh sweet apple cider will mix with the tast and texture of fresh warm doughnuts and it will officially be the Start of the Cold season. Enjoy the smells and the tastes and the feel of the fall. Take some time and walk in the leave and smell the fresh scent that they give off. Revel in the cool evening and build a fire to share with friends. Indoors or out! Get the garden ready for bed with the same care that you get your children ready, and when spring comes it will wake up easier. Gather in the seeds that you wish to save for next season. Cut the grass one last time and don't forget to put some fuel stabilizer in the gas tank before you run it. Get the snow blower ready, before you actually need it. Fill the windshield pisser in your car and get a couple of spare bottles now so you aren't scrambling in the dead of winter to find it to get the salt glaze off of your windshield. Fall is both a time to put things away, and to get things out. Enjoy the season while it lasts. I feel sorry for people who don't have a fall season. They don't know the beauty of the earth getting ready for winter.

odds and ends...

2009-09-16T21:01:00.003-04:00

So as you can tell it has been a few weeks since I have done much on this page, and believe me it's not for lack of ideas, but more for a lack of time. I have to sleep, so somethings suffer, and since this place is not something that is actually making me any money, I have to back burner it now and then. A couple of other things have also kept me form being a busy blogger, namely Facebook and my new camera! You can see from the last few posts that I have been a busy little photographer.

I have now had the camera for about 5 weeks and I noticed the frame count today was nearing 3000. Yes, I am a prolific snapper. Not all of my snaps are collectible photos, but each of them teaches me something, and therefore they are valuable. In fact, today I have decided that I wished to try and get a better understanding of exactly how flash compensation worked, and so I sat down in the shade and shot a few geraniums at various settings to see how the various flash settings affected the shots. And I recorded the data for each shot in my little data book so that I may later refer to the data to help me perfect my technique. The truth is that I much prefer to use natural light and the shadows that it casts, just as it casts them, however there are times when I do and will need to understand how to use a flash to eliminate certain harsh shadows or to even the light across a subject. Thus I have to learn how to do it, when the situation is controlled and I can learn without the pressure of the shots "counting". Getting a grip to be sure.

Facebook seems to be slightly addictive, and I am trying to find ways of interacting a little more with people and getting some feedback. There are certain people who constantly give feedback, and I do appreciate it to an extent, but there is a limit to good wishes from people. Sometimes rather than simply telling me how much they like my stuff, I would like it if they told their other friends how much they like it, and get me some more eyes and maybe some eyes looking to buy! I have been putting up various pictures that I have been taking, especially with my new camera, and The hope is that eventually I will be able to start selling prints. I am not looking to get rich, honestly, I would love to be able to make a living at photography, but I know that it is a long way to get to that point. I know that I am not the best business mind, I am much more creative. That said, in order to make a living at photography, I have to figure out what my niche is. Am I a nature photography, or an action shooter? Am I a concert portrait maker, or do I capture the raw emotion of an event? I have been taking pictures at fire scenes, and I have shot some youth sports. I love taking pictures of plants and flowers and trying to capture the peacefulness or grandeur of landscapes. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to take some portrait style pics of my niece for her senior pictures. What did I like best?

Truthfully, I liked doing all of it. I like nothing better than looking at the world and seeing what I want to capture and then the satisfaction of getting some shots that turn out to be exactly what I had in my head when I initially looked at the scene.

I have this dream of doing a book about barns, as any longtime (longtime being since last fall when I started it!) reader of this blog can tell you, I love barns, and especially the old gambrel roofed style barns. Sadly, they are a disappearing structure in the American landscape, and the history that they hold is disappearing with them. How many times have you driven down the road and seen a lone silo standing sentinel over an empty field? You can bet that lying below that silo is the remains of a barn, whether collapsed into the ground or burned in some tragedy or demolition, it is the barn that raised the silo. The lone silo is the orphaned child of the barn. I don't know if I will ever have the drive to actually finish the book, but perhaps someday I will get much closer to getting it done.

I have been taking pictures yes, but I have also been writing about them. In more than one place. I have the pictures on Facebook and each one has a little something with it as an explanation, and in some cases I use the pictures to illustrate some narrative about what they are or why I took them. Recently someone was looking at some of my pics and asked me why I took a particular picture, and my immediate response was to ask, why not? In the age of digital cameras, there is no good reason NOT to take a picture. True that in many cases you only get a snapshot and not what the professionals call a "picture", but what is a picture but a well staged,placed and/or planned snapshot. By definition the BEST pictures of the last 100 years have been lucky snapshots when someone was in the right place at the right time shooting the scene. "The Execution" in Saigon, "Napalm girl", The flag raising at Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima. Granted the most famous one is a staged event, but the original was a snapshot. Part of the photographers job is being in the right place at the right time, and knowing where to look when the action is taking place. The guys on the sidelines of the big league games, they have earned a place there, so that they have the chance to get that special shot that becomes iconic for a particular athlete, like the crestfallen look of Scott Norwood after he missed the field-goal that lost the Super Bowl, or the moment of triumph when Lance Armstrong crossed the finish line for his 5th consecutive Tour De France win. The guy who was positioned to capture the flight of Richard Petty along the fence at Daytona when he went airborne. These guys have only one chance to get that particular iconic shot, and if they miss it or screw it up, they will never get the chance again, and we, the public, will never be able to review it and see if it is like we remember. In these days of video, and cellphone cameras, it is likely that someone got the picture, but what would you rather see, a picture that you have to squint at to see the details, or a giant glossy poster of that perfect shot? Yeah, that's why I took that picture, because eventually no one will have to ask why I took it, because they will be able to see in the frame why I took it, whether it's the tears of defeat, the joy of victory, the gossamer wings of a dragonfly skimming across a lily pond, or the spectacular colors of an August sunset. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I truly believe that the story behind the picture is what makes the picture with it.

Pictures are art. Every snapshot, every school picture, every painting, every sand drawing. If it is a graffiti tag spray-painted on a building or the doodling of a child on a notebook, it is art. Art is in the eye of the beholder, it is interpretive and has the distinctive duality of being both valuable and worthless at the same time. Each creation is unique, if for no other reason than it is separate from all others, even the copy has it's own individual flaws that make it unique from all other copies. What we create as artists, ( and we are all artists) we always hope to have accepted by someone. Even if it is a small group that sees the innate value of your work, you always appreciate the acceptance. As an artist I know that my art has value to me, in that it is something that I have put myself into, but I hope that it captures something that gives it value to somebody else as well. When I die and the things that I have made are kept as mementos of my life, then they have a new and greater value, because I will never create or capture another piece with my unique vision. From this standpoint, one can argue that even the electrician who puts the wires in the walls of your house, that you may never see or worry about, is an artist, because his work is unique.

We are all artists, and we all deserve appreciation, it doesn't really matter the medium, or even the message, if we leave behind a piece of ourselves, that is appreciated by someone else, then we have achieved a "masterpiece".

My current favorite pictures

2009-09-09T22:25:00.010-04:00

As some of you will undoubtedly remember from a few weeks ago, I have a new camera, and I am loving life playing with it! There is just no stopping the ideas flowing through my brain and the endless possibilities that keep popping up before my eyes. I want to try new things and shoot in different ways. and to show my vision of the world. I feel almost like a veil has been pulled from my creative eyes. I am seeing the world once again in a way that makes me glad to greet each new sunrise. I wait for inspiration to strike, and it seems that I never have to wait very long. Today it was a sunset. Yesterday it was a barn fire!
I am always looking to learn something new, and to refine my own picture style. I am steadily getting my comfort level back with the higher-end camera. I have been using the point and shoots for so long that I have to get my steady hand back for the longer lenses, and to see how to capture the images that I want so that they convey the stories that I am trying to illustrate. Each time I break out the camera I learn a little something that I didn't know before. I find new ways of doing things and especially seeing things. I want to show things in a perspective that maybe nobody else has tried. Although today with all of the amateur photographers out there with high-end, pro gear taking great pictures and trying to be the next Ansel Adams, it's all likely been tried. The odds are that what I do will be noticed by my small group of friends and family on facebook, and perhaps a few friends of friends steered by the linked pictures, and not much more than that.
What I would like to be able to do is to sell my pictures and make enough money to travel and take more pictures. I love to take them and to show them and to have someone tell me that they like them. My firemen friends like the stuff I do for them, at their functions, and after I get a few under my belt and get my technique figured out, I will be much better at the fire scenes too. I have been taking pictures of musicians for years, but this is the first time that I have had the gear to get a good ambient light picture of the guys on stage and not needed flash to keep the fingers from blurring.
The one thing that I don't want to be is the guy with the shingle in front of his house who gets the call for the school pictures. Senior pictures! I like doing portraits of people that mean something to me, I want to show them to the world the way that I see them., I want to be able to capture that little bit of attitude and recklessness that I see in these people. I can only really do that with people that I know. My niece is one of those people. I will give you, that she is so photogenic that it is nearly impossible to get a bad picture of her, but it is still a skill to do it without being boring about it. Catching her being goofy, without being obvious about it, and keeping her in a playful mood makes it really easy to get great shots of her. So what kind of photographer do I want to be? Well, I guess that I want to be the one that people call after an event and ask me if I was there taking pictures, because they are looking for something different, or better than what they have from everyone else. They will know that I will have the background pictures, the pictures capturing real emotion and real action, not some staged, gimmicky, "aww" shot. Not the treacly kiddie shots that most parents take with their cell phone cameras, but the picture of the guys doing the work, the grimace of pain and strain, the dust and the dirt of the events. The stuff that shows how the work gets done, and why people were there.
But then again there are always some really cool "aww" pictures too. They aren't all throw-aways. Sometimes you have to be sneaky to get the really cool pictures. I have been called paparazzi on more than one occasion! It helps that I generally know my subjects and they get accustomed to the fact that I have a camera and they never know when I may be shooting. They forget that the glass is looking for a subject to see, and when they are their most comfortable is the best time for shooting. But there are those who are ever vigilant, lest they be caught being natural, and for those subjects it becomes a challenge to get a great shot. Sometimes you can position yourself in the right place and lie in wait for the right time to present itself, or you just become ubiquitous with the camera and sooner or later you get a great shot of that elusive subject. What ever way works is fine by me, I'm not too picky about the how, I'm much more interested in the "how did it come out?" The bonus of digital is that you can take 200 pictures, be happy with 100 of them, ecstatic about 10 of them and toss the rest and be out nothing but time and experience. A person can learn.

Life is about learning, and photography is about capturing, so a photographers life is learning the art of the capture, I guess.

On baking and learning...

2009-08-29T20:33:00.002-04:00

I have long been a decent cook, and generally somewhat adventurous. I try a recipe and see what I like about and what I don't and then I start making changes, sometimes I make small changes and sometimes I change the recipe so much that it barely resembles the original, but it gives me a place to start and a result to work with. I'm confident enough in my abilities to know that when I venture off the path I can get what I am looking for eventually.

This week and weekend I have been playing baker, making my first ever tries at zucchini bread. Is it good, is it bad? It's hard to judge, but I think I have been doing quite well, working with the recipes that I was given to start with. One a cranberry-walnut concoction, another lemon-pecan, and one blueberry. Each one good in it's own way and quite enjoyable, but none of them quite what I had in mind. In my mind I remember a spice flavored bread, dark colored and a semi-smooth texture. When you bite into it you can taste the spices like cloves and allspice and ginger. Cinnamon is a given, but finding just the right recipe has been pretty futile. So I designed one from what I have found. I'm still tinkering, but I know I'm on the right track. Now it's a matter of refinement.

So I'm learning! I love learning, I like to know new things and to have new experiences. Many people put high stock in learning, but only in specific kinds of learning, what some refer to as, "book learning". Book learning is something specific, that you are taught by a proscribed method for a limited amount of time and here in America you have to pay for anything beyond public school. You can take a test and see what you have learned, and gauge your understanding by telling your teacher about the process. I love book learning, but I have found that book learning will only get a person so far, because books are limited to the experience of the author(s). Far too many of these authors lack the actual experiences that they write about, but rather use the anecdotal experiences of people that they interview, relying on imperfect memories and glazed over truths. Some of the experiences are documented in written accounts such as diaries and journals, and ever increasingly in pictures or video. But we all know that with the advancement of the recording industry there is corresponding advancement in editing and thus, how do you trust these documents? There is also the limitations of the teachers experience. Perhaps they have failed at the field that they are teaching, thus leading to the old adage, " Those who can't do, teach." Cynicism prevails and we find that truly the best teacher in life is none but experience.

Experience comes in many ways, sometimes by design, and sometimes by accident. We often don't even realize that we are learning something new as we go through our day. It isn't always something big, not a revelation such as understanding the theory of relativity, but perhaps you learn that if you stir your coffee with a ball point pen you get ink in your coffee. Or you learn that you need to use the brakes on your car harder to keep the brakes properly polished, or less hard to keep them from glazing. Hopefully we survive the bigger lessons, like don't drive to fast in the rain lest you hydroplane and lose control. But the point is that one of the best teachers is simple experience. Experience is something that we can apply to our daily lives. We know how hard to squeeze the toothpaste, not because we learned a formula in a book, but because we squirted toothpaste all over our hands when we were young. We know not to grab the handle of the frying pan without a pot holder because we got burned when we were young, or perhaps because we tried it as we were learning to cook. Employers come in 2 varieties, those who look for experience, and those who don't.

Those who hope for new employees with no experience want it this way because they are hoping to teach them their own set of bad habits for whatever job it is they are being hired to do. Often times this is for what could be considered a semi-skilled position, meaning you need to have certain basic skills to start with, but not so much skill that you could teach the job to your boss. Basically this is how manufacturers especially, keep employee costs down, because they don't have to pay a wage commensurate to the job they wish done. They can teach a literate dope off the street how to push a button and make a few measurements, and call them a machine operator, when it reality they should have a Machinist doing the job who can work mostly on his own and make the necessary adjustments based on his level of experience.

Then there are the higher-end employers who value experience and are willing to pay for it. The thing that immediately comes to mind is security firms, this is why they often hire retired police and military, because they have the experience required to keep the assets they are assigned to safe. But aside from this there are literally thousands of fields of endeavor that benefit from experienced employees, from finance and politics, to machine shops and auto mechanics. Experience show us the little things that we can't learn from a book. It teaches us by letting us make mistakes, and if we are smart, we don't make the same mistake twice.

Cooking is something that benefits from experience. If you make a mistake, you adjust and try again. Sometimes you can eat your mistakes, sometimes you can't. You've wasted time, food and money, and you just might go hungry. If you know what your mistake was you can avoid making it again, you use your experience to affect your future, and as you add to your experience you become better, as the old saying goes, practice makes perfect.

Been lazy...

2009-08-25T23:20:00.004-04:00

Summer and the livin' is easy... Not so much. Been busy as all hell and trying to keep my head above water financially speaking. It doesn't help that I went out and bought an expensive toy, but I hope that in the end it will pay me back. That will take some time, but I'll keep hoping! LOL

So my summer has been pretty interesting, (If you can call most of it summer! The weather sure hasn't been the best!) I have probably put more miles on the bike than I have in the last 5 years. Been riding it as often as possible because the gas is cheaper when you only have to by $5 worth every 80 miles or so. And when I really push it I buy $7 around 125 miles! How do you like that? For 2 more dollars I go 45 more miles!! As long as I'm not doing any "high performance" riding I have gotten the mileage as high as 52.3 mpg this summer. That's awesome and sure makes it easier on the wallet. As long as the sky doesn't look too forbidding I take the bike. ( or when I'm not going for groceries!)

My weight loss continues. As of this week I am up to ( down to?) 60# gone, I am actually down to one extra chin! The last few weeks have been hard with festivals and carnivals around. I love greasy carnival food, corn dogs, fried dough, sugar waffles, and sausage loaded with onions and peppers, not to mention pizza and candied apples. I took a Friday night at the Onion Fest and chowed on the good stuff. And then last weekend pops went to a festival and brought home bag of sugar waffles. So I had 2 of those too. I have been quite good though most of the time. Since I have been harvesting my squish, I have been eating zucchini and yellow summer squash almost daily. I love the stuff grilled with loads of spices. It is also great in an omelet with some broccoli or sausage. My favorite so far though is to mix it with crushed tomatoes and pile it on a little bit of cooked pasta. Man is that a great treat. I can't do it too often, but when I do. it sure is worth the wait! My meat intake is actually way down this summer. I have been way more veggie centric than usual. Not that I want to cut meat out of my diet, but I think that I'm just better off eating more veggies and less of the vegetarians.

Got a new Lawn mower last week. My old one was getting pretty beat. I have had it for 5 years and I use it for grass in the summer and with the snowblower attachment for snow in the winter. Believe it or not I checked the numbers and it had less than 500 hours on it! I was kinda surprised when I saw that. I gave the old one to my sister. She has a much smaller yard to mow, and the riders are quite a bit lighter than me, so it should last them for a few years. As long as they keep it lubed and sharpened it should serve them well for a good while.

Been watching the news and all this healthcare debate with ever rising bile. I just can't believe that so many Americans are so stupid. Well, I take that back, I can easily believe it, I'm more saddened by how easily they fall for the crap that gets doled out by the republican obstructionists. The Preamble to the Constitution specifically states,:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

To me the general welfare includes the health of the citizens. Public Healthcare is more constitutional than any insurance company collecting premiums and denying coverage ever could be. So you don't want Public coverage? How about this, You don't take it. There are far too many people out in the country who have NOTHING!! They work to make ends meet and they have squat to show for it, and if they get sick? They work through it, usually making everyone around them sick in the process because they can't afford to miss a day of work . If they get sick and can't work? They're pretty much screwed, because you can bet that there are bills that are gonna be late. It is the health insurance that has put me in a freaking hole. How? Because I was paying for "health" insurance that turned out to be more scam that insurance. My own fault for trying to do something without enough research. I dropped that one and got some real coverage, but now the money coming out of my paycheck each week has dropped my net income substantially, so the bills that I should be able to easily pay each month are squeezing my Fridays awfully close together. I push the due-dates of my bills to the limit, and I count on the mail float from the time I write a check until it gets cleared at my bank. So I can send out a check on Wednesday and know that by the time the funds are demanded from my bank, the money will be there on Friday. I have lived paycheck to paycheck most of my life, but this is probably the tightest I have even had to keep the books, even now with a savings account, I can't get ahead. And I don't even pay rent or a mortgage! I can't imagine how a family survives. And the big difference is that I now have Health Insurance. And it is the LOWEST PRICED I could find. Them what has Medicare have it good and they know it. I love to see them on the news shouting "Keep your government hand off my Medicare!" Um... OOOKAAAYYYY.... Medicare IS government sponsored healthcare. My suggestion is that they first expand Medicare to cover anyone 50 and up. That takes a huge chunk of the population in, especially with the aging Baby Boomers. They are nearing 65 fast! Just two years to go before the first wave hits.

Ok enough for now. But remember please, FIND THE FACTS!! Rhetoric sounds great and it can fire you up, but the facts will set you free, and show you what is right and wrong.

