February 2006

Juice.

Earl and I are in our hotel room in Bucks County, Pa., just back from the Philadelphia Wings lacrosse game. Like a true married couple, we don’t have plans to go into center city tonight to hit the clubs or anything, we are sitting around in our jammies catching up on e-mail and ready to call it a night.

I wanted to share pictures from tonight’s game but I discovered that the batteries in my camera are dead, so I was unable to take any photos. A stop for AA batteries is in order for tomorrow! I want to have the camera ready for when we hit the jackpot at one of the Atlantic City casinos tomorrow.

Jock.

Earl and I are meeting up with his brother and going to a Philadelphia Wings game tonight in, well, Philadelphia. It’s only the second lacrosse game I’ll have ever attended in my life. I’m thinking it’s going to be a good time.

The Molson Canadians I’ve already had tonight certainly won’t hurt matters much.

You Are Here.

Today while Earl and I were driving to his home turf outside of Philadelphia, I let him do the driving so I could play around with the GPS program on my PowerBook. I haven’t played around with this as much as I’d like to, but inspired by yesterday’s speed boost of my computer, I thought I’d give it another whirl and see what I could find out about our surroundings.

Click the image to enlarge.

For example, just south of Binghamton, N.Y., the New York-Pennsylvania state line is very, very close to the 42nd parallel. It’s literally inches from it. I’m wondering if the signs are actually off a little bit and when the state borders were negotiated if it really does follow the 42nd parallel.

I also found out that the “mountainous” area in New York’s Southern Tier isn’t really that mountainous at all but rather just a bunch of precocious hills, with the highest point on I-81 between Syracuse and Binghamton clocking in at around 1300 feet.

I’m looking forward to doing more of this investigative work as we get into traveling season this spring. I’m also going to have to look into this activity called geocaching. It sounds quite interesting.

Speed.




Latham Circle Diner.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

Earl and I went to Albany this afternoon basically just to goof off. We stopped at Crossgates Mall while we were there and made a very necessary stop at the Apple store.

I’ve been thinking about getting my computer skills officially certified so that I would be more valuable as I follow my career path to employment nirvana. Because of this, I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a Windows based laptop to add to our stable of computers so that I’d have something to practice my PC skills on.

I’ve been looking around online for the past week or so and had a couple of ideas in mind. Earl and I went to Best Buy, CompUSA and Circuit City in search of this particular Gateway Tablet PC I had decided on.

I couldn’t bring myself to make the purchase.

I’m in love with my PowerBook G4. We’ve been through a lot together and I couldn’t stand the thought of casting it aside when it came to improving and enhancing my computer skills. So instead we quadrupled the memory in my PowerBook so that I could run Virtual PC if the need arises.

After a five minute install job, I’m now kickin’ the limit at 2GB of RAM. (That’s a really big chunk of memory for those not familiar with how this sort of thing works. It’s a good thing.)

My PowerBook and I have a solid relationship once again. Once you go Mac, you never go back.

Here I am pictured at the Latham Circle Diner, ready to have a Greek salad after enjoying a cup of French Onion Soup. Below is a picture of Earl enjoying his salad. We love the Latham Circle Diner. If you’re looking for it, take I-87 toward Montréal and get off at Exit 6 and head toward Latham. It’s on the circle about 3/4 mile east of the Northway (I-87), hence the name. It’s your basic diner, but oh so good.

Latham Circle Diner.

Refresh.

“If we took a holiday…”

Earl and I are taking the day off from work and heading off to Albany this afternoon to do some shopping and hanging out in the city. “Yay to the tax return”, that’s my motto today!

When Earl takes a day off from work, he actually takes off the afternoon, so I’m going to do shopping warm ups to pick up his birthday gift and card as his birthday is Monday. I have no idea what I’m going to get him. I’m hoping for some inspiration once I walk around the mall a little bit.

Routine.

One of my biggest pet peeves is being pigeon holed. I don’t like to be perceived as predictable. When I move on from this life, I want to be remembered as spontaneous. “I wanna be impulse. Reckless.” (When’s the last time someone quoted a Wilson Phillips song in a blog?) “That J.P., he was zany. Zany, I say.”

