Fun and Games Dept

So I’m on Delta flight 6163 en route to Detroit. Once there I must make a quick connection to Delta flight 5611, which will take me to Raleigh-Durham, where I am spending the weekend with friends doing creative endeavors.

Creativity is good.

I’ve mentioned before that I really love flying, and tonight is no exception to the rule. When we took off from Syracuse I had a big smile on my face because I could imagine all those times playing in the backyard at Grandma City’s house and watching the jets fly overhead as they made their way in or out of the airport. Flying over tonight I was able to spot that backyard with ease and it made me happy.

Looking out the window right now, we are over the southern tip of Ontario on the shores of Lake Erie.

Earl and I have been actively talking about our retirement years, though they’re still a ways off. We are going to live elsewhere someday, which makes me happy, and we’ve talked through the pros and cons of having a winter home and a summer home. Other than the beauty of our current home, I have little desire to stay where we are, though I wouldn’t mind if our summer location was in the Syracuse area. Of the Upstate New York cities, that’s the one I feel most comfortable in, and for obvious reasons. I’ve tried others on for size and they just don’t fit right. There’s something about the vibe of Syracuse that fits like a well-worn t-shirt, and I like that feeling.

Back in it’s day, Syracuse was known for the work ethic its citizens had. There are still elements of that in the Salt City but as with everything else in this day and age, times change. I still think Syracuse has a good future ahead of her, if she puts her mind to it, and I’d like to be around to see that future.

The other day Earl sent me a text message telling me he’s ready to go on an adventure driving across the New Mexican desert. If pressed to pick the winter location at this moment, it would have to be Albuquerque. We have been there a few times and I have always enjoyed the visits. I might have to take Earl up on his vacation suggestion and head out that way with the Jeep. Our next big Jeep adventure is to Wisconsin, Arkansas and all points in between, but it’s never too late to plan the trip after that.

We need to win the lottery.

If we did win the lottery, Syracuse would still be in my hopes for our winter location and we’d have more money to explore places like Albuquerque.

We have started descending. I should probably bring this documented daydream to a close.

So I’m at Panera this evening for supper. Earl is out of town on business until late tonight, Jamie off being a Cub photographer and quite frankly I didn’t feel like cooking tonight nor did I feel like sitting in a sit-down restaurant alone, so I decided on Panera. These are the types of actions that are packed to living here.

This Panera isn’t like others in surrounding cities; it was built in a shopping center in a long and narrow space. It doesn’t have the little nooks or cozy fireplaces or anything like that. At times it has the ambience of a school cafeteria except generally without the food fights. The high top tables that were here when the location was first built are long gone because people had a habit of falling of them and flailing in the walkway. I wish I was kidding about these things.

Just a few moments ago when I walked into Panera I noticed an older man and woman sitting and presumably enjoying a meal together. I locked eyes with the woman whilst I was walking by. In response she returned my gaze, stood up and pointed at me. I have no idea what was that was about as there were no words were exchanged. I cocked my eyebrow in a quizzical fashion (I feel very Spock-like when I do that, but not Dr. Spock-like, more Mr. Spock-like, because after all, I know little about babies outside of the fact that they’re small and sneeze things like popsicle juice.) I felt her eyes on me as I made my way to the cafeteria line but I never bothered to ask her why she was standing and pointing at me. Perhaps it had something to do with gay marriage. On the other hand, maybe one of my antennae was peeking out of my disguise or perhaps I left the lights on on the saucer that I had parallel parked between a Fiat and a beat up Buick.

In all reality, she stood and pointed at me because I am one fine look piece of human male. There’s really no denying it. The distinguished gray in the beard, while dressed to look stylish yet not too stuffy and carrying an assortment of Apple products, what person could resist me? I guess I’m fortunate that she didn’t rip my clothes off right there.

Coming to this Panera is always an adventure. I am thankful that no one in line ahead of me was asking for fries with their meal. I look forward to the day that I can sit down at a Panera without being recognized by the unknown masses.

Being a famous blogger is such hard work.

We have over three inches of snow on the ground now. Earl’s flight from Syracuse to Philadelphia has been canceled because they can’t determine if the plane has fuel or not so they have wisely chosen not to risk it. I am awaiting updates on his being rebooked for other updates.

So, to make the day feel that much brighter, we’ll enjoy the theme from The Love Boat. Notice Julie’s kicky hair style in this German version of the opening.

http://youtu.be/N3jpfOFW_QY

So today is the 1st of April. Folks on the internet are just yukking it up with their April Fools’ jokes and everyone else is suppose to laugh. It’s not a ha ha or ho ho laugh, it’s more like a bouncing jaw type laugh that’s kind of like one of the ghosts on Scooby-Doo before they’re shoved into the washing machine via the gang’s latest trap.