The benefits of Technology....

2009-08-22T20:06:00.001-04:00

I'm gonna start by saying that in general, I'm not a great proponent of change, I have found that advances aren't always all they are cracked up to be, and sometimes changing things too fast bites one in the ass. Windows Vista anyone? Modern buildings seem to lack the character and charm of the old classics, the Gothic Cathedrals of Europe come to mind compared to the steel buildings that pass as churches in today's "build 'em faster and cheaper" society. That's not to say that all technological advances are bad, Digital Photography for one thing. In the film days, you took your pictures and then developed them, either yourself, or by paying someone else to do it, sure eventually it became about a 1 hour wait. The wait wasn't such a bad thing but the wasted frames, when you snapped a picture you had to be sure that everything was in place and ready and right or that was a wasted frame. AND you had to pay to have it developed before you knew it was a wasted frame. Invariably you would run out of film at a critical moment, and unless you had a loaded camera on stand-by, you were screwed until you reloaded or even worse went and got more film. With digital, it's better than the old Polaroid instant camera, just snap your picture, and look at the viewer. Was it what you wanted? No? Well, snap a few more and try something a little different each time. Memory is cheap and as many pictures as I take in a day, I have never run out of memory at a critical moment, ( Battery yes! Memory no...) So the advance is better.

A few years back, early in my internet experience, I joined a website called "6 Degrees" based on the old game "6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon". Who remembers that game? It was also known as "Kevin Bacon is the Center of the Universe". The object was to connect Kevin Bacon to another person, ( usually famous, preferably an actor) by pairing him with a known associate, and then pairing that associate with another etc. and getting to the specified person in less than 6 pairings. The goal of the website was to connect people, by connecting their friends. It was an early shot at the social networking idea. I was never too impressed with it, and I think I visited it a few days a week for a couple months and finally lost interest.

Social Networking has advanced greatly since then, and while I was never much for MySpace, and I resisted Facebook for a long time, I finally broke down about 6 weeks ago and joined. One of the reasons that I have resisted is because I know A LOT of assholes, and I don't want them to find me. I don't care if I ever hear from loads of people from my past. But on the positive side, there is a large part of my family that I want to be able to keep up with, and know what's going on with them. (I'm not gonna follow Twitter though, as far as I'm concerned, Twitter is for twits!) Of course I don't need to know everything, but it's interesting to see old family pictures and to chat with the cousins who live so far away and to see how they are doing. We can trade jokes and pictures and share in the special family bond that we have built through years of teasing and torture. ;-)

Family is a funny thing, because as we all know most family trees have hidden places that we either don't talk about, don't know about, or know about but have no way of getting a better look. This is a new benefit of technology. In some cases it can connect an adopted child with their birth family, if the birth family is interested. In other cases it can help someone find a part of their family that they knew was out there, but never knew how to reach. That is what has happened to me. Back in May, I wrote about my mothers, and how I grew up with a step-mom, but I reconnected with my Bio-mom in my late teens. Since I didn't grow up with my bio-mom in my life, I also didn't grow up with her side of my family in my life. I knew that I had at least one aunt, and 2 uncles as well as grandparents connected to my mother. But from the age of 3, I had no contact, until by chance, I met my maternal Grandmother in a parking lot of a local shopping center when I was 12 or 13. I spent and afternoon with her shortly afterward, but then never really heard from her again. The summer that I was 18 I went looking for my bio-mom, by looking for an aunt that I knew was still in the area. ( How did I know? Because my father would tell me from time to time that he had run into her at some beer tent or carnival) I found my aunt, she gave me the telephone number for my mother and I called her. She was surprised and happy. I went to visit her, she came to my graduation, and I met one of my uncles, his wife and daughter. That was 22 years ago. No calls or other contact with the uncle since. Didn't even get to go to my grandmother's funeral, because I didn't know that she had died until after the funeral was over. ( My Bio-mom isn't the greatest with directions, so she couldn't find my house when she was here for the funeral.)

Enter Facebook. When you make "friends" you can look through their friends list and see if there is anyone you would like to add to your list. Mutual friends are a great way to meet new and interesting people, not to mention make contacts in business. Sometimes though, you stumble upon a name that seems like it should be someone you know, but don't. Especially if you know that there is family around that you don't know. That happened to me. I was looking through a friend's friend list, and I spotted a name that I wondered if I was related to. So I looked at what info was available, and it sure seemed like I should be related, so I took a chance and sent her a note. Sure enough not only was she my cousin, but even better she was looking for me! And by finding me, she also found my mother ( her aunt) and has connected me with her brother also. So now I have two new relatives to learn about! And the funniest part is that one of my newly found cousins lives less than ten minutes away from me! The other one lives more like 2000 miles away, but at least I know that he exists now... LOL I'm guessing that eventually I will get to learn about a few more cousins, and possibly some family history.

Too bad I didn't find out that I was related to philanthropic multi-millionaires, but I'm happy just to make my family a little bigger, and my tree a little more complete.

Wandering around....

2009-08-19T22:44:00.007-04:00

This past weekend, I took my motorcycle for a ride, and I took my new camera with me. I decided that I needed some subjects that I haven't been looking at on a daily basis, and what a better way to find them than to get out and go for a ride! And for a ride I went.

On Saturday I headed south, it seemed like a great direction, and the weather was nice and hot, with loads of humidity, and south is into the hills where there is plenty of shade and trees and cool breezes coming out of the deep green forests. So as I was riding I was looking at various things that I thought might make some great pics, but

I wasn't really struck, until I decided that I wanted to get some pictures of the Genesee River. Not just any pictures though, I wanted to show the high water level from all the rain that we have had this year, and the beautiful vistas of the river gorge as it winds along its northbound path above the dam. The Mt. Morris Dam, is a great place to get some awesome pictures, and I was glad to have the equipment to give it a good shot. The day was pretty humid, so you can see the haze in the distance in the pictures. I walked along the hiking paths along the rim and snapped pics from various points along the way. Of all that I took, I think this is my favorite, but If I put more out there you may have a different favorite. I do have more of them posted in my Stone Indian Gallery. I took pictures all along my way that day, mostly in the dam area, but I did stop a few time along the way to take other pictures too. I won't bore you with all of them!

Then on Sunday, Yes indeed, I went riding again on another hot, steamy day. This time, I decided to go north, to the shores of Lake Ontario. I figured there should be a decent breeze, and the temp should be a little bit lower close to the water.

First stop on this trip was Point Breeze, I wanted to get some shots of the boats or the jetskis playing out on the water, but everyone was being responsible and playing nice. Fortunately I did see some interesting things to photograph. Since it was mid afternoon, the charter fishing boats were coming back into the harbor, and they come in from the lake at a pretty good clip. They turn into the channel and drop the throttle to run up the creek and they look a little bit like the S.S Minnow. Well, since it was a nice day, and I was looking to stretch my legs with the camera, I
headed out from there, and wandered on down the road a ways. As I was riding along with my eyes open for possibilities, I spotted this gem. If I had stopped immediately I may have gotten a better picture , but then again maybe not. I figure he was gonna be skittish no matter what I did. How close can you get to a Bald Eagle?

After that, I went on for a few more miles and hit Golden Hill State Park. I went to the boat launch first hoping again to find some jetski action to get pics of, but alas, the price of gas, or maybe the fact that I passed about 100 weddings and everyone was invited, there wasn't much in the way of jetskiers on the water. So, I headed over to the Lighthouse at the campground. The lighthouse at 30-mile Point is a great little place to visit, and I think that the next time I go, I will pay the dollar admission and take the tour of the lighthouse too!

After I left the lighthouse I went to visit my sister, and had the chance to get a few of my niece while she was painting her brother's bedroom, and also to get a pic of my nephew who is part ham and part camera-shy goofball. Getting a good pic of him isn't easy, but I managed to do it!

That was three days ago as I write this. Since then I have been playing with my camera in an earnest way, trying to find the sweet spot settings to get the pictures that I want the way that I want them. Some of my favorite subjects to shoot are clouds, and one of the problems I have had in the past is the lack of glass to truly capture the detail of the formations. Sometimes it's not about the detail, but simply showing the size in a setting that it can truly be appreciated. The ones in this picture popped up on Tuesday evening after the hot, sticky day built up enough atmospheric turbulence to build some thunderheads, and I was in a position to capture that view.
Today at lunchtime I noticed that the gladiolas in pop's garden were blooming quite nicely, and they have some great colors. I was messing with some personal settings and I wanted to see how they compared to the factory settings, and to do that I have to take a whole bunch of pictures, and I really liked this one, and figured it would be cool to share.

Have a great day!

I had an MRI...

2009-08-13T22:12:00.006-04:00

Ok, first of all let me say that it wasn't for anything catastrophic! I had an infected cyst on my back and when the doctor removed it, he found that it was quite deep, and to be sure that there was no deep tissue damage, or damage to my spine, ( it was very close to my spine) that I should have an MRI.

Now I have to admit that I was an MRI virgin, and I didn't really know what to expect, but knowing the the "M" stands for Magnetic, I assumed that there would be some interesting noises. Interesting barely begins to cover it! Having never even accompanied anyone getting an MRI I had no idea that it would be so freakin' NOISY!!! it was like being stuck in the middle of a construction/demolition area with no hearing protection. It wasn't that it was really uncomfortably loud, but it was really drowning out the music that was playing in my headphones!!

Now being aware that the super powerful magnet would be able to do some damage, I was mindful of the tech's reminder to be sure that I had all metal taken out of my clothes and of of my person. At least I thought I was mindful, as I was laying in the tube and the thing was jackhammering away, I realized that I had forgotten to remove my ring! Since I had made it that far, I I figured that it was truly made of sterling silver. After the first scan, and was pulled from the tube, I told the tech that I forgot to remove the ring, and she shrugged and said that since it hasn't been a problem, it probably wouldn't be a problem, which is what I figured too.

Now for those of you who think that my size would make it a problem to get into the tube, well, you're kinda right. It wasn't like sitting in an easy chair, since my arms did rub the sides, but my belly wasn't a problem at all. Having lost that 55 pounds, has really helped in that respect! So anyway, I was loaded in the tube and trying to enjoy my super 70's mix on the headphones over the incessant banging of the machine, when everything went quite and they pulled me out!

I thought that it was over, but it was only half way through! I still had to have a contrast run, so now the injected me with the dye, and this made me a little nervous because my sister had the dye and she reacted badly. and there after she broke out in hives whenever she ate shellfish! That would be bad for me, because I really like shrimp and lobster... and crawdads too come to think of it! So they injected the dye and stuffed me back in the tube for another round of rumbling.

The techs that I had were very cool and had great sense of humor, so I had a great experience. The dye didn't cause me any discomfort, and it looks like all my parts are safe and clear of problems. ( At least the parts they were primarily concerned with!) All things considered, I would not have a problem doing it again. It really helps that I am not claustrophobic in the least, being stuffed in a little tube for the better part of an hour kind felt like when I was working on RV's for a living!

My new toy!

2009-08-12T22:14:00.009-04:00

Yes indeed some days you get what you are looking for, and this week I have gotten me a brand new toy, a new camera!! A new camera for me and this is a great big step up from the little point and shoots that I have been using. If you look at this picture you might guess that it takes some pretty nice pics, and you would be quite right! It is a Canon Rebel T1i, 15.1 Megapixel. Since I didn't have a whole lot of money to throw at this, I searched for a while to find the best price I could, and then I saved my pennies for a few months until I could afford the nut it took to make the purchase. I hope that I will be able to sell a few pictures to help me pay for this thing!

I was so tight on the money that I didn't even have the spare to buy the kit with a lens, I had to buy the body only version. Fortunately, and with some planning I happened to buy a camera of the same make that my Father already owns, and he has given me 2 of his old lenses that he no longer uses. ( He spent the money on some high-end lenses, so I can have the hand-me-downs!) One is the original that he got with his own Rebel XSi, an 18-55mm zoom, and the other a 55-250mm zoom. They are both great optics, but they have a drawback that pops wanted to overcome, they didn't have enough apeture to shoot clear indoor, sports, action shots. While I may want to do that occasionally, I am much more about outdoor nature shots. Yes, I do lots of parties and performances, but they are either well lit, or I have no problem lighting them with a flash, so it's plenty cool to use the higher apeture settings for me. Plus I have learned how to incorporate the blurred movement of certain things into my style.

It has been many years since I have had the luxury of a true SLR camera at my utter disposal, and I am feeling my oats with it. I have already taken over 175 pictures and I haven't even had it for 48 hours yet! Of course, they are not all good by any means, but I am improving quickly as I get used to the feel and the features of the camera. I really dig the auto focus, but it takes a little tweaking for a picky pixel hound like me to get it seeing what I want it to see. Fortunately that's one of the big advantages of this particular brand, I can set the focal points where I want them and the camera will heel to my becon call. One of the things that I have missed so much in recent years with the myriad subjects surrounding me, is the ability to get such a great adjustment in the depth of field in my pictures. Since the glass on point and shoot cameras is set up to be pretty much idiot-proof ( nothing ever is, because there are always better idiots waiting in the wings!) it is designed with a very limited depth of field capability, even with an adjustable aperature, it only closes down to f8, and that is still a gaping maw compared to the the f22, 25, 0r 28 that I can get with the SLR glass. Now I can have some fun with depth!

Not only that, but because I enjoy the nature shots so much, sometime it will allow me to get in close and personal with certain skittish critters. Like this little guy! He was hiding in the watergarden and I nearly stepped on him before I realized that he had himself stashed in such a tight spot. But I was able to get a bead on him for a few frames before he decided to dash away. I sure hope he got his dinner first! While I am not a fanatic conservationist or anything like that, there are tons of subjects that I love to get pics of, from the frogs and dragonflies, to the deer and game birds that spend so much time within my visual range. If I am lucky I may be able to get some pictures of some crazy birds this year. Maybe a turkey or a pheasant, and if I'm real lucky maybe I get me a partridge ( pear tree optional!)

So far I am pretty happy with what I can do, and I am looking forward to really pushing the limits of what this camera can accomplish, and as I learn all of it's little quirks and intricacies, I will be able to refine my own style of picture taking. I am not the most creative person in the world, but I do know what I like and what draws my attention. I really want to get back into getting people like I have in the past. I have been compared to paparazzi on more than one occasion, because I manage to get pictures of people and things that people don't even notice. Partly because I so often have a camera that it becomes an expectation and people lose their natural inhibitions to being caught on film, and partly because I have this habit of shooting so much around me that it is inevitable that eventually I get a few good pictures!

I wish I had a real crystal ball to look in and see what it is that I need to do to find that moment when I meet my dream, but since I don't, I will continue to play with the things that draw me in. Oh yeah, one more thing, this particular camera also does video, in FULL HD!! so cool! I have only just tried this feature for a few seconds to make sure that it worked, but as soon as I have my high capacity SD cards, I will give it a try for real! Looking forward to having some fun with that also!

Why are we so scared?

2009-08-04T23:13:00.004-04:00

I recently read an article ( and when I say "recently" I mean in the last few months!) that broke down "freedom" by state. Using various legislative and social guideposts, the authors of the sited study, evaluated and graded the freedoms in each state. The conclusions were interesting to say the least, because what they found was that, in general, the states with the highest tax loads per capita had the least amount of personal freedom, and the states with the lowest tax loads had the most "perceived" freedom. Why, you may ask do I put the word "perceived" in quotes? Well, it is because, based on the study, most freedom is about perception,( ask your kids how free they feel when they are stuck in school) but when quantitatively measured, freedom has no meaning.

If a person has a job, and can feed their family and live a life that makes them happy, what freedom are they missing? If this person lives in country that is ruled by a military dictator, or by a democratically elected president makes no difference. If a different person has a job they can't stand, and makes barely enough money to live, and lives on the edge of financial ruin, never finding happiness in their entire life, are they ever truly free? Again, it makes no difference what system they live under.

Taxes that seem to go ever upward, with ever deepening cuts in the services offered, gives a feeling of the loss of freedom. When you can keep more of your wages, you feel like you have more freedom. When you are doing something that you enjoy, more than you're doing something that you don't, you feel free. Ask yourself, do you take a vacation to do stuff you hate? Of course not! Unless you're married and you take a vacation to catch up on the "Honey do.." list, then maybe you are doing stuff you don't like on vacation. See, you don't feel free then, do you?

In America, we spend so much of our time trying to meet our payments that we have lost view of what life is really about. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, were the golden trio described in our Declaration of Independence, but today we give them up for Work, Struggle and the pursuit of the next cool thing. Anybody who has lived a few years can tell you that the continuing struggle for money and belongings has sidetracked us from the real things in life, family, learning and living.

Living is one thing that the rest of the world seems to have on us. Especially the European countries. The European model has capitalism, with liberal amounts of socialism sprinkled in to make life livable for the masses, and not just for the lucky few. Health care is only one place where they have us beat. We have truly lost some greatness in our educational arenas, and our research capabilities too. Thanks very much to the odd religious nutcases who seem to get power, even when they are a minority. Long discussion for a different time.

Just as much, I pursue the dollars and the stuff. I have no time or money to do the things that I really want to do, so I compensate by getting stuff instead of going and seeing like I want to! Occasionally I have the luck and the time to get out of my small realm and see the broader world, and I always love those times. But they are far fewer that I would like, so in the middle times I amuse myself with what I think I want when I can't have what I really want. It is my freedom of choice and I use it rather unwisely!

On a lighter note.....55# gone. I have hit a plateau, but it might have to do with the hole in my back. Small surgical thing that needs to finish healing so I can get back into some more vigorous exercise. Sounds funny to say, but I miss it!

Random thoughts put is no order

2009-07-28T22:11:00.003-04:00

So it has occurred to me that our President could get more accomplished if he actually DID something rather than get on TV and talk about what he WANTS to do. I can't remember any President who has been on TV more than Mr. Obama. He is on in the middle of the day, he disrupts the afternoon soaps, or he gets some prime-time spots to screw up the TV viewing schedule. It has gotten to the point where the networks are actually deciding NOT to air his addresses live, because there have been so many of them! When the network news is no longer taking you seriously, it's time to rethink your approach.

If government run healthcare is good enough for our veterans and our elderly (well maybe not elderly, but them what's old enough for Medicare) why is it "socialism" to offer it to the general population? I don't understand how "Socialized Medicine" is good enough for our military personal, but not all of us.

Why is it ok to try to change the constitution to elect Arnold Schwarzeneggar president? President Obama was born in Hawaii which is a State and was a State when he was born there. It has been proven time and again, too bad there wasn't a video of the birth, but then in this day and age it is likely that even that would be called into question. Just because his dad was Kenyan, his mother was still American. He was born in Hawaii in 1961, Hawaii became a State in 1959, soooo.... He is a natural born American Citizen. Just like so many of the children born to the Cuban Exiles, or the Italian, Polish, Russian or whatever, immigrants, by being born inside the borders of the United States of America, he is a citizen. So bite it "birthers!"

