16 years ago tonight I was spinning for the first time in a small bar in Jamestown, New York called “The Nite Spot.” Adjacent to a set of railroad tracks, whenever a train was heard in the distance I had to switch from vinyl to cassette single while the train passed by, because the vibrations would occasionally make the record skip.
I remembering playing this song that night. At the top of the dance chart 16 years ago today, here’s the video to “Got A Love For You” by Jomanda.
I would like everyone to take a moment and just relax with me. Take a deep breath. Clear your mind. Listen to the stillness. Yearn for the calm.
Why the tranquility? My dance with “Intermediate Algebra” has come to an end. It is now summer vacation for this college boy. The big guy says I should find a temp job for the next couple of weeks. I agree with him, as I will lose my mind if all I have to do for the next seven weeks is partake in the bon bon brigade.
By the way – I asked the teacher to score my final exam while I waited. I did very well. I only missed the question involving the hectare on the 747.
Earl snapped my picture as I got ready for my Independence Day bike ride. As of today I have ridden more this year than I have ridden in the past two years combined. Since the summer is really just getting underway and I plan on riding until Thanksgiving, I’d say that’s a good thing.
My body is thanking me for the exercise. I feel wonderful.
Mother Nature is giving us her own version of fireworks for Independence Day in the way of severe thunderstorms. It looks like no picnic today. Perhaps we’ll catch a movie or something.
Oh, as a public service I made a video of me making a left turn at a busy intersection. I’m trying to spread the word that cyclists should ride their bikes like their riding cars and follow the rules of the road. I’ll have a longer post about this soon.
[MEDIA=10]I had a blog software upgrade go bad, so all my data is here but my pictures, videos and display themes are a little wonky at the moment. Please bear with me, but I’ll continue blogging with this temporary setup.
You’d think after 25 years of doing this computer thing I’d get it right by now.
Update 2007-07-03 23:50 – I’ve restored 3/4 of the videos and pictures from the past week. I’ve also restored the look of the page. Hopefully, my webhost will be able to restore it all tomorrow but I’m not banking on it. I’ll just keep working on restoring pictures but a couple of videos might be lost.
I mentioned a couple of days ago that the NYSDOT has made great strides in working recreational trails and such into their latest highway projects. A couple of years ago a new expressway was opened in our area, and with it came the “NH&W Rail Trail”, a five mile cycling/walking/rollerblading path along an old railroad bed in the towns of New Hartford and Whitestown. Eventually it will connect to the Canalway Trail I mention in that previous post.
One of the beautiful things about the Rail Trail is that it goes right through the middle of the woods. On one side you’ll find plenty of wetlands, on the other side you’ll find trees, fields and other woodsy things.
NYSDOT built a couple of lookout points over the wetlands when they built the trail. There’s also a couple places where people fish in the ponds. In fact, when I was taking one of my photos tonight, I was startled by a small bird that began flapping wildly and making lots and lots of noise. There was one small problem, it was trying to fly and couldn’t get anywhere as it was tangled up in some discarded fishing line. I couldn’t stand the sight of the bird hanging there and struggling so I tried to set it free. Whenever I went near the bird to try to untangle it, it panicked and started flapping and darting around, so I did my best to keep some distance as to keep the bird calm and tried to break the line as close to the bird as possible. As soon as I broke the line, the bird took off like a shot with a small trail of fishing line behind it. I’m hoping that the rest eventually falls off so it doesn’t get tangled again.
Earl and I walked about 2 1/2 miles tonight along the trail. It was good to get the exercise and enjoy nature a little bit. I’ve never biked along this trail, but I’ve put it on my list of priorities. There’s more pictures available by clicking on the picture above.
Today has been an odd sort of day. Earl had a doctor’s appointment at 10:30, a stress test where you run on the treadmill until you’re in pain, so he came home around 9:45 to change his clothes so he was dressed more appropriately. I think he wanted to show a little chest to Dave, the bearish technician. So his popping in threw me off my game a little bit while I was getting ready to leave for school.
The master clock that runs my collection of school clocks did not survive the last round of thunderstorms we had, so the clocks throughout the house are running on this makeshift setup I have while the clock is getting repaired. I know this is going to sound strange, but with the regular setup the clocks make a click at the 58th second then at the :00 of every minute. I couldn’t manage that with the makeshift setup, which causes the clocks to click at the 56th second then at the :00 of every minute. So the clicks are spaced further apart which is confusing my internal rhythm. It is sort of like Chinese Water Torture.
When I got to class only five of the twenty or so showed up for our final class before the Final Exam on Thursday. This threw me off a little bit, as did the fact that the professor came in clean shaven, where he usually has a goatee.
When I got home from school, ready to make a sandwich and settle down for “The Addams Family”, I found Earl at home surfing on his computer. While he survived the stress test just fine, he has no heart trouble at all, he didn’t feel in the mood to go back to work so he took the afternoon off. I’m glad that he’s home, but I didn’t feel as close to John Astin and Carolyn Jones as I usually do.
By the way, is it mysterious and spooky and all together ooky that I find myself rather attracted to John Astin as Gomez Addams?
This is the last week of the summer semester at school. By this time Thursday night I will have completed my Intermediate Algebra final and bagged a pretty good buzz from a couple of brewskis in celebration, because I am naturally a two beer queer.