As I’m sitting here eating lunch, I’m realizing that I’ve adopted a routine that may border on mundane. I come home, lunch pail in tow and lay out my lunch. I pet the cat on the top of the head and then let him out the back door. I then eat my lunch and surf the same pages, every day, in the same order. I have a handful of blogs that I read, and I always read them in order, regardless of who has posted the latest entry. I check a few usenet discussions and then I read a few message boards about various, often entertainment, interests. Then I write in my blog. As I letting Tom out before settling down to eat, I realized he was waiting by the door because he knew what was to happen next.

I think this routine is a product of the time of year. I imagine once the weather breaks and really means it this time that I’ll walk or sit on the back deck or run around the house with my hands in the air going “Let the sunshine, let the sunshine, let the sunshine in!” I don’t think the neighbors would mind, they often do the same thing. Except crazy cat lady. She just calls neighborhood cats by banging an iron skillet on a cow bell. She’s whacky like that.

Long ago I was told by an ex-fling that I was very predictable and I worked in a three-week cycle. I had my high points, I had my low points and you could set a calendar by the schedule. “J.P.’s giddy, time to pay the electric bill!” Unpredictably, I hung up the phone while he was telling me what my problem was and predictably I dumped him in a curt, yet colorfully worded e-mail. Mind you, back in 1989, dumping people over e-mail was rare so maybe that wasn’t so predictable after all.

I think I’m going to do something very spontaneous this weekend. On purpose. I don’t know what it’ll be, I don’t know when it’ll be. I have a five day weekend ahead, this is the perfect opportunity to be zany.

I have to think about the details.

Ah, Memories.

I was going through some of the stuff in the “wreck room” closet this evening looking for the documentation for the video camera when I came across a box of old photos. I hadn’t seen these in quite a few years, I thought I’d drag them out and share them.

Up first, my publicity shot from 1997. This is from when I worked at the radio station as a Program Director. It’s important to have a snazzy publicity shot in case your peers shower you with acolades in a trade magazine. I can’t even type that sentence without gagging.

And the second little gem I found was from July 1994 when I worked at a station called Hot 107. We all got together and hung out with the Fly 92 crew in neighboring (and much bigger) Albany at their summer jam. Here I am with Sherman Hemsley, Brian Cody and Matt Hubbell from Fly 92 and my co-worker from Hot 107, Becky Myers. I don’t know who the woman in shocking pink is, she just sort of jumped in the picture. Must be she wanted to be in a trade magazine too.

I wonder if being pictured with George Jefferson made me Weezy for a day.

Skyline Drive.




Skyline Drive.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

With the warm spring-like weather, Earl and I decided that we needed a breath of fresh air today. So after work we jumped in the Jeep and drove to the highest point in this area, appropriately named Skyline Drive.

Fresh air is good for the soul.

Those Teeth.

She is a beautiful woman. She’s lost her mind, actually it’s been washed away, but her beauty is still intact. That’s pretty much undeniable. Why then, does she look like she’s about to swallow a whole rat (like Diana did in “V” back in the early 80s) whenever the paparazzi grab a shot of Katie Holmes?

Come To MamaRotten Ryan mentioned this way back in October, but now that the internet is being peppered with another whacko performance* by the increasingly startling Tom Cruise and rumors of a TomKat breakup, pictures such as this are starting to appear again.

I find it all quite unnerving.

*From what I’ve been able to gather, Tom Cruise went to the Kanye West Grammy party where he didn’t like the crowd around him, so he climbed up some ropes or cables as if he were still filming for Mission Impossible. This, of course, was apparently the proper way to get to the VIP section. Once he settled in he did some crazy dance while singing along to the lyrics “we want prenup” and then asked everyone around him their religion and told them that Scientology has improved fianceé’s and his lives. I think someone forgot their Flintstone chewable that morning.

Up.

I am desperately trying to be in a good mood this morning as I get ready for work. I am not an early riser. I don’t even pretend to be. But occasionally I have to bite the bullet and get up before the sun rises so I can work the early shift at work.

I can be very cranky in the morning, but that’s a habit that I’m trying to break. So far, so good.

As I look out towards the east, I can see the beginnings of a beautiful sunrise. There’s no sign of red, so the sailors needn’t take warning today. The sky has a few puffs of clouds scattered amongst the deep, dark blue giving way to brilliant sun.

As I look at the weather forecast, I notice that it’s going to be near 50 for the next couple of days. That news just perked me up a little bit. My crankiness is now officially gone. It’s going to be a lovely day.