How do you believe in a talking snake, but not evolution? How do you swallow that an omnipotent/omnicient being created all the universe in 6 days, but not that some lightening in the primordial ooze sparked life? Why does "God" support your team and not the opposing team? What is the difference between God, Odin, Zeus, Allah, and Whoever you choose to worship? Do not all religions essentially teach the same things? why is one better than another? They all have their problems and their good points. Take all the good stuff and discard all the bad and you don't need a church, temple, or mosque. It's time for religious institutions to pay taxes or to put ALL of their money into the charities that they profess to support.

Vote against the incumbent, even if it means writing in "None of the above". The Democrats control the White House, The Senate and Congress, yet they can't pass legislation. The Republicans will get something done, even if it is wrong. Why is that? Too bad that the people who are supposed to be smart, haven't got the brains to get something accomplished!

Crazy shit rolling around in my head. Tired of the crap, I just want to see people agree for a few days, and get something done that actually benefits the people of America rather than the people who are elected to represent us. In other "free" countries the Government is afraid of the people, but in our country the people are afraid of the Government. Why is that?

thoughts and holes

2009-07-23T20:14:00.002-04:00

So I went to the Doctor today about this bump on my back, and it turns out that I had a little thing called an infected subacious cyst. Sound delicious doesn't it? Yeah, so anyway, since I was there and he was a surgeon, I decided to let him take it out. He got in and cleaned out the infection, and now since it needs to heal from the inside first, I have a hole in my back packed with gauze. Fun wow! The real fun will be getting the packing changed, I'm sure that without the anesthetic it will be quite a joy to feel. Oh well, better for me in the long run.

Last night I met someone who I would consider to be a minor semi-celebrity. Have you ever met someone and knew, without even a seconds hesitation that you are with someone who will someday be truly famous? In the first 5 minutes, I was impressed with this person. I'm not easily impressed, and most people who have the drive to pursue this type of life, are generally self centered and pretty much a walking ego. The lady that I met last night was not. She was gracious, and friendly, and she was just as happy to listen to our stories as we were to listen to hers. When she listened to you, she looked at you, and her eyes would see into you and sort the bullshit from the truth, with the precision of a laser scalpel. In the first 5 minutes I knew why she had her job, and in the first half-hour I knew that she was gonna be way bigger than our little city. By the time the evening was done, I was sure that she was gonna be one of the biggest. She will be one of those people who will surpass all of the expectations. I don't know if I would say bigger than Oprah, because let's face it, that's a just not likely for anyone anymore, but she will at least be as big as Ellen, or maybe Leno. She is a girl with drive and balls, backed by intelligence, wit and amazing beauty. If she doesn't become a household name I will be surprised, and some day I will turn on the TV and she will be there doing something, and I will chuckle and say that I had dinner once with Lilly Hisenaj, back when she was just in the middle of her career path, before she was a household name.

Someday you all will know who I mean. I'm sure of it!

Where is my summer?!?!

2009-07-15T21:45:00.004-04:00

" Hot town
summer in the city,
Back of my neck
gettin dirty and gritty..."

Love that song, but it seems like this year it sure hasn't been true so far! This is mid-July, and I am comfortable wearing jeans and long sleeve shirts. That is completely wrong. I should be sweltering in hot, sticky weather, waiting for the end of the work day so I can jump in the swimming pool and enjoy a refreshing dip. I have been in the pool exactly once! and that was to work on cleaning it. In fact I haven't even been too worried about getting it completely cleaned yet, because I'm shivering in the morning and just happy to be warm in the afternoon.

I know that it's related to the global warming, and the truth is that in our temperate climate the loss of hot summers is one of the things that will happen, meanwhile the equatorial regions will be sweltering and probably in drought. It's all related people. I remember back in the early 90's when we had some doozy winter weeks and Time Magazine had a cover that showed Niagara Falls ice bridge, and the headline was something about a new ice age. It's all related. The warming melts the ice at the poles, which in turn slows the ocean currents, because the temperature gradient isn't as high, so the warm weather stay in the warm regions, and the cold weather stays in the cold regions. Eventually the cold builds up and the heat builds up and neither the twain shall meet. Yep The ice age is brought on by global warming. See? It's all related!

Oh well, I just want to be hot and sweaty and looking forward to a swim!! I can't do it this week, because now it's gonna RAIN!! (Plus it's still too cold!)

Barbecue season...

2009-07-11T15:33:00.002-04:00

50 pounds less of me there now is!

And the fact that I have managed to keep to my changes even in the middle of barbecue season makes me very happy, because next to Christmas this is the hardest time of the year for me to keep from gorging on everything in sight. Between working outdoors and playing outdoors, I'm hungry to start with, but throw in the constant scent of barbecue in the air from all over the neighborhood, and I should be binging left and right! Plus the added incentive of being too hot and tired to really want to cook anything good, but with a taste for junk in my brain.... I want to dive head first into a Chinese buffet! Who knows, maybe that will be my splurge this weekend, it is either that or maybe I will get a pair of them bacon burritos from Taco Bell! They sure look good on the commercials. Taco Bell is the one place that seems to rarely disappoint me between the commercial and the reality. Unlike Applebee's which always disappoints me. Everything looks great and tasty, and I get there and it seems like warm cardboard. Yet I still try the place now and then just hoping to find something good. LOL I guess that fits the definition of insanity. But it's food, what can I do? As I have said before, it is the one thing that I am nearly powerless over. That is changing though, and I am happy about it! Maybe someday I will have the willpower to never set foot in those places again, but for now, I am getting by on smaller and much more distant doses.

I guess I will go make a broccoli and jalapeno omelet.

life on Mars...

2009-07-05T21:03:00.006-04:00

When I was a kid, I asked my dad one time what was the difference between a weed and a garden plant, and his succinct answer was this, " A weed is any plant growing where I don't want it." So by his definition, a beautiful rose bush growing uninvited in a field of cucumbers, is a weed.

As every gardener knows, weeds are the bane of our existence, there is no plant more resilient than the humble garden weed. Be it a dandelion, or a sunflower, if it is growing where you don't want it, it's gonna be persistent and nearly impossible to get rid of. Yet try to get the things that you want to grow to take hold in the same fashion and you will have better luck trying to stuff a wet noodle in a stray cats ass. I have seen sunflowers growing wild, and I can say that some of the wild ones are better by far than half of the cultivated ones I have seen. Yet, try as I might, when I want sunflowers to grow wild I can barely get three or four to make an effort.

If you have ever owned a bird feeder, you know just how easy sunflowers will grow, all they need is moisture and some sunny days and they are sprouting away left and right. You can mow them down all summer long, yet they keep trying. The birds and squirrels will drag those damn seeds everywhere, and they will try to grow. Yet if you plant 20 in a row, you get 6. What the hell? !

Sunflowers are just an example, but it is the weeds that I am concerned with today. I have weeds that are so hardy that they stand up to everything I throw at them. I have hit them with high-end weed killer, I have burned them, tilled them, hoed them and weed preventer-ed them yet they come back again and again. I get more than my daily exercise pulling weeds, and hoeing and cultivating the garden, trying to keep it looking fairly presentable. I get one area cleaned up, move on to the next and 2 days later the original has the pale green haze of weeds showing again! They grow in the dry season, they grow in the wet season, and they grow past the frost and before the thaw! If NASA wants to see if Mars can support life, I will give them a couple shovels of dirt from my garden and they can plop it onto Mars and watch it go! I bet them weeds will even grow on Mars!

You want to find out if there is life on Mars, give them some good old New York weeds to deal with and we may actually end up with our first interplanetary war. The Martians will be pissed, beause they will never be rid of them weeds once they get a foot hold. But the kicker of the whole damn thing is this, some of the blooms on the weeds, are prettier than the flowers I have planted. So I may use some reverse psychology on the weeds and try to grow a few rows of them for the blooms! You think they will actually grow?

Of children and nations....

2009-06-30T21:16:00.004-04:00

"If all of your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?" How many times has your mother used that old chestnut on you? And so we will eventually use it on our kids and they in turn will use it on theirs ad infinitum until there are no bridges in the world to use as an example. What were our mothers trying to teach us with this little rhetorical question? First of all you better believe that it was rhetorical, because at that point if you tried to answer you were quite likely to receive a quick wallop upside your head! But what was the lesson being imparted? Just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it right.

Remember the first time your younger sibling bit you? Then you, being the logical being that is an older brother or sister, ( but not much older) Bit the younger one back, and they screamed bloody murder, and what happened next? Mom or dad came into the room and clocked you a good one. But the little brother or sister was quickly comforted. Ever notice that the punishment was always to the one who was caught in retaliation? There is a lesson here too, I still haven't quite figured that one out, but maybe someday I will be smart enough to find it. One thing I did learn from it was that if I held my ground and let the younger one poke at me a few more times, mom would catch on and they would get punished! Always the more satisfactory outcome. What does this have to do with nations?

I was given a chance to sign a petition today to support teaching the Geneva Convention rules of warfare and combat in our schools. It makes sense, that we teach it, because it is mentioned in the news quite a bit, ( especially lately!) and it is part of both our history, and hopefully the future of the planet. When I say, "hopefully," I don't mean that I hope we have more wars so that we can use these rules properly, but rather that there comes a time when the basis for these rules, Humane treatment of fellow human beings, becomes the norm on the planet.

There was a time when the ability to grow crops and feed a population was limited by the ground that you controlled. If you didn't have enough farmland in your kingdom, or empire or whatever you wished to call it, you likely had lots of peasants starving and this caused them to rebel and cause problems for the throne. A bad ruler would simply go and kill his own people to make an example of them to stop the rebels. A good ruler would get his peasant army together and channel that anger into conquering more land so that they could haul in bigger crops. Or simply raid neighboring kingdoms for their goods and food. Today, the entire world is much smaller. Not in a literal sense, but in a figurative sense. The technology that allows Americans to grow bumpercrops of wheat and corn and oats, can easily be used by Russians, Germans, Chinese, or anyone in the world who wants to use it and has the land to put it to use. Those countries that do have the natural farmlands, have other things that we need. So we trade them. We send them the food they need and they send us the stuff that we need. It is much easier to ship wheat and corn that it is to move an army.

Since scarcity of resources is no longer the easiest reason to use for hating people, we have decided that ideological, racial, or religious differences will fill the bill. Keep killing. It's the way of the world. You don't follow the same book written by a dead guy 2000 years ago, as I do, so you must be bad and I must kill you. Your parents were born on a different hill that mine, so I must hate you and try to kill you so there are no more of you. You wear different shoes than I do, you must die. There are hundreds of reasons for killing and not one of them makes any sense except in defense of your own life, even then there will often be some doubt about the final choice. No matter what argument you can make there is a counter argument that is just as reasonable.

In the old cowboy movies it was so cut and dried, the good guys always wore the white hats so you knew who to root for. Of course that's if you considered the good guys cause to be right, some people obviously rooted for the "bad guy" because they felt much more in tune with his causes, but in the end, it was always the guy in the white hat who won the day and the heart of the farm girl. But how did he win the day? He was first and foremost reasonable. he used his brain much more than he used his brawn. Ok, to be fair in most westerns he also used his guns and killed plenty of bad guys, but if you remember he never fired the first shot, he was always defending himself. Real life isn't the movies.

In real life there is a vicious cycle to killing, and maiming and even torture. Once the cycle begins it can take generations before it can be ended, if even then. Ask Ireland and the IRA. It is like the Hatfields and the McCoys, or the Montegues and the Capulets, one dies so there is retaliation, but there is no mom to smack some sense into anyone and it continues to escalate until entire nations are brought into the fray. The United Nations was devised to be that "mom", who could put a stop to the squabbleing, but it seems that there is always some rivalry or other going on and someone needs to be smacked upside the head.

You know what really sucks about swatting mosquitoes? When you smack them you are often hurting yourself at the same time, and that is exactly what torture does to nations. There is the satisfaction of causing pain and discomfort to the enemy combatant, but at what cost? I have a friend who was in Vietnam in the late 60's. He fought some of the bloodiest battles of the war, and he helped with many body counts. One of the things that truly affected him was when he would move the body of an enemy soldier, and find them clutching in their hand, pictures of their loved ones. Suddenly they were not soldiers to him, but husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. He knew how he felt about his family, and how they felt about him, and he knew that what he was doing was not right, no matter what the reason. The training that he had received and the years of indoctrination about the "commie bastards", the "gooks" and the "enemy" was no more than political bullshit and what it boiled down to was that he and his friends were doing was not killing simply soldiers, but killing people. True, if he suddenly stopped fighting he would be just as dead as them, but even so, this is where his conscience kicked in, and why he still works hard to atone for what he did there.

Because of the Geneva Conventions, it was possible for American servicemen to become friends with their German prison guards after World War II. Not all of them, but there were some incredible frienships formed, because the guards were not allowed to mistreat their wards, because of the Geneva Conventions. This is only one example, but it is the best one I can think of. Sadly, this was the last time that the Conventions were truly followed, at least by more than less. There were still many evil acts done to prisoners, and often by those people seeking revenge or retaliation for the loss of family or friends. When cities were bombed, people died. Innocent people as well as combatants. Sure, it's part of war, they started it, it's the only way to win, and any other excuse you want to use, but the people that died had family and friends. On both sides.

One has to hope that at some point humanity will see the futility in war. The futility in hate, and the futility in religion, or at the very least the futility of trying to force ones beliefs on others. It probably won't happen in my lifetime, but I can dream. Until then there needs to be some rules to seperate the "Good Guys" from the "Bad Guys". The Geneva Conventions are a good start, "Adopted by 194 countries, the Geneva Conventions safeguard those who do not take part in fighting and those that can no longer fight – wounded, civilians, and prisoners of war. They protect American and foreign citizens alike." If there must be war, there must be reason, even though by definition, war is unreasonable.

" He hit me first!" will not stand up in the court of Mom, and it shouldn't stand up in the Court of the world either. Those that have walked the walk and talked the talk, can tell you that torture only gets you what you want to hear, not the truth. The Geneva Conventions were a good idea when they were new, and they remain a good idea today.

Some days it ain't easy...

2009-06-26T23:23:00.003-04:00

Some days a body really has to want to do something more than sit on it's fat ass and do nothing. Even when that's all the mind wants to do is nothing. So when it's been raining for two days at the normal workout time, and the schedule hasn't had much free time for moving the body. So to compensate I ate less. Which really isn't easy since I'm not eating much now by my old standards!

The hot sticky days of summer have finally arrived and I must say that I love it just fine. I hate being cold, so I don't mind the sticky, hazy, hot and humid days of summer. I like floating in the pool. I like riding my motorcycle, my bicycle and rollerblading. Summer is when you can do these things best.

3 Down

2009-06-25T22:07:00.005-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Ever hear the saying, "They always die in Threes."? "They" being the rich and famous. This week three greats are gone. "Greats" of course is a matter of opinion, but from my viewpoint they really were greats, even if the world is divided on the opinion, they were often recognized as greats in their fields. The perpetual sidekick, the "king of pop" and a great actress, one the the original Angels. Yes, I am talking about Ed McMahon, Michael Jackson, and Farrah Fawcett.

Ed McMahon, was the voice of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, I'm old enough to remember that, but what I really remember him from was the blooper show with Dick Clark, and Star Search. If your old enough to remember Star Search, you remember that it was THE thing to watch on Saturday nights. The new, up and coming comics and singers, acrobats, dancers and who can remember what else. The original version of American Idol. They performed head to head and the winner each week took on a new player the following week, and at the end the one who survived was the winner. Who can remember all of the future stars who crossed that stage? Just like Idol today, even most of the losers went on to great things. Sawyer Brown the great country band, a 5 year old LeAnne Rimes. What about Sinbad? These are the three that pop to the top of my own memory, and the TV says that Brittany Spears and Justin Timberlake crossed the stage too, before they were Mousekateers. He gave so many people a start over the years of that show, that it is hard to believe that he is still best remembered as the perpetual sidekick to the class clown, and the Peter Pan of Bandsstand. One more thing that he was known for for many years was being the face of and integrity of Publishers Clearing House. He was the guy delivering the big check, when the winner was chosen and presented. You may already be a millionaire!

Michael Jackson, once one of the most amazing artists on the planet. I freely admit that I was a fan at one point, and I grew up on the sounds of Motown, and the Jackson 5 was part of that sound. "1-2-3", Was probably one of the songs that I remember best of the original family group, along with "Never can say good-bye". I also remember the Saturday morning cartoon of the Jackson 5. Like Scooby-Doo without the stoner and the dog! Yes, the man became the butt of jokes, but it was really a lot of his own doing. With his immense fame came some mind warpage. Who wouldn't get a little freaky when everywhere you went you were a riot waiting to happen. No privacy, no anonymity and never a chance to just walk down a sidewalk without the prying eyes of the tabloids and paparazzi scrutinizing your every move. The truth is that he got weirder and weirder as the years went on, but it seems that some of it was pushing to see when someone would stand up and call him on his stuff. It seems that nobody ever did, until he was arrested and charged with child molesting. It's too bad that this will be his legacy for more than a generation. It will take that long before his music once again becomes the focus of the country where he grew up and got his start, and gave him and his whole family a great career. He had real problems to be sure, but he actual work and contribution to the history of music will far outlast his freakazoid lifestyle.

Farrah Fawcett, just her name inspired the plumber jokes, but she was a great actress. She was a pin-up model, and another one noted for her strangeness. Who can forget the infamous Letterman interview when she seemed to be lost in the ozone and floating in her own little world? One of the original Charlie's Angels, she was the postergirl of the 70's. I can't think of a single one of my friends that didn't have that poster someplace where they could stare at it and her OH so perky nipples. We all longed for the day that we could see her nekkid, and then here comes the 90's and none other than Hugh Hefner gets her to show us them boobies! Not once, but twice! And even on a pay-per-view show where she used her nekkid body as a paint brush. Yeah, she lived up to her reputation. But she was also an actress who did things that were worth watching, the battered wife who sets fire to the house with here drunken husband passed out inside, The Burning Bed. She was the mother and wife who goes into stress induced breakdown in Dr. T and the women. A role that she seemed so perfect for that it was amazing. But she was also a mother to a son who wasn't perfect, and the one time wife of the Six Million Dollar Man,

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

and the live in lover of Ryan O'Neal. The tumultuous relationship provided years of tabloid fodder for the voracious gossip appetites of the tabloid reading public. Beautiful and talented, but in some ways disturbed, she will be missed by many.

I have never figured out why they seem to go in threes, but if you think about it, it almost always seems that three big names always seem to die at close intervals.This time was less than a week, and 2 in the same day! Usually less than a month apart, but on rare occasions the interval can stretch out to 8 weeks, but as far as I remember you really have to dig to find a time in the last few decades when this wasn't the case. Sometimes the Fame Level is questionable, but it is generally they are on par with each other like this now gone trio. Even with the disparate ages, their level of fame remains on par.

