NY Route 177.



NY Route 177., originally uploaded by iMachias.

Today I joined my dad and my stepmom for dinner to celebrate Father’s Day. Dad picked the restaurant, we went to the Brew Pub in historic Sackets Harbor. A microbrewery, the Brew Pub offers some great beers along with a delicious menu selection. If you’re in the area I highly recommend it.

It has been too long since my Dad and I have had the chance to talk at any great length; since I was heading home after dinner we took two separate cars to the restaurant and Dad rode along with me. We caught up on family stuff, reminisced about various things and just had a nice conversation. I really enjoyed the ride and the time together.

Since I planned on heading home after dinner I took the opportunity to take a more direct route instead of backtracking by way of my Dad’s to get home. This route involved taking NY Route 177. Route 177 is my favourite rural route of all time to drive on.

As a driving enthusiast I am quite aware that there are posted speed limits in the United States. Route 177 is a road that begs you to defy these speed limits, well at least in the summer, and the weather was perfect for me to oblige.

I always seem to drive Route 177 from west to east. It’s approximately 25 miles long, and save for slowing down to 40 MPH for the tiny hamlet of Barnes Corners, Route 177 is otherwise an open, relatively straight road that passes through lots and lots of farm land as it makes it’s way over the Tug Hill. I was not the only driver that was exceeding the speed limit. I was, however, very in tune with my car, the road, the fields I was passing through and I had an incredible feeling of being centered.

Many meditate to find their center. I drive.

Community.

It’s no secret that Earl and I have been somewhat hosting a semi-monthly bear night at the only gay bar left in our fine little city. Tonight was the latest bear night and with it being pride weekend and all, we thought folks would be in a festive mood.

Earl and I like to make every one of our bear nights extra special by adding extra goodies; we usually have a 50/50 raffle to raise money for the local HIV related charities, we give away lots of door prizes and we bring goodies for the crowd to snack on. We’re not that much different than bear nights in neighbouring cities but it’s something a little different for the crowd in our area and we like to think they enjoy it. To cover the expense of gathering the prizes, buying the food, etc., we charge a cover charge at the front door. This gets you entered into the drawings automatically and as I mentioned before, gets you in the door where we like to think you’ll enjoy something a little bit extra. As an added bonus we had professional photographers taking photos for those that were interested in sprucing up their online existence or even wanted a print of something extra special for their living room.

Now, I’m going to sound a bit elitist here, but over the past year or so the typical crowd at the bar has, well, degraded. What was once the hangout for the 30+ crowd and those that wanted to enjoy a somewhat civilised party has turned into the catch-all for anything and everything gay in our region. This is not uncommon in the days of instant gratification and hook-up through the internet, but nonetheless the population of the bar has tipped in the favour of the 18-25 crowd with an emphasis on the lower half. Anyone under 21 is marked with large “X”s on both hands. Some claim that the permanent marker indicators sweat off whilst they’re dancing but we know better.

But I digress.

Tonight we began the night by charging our standard cover charge of $5.00. The crowd started picking up around 11 and at 11:45 I had a line of about 10 people or so waiting to show their ID and pay their money. This is when one of the employees of the bar came up to me and said that we had to stop charging the cover charge immediately. I asked him why, he replied that he was getting urgent text messages from people that said they didn’t like the $5.00 cover charge and that word was getting out about it and it would kill the crowd.

Here’s the thing. (I say that a lot). It’s no secret that we were charging a $5.00 cover charge. We never make it a secret. We include that information on all mentions of our events. Making it a secret would be moronic.

I countered that you can’t stop charging a cover charge at five minutes until midnight because that would be very unfair to those that had already paid. He said he didn’t care, we needed to stop the cover charge. To prove his point, he called the owner of the bar and got him to agree.

So we stopped charging the cover charge.

At 12:15 we gave away half of the door prizes; we usually have the drawings closer to 1. At 1 a.m. I shot away whatever food was left, packed up our toys and got the hell out of there.

I was pissed.