This class has been an interesting one. Populated with mostly older folks taking their time at the finishing their degree, there has been one woman near my age who has consistently barked out the wrong answer to every question posed while the professor has been squeaking the chalk on the board the entire semester. He could ask “what’s 2 plus 2?” and she’d yap out “5”. I’d then say “4” in a slightly irritated voice, resisting the urge to throw on a Thurston Howell III accent while correcting her. I don’t think of her as Lovey.
The professor likes to give us extra credit tasks with what I call “speed trials”. For example, he’ll write an endless sea of variables, lines, operators and operands and tell us that the first five people to answer the given problem will get three extra points on the next exam. While I can normally answer the question, I must say that I’m not good in the role of Speedy Gonzales. I’ve purposely slowed myself down for this round of college so that I’m sure of what I’m doing and making sure I do it correctly. Give me time, I’ll figure it out. Last Thursday he wrote an equation with several real and imaginary numbers involved and announced, “The first person to answer this question will 5 points added to their semester grade.”
Holy crap.
Of course I froze. I don’t care, I’m already hovering near the top of the “A”‘s so I figured “let them eat cake” and slammed my pencil down, not in the mood to get all imaginary with numbers. Naturally, Ms. Yap was the only one to answer the question correctly. She sure picked a doozy for her grand debut.
So the challenge this week is to enjoy Independence Day AND study for the final the following day.
After spending the morning doing chores, Earl and I took a few moments to relax on our patio this afternoon. Like the well oiled machine we strive to be, we split up the “honey do” list and just got everything done. While Earl was grocery shopping, I had the task of trimming the out-of-control bushes in the landscaping across the front of the house. We planted the bushes three years ago and haven’t done much with them since. They are now tamed back to a reasonable size. I was expecting to find a buried treasure or something but all I found was cat poop.
After the landscaping was under control and the groceries were put away, we went to Lowe’s and picked up a few goodies for the house, including a bird feeder, some potting soil and geraniums from the abandoned decorative pots along the driveway. All this outdoor activity coupled with my craziness in cleaning the house on Friday has me feeling pretty good about this place we call home.
Now if the weather would just feel like July 1st instead of May 1st it’d be picture perfect.
Nearly three months ago I posed a question to the few that stumble upon my ramblings here at ‘Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity’.
Today, you see the answer.
Earl and I haven’t been on a fun road trip in a while. With sunny skies and moderate temperatures bestowed upon us by Mother Nature, I declared that today we would return to the tradition of going for a “long ride”. We decided to approach today’s ride a little different and explore a little closer to home.
Our first stop was the Rosamond Gifford Zoo at Burnet Park in Syracuse.
I have not been to this zoo since I was 10 years old or so. It was still called the Burnet Park Zoo at the time. Despite the 29 years that have passed, I still remembered quite a bit of the zoo. It seems to be in good shape and the animals seem happy. I’m not sure that I’m a huge fan of the whole zoo concept, however, I do appreciate that the zoo is doing their share to make sure animals that are near extinction are not killed off completely. Plus, zoos do a good job of educating the young about Mother Earth, so there are many good things about a zoo. However, if I had to sit in a cage all day I might resort to throwing my poop, so I guess I see both sides of the coin.
Overall it was a pleasant experience.
After the zoo we headed north to the Oswego County Fair. I had read that this is the 150th anniversary of the Oswego County Fair, so I thought it would be just wonderful. The fair is held in the next town over from where I grew up and it was a regular family activity to go to the county fair, so I was looking forward to the experience. When we arrived I noticed the grandstand was jammed with folks gawking at the demolition derby. I guess it’s still the biggest attraction at the fair. We decided to skip that and opted to walk through all the building, pass by all the food vendors, look at all the arts and crafts and admire the various tractors on display. After about 10 minutes or so it was time to leave as we had seen it all, so we headed out. So much for that 150 year celebration.
After a stop at Smokey Bones for a few brewskis and supper, we headed to Carousel Center for a walk before heading home. One stop at Carousel Center was at the Apple store, where I got to play with an iPhone. O.k., while I think the hype of this thing was entirely off the map I must say that the geek in me really loves this gadget and while I can think of many other things I could spend $500 on, I wouldn’t mind if I had one of these things in my pocket. So I have not added an iPhone to the geek arsenal but I would definitely say there’s one in my future, even if it’s two years from now.
There has been an effort underway for many years to transform Carousel Center into Destiny USA. If the final vision for Destiny USA is ever reached, it could be the largest man-made structure on the entire planet. Even Phase One of the plan is quite impressive, especially in the fact that it is an entirely green operation with absolutely no fossil fuels involved in it’s creation.
To me that’s just cool.
A number of years ago, when my sister was sitting in intensive care with something close to Legionnaire’s Disease, I was sitting in a hospital waiting room with my cousin Theresa. Concerned about the welfare of my sister and still reeling from the death of Theresa’s daughter, we were basically “numb” and just talking about the meaning of life. Why are we here, how can we make a difference and all that sort of deep stuff. I’ve never forgotten that conversation. It enhanced a drive I’ve always had to do my part to make the world a better place. This is where Destiny USA intrigues me in many ways. First of all, if it ever comes to fruition, it’s going to be nothing short of impressive. It is being built on an industrial wasteland that was known as “Oil City”, for all the oil storage tanks that used to live there. It lies on the shore of one of the most polluted lakes in the world, Onondaga Lake. However, Destiny USA can be a major force in turning this all around, enhancing efforts to clean up the lake and bringing jobs, visitors and prosperity to the Upstate New York “rust belt”. Many may not agree with this, but I think there’s a solid vision waiting to be realized.
Perhaps a newly educated Civil Engineer could assist in the effort.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!