Remember them for the great stuff that they did, and not for the jokes that were told about them. Their contributions were worth more than most of us will ever be able to accomplish, and what they did wrong, well, it doesn't really matter anymore does it?

Once again, it's about responsibility...

2009-06-23T21:41:00.003-04:00

So here we are with more dumb-asses in the news. How did it come to a dumb-ass, celebrity, gossip-blogger becoming NEWS? So he writes something that is not appreciated by his targets, and eventually one of those targets decided to confront him. Sooner or later one of those targets is not gonna care about a police record and take a poke at him. Seems to me that if I was a celebrity target of these idiots I would have a goon on retainer to go break some fingers now and then.

Of course you know that I'm pissed off about this Perez Hilton Bullshit. These Gossip bloggers hide behind the first amendment like it's armor. I can barely think of them as journalists. As much as I like and respect Harvey Levin, I can't consider TMZ to be real news, and I can't consider him or his associates to be journalists. They are snoops and busybodies. That's it. Perez Hilton is a dopey little twerp who realized that by writing about celebrities, eventually they would take notice of him, and he would get to actually hang out with them. Now that he is himself a "celebrity", (I consider that to be dubious at best ) he has become a target of his own kind. He is the subject of the bloggers.

If you talk shit about people long enough one of them is going to not want to talk. The 1st Amendment protects the freedom of speech and the freedom of expression. By the current standards that means that anyone can say anything about anyone, as long as they can either :A) prove or verify the statements, or B) qualify the statement as rumor or opinion.

Opinion, there is the sticking point, because as the old saying goes, "Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one, and they are sure that theirs doesn't stink." Well, when you voice your opinion long enough and loud enough, you eventually piss people off, especially those whom you are expressing your opinion about. While it is less likely to happen these days, because most people don't feel like making an idiot rich, there was a day when a person was expected to defend their honor, or that of their friends. That often meant calling the idiots and braggarts out to the street for a good old fashioned ass whuppin'. If the braggart won, he kept his honor and the right to talk his particular brand of shit, but if he lost, he was expected to (and usually would) retract all derogatory statements and issue apologies, or expect another ass whuppin' in the near future.

Not today! No way man, if someone decided to make your life miserable, by writing crap about you on their website, you're pretty much stuck with it. There is pretty much no recourse, other than writing your own line of crap on your own website. This is progress! Nope, I think it's time to look at certain laws and bring back the the field of honor. There is no need for killing, that's a little harsh in general. (but not always!) Perhaps it's time to make the bragadocious knuckleheads who spend their lives making other people miserable feel a little actual pain. Just because they say that they are only using words, it is only words that cause many teenager each year to take their own lives, because they can't deal with the repercussions of those words.

The great writers like to say, "the pen is mightier than the sword." Yet, when called on the pain their writing causes to people, they love to respond, "But it's only words." So which is it, your majesties? Does the power of the pen trump Stick and Stones, or is it possible that you must take responsiblity for the pain that your words cause? Someday you may well get more than a black eye for writing mean things about people. Even if you do it in jest, or with a grin, not everyone knows that you're doing it in such a way. And when you get self-righteous about your right to write what ever you wish, just remember that Karma is a bitch, and sooner or later you will have to pay a price for the meanness that you put into the world.

OH yeah, and one more thing, If you were truly hurt, you would not have tweeted about your assault, until you were in the ER sitting in a bed and getting stitches. If you can't take your medicine, don't play in the rain!

So Ironically, I have spent my freedom of speech talking shit about PEREZ HILTON. But you know what? It's only words!

Too many dreams...

2009-06-17T19:58:00.004-04:00

Dreams of travel, and dreams of leisure, riches and pleasures. Every day we dream about what could be, and what we feel should be, but mostly what we would like most. Or at least what we think we would like most. Everyone knows the old saying, "Money can't buy happiness." and that is true is many ways, but it can also be a fallacy if taken to be literally true. Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy things that help one find their happiness.

I wish to travel and see the world. With money, I could do this much more easily, with lots of money I could also do it comfortably! To me travel is about learning new things and seeing new places and experiencing things in new ways. Part of this is learning new languages. Since I am not surrounded by the united nations I have to seek out ways to learn new languages, and again that can take money. So money doesn't buy the happiness, but the things that bring the happiness.

There is another old saying, "If you find a job you love, you will never work again." This one I think is much more truthful. Who hasn't been doing something that they thoroughly enjoy, and thought that if they could make a living at it, they would be happy to do it all the time. Everyone has something that they like to do, and that the are at least reasonably good at. I love taking pictures. I like travel, and taking pictures. If I could find a way to pay the bills and travel and take pictures, I would be quite content in my work. To me I wouldn't be working, even with a deadline and the need to take certain pictures. As long as it was all that I had to do to get my pay, I would be pretty darn happy.

Sadly, most of the world does what it has to do to pay the bills. People in generally do what they must do to survive, and that means that most people in the world are not really doing what they love. The brunt of humanity survives, and they find happiness in the little pleasures that life hold. Physical pleasure in sex, or the chemical pleasure in drugs or alcohol. The pleasure of the company of friends who think and feel the same way that we do about our lot in life. The pleasure of a day away from work, doing that thing that we true love to do. Laying in the sun, swimming in the pool or the lake, slicing through the water on a sail boat. Playing with the children, turning the soil and tending to a garden. Pleasure is like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder. To me mowing the lawn is a pleasure, but to many it is a chore that must be done.

Doing what you must, and doing what you love. It depends on which one can keep you in beer and skittles. Sometimes you do what you must so that you will have the money and time to do what you love. Too many dreams, not enough time to do what I must in order to pay for what I love. Money can't buy happiness, but it can pay for the stuff that makes me happy.

Riding...

2009-06-16T23:08:00.004-04:00

I'm a rider, I ride a motorcycle and I love it. There are some very important things that one needs to remember when riding a motorcycle.

My first rule of riding is to be aware of what is going on around you. To survive on a motorcycle you must believe that you are invisible and nobody can see you. Expect them to pull out in front of you and make sure you are prepared. Expect them to turn without signals, and be prepared. They are in a tank, you are riding an eggshell. Who wins in the crash? The tank beats the eggshell every time.

Even when there is no law that tells you to wear a helmet, it's really a good idea, because eventually everyone goes down, and the helmet can be the difference between being a dude on crutches or being an organ donor. A good friend of mine ( who has gone down!) says all the time, "Dress for the crash, not for the ride." His point is that while 99% of the time you will probably have a normal day, a few idiots drive you nutty, but all in all there is no incidents, but that 1% of the time you will be very happy to have put on the helmet and long pants, gloves and long sleeves. Some people go all out with the leather and the pads, I'm not quite that bad. I do believe that you should never ride in shorts, take a stone thrown up from a tire in the side of the leg once or twice, or perhaps have your calf bump into a hot tranny, jug or pipe, and you will remember that skin is much more delicate than you can believe. Good shoes or boots are always the better choice over sandals. You laugh, I have seen knuckleheads riding in shorts and sandals! You never know when your gonna have to drop a foot to the road surface, it's not common, but a sandal or your bare foot is pretty useless at that point, a boot is always a better friction source. I am guilty of riding in short sleeves, but only for small rides, in general when I am riding for more than short run to town, I try to wear long sleeves, especially if I'm on a road trip. First of all the sunburn is killer. Secondly, it's just better protection for the skin, bees and hard-shelled bugs can actually draw blood. I have had it happen!

Keep the Bike in good repair. Cobbled brakes, cracked tires and oil leaks are not good. There is nothing worse than being out on the road away from your tools or your mechanic and having bike trouble. Ask me I know! Of all the problems I have ever had, only the dirty air filter was completely preventable. I have gotten bad gas, and had to have the carbs drained and cleaned, while on a road trip. I have blown a headlight out on the highway at dusk! I have fouled spark plugs and had speedometer and tach cables break. You can never prevent everything that can go wrong, but by taking care of your equipment you can minimize the things that do.

Enjoy the wind, and ride safe. If you don't ride, keep your eyes wide. Bikes are small and fast. Look twice and be sure that there is no bike coming before you pull out, Please! We will do our best, but we need you to look out for us too.

Life continues... for some....

2009-06-14T23:18:00.002-04:00

People continue to die, and the US government continues it's Genocide of the American Indian. There is far too much for the American Government to finish on the reservations of America, before they can even hope to be able to begin formulating a healthcare plan for the general public. Prove that they can care for the people that they tried to eradicate, and then maybe they can start working on the rest of the population. The government has the bad habit of making a law and then forgetting about it. This is this proof. The US Government needs to revisit the books from time to time and adjust for the current situation, this is definitely one of those time. 700 Billion dollars to bail out idiot financial "wizards", yet people continue to die. There is no need for it, and no good excuse either.

Warm blooms...

2009-06-13T00:37:00.009-04:00

As summer approaches, there are more and more flowers blooming all over the place, and every now and then some are so cool that I just feel like taking a few pics of them. Sometimes I get carried away and get 20 pics of the same blossom, and other times I get one and I can never find that particular bloom again, and I want more!!

So this is a peony that I have in one of my yards. It was left by the people who once lived on this property, and it grew wild for about 20 years and nobody paid it any attention, then I unknowingly mowed it down the first 3 years that I owned the property, then I realized what I was seeing there and I let it grow. Boy, I'm glad that I di, it has proven to be an amazing little bush. It blooms every year and the blooms are huge and SO sweet smelling that you can't believe it. The sad part is that the blooms are so big that the slightest wind or a good rain will knock them down, because they are too big for their own stems!

I have no idea what this bloom is called, but I have a bunch of them in various colors and I really like them. They are low to the ground and really bright.
They come in so many colors that I have to get pictures of all of my favorites. The more neon-y colors are my favorite. They are like little electric sparks in the garden. They have come from a wildflower mix that I bought a few years ago, and it takes 2 years for them to show up, but when they do... Man is it worth the wait!

I love this little one because the blooms are still opening and they are uncurling in such and neat way that I wonder how nature puts things together sometimes! They kind of remind me of a bouquet or roses and rose buds mixed together.
No matter how you slice it they look pretty darn cool.

Not all blooms are flowers, at least not our "normal" definition of a flower. But Mushrooms are also a flower of a sort, because it is the head that grows the spores which eventually become the seeds of the next generation. And they look so cool!

Never take for granted the lowly little Mushroom, after all, he really is a "Fungi"!! LOL old, stupid joke but still funny!
When you live in a place where most panoramic views are blocked by trees, hills or buildings, you tend to appreciate them more when you actually see them. I am lucky in that I have a place where I can see this basic view every day, and some people might think that this would get boring. Truthfully it is far from boring, because it is nature that changes the view, stars, wind-blown dust, blooming fields, harvested fields, waving grass, painted trees, fluffy clouds, flat clouds, gray clouds, white clouds and snow! Look out in the rain sometimes and later you are treated to a rainbow. These things are all out there to see, but you have to look now and then to catch them.

There is nothing more ephemeral than a view in nature. If you forget to look you may never get the chance again.

funny what changing, changes...

2009-06-09T23:01:00.004-04:00

Hello Lovely readers, and thank you for paying attention! If you have been following this blog for the last few weeks, you know that I have been on a mission to lose some weight and to change my lifestyle.

One of my changes is activity, I need to be more active, and I have been riding my bicycle as often as possible, for at least 30 minutes each day. I tried to do this last year, but that little seat seemed to hurt my fat ass, so I went and got a different seat, and now it's MUCH better. The seat is wider and a little softer, so it is less likely to disappear up my ass! Now that I can feel that my ass cherry is safe when I ride, I actually like it again. I have to say that now that I am riding on daily basis, when the weather is bad enough that I can't ride, I actually miss that 30 minutes or more out there in the wind and the sun. I never thought that there would be a time when I was missing physical activity. Heck you could knock me over with a feather when I realized it. I have a new pair of rollerblades that I am getting used to, and I hope to be able to skate for an hour without needing to rest my feet before the summer is over. I wish I had somebody close by who I could play frisbee with. or to ride with, or to skate with. I'm ready to have some company while I try to get myself smaller.

Someone asked me why I decided to lose weight, did I have heart problems or diabetes or high blood pressure, and truthfully, I had none of those problems. What I had was sore feet, and a belt that was getting tighter in the same hole! I was in the shower one morning and I realized that I had to lift up my tummy to make sure that I rinsed all the soap out from under the fat roll. Then I looked in the mirror and realized that I had fat rolls under my arms! I had become the people who disgusted me in wal-mart! My knees hadn't yet started knocking together when I walked, and My pants size was still under 50, but it was getting close, and I was completely disgusted with myself. That's why I decided to lose weight!

I am getting into smaller pants now, and in fact I had to dig out a smaller belt and punch a new hole in it so I could keep up my smaller pants. Man, how good did that make me feel? !! I keep working at it, and I know that eventually I will be even smaller yet. I keep working at it, and seeing results sure makes me feel better about what I am doing, and gives me motivation to continue.

I'm feeling better, and with the right plastic surgeon I could even look better!!

the fall continues...

2009-06-07T00:35:00.002-04:00

The falling weight that is!! Yes indeed, I am now down 40 pounds. It seems like a huge amount when you think about it, but it barely scratches the surface of what I wish I could get rid of. The good news is that I am nearly halfway to my goal. I stepped onto the scale this morning not knowing what to expect, because it has been a weird week, and I haven't gotten in all of my wanted exercise time, but I have been busy and doing physical labor, so I guess it has been a wash.

I have been taking great pains during the regular week to stay away from certain things, but in order to keep myself from binging out of control I use from dinner time on Saturday night through dinner time on Sunday as my " have some of the good stuff" time, and today I treated myself to some chips and dip! So far my method has been working, and I will continue with what I am doing, despite all of the unsolicited advice I seem to be getting from so many well wishers!

I ran into a friend at the store today while I was buying my Chips and dip, and He was happy to hear that I had made such progress, and being in quite good shape Himself, he immediately started to make suggestions for me. I appreciate the thought, and that you are trying to help, but I have found a system that is working quite well for me, and I plan to stick to it for as long as it takes to accomplish my goal, and possibly more if I think I can continue doing so. I doubt that I will ever again see the underside of 200#, but that said, if I can continue at the pace that I am going I really could achieve my goal before the summer is finished. I have found a system that I have been able to stick with, and it works well for me. I am feeling better each day, and my energy is increasing also. I find that the more I do, the better I feel later. It is truly encouraging.

My current favorite picture

2009-06-02T21:55:00.002-04:00

Click on the blossom to see a bigger version. See the sparkles and the details.

" A rose by any other name..."

2009-06-01T21:01:00.004-04:00

As the Bard wrote in "Romeo & Juliet", "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." It is a truth of humanity and life in general, that no mater what you call something, it is what it is, and no changing of the name can make the debate more or less meaningful. What brings this up you ask, 2 things, assholes ( the people not the body part) and "Gay Marriage".

First the assholes, The internets seem to be stuffed full of them, crammed to the gills with jerks of every shade and texture who think they are being "truthful" or "honest" or "real". By writing in the comments of blogs and comics and news articles, they take the time to spill bile on the works of others. They feel that their opinion matter more than anyone else's and it makes no difference that they are tactless and generally ignorant of most social graces. I have pretty much given up on reading comments sections of many comics and blogs because of these argumentative and annoying know-it-alls and their need to argue every point of minutia, ad nauseum. Someone creats something that is funny or interesting, or beautiful to some people and that is great. Yet there are those who feel that it is their job to speak for those who don't like something. If you don't find it funny, or intersting or beautiful, go find something that you do like. You don;t have to ruin the enjoyment for those of us who do like it, for whatever reason we choose to find it enjoyable. I bet these are the same people who pinch babies just to hear them cry. Bullies are bullies, because no one can or has stood up to them. When the hide behind a computer keyboard and piss on everything the can find on the web and call it honesty, they are just jerks. Come tell me to my face that I suck, and I may respect you dumb ass! Until you have that much stones, leave your bile in your notebook and let the rest of the world enjoy the creativity of others as we see fit.

Now on the subject of "gay marriage", I couldn't care less whether two people of the same sex get married or not. Calling it a :"Civil Union' instead of a marriage makes no freakin sense at all, because all marriages equal a civil union if you have been "legally" married in the eyes of the state. If you have had a wedding at a church, it is called a "ceremony" and is nothing more than a ritual performed in front of friends and family, but it is not a legal union until the marriage certificate is filed with the local authorities. It gives you the right to file taxes as a couple, and to collect death benefits from insurance, and to cover a spouse with insurance. Now many of the opposition say that the insurance is the big problem it will increase premiums and make it harder to pay for insurance if all the gays can put their spouses on their insurance. As opposed to the straight people who make kids by the thousands each year and add them to their insurancd policies? It is less likely that a gay couple will add a child to their insurance. No unlikely, simply less likely. In many cases the gay couples who wish to marry, have already had and raised their kids, and they are independent persons with their own families. In the cases of the younger couples, perhaps they will have a child of their own, or maybe adopt, but the statistics say that it is likely that they will only have or adopt one child, and in rare instances 2. Breeders may have 3,4,5 or more kids. By design or by accident, they will have 2.5 kids ( that's what the statistics say!) where you get half a kid I have no idea! But still, adds to the insurance costs for everyone and it's not the gays we need to worry about! Marriage also allows for hospital visitation, and legal transfer of land, and to provide citizenship to those not born in America. There is no reason that makes sense for keeping these people from calling what they want a marriage. A rose called a turd blossom still smells like a rose, and if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you can call it a parrot all you want, but I bet it is still a duck.

So just keeping it real, Let them gays get married for cryin' out loud, who does it really hurt? No one!

Sizes....

2009-05-28T22:11:00.003-04:00

Not the size of my.. never mind, I mean clothing sizes and food sizes! You have a dirty mind!!

Ok this comes up for a couple of reasons, first of all I just bought a brandy new pair of rollerblades. Yes, the fat boy loves to skate, but I haven't done it in a few years, one of the reasons is that I haven't had a good fitting pair of skates. So I went to the sporting good store and looked around, but I wasn't happy with what was there, and they didn't have any sizes in stock that would approach being a good fit. So I went online. Using the information that I had gained from looking in the store, and the charts on the website I found a style that I liked that was available in a size that should fit me. I ordered them. 125 bucks!! Yikes, but hey, I need the fitness that they can provide. Exercise is key to my losing weight. ( that and not eating as much! ) The skates arrive and I try them on, they seem a little bit snugger than I really wanted, but I guessed that maybe they needed to be to provide the proper support. I couldn't stay on my feet in them for more than 10 minutes. And after that initial pain set in, the interval dropped to about 5 minutes. So now I have to go through the trouble of sending them back and ordering the next size up. I hope these ones fit better, because it's the largest size available in that style. If these don't fit, I may have to find a specialty shop and make a few phone calls. Being a fat guy, I have fat feet, but I think that this size change should make the difference for me. I hope!