I don’t care about the money. Earl hates to hear me say that but I couldn’t care less about the money; we had barely covered our expenses but it wouldn’t be a total loss. What did anger me though is that the rules of the game changed one third of the way into the night, and that was extremely unfair to those that had paid to get into the bar. This change in the rules significantly changed the vibe of the party into some sort of youth-infested rap fest that was making the bears in the crowd quite uncomfortable. So much for bear night.

Tonight was the last time that Earl and I will ever contribute a bear night to the community in this area. We will continue to support our friends as we travel here and there but we are _done_ with what we had going here.

I’ve picked up my toys and brought them home.

Shopping.

Today I decided to spruce up the wardrobe just a little bit and make like it’s summertime by purchasing a couple of pairs of shorts. I was recently accused of wearing too many variations on the camo shorts so I decided to go for something different. At first I considered something in a plaid, but I stopped wearing plaid years ago when I sat on someone’s old couch and disappeared from view, prompting others to think I had become a floating head (damn that trendy jumpsuit) so I moseyed on over to the local Army and Navy store and took a look at “work shorts”. Don’t think skorts because they’re not and luckily they are not slanged down to worts.

Anyways, I hate shopping. When I was being built for this life they left out the shopping option when they installed the gay gene. Whilst I enjoy people watching very much, I like it for just that: my sitting back and watching people go by. I don’t want to actively participate in the mayhem associated with shopping, I actually want someone to shop for me (hence the aforementioned plaid incident in the early 1990s).

The first order of business was to find a Father’s Day card. The small section in the card shop was jammed with people pawing and grabbing at the cards with one particular woman yakking on the cheap flip phone wedged between her head and shoulder as she went on and on about some sort of work-related business that she was going to take care of on Monday whilst reading touching cards to express her love for her father. Not only was she very loud but she was separating the cards from the envelopes and putting things back in a generally disorganised fashion. The anal retentive side of me kicked in and I subsequently kicked her (um, accidently) and stepped on the back of her left shoe. She didn’t notice until she tried to turn and walk away.

Mission accomplished (selecting the card, not terrorising Miss AT&T), I finally got to the Army Navy store and made my way through the Carhartt section. Wearing Carhartt clothing is a badge of honour for my rural side of the family and something that I quite frankly enjoy. I like the feel of this particular brand of clothing and the practicality of it, hence the aforementioned work shorts.

I ended up purchasing three pairs in muted colours (but not all the same colour). As I stood in line at register 2, the kind cashier kept trying to direct me to other registers, even though there were others behind me. “You can go through register 3! Register 1 is open! You can even check out at the service desk!” Apparently I am scary but I stood my ground and made my way through register 2.

One thing that I have noticed whilst being out in public lately is that there are a lot of screaming kids on the street. Now I don’t mind that kids are out and about, after all it’s their world too and they need the interaction for proper socialisation, but lately there’s a lot of unhappy kids in a set radius around me. A meal at the diner was interrupted by a kid who propelled himself through the diner by latching onto the legs of the other customers. There were three kids screaming in various departments of the Army Navy store. I suspect they were trying to out scream each other as they shared their dismay with the situation.

I know how they felt.

Cosmic Bowling.



139.365, originally uploaded by iMachias.

Tonight Earl and Jamie came up with the idea of going bowling. And not just any kind of bowling, but Cosmic Bowling, complete with capital letters. We invited our friend Tony to join us.

Here’s the thing. I haven’t been bowling since 1979, efforts on the Wii notwithstanding. It has been 30 years since I was last seen in a bowling alley, more specifically the Strike ‘n Spare in Mattydale (outside of Syracuse); my Uncle Gary took my sister and I along with our cousins Jean and Heather for a Saturday afternoon.

I have two traumas associated with bowling. The first is that I come from a family of good bowlers; both Grandma and Grandpa City (and all of their siblings and relatives) were in bowling leagues. Grandma always watched bowling on Saturday mornings and early afternoons; she would often remark that I should become a pro-bowler if I really intended on making it in life. So I always feel some of lineage commitment pressure when I am handed a bowling ball.