You can’t believe a word of news today. So far there have been stories about transparent iPhones, something called Google Nose, Kirk Cameron’s new TV series and some article about gay marriage threatening the sanctity of the tried and true institution that’s been around for millions of years. These pranksters, always a barrel of laughs.

Personally, I’m not a fan of April Fools’ Day. I don’t remember why we have such a hardy-har-har-har time on the 1st of April and quite frankly I’m too lazy and not really that invested in the subject to bother to Google it. It’s not that important to me, though I have to admit that if anything else was such a pain in my ass I’d go look it up so I guess I’m just lazy.

There have been a scant few good April Fools’ Day jokes, the best being when we told the employees of our restaurant that we had decided to close down the business the morning of 4/1/00. That was a hoot and there was no punchline! Nothing makes your jaw jump up and down like a good cry.

Years and years ago there was a radio station called KG104 that told the world that we had converted to metric time. They had ads running from sponsors and everything telling customers how to reprogram their VCRs for metric time. I thought that was kind of clever, but perhaps we did funny better in the early 90s. I mean, look at the laugh riot of “Saved By The Bell” and “Charles In Charge”.

So today, this first day of April, I sit here and stare at a computer screen trying to decipher what is real and what is not as I read through the various blogs.

Such a hoot.

Just stuff me in the washing machine and get it over with.

So last night while we were at Destiny USA we stopped at the Apple store. I spent a few moments lusting over my next computer, which is a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. Earl outlined the budgetary concerns with such a purchase and told me when I will be able to buy it. I can at least say, “at least there’s hope.”

But I digress from my original intent of this post.

During our last couple of visits to the Apple store we have looked at the Philips Hue Lighting “system” (for lack of a better word).

The Philips Hue Personal Wireless Lighting starter kit consists of a puck-sized controller that connects to your home network. This puck can control up to 50 LED light bulbs that have the ability to communicate with the puck. The puck communicates with your home network via an iPhone, iPad or Android app. You can also communicate with the light bulbs via the Hue webpage.

So what’s the deal? Well, these LED bulbs can be programmed to throw off any color you can imagine. The apps let you program “scenes”; press a button and it looks like sunset in your room. Press another button and it looks like you’re sitting in the beach. There’s millions of combinations and some that are suppose to give you a “therapeutic” light, such as lighting to urge better concentration or destress you before hitting the hay for the night. You can set an alarm and wake up to a simulated sunrise. It’s all quite nifty.

The starter kit comes with the aforementioned puck and three light bulbs. And it costs $200. Additional lightbulbs are $59.99.

Pricey!

However, remember that these are LED lightbulbs and they’re allegedly going to last a very, very long time. Regular LED lightbulbs at Lowe’s or Home Depot are in the $35-$45 range, so this isn’t completely out of whack but it’s definitely an expensive toy.

The system took less than three minutes to install. I have installed apps on my iPhone and iPad and on Earl’s iPhone. You don’t have to use your smartphone or whatnot to control the lights, turning the lights off and on with the switch make them behavior as expected, however, they “dim up” and “dim down” instead of just snapping on and off, which I think is wicked cool. If we want to use the simulated sunrise approach in the morning we have to leave the light switch on and turn them off via the app. I can handle that since I sleep with my phone anyway.

All in all it’s a nifty gadget albeit and expensive one. But I like it a lot and it was actually Earl’s suggestion that we get the lights.

If you’re in the neighborhood you’ll have to see our simulated disco in the bedroom. It’s a hoot!

We have lived in our house for nearly 10 years. Our kitchen has twice the amount of cupboard space as what we had in the old house. Still, we managed to find the need for just a little more space. There was a section of wall in the kitchen that was just begging for a baker’s rack or a small cabinet.

Thursday night we finally found what we were looking for. We found a 36-inch cabinet at the local Target, which could only mean one thing.

Some assembly required.

Earl and I spent our Easter morning assembling our new cabinet and getting it into place. Having been together for nearly 17 years, we’re pretty good at doing this sort of thing without killing each other, though I did ask Earl once if we were ever going to be rich enough to have a houseboy do this sort of thing for us. He said “yes, now get back to work.”

In the meanwhile, we are enjoying the new cabinet. We used all the parts and everything!

So yesterday morning Earl and I woke up at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Buffalo. We had driven to Buffalo the afternoon before for Jamie’s big photo book and gallery debut, which was a great success. It is always good to be amongst friends and family.

Normally the drive from Buffalo to home is a little over three hours.  Yesterday it took us around 11 hours to get home. And it was wonderful.

Our first stop was at the Buffalo haunt of Anderson’s for Beef on Weck. A western New York staple, it is one of my favorite sandwiches.  A pretzel type roll with some pretzel salt.  Delish.