Why do sizes vary so much? My shoe size is truly a 10 wide, but in many cases there is no wide available, so I have to step up to a size 11 or sometimes even 12 to get the needed width. Is it so unreasonable to expect the availability of a descent size range? I can't possibly be the only person who has this problem. I mean as the American ass spreads, don't the feet spread too? They have to hold up so much more weight, it makes sense that they would need to be wider to disperse the forces of gravity! I mean, have you walked through a WalMart in the warm weather and seen the huge legs poking out of the stretchy shorts? Sure, you notice the fat-ass wedgies, but also that the shoes all look like their about to burst like a sausage on a grill trying to hold in a fat foot! You may also notice that most of them are Velcro closed too, but the fact that fat people can barely bend over long enough to tie their shoes is also beside the point! LOL Seems like other things have expanded with the population's guts, why not shoes and theater seats?

As I am losing weight I am looking towards buying some new pants. Maybe not a lot right away, but some at least, to get me through the transitional phases. Right now I'm down one size and about a half. So I am wearing stuff that I haven't been able to wear comfortably in well over a year. It's kinda nice, but it drives me nuts that I buy the same size pants from three different companies and they all fit different. I have one pair that the legs drag on the ground and the waist is almost a full size smaller than the same sized pair of Levi's. Oh well I guess I don't mind having the problem of finding a smaller pair of pants!! LOL

And what about McDonald's? A regular size french fries is now what was once called a large, and a large is a super-size, and what is now called super-size is enough fries to feed an entire family! what was once a "regular" is now considered a child size and is relegated to the Happy Meal. Have you seen one of those 64 oz coffee mugs that some of the donut chains are selling? 64 oz of coffee is more than the average home coffee pot can brew at one time!! Who needs that much coffee and why? That is a worse sign of addiction than needles and spoons! Good lord, it's no wonder people are peeing in odd places these days. When you see someone carrying around a grande coffee cup you know that they are gonna have to pee sooner rather than later and when the urge hits, there will be nothing stopping the flow! The super size soda bottles and cups from the burger joints are enough to weigh down an armored truck, and people drink the whole damn thing! I know, I used to be one of those people. It's killing them and they are happy to do it. Oh well, I'm not their babysitter. I will watch and comment.

Eat up, we need a few less people anyway!

kids are fun part II

2009-05-25T23:15:00.001-04:00

cool kids...

2009-05-24T00:03:00.005-04:00

There is something cool about kids. I don't know what it is exactly, but they seem to make me happy more often than not. I love to listen to their ideas and their plans, they don't know that something won't work for one reason or another, so they are willing to try. They also seem to have boundless energy, as long as you don't ask them to do chores!

Today I was playing frisbee with my nephews, and it seems that they can go for hours while playing, but if it's work? No way, they get "tired" in 10 minutes! LOL
This is my nephew Devon, he is the youngest of the three, and he is pretty darned athletic. I know that it didn't come from our side of the family, but apparently his dad's side of the gene pool has some jockstrap in it! All three of my sister's boys are into sports, so it is fun to watch them compete. Football, Wrestling, and baseball they keep us occupied and involved for most of the school year, and plus they are all instrument plaers in their respective bands. Trombone, clarinet, and trumpet. They could make a nice little jazz trio all on their own if they wanted to. Plus the middle boy plays guitar and piano too. That he definitely gets from his mother, she is a natural musician, and she doesn't play anymore!! Drives me insane, I have to practically kill myself practicing to play piano, my sister can sit down and plink out the notes and play a song by ear with no technical training. How she does it I have no idea, and that is why it's called "talent!"
I wish I had that kind of talent, but since I don't I use the other talensts that I have. What they are I'm not always 100% sure, but I keep looking. I am a fair groundskeeper, and this is me and my Lilac tree. One of them anyway. Right now I have 5 blooming lilac trees, I hope to have more next year! I like working with trees and plants, but again I have to struggle with it. I keep trying, but it just never seems to get easier. So while I can do the work involved, it isn't one of my talents. One thing I seem to do effortlessly is deal with kids. They seem to love me.

Kids that refuse to talk to most adults will gravitate to me, and talk a blue streak. I have no understaning of this ability, but I think it is a "teddy bear" effect, because the little ones see me as a big, huggable teddy bear. I have always had this talent, and I can never remember a time since my teens when I wasn't the kid magnet in a room. Ones I have never met before, and even kids wandering in a store will grin at me and start chattering away . I guess it's because they are too young to have been tainted with judgement and they are still using their inate instincts, and they can tell that I am a safe person, their gut tells them that there is no need to worry about me. So I become a target for them and to tell ya the truth.... I kinda like it!

Less of a man...

2009-05-21T23:27:00.002-04:00

I like being less of a man!! Yes there is now 30 pounds less of me! I was at the doctors office today and my official weight is 300 pounds less than it was a mere 6 weeks ago! I am so freaking happy! I am once again fitting into pants and shorts that I haven't been able to wear in nearly a year. That is way cool, and Good results are encouraging! Notice all the exclamation marks? !!! it's because I am Very, Very, Very Happy!

You can't understand it if you haven't lived it, but it sure does feel good to be less of a man when the man I was was more than twice and average man. Yes, I am a little bit sore from using certain muscles again, but it is expected and to say truthfully, it feels kinda good. I still have those days when the food wants to take control, but when I can channel it into something else, whether it is moving or writing, then I am happy. Sometimes the food still wins, but it wins less this week than it did last week.

I'm keeping at it!

Pockets..more or less...

2009-05-20T22:27:00.003-04:00

Well, the warm weather is finally here and it looks like it may stick around for a while now. I sure hope so, I mean come on!! It's Memorial Day, ( a week early, but so what? right? ) I'm ready to wear shorts every day and get in the pool after work and swim for an hour or so. So this brings out my subject, Pockets.

I was digging my shorts out last night and I realized that more than half of my current shorts are the "Yuppie Summer Uniform", cargo shorts. As I looked at the various styles of cargo shorts in front of me I noticed that there were a variety of pocket styles, but also a varying number of pockets. After counting them, the pair with the most pockets, ( How come shorts and pants are called a pair? You only have one ass to put in them. You have 2 arms on a shirt and they aren't referred to as a "pair of shirts"...) has 10 Pockets! What the hell is someone in SHORTS going to do with 10 pockets? I mean aren't you supposed to travel lite when you're wearing shorts?

I understand the extra pockets if you are hiking or playing tourist. You need a place for extra camera batteries, and perhaps a bottle of water, but let's be honest here, You get much stuff in the pockets of your cargo shorts and you will need both suspenders and a belt to keep them from falling down every 5 steps! Just going through my pockets this afternoon, I had my keyring, a chapstick, a lighter and my pocket knife in one pocket, and money and a debit card in the other. That's it! I had my cell phone and a pen in my t-shirt pocket, like I always do. Later, when I was mowing the lawn, I put the cell down into one of the leg pockets so I could keep the iPod in the shirt, but still and all, nothing groundbreaking or extra special there.

That's just me though, most guys are like little kids. I have never seen a kid with a lot of pockets who didn't HAVE to fill them all up with something. Ask any mother who has done laundry what she has found in a kids pockets. Girls and boys alike. Anything from the missing diamond ring, to a dead snake, there is just no telling, but I'm sure the hands down leader in items found in kid's pockets is rocks. What kid has not looked down at the ground on occasion and found a "pretty" rock they they want to take home to momma? I don't think it's possible to take a 2-4 year old for a walk in the country without them bringing at least a couple rocks home with them. My youngest nephew was a grand collector of rocks. Walking down the beach with him one day, ( Yes, some our beaches here in NY have some rocks, you wanna make something of it? ) and as we walked, he collected. Before we were half way back to the picnic site, his pockets were overflowing and he was walking with both hands holding up his britches! His mom thought he looked cute in cargo shorts. Yeah, and he looked even cuter with his Spider-man undies visible, because his pants wouldn't stay up, loaded with rocks. I was afraid he was gonna break a toe when they fell down!

Men at least don't generally collect rocks anymore, unless they are geologists or just a little unstable. Men collect electronics and tools. More pockets to carry more crap. Cell phone, GPS, camera, iPod, Flash drive. What else can we cram in there? Wallet, keyring, pocket knife, extra batteries, extra memory card for camera. Maybe a flask or a couple bottles of brew. Hey, might get hungry later how about a slim jim or a granola bar? Don't want to get dehydrated, keep a water bottle in there too. Or if you're a pro, a sports bottle. Spare pair of earbuds in case you meet a bud and want to share tunes, or maybe for picking up chicks? Never know when you may need to fix something so don't forget the toolbox from the garage! That's cool!

Think men are the only cuprits? Think again. The mommy patrol has a million uses for cargo shorts too. Who hasn't seen a soccer mom chasing after the kids with a kleenex? where do you think she had it stashed? In her pocket!! and where will it go when she is done with it? If there isn't a trashcan nearby and she isn't a total heathen, it will go back into a pocket! The younger the kids, the more stuff mommy will likely have in her pockets. (Purses are so passé these days) There will be baby asprin, wetnaps, a juicebox or two. Probably a spare pair of undies for each child if they are just recently potty trained or still in training. There will be at least a couple band-aids maybe some hand sanitizer, (If not a full first-aid kit if she's a worrier) and then the usual suspects, the cell and the keys with the clicker for the door locks and security system, some folding money and at least one credit card. She probably has some snacks in there too, cracker packs or maybe some cookie packs. You know how cranky kids get when their blood sugar drops!

I guess it's great if your a mugger, because with more pockest people are carrying around much more stuff to rip off. It's like a quickmart for muggers! Electronics to hock, and money to use immediately, how can you go wrong? I just hope the mugger isn't in a hurry, because they still have to get through the layers of fasteners to get the stuff out of the pockets! You don't actually carry anything in there that you would need in a "real" emergency, because if you have to get those pockets open, doing it in a hurry just ain't happening, unless you have straight velcro. Zippers, snaps and/or buttons, backed by velcro is what most of mine have. I have a pair where the button is hidden under a little flap, if it was a matter of life and death to get something out of that pocket in a hurry, I'm gonna die. It takes at least a minute to manipulate the button around to open those pockets. I challege any good pickpocket to show me that they can get into them without me knowing about it! Velcro is great deterent to pickpockets I think, it talks and they hate that!

Give me my old cutoffs! When I was a kid, mom would take a pair of jeans that I wore the knees out of and cut the legs off above the knee and I had shorts! ( they were almost never even! lol) A few washes and the ends would fray out and then you looked "right", fresh cut shorts always looked so dorky! Too many pockest just complicates life and on shorts it's a travesty, because shorts weather is the time when you should be enjoying simple things. Who wants to have to empty the electronics before starting a squirt-gun war on a hot July day? Not me, but I still do. It's just no fun turning the garden hose on your buddy when you have to replace his cell phone and his iPod that was stuffed into a back stash pocket of his cargo shorts!

Enough with the pockets, if you can't live with 4 pocket shorts, get a purse!

Stalkers

2009-05-18T22:47:00.004-04:00

No, I don't think I have ever had a stalker. It has occasionally been intimated that I may be a stalker, but as anyone who really knows me would tell you, I could never be a stalker. I just don't have the necessary task commitment.

First of all I'm lazy. A stalker needs to be a real go-getter. In order to be an efficient stalker, you need to be able to dig for small tidbits of information, you need to be able to spend hours digging through your quarry's trash to find things that you can use for tracking. You need to have dedication to sit in a tree for hours in the cold, wind or rain. Dedication is the hallmark of a stalker, that and mental instability.

Secondly, I don't have the financial independence needed to be a dedicated stalker. Anyone who truly wants to be a stalker needs to have a steady and solid financial base to use for the endless little things involved with good stalking. Listening devices, parabolic mikes and good image stabilizing binoculars are not cheap. What about plane tickets and other travel expenses? I mean, as anyone knows, one of the defining abilities of a good stalker is the ability to follow the target. No matter how that is accomplished, other than on foot, it takes money. If you wish to follow a tour bus, you need gas money, if you are following a jet-setting star, you're gonna need money for the first class tickets to keep an eye on the glitterati who will never fly coach. If you intend to follow them EVERYWHERE, your going to need a passport and visas and all sorts of paperwork that costs money. Nope, I sure can't afford to be a stalker.

Third, I just don't have the level of fandom that would cause me to be a stalker. Just can't see caring that much about someone that I have never met. Sure, I love Kelly Clarkson, but geez, she doesn't even know I exist, and she probably never will, so why would I spend a huge chunk of my life following her around? Or Catherine Zeta-Jones. Yeah, THAT's gonna happen! I can see them better on TV than I could at a red carpet event, so why go and get pushed around by security and trampled by a crowd of papparazzi, when I can sit safe and sound in my livingroom and see them just fine.

Lastly, why would I want a police record for stealing dirty panties or some stupid thing like that? Every stalker eventually gets caught doing something really warped. Breaking into the home of the prey and masturbating in their socks or using their shower, or setting up a shrine in their bedroom. Then the police find them and arrest them and they end up on TMZ looking like Nick Nolte after his DWI. Is that really the way that you want your crush to finally see you? With the bracelets on and the cops guiding you through the crowd of photographers? Come on! If you wanted to make a good first impression that was surely the way to go! They will never forget you, and the restraining order will always remind them!

Maybe a stalker can get lucky and their prey turns out to be just as loony as they are, (ala Britney Spears) and they hook up and have a few dates. It still ends badly when the prey gets sent to rehab and when they get sober they realize that your a freak and probably the reason they had to spend 90 days of their life locked in a padded room, then they kick you to the curb, with a new restraining order and most likely a lawsuit too!

Don't get me wrong, I am not commitment-phobic, I just have a better place to focus my commitments! And besides I don't want to be Commited! I don't fit a straight jacket so well, even though I suppose they make them in all sizes, I just don't wish to find out!

Hunger

2009-05-11T22:32:00.003-04:00

It is interesting what an American will think of as "hungry" as compared to the rest of the world.

Going to McDonald's and getting a regular fries and a cheeseburger, will leave most Americans feeling "hungry", but give that same meal to a kid from the streets of Buenos Aires and they will feel as if they have just had a banquet. What an American considers a meal for one, the rest of the world ( perhaps with the exception of England or Germany) would consider to be a family size buffett.

It comes up because while I have shed close to 20 pounds, by eating less and moving more, the hardest thing to stop is the after-dinner snacking. Especially when I sit at a desk right next to the kitchen while I am typing this. But I am continuing to remain strong. I had my dinner, a very reasonable one I might add, and now it is nearly 11 pm and my tummy is rumbling. Granted I did a lot of work after I had dinner. Beside walking, I also handled trash ( shop trash, boxes and boxes of it!) and mowed. Still have laundry to finish. Doesn't matter, no more eating after dinner. Holding strong.

I'm not really hungry, I just want to taste something and chew. And swallow. Why? Because my mind is not really occupied, and I am frustrated. But I gave up smoking and I can give this up too. I am tired of being a tub-o-lard, and this is how that finally ends!

Thank you for letting me rant, I will be doing some more from time to time until I have lost at least 100 pounds. Do you realize that by losing 100 pounds, I will still be heavier than my sister and brother combined? I topped out at 355 three weeks ago. Once I get below 275, I hope to never get over it again! It will take work. I'm up for it!!

Happy Mothers day!

2009-05-10T21:48:00.003-04:00

I happen to have 2 mothers. No, I am not the adopted son of lesbians, I have a biological mother who was married to my father, and I have a step-mother who was also married* to my father. I was raised by my step-mother. I have actually known her longer than my birth mother. Here is the story...

When I was 2 or 3 years old, or there abouts my mother and father split up, and my mother disappeared from my life. I knew that I had a mother, and I knew that she was out there somewhere, but I didn't know where.

When I was 4 I was riding on the back of my father's motorcycle and I managed to poke my heel into the spokes of a moving motorcycle and get my foot wedged between the shock absorber and the whizzing spokes. ( not a good thing to do!) and I managed to get a 3rd degree burn on my heel. After initial treatment my doctor decided that I would need a skin graft to repair the damage. So I got to spend a few days in the hospital, and there was this cute nurses aide working there that my dad liked. It worked out because I liked her too. Later that summer I had a new Mommy.

She was not perfect by any means, but she was a mom to me and I was very happy to have her in my life. She was all I expected from a mom, she spanked me and cooked for me and let me get away with crap. She gave me a sister and a brother and she helped me with my homework. She help me learn how to drive and she gave me the wish to learn how to cook. She loved me every day, even when I didn't deserve it, and she still does. I love her too. I always will. Her family became my family, when I speak of my aunts and uncles, it is usually her family I am talking about, because I barely know any of my aunts and uncles from my birth mothers family. I know they are out there, and I am even sure that I have probably partied with them on occasion, I just don't know it. My Step-moms Mom welcomed me into the family with open arms as did the rest of her extended family. So happy Mother's day to Mom, and to Grandma Hubler too!

MY natural mother, is once again a part of my life, and it means a lot to me that she is out there. Many people have asked my how I could forgive her after she left me when I was so young, and I tell them that first of all she didn't abandon me on a doorstep, she left my father and I happened to stay with him. I asked her about it once, and she was quite plain in her response, she didn't have the nurturing instinct and she knew it. Dogs and cats were ok. She figured that she was screwed up enough on her own, and she didn't want to warp me anymore than the genetics already would. ( I really appreciated that thoughfulness!) So 16 years later I went looking with some of the imformation that I already had, and I found her.

Turns out that she and I are quite alike in many ways. But I can't for the life of me understand her!! LOL It doesn't really matter though, we are friends now, and I am happy that she is in my life. She may not be "mommy" but she is my mother and she is truly a part of who I am and the way I am, it really is true the genetics plays a big role in who we are. I may not be a genius, but I am smart enough to know that. The great debate of nurture vs. nature, is one I love, because I think I am smart enough to know that I am a perfect mix of the 2. For good or for bad, both the one who raised me, and the one who birthed me, are a huge part of who I am.

So for you too, my "real" mom, Happy Mother's day! You were smart enough to give me up, rather than warp me out. Thank you!

*my father and natural mother were never divorced. My step-mother was a common-law wife. I never knew this until after my 18th birthday. Surprise!

Time passages...

2009-05-02T23:30:00.004-04:00

No, not the song, I am referring to the actual passage of time. More the perception of the passage of time. Physics tells us that time is relative, and if you don't believe it, have some relatives stay with you for a few days, and see how long THAT feels!!

It seems to come up in conversation all the time, the phrases, "Where does the time go?" and , "What happened to the time?" Well, the times goes the same way that it always does, ever forward. Since we can't yet travel at speeds exceeding the speed of light, time MUST travel forwards. Yet the actual meaning of these phrases is not literal, but rather rhetorical, how does the time pass so quickly without our noticing?

"A watched pot never boils." this is so far from true, yet it is another comment on the perception of time. In fact there was an episode of ST-TNG ( for those of you who are not geeks, Star Trek-The Next Generation) where the android character Data, tests this assertion, and finds that it always takes water the same time to boil when all variables are accounted for and factored in, whether the pot is watched or not. This is not about the pot of water, but the lack of excitement in watching a pot come to a boil. Although the time that it takes never changes, the simple act of watching it happen stretches the perceived time taken because of the lack of any other activity. And yet, "Time flys when you're having fun."