My second trauma is that I broke two lanes that day 30 years ago when I was at Strike ‘n Spare because I had a habit of not waiting for the pinsetter to do it’s thing and would end up chucking the ball into the little rail thing that tells you not to bowl. I think there was a reason that Uncle Gary never took us bowling again.

So while tonight’s bowling adventure was fun, I have to admit that I really, really suck at it. I think I bowled a 49 in the first game and a 50 in the second. Earl was giving me pointers such as start with your right foot, don’t hop and for god’s sake don’t throw the ball like a shotput again! I seem to have this roundhouse approach to my bowling stance and tend the launch the ball like a backhanded frisbee throw. At least the little extra hop I used to do when I was a kid is gone. A bonus of the evening was that my ball didn’t jump lanes and usually ended up in the general vicinity of the pins.

After a post-game snack at the Denny’s where people are routinely shot or stabbed, I am pleased to say that I had a really good time with the guys tonight. I’m actually looking forward to going bowling again some time and maybe even knocking down a few of the pins.

Computive Schizophrenia.

Two days ago I was producing a video on my Linux box to prove that I could do it. Today I couldn’t live without my MacBook Pro.

It’s iPhone 3.0 day. While I’m not tripping over myself to go out and buy a new iPhone 3Gs, I have to admit that I do love my iPhone 3G and all things Mac and I am very excited by the pending update to the iPhone software. I guess once you go Mac you don’t go back.

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Mobile Manners.

Intel just released these videos called “Mobile Manners”, featuring iJustine (Justine Ezarik). I think they are right on target and a hoot to boot.

There is a link in this first video that will take you to the others.

UPDATE: I need to adhere to these better as well.

Progress. Not.

The New York State Public Commission recently announced that the planned overlay or splitting of the 315 area code, originally slated for autumn 2010, has now been pushed off until 2013. Area codes are often split or overlayed with a new area code when the number of available telephone numbers in the original area code is close to exhaustion.

Media outlets report that the change in the projected exhaustion date is due to a decline in the demand for new telephone numbers in this area, mostly due to a faltering recession and a failure to meet the projected demand for numbers.

Let’s put this into perspective. In today’s world many individuals have multiple telephone numbers; there is their traditional landline number in addition to any number of cell phones within a household, not to mention fax machines, dedicated internet circuits and the like. So with the unprecedented explosion of technology currently underway, the folks in the 315 area code are not grabbing up the numbers as quickly as originally projected.

I will say that steps have been taken to use as many possible telephone number combinations in this area as possible before embarking on the task of adding an additional area code to the area. However, if you think about it, we are not gobbling up existing numbers because industry and business is not moving into this area and as a result people are leaving the area in droves in search of employment.

To run out of available telephone numbers in 315, while an inconvenience to many, is an indicator that the area is thriving and that we can’t keep up with the demand being placed on our telecommunications infrastructure. Quite frankly (and unfortunately, predictably) the complete opposite is true. Our area is not thriving. Not as many people as originally projected want a 315 telephone number. There is no demand from new people here because there are no new people moving here.

So rest assured fine citizens that you needn’t worry about the labourious task of dialing all 10 digits because of the overlay of a new area code or you won’t have to remember that half of 315 suddenly became 938 (totally random number made up by me) and you have to remember which half you’re in, because you can squarely remain a “315er”.

Loner.



136.365, originally uploaded by iMachias.

Feeling unsettled today. I’m not angry or depressed or cranky or anything like that, but I feel restless. Unsettled describes it best.

Time feels like it’s flying by at a snail’s pace. I am firmly on the ground whilst holding on by the tip of my fingers.

As much as I try to socialise and be part of the crowd, I’m really not. I like my world, my way and the few people that I allow to be part of it.

Few get me. And I like it that way.

Testing 1-2-3.

A very boring video as I try out some software on Linux.

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