What brings all this inane stuff to my mind you are probably wondering, and I am getting to that, but I wanted to make a few points first. As much as it is a constant, for us mere mortals, it is also a liquid and elusive thing. When were are excited with anticipation for some approaching happy event or date, time crawls along, and when the time finally does arrive, it is over and done before we are ready and we wonder what happened to it. Remember when you were a kid and it seemed like summer would never end and you couldn't wait for the end of school so you could start those carefree days of summer vacation? It seemed like summer took forever to arrive, but then when it finally did, you couldn't imagine it would ever end. ( even though you knew it would!) When you are 10 years old, you have only experienced 120 months of life. 1-2-0!!! That's 3,652 days ( including leap years!) That is it! Double that to 240 months and you are now 20 years old. ( 7,305 days) Makes it seem like a lot longer than it really is since I am in the over 14,600 area! LOL Let's break it into some thinkable fractions.

When you are 12 months old, one month is 1/12 of your entire life. 1/12. When you are 12 years old, 1/12 of your life is now 1 year! When you are 24 years old, 1/12 of your life is now 2 years! The older we get, the faster time seems to go, because the frame that we have to reference gets bigger. It is the same as looking back at the clothes we wore when we were little kids, you look at those tiny shoes that your mother saved and while you can remember your feet in them, you don't remember when they no longer fit. Time is much the same, you are always aware of the passage of the time, how many hours have we spent at work just wishing the hours away so that we could go home and relax, or go on vacation, or just go have a beer? How many hours have we wasted looking for something that was "lost" only to find it someplace that we already looked, but not quite thoroughly enough? How many days of our life have passed while we have sat watching TV or reading books of somebody elses adventures. How much time lost standing in line for who knows what? The one thing that we all have in common is time.

Nobody is immune to the passage of time, if you are alive and living in our dimension. If you wish to have more time, you are shit out of luck, you get the same amount as everyone else does. 24 hours in each day. Everyone gets a different number of days, but what you do with them once you are aware that you can do something with them is where the differences come in. Some people will learn everything that they possibly can, and some people will happily sink into oblivion and never feel the need to look up. Sadly, it is a coin toss to figure out which one ends up rich and famous. There is never any telling what the fates will drop on somebody.

Because of the structure of society, there are many of us who will do the responsible thing, and waste most of our life toiling away at a job that we tolerate, and wishing for the opportunity to do the things that we truly love. Because the world requires that we have means to enjoy many things, and the only way to get these means is to work, we work. We spend 40+ hours each week working, but what about the rest of our lives?

7 days X 24 hours is 168 hours in a week. Subtract the average work week of 40 hours and that leaves 128 hours. Figure a minimum of 6 hours of sleep daily. Another 42 hours of the week gone. Leaves us with 86 hours. Take out 2 hours a day for cooking and eating, which makes 14 hours a week. Down to 72 hours already and we have barely scratched the surface. Daily shower... let's just say personal grooming... 30 minutes a day, 3.5 hours a week. 68.5 hours left. How do you get to work? How long does it take you. American average is somewhere in the 45 minute each way area, so that's 1.5 hours each day 5 days a week. 7.5 hours down the tubes. 61 precious hours left in our week, but we ain't done by a long shot. Average American watched 2.5 hours of TV daily. If you watch TV while doing other things you're ahead of the curve, but far too many people don't. So that's now another 17 .5 hours a week gone forever! We are down to 43.5 hours, but I will spot you 7 hours back, because most people eat while watching TV and we will assume that half of that is meals... so we are plus 50.5 hours. What about your daily chores, cleaning, laundry, shopping, yard and garden work, errands, anything that is considered work that you don't actually get paid for. Figure easily 3 hours each day. (averaged over 7 days) Works out to 21 hours. Now we have only 29.5 hours left.

We are down to 29.5 hours a week left to us. Spread out over 7 days, which comes out to a little more than 4 hours a day. Sounds like a lot doesn't it? But consider that is likely to be 10 minutes here and 5 minutes there, maybe a full 1/2 hour someplace along the way, and you wonder what happens to that 29.5 precious hours that you can call your own. Thinking about them will drive you nuts, but now that you know they are there you will be looking for them.

A wise person once said that it doesn't matter how many days that you live, but what you do with those days that matter. To me, a life well lived is worth far more than the money that I may or may not make along the way. Not everyone feels this way, and that is just fine. I would like to be able to pursue some dreams, but I am still pursuing the means. Perhaps someday the dreams will come, but for now I will continue looking at the minutes that I have available to me as opportunities, and whenever possible I will use those precious minutes to work on my dreams instead of just working. I hope that you will do the same, dreams are important to everyone, and it is always nice when some of them come true.

Fat Boy...

2009-04-30T20:05:00.004-04:00

And I'm not talking about the Harley!! I mean me and others like me. I am a Fat Boy. Been a fat boy most of my life from the time I started school and the teacher made me sit still and be quiet. I got the "sit still" part down pretty good and rather quickly, but the "be quiet" part not so much!! LOL As a kid my parents and grandparents taught me to try things. Meaning food! "Don't turn your nose up before you try it!" they would chide. So I tried it. I tried everything that came in front of me until I got old enough to understand that there are some things I just ain't puttin' in my face!

Between my dad and my grandfather I developed some seriously bad-for-me tastes. Heavy cream on cereal ( especially oatmeal!) I love grilled meat, and baked goods, pies, cakes, cookies and breads. I like to eat junkfood like nobody's business, and I am paying the price now in my mid-life. I learned not only to eat the stuff that tasted good, but to eat it in great volume. It was the worst thing I could have learned. My grandfather used to tell us, "Take all you want, but eat all you take, don't waste food!" I'm sure that much of that comes from growing up in the 1930's during The Great Depression, but it also came from growing up poor in general. My parents and grandparents always made huge meals, pot roasts and pastas and stews and soups, in quantities big enough to feed a small army. When I was around my cousins and uncles it was a matter of pride who could get the biggest portion and finish it... Not the brightest bulbs on the tree, I guess.

Cut to my teen years, and I have a job and money in my pocket. Now I can get the stuff that mom didn't have money to buy very often. I could stop at McDonald's any time I wanted to, and I often did. Then I discovered the places in the city that served the stuff that truly clogged the arteries, Garbage Plates! From Nick's and Mark's and The Princess. I found the nectar of the gods! To me anyway, as well as the steak subs and the meatball subs and the long simmered sausage and sauce from the from the great Italian restaurants in Rochester. Pasta galore and pizza from every joint in the city. I am happy to say that I'm not now nor have I ever been a big fan of chicken wings, but I have many other vices!

Not only was I an eater, but I found out very young that I was a power eater! I could pound back the food like nobody's business. I was 6 years old when I won my first food related bet. I was at a restaurant with my parents for some celebration or other and some of their friends were there. I wanted Spaghetti & Meatballs for dinner, and when dad asked how big the child's portion was, the waitress indicated a size that seemed way too small for my normal intake, so we opted for the adult portion. When it arrived it was huge! A pile of pasta at least 4 inches deep on a plate the size of a serving platter, covered in red sauce and with 6 gigantic meatballs arranged around the plate. My eyes lit up like spotlights! As I reached for the Parmesan, one of dad's buddies commented that I wouldn't be able to eat half of that pile. Dad laughed and so did I, so he bet me a dessert that I couldn't eat more than half. I ate the whole damn thing! In less than 30 minutes I had that huge platter of pasta tucked away in my belly. And then I had dessert! In school it became a source of pride the quantities of food I could eat. I would save my allowance so that I could get doubles and sometimes triples of my favorite lunch items. Pizza, sloppy joes, ravioli, toasted cheese w/ tomato soup. ( what was it about those toasted cheese sammiches? MAN, they were tasty!!) Tuna boats!! Did you ever have a tuna boat? They are simply a tuna sammich made in a hot dog roll. Simple and tasty and easy to handle, one day I ate 18 of them. I ended up in the nurses office. It was some time before I tried eating tuna again, and from that day forward it always gives me indigestion for a few hours. The canned corn that the school served? Swimming in butter and salty!! I loved that stuff and I used to get soup bowls of it. My personal "best" was eating 15 slices of school pizza when I was in 8th grade. My friends even bought me some when I ran out of money to see how many I could eat. Eating contests at McDonald's? You bet. A Friday night after a football game, and a bet .... One week it was cheeseburgers. 29 of them. Big Macs? 16 was my limit on them. French fries? 10 large orders ( what is a "regular" now. ) Each week it was something different, and I would take on the champ from the school that we had played the football game against. What was the food? As long as it was made at Micky D's, BK or Pizza Hut I was in for the challenge. I never lost in 6 years. 12 Whoppers, 32 BK regular burgers, 18 Quarter Pounders with cheese, 2-1/2 large pepperoni pizzas. 12 personal pan pizzas, 8 pounds of lasagna, or fettuchini, or spaghetti. I was never cowed, but I ate like one to be sure!

Now I pay that price for these poor habits and practices. No, believe it or not, I don't have diabetes or high cholesterol. I have the great good fortune to have good genes. Somehow I have a nice normal cholesterol level. My "good" cholesterol isn't as high as it should be, but still and all, the doc say that my arteries aren't clogging with plaque like some people. Along with the terrible habits, my fore bearers also gave me some good ones. I like veggies. Broccoli, Brussel spouts and cauliflower, I love 'em. I like squash and carrots and beans, green beans, lima beans, butter beans, and kidney beans. Black-eyed peas and snow peas and sweet peas. Sweet corn, and tomatoes, cucumbers and sweet peppers, hot peppers, jalapenos and habenaros too. Black olives, greek olives, and figs. Apples, oranges, lemons, limes and grapefruit. Grapes! Concords and green grapes too. I like my meat lean. I can't stand a fatty cut of meat. My dad and my grandpa used to eat the fatty stuff, and grandpa was the giblets fiend in the family. I never developed a taste for that stuff thankfully. He could have all the gizzards he wanted, I didn't like them in the least.

Old habits die hard. I quit smoking, 4 times now. The last time was nearly 2 years ago, and I'm glad to be done with it. As long as it lasts. I still have the urge, but I keep on fighting it. Now I have to change my eating habits. This is harder by far because you don't need to smoke to live, but you do need to eat! I have tried many, many ways of changing my eating habits, but there are a few things that seem to foil me over and over.

I love food. I have no other love in my life right now. The cupcakes and ho-hos never turn me down! Lay's is right, you can't eat just one! When I am traveling I always seem to end up in a drive through. I hate to waste food, so I eat the whole thing. Have you ever ordered the nachos at Applebee's? HUGE. Slowly I am working on changing my habits. No more big bowls of cereal for breakfast. No more 3 egg ham & cheese omelets. No more 4 slices of toast with peanut butter. No more 3 potatoes worth of hash browns. No more dozen pancakes with butter and syrup. My average breakfast now is a piece of fruit, a grapefruit or an apple and a small glass of juice. orange juice, maybe pineapple or cranberry. That's it. 6 days a week that is my breakfast. One day, usually Sunday, I may have something different.

I have eliminated soda-pop. No more Coke, Mt. Dew or Dr. Pepper. Diet or otherwise. The diet is even worse than the regular! I drink tea. I know the caffeine may not be the best for me, but it's calorie free and sugar free. I don't add sugar so it's the best I can do. Green teas and black teas.
I have dropped snacking to a bare minimum. I have one cookie or cracker product sometime between Breakfast and Lunch. Then I have the same thing between Lunch and dinner. No snacking after dinner. No ice cream, no cookies, no nuts or fruit. Dinner is the last thing I eat. At least that it the goal. Doesn't always work out, but I try dang hard. I am keeping a running tally of my week, hour by hour I am charting my habits trying to break the cycle.

Lunch is one old fashioned "normal" serving of something. Maybe a tuna sammich, or a wrap. A bowl of soup or a can of Chef Boyardee. Maybe a few crackers and some peanut butter, or some fruit. Fresh fruit or canned fruit in juice. No heavy syrup, lite syrup, or Splenda syrup.

Dinner is one serving of whatever is good that day. I like veggies, sauteed in olive oil. Perhaps a veggie omelet. Lean meat, or perhaps a piece or 2 of chicken. Skinless, but I do like the breaded stuff. Desert is immediately following dinner and it is small and light. If not immediately following, it doesn't get eaten. No dessert some days. After dinner I take a walk. 1/4 mile up hill and down. As the weather gets better, I will be able to ride my bike more often. Right now I ride for a little bit in the afternoon up the driveway and the road.

2 weeks in tomorrow. One inch and 6 pounds gone. I will be working hard at keeping myself from eating when I am bored. When I am lonely, when I am frustrated, when I am pissed. I crave food, but I am working on it!!! Wish me luck!

conflict

2009-04-29T19:54:00.003-04:00

Some people thrive on it, and some people live for it, but then there are others who can live without it, and those who can take it or leave it. Then there are those of us who will actively avoid it. I'm one who will actively avoid it.

We all know "that couple," the ones who snipe at each other every chance they get, poking and prodding trying to provoke a fight or at least an argument. I guess it's the only way that they understand to get into each other. They think they are being honest, or at least open. I think it's a way to stay closed off, if you are always on the defensive ( or the offensive too) you don't have to open up and actually talk. Some people call it "passion", but I just don't buy it, how can a person be happy when they are constantly in a state of looking for a way to make someone mad or a way to defend themselves. I have seen many of these couples break up over the years. Some last longer than others, but they all end when one or the other gets tired of fighting.

There are the individuals who are always spoiling for a fight, whether it's a war of words or actual fisticuffs doesn't matter to them, they are just looking to try and best someone, these are bullies. They have to be louder, and tougher and they feel the need to bend everyone to their will. They will argue over a noise that somebody's chair makes, or the daily weather report. These people will be ready to throw punches over the smallest perceived slight, from a look to an accidental sniff. Never turn your back on a true bully, they have no sense of shame and will happily use any means necessary to cause you pain if they think that you have done them wrong in any way. Some people say they are the "alpha" types, I just think they are attention seeking jerks.

Some people will stand up for themselves or their friends and loved ones, but otherwise they are peaceable and easy going people. These are people who will have discussions about things when they disagree with someone, and they will remain calm for the most part. If somebody pushes them, they will push back, they will never escalate, but will always meet with at least equal aggression. Sometimes they win, and sometimes they lose. They don't live and die by the honor of besting someone in everything they do, and they learn from their mistakes and try to get along with people. These are people that make great friends and neighbors, they are great to have in the family and they are often good peace makers and "go-to guys" because they get the job done and generally avoid making enemies while doing it.

Then there are people like me. We go to great lengths to avoid conflict, arguments make us queasy, and just the thought of raised voices or disagreeing with someone can cause us stress. We are calm and agreeable and easy to talk to. We will smile and nod when you tell us the craziest things. You think that you can't surprise us because we remain so calm outwardly, but inside we may be screaming. Don't believe for one minute that we can't stand up for ourselves, because that's just not true, we can, and many of us have, but we wait for something really big, or until someone pushes just the right button one too many times. Sadly this is quite dangerous, because whomever gets the bull will be getting the bull that has been building up. It is the risk we run, sometimes we just lose our minds, but generally we have a great big blow up, and things get said and broken and sometimes there is violence.

What many people don't realize is that those of us who avoid conflict have some pretty good reasons. I can't speak for anyone but myself, but my reasons are pretty simple, the main one is that I know that I have a serious temper. I'm not a hair trigger by any means, but I do know that when I get pissed in a serious way that it is not safe for me to be around people. I never want to cause bodily harm to anybody, I may say I do, but in truth it is probably the last thing that I would ever actually want to do. I have spent many years learning how to control my temper and to stay out of trouble, but there are people in this world who will think this means that they can push me around, and in some cases they can. Only because I let them.

Another reason that I try to avoid conflict is because I used to see it in my own home when I was a kid. I watched my mom and dad fight. Plenty of arguments, and sometimes big, old, knock-down, drag-out fights. My dad was a great provider, but he was also a bully in the house. It was his way or the highway, and I knew it. Whenever I tried to stand up for myself I was beat down by the old man. A smart answer generally meant a fat lip or at least sore spot on the cheekbone for a couple days. I have flown through doors, and out of rooms. I have had bruises from on end of me to another and I am sure that on more than one occasion my scalp came off of my skull while I was being dragged around by my hair being shown the work I didn't do. I can spot anger in a person in a millisecond, and it always flips my stomach. Past is past, but it still affects me and my behavior. I try everyday to be the exact opposite of how I was raised. I never say never, but I truly prefer to calmly resolve problems. The second that a voice is raised in my direction, I go into defensive mode, and I scare myself. So yeah, you can often push me around, but please count yourself lucky that you aren't the one to throw the straw that breaks the camel's back.

There is some serious positivity that has come from this, I am polite to everybody that I meet, no matter how big an asshole they are. No matter how much I dislike you, I can be friendly and kind to you. I may be a little passive-aggressive on occasion, but in general I am polite and well behaved in public. Sadly this gives me plenty of people who insist on talking to me when I would just as soon they would find a new friend, but the positive side is that I can get things from people that give up nothing to anyone. I don't force my way up hierarchies, because I don't like to fight over crap, and I refuse to compete for attention. I do my job as best I can, and generally I do it quite well. I am a professional sidekick, because I don't want to be aggressive enough to get the top spot even though I probably deserve it.

If I can live a peaceful life, I will be happy, but occasionally I know that I will have to stand up for myself or for those close to me. I chose my battles very carefully. I also approach them with trepidation, but when I have to, I can fight with the best of them. I have been a bouncer, and a security guard. I can hold my own in a fight, I just prefer not to have to.

Too many people choose conflict, and not enough are willing to try a calmer way. It's too bad, because life is so much more pleasant when there is more calmness and less conflict.

some can and some can't : Mustache!

2009-04-20T19:39:00.004-04:00

Hair... It's just hair, but it means so much to so many.

Ever notice that there are people in the world who look good with facial hair and others who never do? The same with long hair on the head, some people can pull it off and others can't. The bald guy with the ponytail? Nope, just looks dopey no matter who or where. When the bald guy wears a hat to cover the bald spot, and then takes it off an the ponytail is still there? Oye! I was a long hair for many years, and quite proud of the fact. I just thought that I looked better with long hair. That's what mattered to me, that I thought I looked good. The old guy down the street who would bitch about the long hair didn't bother me, and the boss bitching certainly didn't bother me. What ultimately bothered me enough to get me to cut my hair off was cleaning out the drain. It's not like I was going bald, but I hated cleaning out the drain of all that nasty hair coated with soap scum!

I found out that I have some follicle problems. Not enough!! I guess that my genetic heritage is such that I do not have the dense facial folicles to grow a decent mustache or beard. Heck I can't even grow a respectible goatee! I tried, for a long time, I bet it was nearly a decade that I had some sort of hair on my face. In fact one year for my Halloween costume I shaved my face clean and cut my hair short and went out without my glasses. Some of my closest friends didn't recognize me!! It was brilliant! In fact I nearly got a poke in the nose when I freaked out one of my female friends. LOL

So what is it about certain faces that make them look good with fur? Some guys look dumb without whickers, but put a mustache on them and bang! they look intelligent, distinguished, or even adult. Other guys look normal, with a clean shave, but then they grow a beard or a mustache and they look like a cast-off from a 70's porn flick. Scruffy barely covers the look. You see them and you expect them to grunt rather than talk! Never could figure it out. How does one know until they try life both ways? And who is the person who decides for them? Do they decide for themselves or do they wait for the compliments to come or not?

But then who cares! I

Why I take pictures...

2009-04-15T19:31:00.003-04:00

I was recently asked what I get from a picture, why do I take them, and I thought about the answer for about 5 seconds, and this is what I said...

What are pictures for me? Many times it depends on the picture, and when I am taking it. Pictures to me are many things and a huge part of my life. I have aspired to be a "Photographer" for much of my life, along with so many other things, but pictures were always something that were simply a part of my life, whether I was working hard on them or simply snapping memories. Most of the time they are simply that, memories. A snapshot of an event or a day, or something that I simply wanted to be able to remember later. But in recent years, especially with a digital camera, where the cost of film and the associated processing are no longer a factor, I take pictures in a much different way.

When I got my first digital camera, I took it with me everywhere and took pictures of anything simply because I wanted to see how the camera captured images, what it did with light and what I could expect from it in various settings. I have never been the type to stage a picture, for me they have to be natural. If they can be easily recreated, I'm not very interested in taking the picture. I try to capture certain moments and moods. Many of my friends consider me to be a paparazzi because I love to take pictures of people especially when they are not expecting it. I try to capture the spirit of a person, to see them in the unguarded moment when the picture will show you their soul, when you can see what they desire, or regret, or what they truly love. I like to capture the moments of unbridled joy, when someone is so happy that they simply overflow with the emotion. Sometimes I can catch someone pondering some deep problem, and you can see the thoughtfulness or the worry, or the care that they are taking in a decision. I enjoy taking pictures of children playing. There is something special about children, there is a purity of emotion in them that adults try so hard to cover up. With children, there is no tact, or deception, you can see in their faces what they are feeling and to get those special pictures is always a joy to me.

When I am taking pictures of buildings or landscapes, I look to capture the mood of the subjects, a field of blooming flowers is a happy picture, and I try to find a way to make it look happy. A dead tree standing in a hedge is a sad subject, sometimes. Sometimes it is a subject that feels of grandeur, or an indomitable spirit. The lone sentinel holding its' place long after its' fellows have fallen. The lone tree standing in a field, in the summer time gives a feeling of hope, there is shade and respite in the stark world, under the spreading shade of the lone tree. In buildings I can see the past, walking along beside and among the present and the future. It is one of the things that I love about Odessa, the Old buildings being used for modern things. I enjoy walking into an ancient building, the facade rebuilt many times over the centuries and yet the interior is as modern as any building being erected today. The juxtaposition of new and old, to capture this in a picture shows that history can continue to exist, while being utilized by continuing generations.

Sometimes I see something that captures my attention and I simply enjoy the aesthetics of the colors or the textures. Today I took some photos of clouds. They were interesting to me in their formation and layers. Capturing a sunset is special, because no matter how you try, you will never, ever see two sunsets that are the same. Every day is different, and every location has it's special charms. Sometimes the sun is reflected from water, and sometimes blurred by snow. Sometimes there is a rainbow, or the evening star, the planets trailing the sun closely into the horizon.

Sometimes I look at pictures that I have taken many years ago and I can remember exactly what I was thinking when I took them. I am taken back to that exact moment in time and I can relive the feelings and the emotions.

This is what Pictures are for me, they are truly pieces of the fabric of my life and in some cases, extensions of my soul.

traffic, weather and guns....

2009-04-10T23:38:00.004-04:00

The world is falling apart and everyone is blaming the other guy, nobody wants to look in the mirror and point at themselves. Bumper stickers abound talking trash about everything, and the pundits on the airwaves have it all figured out. The conservatives blame the liberals and visa-versa. I don't have all the answers, I will leave some of that to the people who are way smarter than me, but I know some things, and I feel that I need to say something. Here is what I see:

In my local city, (Rochester) they are getting government money to install red-light cameras at particularly troublesome intersections. These cameras are designed to snap pictures of the license plates and drivers of vehicles passing through intersections that have red lights. Duh! "The great Orwellian society is taking over." "It is the age of big brother." This is the cry of the public now. Um... Guess what? There are cameras everywhere you go these days waiting to catch you doing something wrong. In the parking lots, in the malls and the stores. In the gas stations, and in the restaurants. Anywhere that people congregate there are cameras watching. The biggest difference is that, MORE PEOPLE BREAK TRAFFIC LAW THAN ANY OTHER LAW. Sad sack sumbitches think that now they will get caught doing something that they shouldn't. Mostly because they have been doing it for so long that they figure that they will forget the cameras are there and get nailed. I'm sure they will. I don't like it, but people have proven for generations that they can't be trusted. When I was a child someone once said to me, " A lock will only keep an honest man honest." I think that is probably one of the truest things I have ever heard in my life. There is something in a human being that makes them wish to "get away" with something. Whether it is extra dessert when nobody else gets it, or finding an open door or slipping through a red light when no one is coming. Even the most Honest person in the world will eventually slip up and let nature goad them into something. Maybe they peek in a window and see a naked lady, or snitch the last donut. IT happens. It's human nature, like fighting and arguing. Sadly traffic cameras are more about generating income for a city than they are about traffic enforcement. It's a newer and sneakier tax. There is another things that the police are using now to catch scofflaws too called a traffic scanner. It's a highspeed camera attached to a computer that scans plates and stickers for validity and warrants. Lazy cops! Whatever happend to knowing your people? Get out and walk around the neighborhoods! Get off the bbicycles and out of the patrol cars and walk. Get to know the people again.

Guns are in the news and in a big way. People dieing and people killing. Whole families wiped out because of the despair factor. Insanity and instability making people go out with a bang. (pun intended) But there is another thing that I know the Pro-gun and the anti-gun crowd haven't considered as a contributing factor here. It was dramatically pointed out in the Pittsburgh Police officers deaths. The Pro-gun people have been harping constantly on how President Obama is going to take away our guns. The truth is that he has so much more to concentrate on, that it is highly unlikely that it is up at the top of his to-do list. Yet as long as the NRA and others keep pushing the buttons it will spur idiots to do stupid things, and this only adds fuel to the Anti-gun fires. Everytime a child dies or a family is torn apart or a maniac goes on a killing spree, the drums beat louder to take away our 2nd amendment rights. This will literally take a LOT of doing and no one president or congress will be able to do it. It will take most of a generation to get that kind of change enacted and it just isn't gonna happen yet. Sadly, the despair brought on by the economic situation in this country makes it more likely that people who were borderline stable to begin with will go off the deep end and do something to hurt themselves and those that they "love". Selfish bastards! Still, look at the overall statistics and you will see that more people die on Americas highways than at the end of a gun. And now here in Rochester we have a new problem...

Last Saturday morning (3 am) a man shot and killed a 17 year old kid who was breaking into cars. The basics of the story are this; A man heard noise and looked outside to see people moving from driveway to driveway. Being a leaglly licensed gun owner he grabbed his gun and told his girlfriend to call 911 and get the police coming. He went outside and yelled to the people to stop what they were doing, he warned them that he had a gun and he was calling the police. He found that it was three young men, and two of them took off running. The third one charged him despite his continued warnings. He fired two shots stopping the young man. He immediately ran back into his house and relayed to the police via the 911 operator that he had fired his gun and was afraid that he had killed the young man. He laid down his gun and put his permit with it as instructed by the police. He was arrested and put in jail and indicted by a grand jury. The young man's family has spoken out that their little angle could not have possibly been doing anything wrong. If he wasn't doing anything wrong, why was he out at 3 am? Why was he breaking into unlocked cars? Why did his cousins run and not look back? They are as culpable in his death as the man who pulled the trigger, and they should be charged as well. If they had stood still and kept their cousin from charging a man with a gun, they would all be alive and most likely on probation. Now a good man is going to stand trial and probably lose his job and half of what he has worked his whole life for, because he tried to do the right thing. To much to discuss here, but it's another example of neither side willing to see the middle ground where real life happens.

Scientists wish to put reflective particles into the atmosphere to cool the earth. Idiots!! I can't even believe that they are truly considering this act! The planet will fix itself if we give it the chance to come back into balance. Stuff in the atmosphere is the reason for our problems. I have watched enough of the History channel and Discovery to know that they are talking about Carbon Black. It's a very fine powder that when released in the atmosphere will cause cooling over large areas because it will block the suns rays and reflect them back into space. Uh huh. In small scale, earthbound, laboratory expriments it has proven to work, yet I truly fear putting this dust into the air. In 1980 when Mount St. Helens exploded, there was a decided cooling in the atmosphere and the summer was particularly mild. This was a natural phenomenon, and we had no control over it. The dust eventually settled and the atmosphere warmed back up the following year. Carbon black is FINE stuff and it could actually stay airborn in the atmosphere indefinitely. How long do we really want it up there and what would be the effect if it stayed there for a few years? How much crop loss would there be? How much crop loss could the world stand? We are near the edges of production capability on many things and even one year of significant crop loss could be plenty hurtful to many economies, but 2 or 3 years? That would be utter devastation and probably the beginning of the apocolypse. Screwing with the atmosphere in a deliberate way is worse than all the damgae that we have already done. We could easily bring the planet back into balance in a generation with some minor fixes. Messing with the atmosphere is too dangerous. It is the atmosphere that keeps us alive. We must have it to live. Without it we are done for. No question about it. The magnetosphere keeps out the excess solar ratiation and the atmosphere gives us life. Carbon is what got us into this mess and Carbon is NOT going to get us out, unless it is used as a way to gather solar energy and convert it into electricity. Solar power and wind power are the two things we need to develope in order to stave off the disaster that is looming in the future of humanity if we don't change our ways.

There I got that off of my chest! I feel BETTER, but still not very powerful!

Sick of Advertising!!!

2009-04-06T21:17:00.005-04:00

I love TV and Radio, and I Hate Commercials!!! It's not that I dislike the fact that people need to advertise, I understand the needs of business and the want for more traffic. What gets on my nerves is the Idiotic commercials that so many people find cute or funny. Once or twice they are cute or funny, but when you listen to the radio for the entire workday you hear these commercials 10 or 15 times in a day (depending on how much the advertiser spends)and they begin to sound extremely annoying. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if changing the station would change the commercials, but it doesn't.

Especially the national campaigns, like McDonald's, BK, or ( gods Help me!) Geico. I long for the day that that dumbass gekko gets run over by a car or made into a grease smear on a windshield! I have come to the conclusion that Micky D's is geared towards the biggest idiots in the country, and BK commercials are made by Biggest idiots in the country! As much as I enjoy my DirecTV, I wish that idot would kick his "friends" out of his house when they won't let him watch his game on cable, whether it is in HD or NOT!!! IT"S HIS GOD DAMN HOUSE!!!! Kick those Idiots out, it's not an intervention when your are not being harmed, and if they want to change your programming so bad, they can pay for it!!! If they are so offended at the lack of HD they can go watch the Game at their own house!!! Take away the chips and salsa and give them no beer!

The kid who won't keep his rollover minutes is another idiot!!! His mother is such an idiot that she should just take his phone away and make him pay for his own plan. Simple people!!! What other ones are getting on my nerves lately? Hmm, let me think.... I'm sure that something will come to mind. OH yes!! I remember now...

The Whopper Jr. commercials..... I would like to see someone come around to the drive through with a shotgun when that punk starts screaming about the buck. And when he is at the therapists office with his dad, that boy need a swift kick right in the nuts (sesame seeds?) to remind him that he is jr. and not the boss. I wouldn't buy a whopper jr. if they were ¢10 each, just because I hate the ad campaigns so much.

I am sure that there are millions of people who are led to the products that are being advertised by these insane, inane and decidedly stupid campaigns, but because they have gotten on my nerves so much I am sure to avoid the products no matter how great they are. Think with your dipstick Jimmy! Not this boy, I'm never gonna buy the product, EVER! That little Scotsman ever came up and whipped me on the back of the legs with a dipstick, you can guarantee that he will fall to the floor with brains leaking out of his ears and a 9mm bullet hole in his forehead. Entirely too much money is spent trying to get us to buy crap. If the stuff was really worth it, we would be buying it. Not because we saw the ad, but because everyone who had it was happy and talking about it. If that money was put into making the stuff better? We might actually want to buy it without the blitz krieg advertising.

You know that Americans are Sheeple and will follow any fad. If the neighbor is in love with it, then soon you will have to have it too!!! You know it's true!

Over Population

2009-04-05T14:44:00.003-04:00

This is one of those issues that has so many sides that you will go insane thinking about it, but it is also a very important issue. The world is suffering from population pressure and I have noticed that it seems to be getting worse. In biology we learn that in nature, animals will control their populations based on availability of resources such as food and living space. In the wild, they will stop giving birth when there is a lack of food, or the population density gets too high. Pretty smart for critters who supposedly can't reason.

Humans on the other hand, are completely different. They will continue to breed and add to the population density to the point of disaster. Humanity is a cancer on the planet. If you don't believe me, think about it this way: Cancer is unregulated growth of cells that will eventually overwhelm and kill the host body. Humanity grows on the planet, apparently unregulated, and without some regard to the future, will soon overwhelm our host and kill it. We have been killing it slowly for some years now. Of course the planet will recover, it doesn't need us, we do however need it and we need to keep it healthy.

The human population is growing at an ever faster rate. In 1800, the worlds population was estimated to be 978 million, yes, Million. 100 years later this figure grew to 1.65 billion! That time it's a B as in One Thousand Million. Let us jump 1 more century, and now the population in the year 2000 is known to be 5.99 Billion! And 9 years later, according to the U.S. Census Bureau,

04/01/09 --- 6,770,332,394

Of course huge portions of these people are concentrated in certain parts of the world, India and China come to mind immediately, and these places show the extremes of life in a place where the population really exceeds the resources of the area. India is known for its' slums and the quick way that disease spreads in these areas. It was recently brought to the fore of the world consciousness in the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Children abandoned by their families, because the family can't feed them. They live from garbage cans and survive by the force of will. Too many of them die. In China it has been long known that the government tries to control the population growth by limiting families to one child. So the Families will often abort a healthy child or in even worse cases kill a healthy baby girl at birth so that they can try to have a boy child. Boys are more likely to be able to get a better job in the future and perhaps make a better living. This is the story we are told anyway. But what does this give us? A HUGELY disproportionate ratio of men to women in the general population. That's sure not a good thing. Men with no jobs and no women end up making an army, and armies make nothing but trouble.

This is not the only worry about this population pressure, what about energy? This many people will need energy resources, electrical, motor fuel, raw materials for building structures and products, as well as food and water. Where does all this energy needed come from? Ever expanding power grids and distribution channels. Sooner or later something will not stretch any farther and things will begin to cascade out of control. There are many ways to make electricity, but the most common are currently, coal fired steam, hydro, and nuclear. Coal is the worst for the environment, it puts so much carbon in the air and contributes to the problem of global warming. Not to mention it is also responsible for additional smog , resperatory problems and Beautiful sunsets. One good thing just doesn't outweigh the bad stuff there. Hydro power has the advantage of not needing to pollute the atmosphere, but it takes it's toll in other ways. It can destroy huge tracks of land as well as wildlife habitats. The Earth is made to have certain balances and losing one population of crittes can have a domino effect that may be unpredictable. Suddenly an invasive species may run out of control, or a preditory species will lose a food supply and begin hunting something else. When messing with wildlife habitats, you can never fully predict what will happen by losing a species. Nuclear power is generally considered to be safe overall, but the problem is what to do with the spent nuclear fuel. It's a radioactive substance that needs to be locked away for a thousand years or so. We all know that there has never been a country that lasted for 1000 years. Regions, and cities, have kept their names while regimes and ideologies change. I don't know how many crazy ideologies I would trust with Nuclear waste!!

What about food? As population increases so does the need for food. In South America the rainforests are disappearing so that they can be used as farmland for the ever growing populations. The rainforests are the lungs of the Planet, and by losing this lung tissue the planet breathes harder. The conversion capacity for processing the CO2 in the atmosphere back into oxygen is taking a huge hit. So while the increasing need of electricity pumps CO2 into the air, the razing of the Rainforests takes away the planets' ability to reclaim the Oxygen, and keep the planet balanced. But back to the food, populations grow and they spread out, the cities grow and the farms move ever farther from the population centers. Transportation needs increase. The tillable land areas shrink and the need to get ever greater yields from ever smaller plots increases the need for more tillable land. Forests are cleared, mountains are terraced, and technology gives us hydroponics and greenhouse abilities. Food is produced year round in places where it never could be before. Storage Technology learns to store food better and longer so that we may survive a bad season. But what about 2 or 3 in a row? Increased scale of global warming makes it much more likely that areas that have long been the bread baskets of the world will become untenable as farmland within the next 100 years, and if the population growth continues on the scale that it has been going, there will be some hard times ahead. When people are worried about where they are going to sleep and get something to eat, education takes a back seat.

Large under- and uneducated masses of people are good places to foment rebellion and plant the seeds of war and destruction. Hungry people are easy to anger, and uneducated people are easy to convince and guide. The smart and ruthless will use this knowledge to their advantage and it will be some big wars that end some of the population presure. I just hope that they stick to killng great numbers of each other with conventional weapons. If there really is a nuclear war, I doubt that there will be enough of the planet left usable to sustain any population for very long. I really fear for the future of the children, not only the ones already here, but also for the ones born in the next few decades. As I have gotten older I have found that I would like to raise a few rugrats of my own, but I can honestly say that it scares the hell out of me to add to the problems that the world already has. But then again, what if it turns out to be my child or my grandchild that saves humanity? Highly unlikely, but you never know do you?

I guess I need to have someone in my life to actually breed with, before I should worry about the decision, but there is still a lot there that affects me and that I wonder about!

random thoughts and ramblings

2009-04-01T20:36:00.004-04:00

The war on drugs is a fraud. There is no war on drugs, it is a war on American mindset. Americans have been the subject of intended brainwashing by their government for most of a century. The interesting thing about this, is that even as they have continued sending piles of money to the incinerator of "drug interdiction" they have done nothing to actually hurt the giant drug lords and traffickers. The drug business itself takes it's toll on the people who make the most money. It is a business of greed, and greed is the biggest motivator in it. When there is no longer huge profits to be made, it will begin to diminish. Drug lords are killed by their rivals. new drug lords take their place. They make tons of money and live like kings. They get killed in the next coup. The drug trade in America is the modern equivalent of slavery, and just like in Africa the black man enslaves his own race as does the white man and the yellow man and the brown man. Take what little money that your fellow man has, and get him addicted to your product. Then make him work for it when he can't afford it. Eventually he will never have a chance to have anything that is his own, and then he is no more than a slave, either to the dealer or to the product. The saddest part of the cycle is that eventually the user dies, or with a little bit of luck, kicks the habit, and then the dealers must find new clients or he will go out of business. What is the solution? I am not smart enough to say for certain, but one thing I do know is that drugs should be treated like alcohol, regulated and taxed. The United States government learned over the decade of the 1920's that prohibition is useless and only makes the criminals rich. The real change needs to be in the public perception, of course that won't happen over night, and the crazy conservatives will scream that "their money" will be supporting drug addicts. Guess what? It already does in a myriad of ways, but by ending the criminalization of most drugs and their users, the money being wasted now on the "war" can be funneled into education and rehabilitation. This is the only way to break the cycle. And eventually the need for less money to be spent in this field.

I recently read an article in the newspaper about the the loss of religion in the United States. This was followed a few days later by a flurry of letters to the editor from both sides of the coin. On the pro religion side was the general status quo, that without God in our lives we are destined to be worthless and useless people who will never amount to anything and at the same time will suffer for eternity because they have not been "saved". One writer even went so far as to blame all crime and discontent in the world on the lack of God in the lives of the perpetrators. How in the world do they make this connection? Keep drinking the Kool-Aid! I see it as quite the other way around. It continually fascinates me when these knuckleheads really believe this crap that they are fed. Just because I do not subscribe to the same belief system that these poor freaks do, I do live in the same society and live by the same rules of conduct as these religious nuts, but I have the decency to let them go about their business without continually thrusting my distaste for their life choices in their faces and I truly wish that they could quit doing it to me. I was raised in a manner that taught me to reason and think about the consequences of my actions. Every boater is taught that they are responsible for their wake. It is a great metaphor for life. We are all responsible for our wakes. In life we create a wake wherever we go and the things that we do all have consequences. Because I don't subscribe to a specific set of written down beliefs, I am able to take each action as it happens and apply the result to my next action. It is called reason and logic. The definition of insanity, in the popular saying, is to repeat an action over and over again expecting a different result. To me, this describes Religion. More and more it looks like the followers are insane, they repeat the actions that they have been repeating for the last millenia and still expect different results. A small sidebar of this same original article was a bit of research that showed that the more religious a person was, the more likely they were to be afraid of dying, or letting anyone near them die. These are the people who keep loved one on life support for years after their brains have died, on the hope of a "miracle". They keep pets alive while they suffer the pain and indignity of osteo-arthritis and incontinence, GI problems and the loss of their teeth. Animals can't tell us that they don't want to suffer this way, but because they are our pets and they love them they try extraordinary means to keep them with us long after they should have moved on. They deserve a dignified passing as much as a human does. Meanwhile those of us who consider themselves to be agnostic or atheist, we'll have no or little problem when our time comes, we are more curious than scared, because we haven't been living a hypocritical existence. We live as we feel life should be lived, we don't hate people for arbitrary reason and we don't believe that we know all the answers to the questions of life and death. I am sure that I will hit this subject again some day.

Again on the recent news front, there has been much about the drug toxin levels in fish. Anti-depressants getting into the water tables and being absorbed by the critters living in the water. SO now the fish are Happy!! Now I am not against the use of anti-depressants. I understand that there are people who truly need these beneficial drugs. It keeps them balanced and in many cases alive. I am however against the OVERUSE of these drugs. In far too many cases they are prescribed by doctors too lazy or inept to find the real cause of the depression. I do know that there are some cases where there is a chemical problem in a persons brain and they just don't make the right chemicals to find happiness. I don't believe that this is as prevalent as the doctors and drug companies would have us believe. I think that it is often much more inherent in the western lifestyle. The TV shows us people who are deliriously happy. We expect that we will be deliriously happy. When we aren't we think that there is something wrong with us. We worry. Then the TV shows us people who are depressed and they get deliriously happy with drugs. They are walking on the beach, laughing at parties and holding hands with their great looking, happy spouse. If we don't have the happy spouse, the beach vacation, and the party invitations, well there must be something wrong with us and we don't feel happy about it. Are we depressed or are we just chronically unhappy that we aren't the greatest people on the planet? Westerners spend their life wired and plugged into everything and wanting everything. In the last half of the last century, Americans especially, elevated their overall way of life above just about every other nation in the world, and in doing so they set standards of living that they expected their children and grandchildren to at least achieve and in many cases to exceed our parents standards. In most of the world parents expect that their children may be lucky to do the same that they do. The same job, in the same place and for the same pay.They will live in the same town, and maybe even in the same house. They don't expect so much out of life, but to live it the best that they can, the same as their parents. There is not the pressure to achieve. ( I said in MUCH of the world, now all we all know a few over-achieving Asians!) Even in the Asian countries it is mostly true, but the citified masses always have their educated elite, and they are expected to achieve just like western kids, and they show the same signs of stress that the western people show. They have their heart attacks, and their ulcers, and their suicide rates too. But the truth is that they are far fewer in those places per capita, because the pressured portions of society are much smaller than in America. Our own competitiveness is our biggest downfall, and the obsessive need to have all the same stuff that our friends and neighbors have is where our insane depression rates come from. If we lost TV and Madison Ave. for a generation I bet we would see a steady decline in them. Sure I want my MTV, but it's gonna kill me just like them Marlboros will too. There is a whole industry that is dedicated to making us want what we can't afford or don't need , but we are sure willing to try and do whatever it takes to get it. Then we instill this same mindset in our children and wonder why they aren't happy. Add to that the "everybody wins" method of child-rearing that has become so popular and it is like pouring battery acid on a paint job. It just eats away at the mind and happiness is the first thing to go.

That's all I got today. I am sure that I will have more soon. Enjoy your day and don't spend it all wishing for what you don't need. Live the life you have and don't worry about what everyone else has.

A picture is worth a thousand words...

2009-03-29T21:02:00.006-04:00

Sunlit birch against threatening sky

sunset trees against purple sky

Glowing cloud

Nature is the best artist ever.

The Big Box Dilemma

2009-03-26T20:03:00.003-04:00

Yep, The Big Box. You know what I mean, Wal-Mart, the store that so many people love to hate. It has become the symbol of the homogenization of American culture. 25 years ago it was McDonald's, before that? I really can't say because I only really began paying attention somewhere in my late teens. Howard Johnson's maybe? It really doesn't matter, I guess, the point is that sometimes the things that make our lives easier or more convenient, are the same things that we resent for taking away the individuality of the landscape.

It seems that no matter where we go in America these days there is a Wal-Mart, and more and more of them are billed as "Supercenters." But let's be real, just because you can buy food and drugs and clothes in the same store doesn't really make it a supercenter, because you can do the same at most Walgreens, Kenny Drugs, Rite-Aids and even grocery stores. The Marketing department of the Wal-Mart Company knows that by billing the store as a supercenter, it gets them more community support,( if they have any to start with, there is a serious backlash going on with Walmart) so even though it may not be a full supercenter they will still call it such. I live where I can drive to three different Wal-Mart "supercenters" in less than an hour. The smallest one is in my own hometown. It has all the bells and whistles to get the label, but the bells are much smaller, and the whistles are more like tweeters. Each one offers all the same services, but the population that each caters to is different so the stock reflects this. So does the size. The one in the college town is the biggest store I have been in to date. It is the newest incarnation in the same town, they pretty much outgrew the first one that was built 15 years ago. Now the old building sits empty waiting for a new tenant or someone to doze it over and build something new. This also is a common occurance when it comes to this megalithic retailer.

The dilemma is this, do you go to Wal-mart with it's low prices and continued market dominance, or do you patronize the little stores where you know the owners and have been shopping for years? Wal-Mart has what you need, and in the style you want and at a low price. The little store knows exaclty what you want, but doesn't have the style in stock, ( but can have it in a day or two) and the price is a couple dollars more. What do you do? America is a country that has no use for anything less than instant gratification, Wal-Mart wins, today. What happens tomorrow? Do you even bother looking at the little store? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. The more times you choose Wal-Mart the more you hurt the little store, and the more likely it is that they will go out of business. When they go out of business, the irony is that they will be shopping at Wal-Mart, because the low prices will be all that they can afford!

Now don't get me wrong, I am not a Wal-Mart basher in general. I shop there, for the exact reasons that I have specified above. Low prices and selection. When you have a company that can buy an entire production run of a product, you know they will have the lowest price on a product. In fact, they can pretty much control the market price on most things. They can undercut any local competitor and drive them out of business. Then they hire at least a portion of that competitors labor force to staff their ever bigger stores. Meanwhile they buy cheaper products made in foriegn factories, meaning that Unemployed Americans will continue to shop for the lowest prices thereby making them the winners again. How's that for dominating the market?

I love to travel and road trips are one of my favorite things to do. Generally due to time constraints I usually travel by Interstate Highway. It's a great way to get from city to city and to cover ground fast. Contrary to the popular belief when they were built, they really do provide some wondeful views and vistas. They cut through some of the most beautiful places in the country, and some of the most desolate as well. Anyone who has ever followed I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas knows that. Who hasn't stopped at the Mad Greeks in Baker, CA just because it is the biggest piece of civilization between them? When you drive through most suburbs these days, you can pretty much count on seeing the same string of franchise eateries, motels, stores, muffler shops, and auto parts stores. Whether you drive through Atlantic City, New Jersey, Cleveland, Ohio, Wichita, Kansas, Durango, Colorado, Flagstaff, Arizona , or any other city you can think of, you will find the line up of strip malls somewhere along the road into town. Sooner or later you will spot a Ken-tac-hut, next door to a Monro Muffler, across the street from an Applebee's that is across the parking lot from the IHOP. Down near the exit will be the Super 8 motel, next door to the Motel 6, the Red Roof Inn and the Holiday Inn Express. Of all that I have mentioned above only one is a single location, one-of-a-kind place, The Mad Greek's in Baker, CA. If you have ever been there you know what I am talking about. If you haven't I highly recommend it. When you get to these parts of any city, you literally could be in any city in the USA. Sure, if you are west of the Mississippi river you are much more liklely to find a Carl's Jr. or a Jack in The Box than a Hardee's, or a Sonic, but still and all, it is a pretty homogenous thing.

There is the benefit of knowing that you will always get the same product by the same name wherever you go in the country, but at the same time where is the adventure of the journey? What is the use of leaving home if you will only continue to visit the same places expecting the same services and products wherever you go? Isn't the point of traveling to be able to try new things and to have new experiences? To me, it is useless to travel if I will have the same thing in Utah and Colorado, and Kansas and Memphis and I can have in Rochester and Buffalo. When I am in Kansas City I want KC Barbecue, I'm going to Jack Stacks, when I am in Chicago I want Deep Dish Pizza. When I am in New Orleans I want crawdads and Jambalaya, I'm gonna find the place where the locals go for them. When I am in Texas, I want some Texas Beef, slow cooked over a mesquite flame. If I am in Maine I am gonna have Lobster at every meal, and shrimp and maybe even clams! But sad to say, when I need a new pair of pants, in Billings, Montana?

Yeah I'm going to look for a Wal-Mart. I can't help it, I know they will have what I want and in the size I need. I promise I won't buy a new pair of cowboy boots there or a hat, but for the pants and shirt, yeah I'm going there.

Pluses and minuses of everything. There is a benefit to knowing what you are gonna get sometimes, but other times there is a need for the adventure, and when you have a chance to have an adventure, don't waste it on a Big Box, adventure-ize yourself and maybe learn something about your own tastes. You never know when you will find something new that you really like.

4 months later

2009-03-24T22:24:00.003-04:00

So it has been 4 months since my favorite radio geek has come back on the air. Wease is Wease and now that the show has gelled and everyone has begun to get used to each other, I can give an honest critique of the show. I still love the show, but there are somethings that get to me.

One thing that I have noticed is that I am not impressed with the executive producer, Anthony. As I have said before, I am aware that I don't actually know these people, but the persona that they present on the air each day, that being said, the producer seems to me to be a nice guy, but not the brightest bulb on the tree. I hope that it is a persona, because I trust that Wease will surround himself with competent people, but sometimes I wonder about this guy. He believed that his daughter was born with Vick's Vapo-rub™on her head, because his wife ate the stuff when she was pregnant! Not the sharpest knife in the drawer! That is just one example, but there are many others where his beliefs seem to trump his visions of the truth.

I enjoy his producer Nick. He seems a genuine guy, but a little too conservative or right wing for the person he is working for. To be honest he is the main producer for the right-wing talk show host on the AM station, so he has a little bias coming into the show. I like his way of injecting his view when he disagrees with Wease. He likes to remind the show and Wease in particular, that not all the world is as liberal as he is. In fact, Nick has occasionally made some good points that I even agree with. Especially when he speaks of the money that has been wasted by local governments in the multitude of snafus over the years, and how that money would have been better used for education, infrastructure and law enforcement, rather than just "cool stuff."

The male sidekick, Jamie Lissow, he is a stand-up comedian who has been on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, he has been on Fox News show Red-Eye, and he has his own 1/2 hour comedy special on Comedy Central. He is funny in a dry sort of way. His humor reminds me very much a the kid in the back of the class making stupid jokes at the teachers expense. He is a jock and a health nut. He likes his healthfood snack and he reminds everyone just how unhealthy they really are! He has his own little segment where he gets some of the local news items that are pretty stupid. They make us laugh, and everyone comments on the items so it takes a good half hour to get through the bit. I like him over all and I hope he gets better, he is good now, but I think he has some development room.

The female sidekick is Lilly, she is a complex little girl. Interesting in some ways and infuriating as all hell in other ways. One day I like her and I would love to have a conversation with her, then she says something later and I hope I never have to talk to her. Who knows the mind of a woman? Not even a woman!! Oh well, it's not like I want to date her or anything, she's just a voice on the radidio! I am curious about her though, She is a first generation American, as her parents are Albanian born. She was raised in Jersey, and has a decent education. I wonder if she speaks Albanian? If so, does she speak any other languages? I would really like to talk to her on the informational level just for my own curiosity. She has said that she finds religion silly. A great thought to me, but a strange wording. Silly? Maybe frightening, morbid, insane... but silly? I guess, but as long as she isn't a freak about following some ancient useless cult, I give her points for intelligence.

All in all the show has come together pretty well. I'm sure that there will be changes and adjustments to come, but so far, it's good. Could be better, and it sure could be worse. Right now I give it a 3 out of 5 stars. The interactivity of the show now is great with the webcams and the chat room, and the accessibility of the show is the best it has ever been. I can email the show and be acknowledged on air in a few minutes. That is great. The content hasn't been stellar. Some of the guests have left a little to be desired, but last week with Bobby Slayton! That was batting 1000. The various interns have provided some great radio, for sure, and they are learning from a true master of the medium. The phone screener Leah and the computer chick Colleen are great to chat with occasionally. I hope it gets better, because it is already good, but it still can be great!!

Spring thoughts...

2009-03-22T16:53:00.004-04:00

So the first day of "official" spring in the Northern Hemisphere has occurred and to remind myself that it was really spring, I froze my face and fingers off to get a nice little picture of a robin. Living in Western NY, many people consider the arrival of the geese, on their trip north, as being the harbinger of spring, but for me it is the arrival of the robins. They show up the week of the equinox. Always. They arrive and with them usually comes the first warm weekend of the season as well. So, they are my favorite birds.

Spring is my second favorite season. Summer being the first, but spring is right up there. I like 'em all to be truthful, but for different reasons and in different degrees. Spring is many things for me, but more than anything it is the beginning of warm weather. I like warm weather, actually I like hot weather, but Western NY hot, not Mojave Desert hot. I like when the thermometer is pushing into the high 80's and the sun is shining bright all day long. When the pool temp is getting up there too, and you can jump in the water and be so comfy that when you get out the air seems cool. That's what I really like. But that is summer, I wanted to wax philosophical about spring!

So what I like about spring... the snow is mostly gone and nature is coming back to life all around me. I walk outside in the morning and I can hear birds back in the trees. I am greeted by all manner of chirps and squawks and cheeps. Whistles and trills, the flutter of wings and the honks of the geese. Sometimes I can look out in the field and see the Canadian geese less than 50 yards from my doorstep. I see the rabbits scampering for cover when they spot me. They better scamper for cover, because I hate when they eat my flowers, so they are fair game for a shot from whatever gun I have handy. But the big draw for me is watching the world around me turn green. The spring bulbs come first, poking little shoots out of the ground and fighting the cold and the occasional snow until they triumphantly bloom! Sometimes the first emergence is the snowdrops, but other times the crocuses beat them to the pop, but color reappears in the world.

After the first blooms the daffodils follow and the tulips right behind them, colors from the whole rainbow in little gardens and corners of the yard. Poking out from under the mulch or the matted grass left from the winter snow. Before long there is work to be done, raking up the sticks and branches that winter has blown from the trees, making a pile and setting it afire, maybe using it to warm you hands on a cold, clear day. Everywhere you walk the ground is still soft, and if you're not careful you find the squishy spots where the mud squelches up around your boots, and if you don't step just right it squirts up and onto your pant legs. On the calm days you can hear the sounds of the neighborhood children outside playing again, maybe you spot the occasional kite, or if you're lucky enough to have the time and space you can fly one yourself. Can you get it so high that you can barely see it? Soon you will see the bicycles and the skateboards returning to the sidewalks and the streets and parking lots. The roads are still white with the winter salt, waiting for that big rain that will wash them clean. Motorcycles return to the roads with the warming of the world, and once again it begins to sound like summer. Before long the weather is warm enough to wake the frogs and the toads, and the forest comes to life with the sounds of peepers and croakers. The warmth also brings back the dreaded mosquitoes and the annoying houseflies. But they are food for the frogs, so they are tolerated until they get within our personal "no-fly" zones. I'm one of those lucky people who is not bothered by a mosquito bite. They bite, I swat and it's over, no swelling, itchy bumps here. Yet I still can't win the lottery!

Before long it's Memorial Day, and the gardens must be planted and the grass needs to be mowed, and the cover comes off of the pool. It is the beginning of summer, and the end of spring. Spring is it's own special time and it's a time to be enjoyed. I always hope that one of these springs I will have my great love to share it with. Because I really do think that spring is a great time to be in love. To take a walk holding hands watching the world come to life, or seeing one of springs spectacular sunsets. Having a person to share thoughts and ideas with, and to feel understood and cared for, seems the most important in the spring time. I guess I'm a romantic fool in many ways, but the new seasons always make me more so.

Go out and walk in the mud. Spring only lasts for a few months!

First one!!

2009-03-17T23:36:00.004-04:00

Spring has sprung for me!! My very first bloom of the spring! I am happy happy happy!! I know that in a week or two it will snow again, and before it's all over with, probably more than once, but for today I felt like spring and I'm happy with it!!! Soon it will be daffodils and Tulips, then I will be mowing the grass, but for now a blossom is a beauty!