From Anderson’s we should have headed east on the Thruway but instead we headed south on US Route 219? Why? Because they extended the US 219 freeway by a mile or two a couple of years ago and I hadn’t seen the completed work yet. Eventually the freeway will make it all the way to the Pennsylvania state line but the progress is slow.

When we got down to Ellicotville, the quaint little town that is home to the Holiday Valley Ski Resort, we finally turned east and started heading in a general direction towards home. The ride took us through the little town where, in 1990, I narrowly missed a cow, went into a ditch and was rescued by a guy that kind of changed my life, even though I only saw him only one more time after that encounter. Here’s the sign that standards where I went off the ditch. The man didn’t remember my name the second time I saw him, so he just called me Machias. 

North of Machias we ended up in Arcade and drove on my second favorite stretch of road in the Empire State, NY Route 39 from Arcade to the little hamlet of Pike.  It is much like my favorite road, NY Route 177, in that it passes through nothing but farmland, has an “open” feeling to it and it even goes through a wind farm!  Look close and you’ll see two farms in this photo.

We then stopped in the college town of Geneseo, where we had a little snack at Tim Hortons and we washed the car. It is spring, after all!

We continued our trek through the Finger Lakes, driving through the small cities of Canandaigua, Geneva and Auburn, where we finally ended up at Destiny USA in Syracuse. Syracuse had just made it into the Final Four, so the mood was celebratory at the Gordon Biersch at Destiny USA. To celebrate, I tried their Golden Export while Earl tried a sampler flight of each of their beers.

We then walked all three floors of all of Destiny USA, making an obligatory stop at the Apple Store, where we bought a new toy. (That will be highlighted in a separate post).  Sam the Apple store genius was very helpful. I really like the folks at the Destiny USA Apple Store. They are always courteous, always helpful and the facial hair on the guys is quite impressive. Unfortunately I didn’t feel assertive enough to take a photo of some of the impressive beards, so instead you get to look at my smiling face.

After touring the mall until its closing, we decided we should head home, but not without a stop at Turning Stone Casino to meet our step count for the day and perhaps have a little dessert. Surprisingly, we didn’t gamble at all!

We finally made it home around midnight. We were exhausted but happy. Earl called it our “date day” and quite frankly, it was relaxing and very enjoyable.

We both feel recharged.

I like roads. I like driving on roads, I like designing roads, I like following roads to see where they go and I like seeing what signs say on roads.

I’m a road geek. I always have been and I always will be.

I have a whole website devoted to the roads of Upstate New York. Some people don’t understand why I have such an obsession with all things roadly, but I do. I have been known to drive two hours out of my way to see what the new exit signs on an interstate look like.

I haven’t been as engaged with my road hobby over the past year or so as I would like to be. Work has crept into my personal life a bit and I have been busying myself doing hobby things on tech with tech. I’ve been futzing around with Linux, tweaking config files and the like. While these little tech adventures occupy my mind and keep me busy, they don’t invoke a passion like being a road geek does. Tweaking tech feels like a job and when it doesn’t work right I start to get cranky. I don’t want to feel cranky, I want to enjoy the passion I have for a hobby.

I like it when I feel passionate.

This morning I dug out my little pocket video camera and mounted it on the dash of the Jeep. Earl had bought me a nifty camera mount specifically for this purpose and I hadn’t used it before. It’s nifty! I took some video of a stretch of road that I thought other road geeks, well, actually road scholars, might find interesting. I’m going to be adding it to my road website in the next week or so.

Taking that video made me realize my passion for this geeky little hobby of mine and it got my day started off on the right foot.

And starting the day off on the right foot is always a good thing.

Earl and I have a lot of travel planned over the next several months and much of it involves driving.

I’m going to be one happy man.

So yesterday we drove the final leg home from our trip in Florida. Saturday night was spent with our friends Jeff and Mark north of Durham, N.C. We were on the road by 10:30 yesterday morning.

As we drove up Interstate 85 and crossed into Virginia, I noticed that the outside temperature was dropping and that it was hovering just around freezing. This didn’t really worry me because after all, we live in Upstate New York where we deal with this type of weather well into April. So I just kept moving along and everything was fine. It was raining and the road didn’t seem to have ice on it.

There were cars going off the road all over the place.

As we got closer to Blackstone, Va., I noticed that there was a little bit of slush in each of the lanes on the Interstate. If you stayed out of the slush, the road was wet. I slowed down a bit, just for safety’s sake. But then I had a brief moment of panic. What if the reason that I am able to drive in winter conditions in Upstate New York is because the folks up here take good care of the roads in the winter? There were no signs of salt or sand or brine on the roads; just a little bit of slush and a lot of wet.

More cars off the road all over the place, but not us.

I had a hard time trying to figure out why these cars were going off the road. Were they texting? Did they hit the slush and not know what to do? There must have been a dozen cars off the road within a 15 mile stretch and judging by the conditions of these vehicles, they must have hit the guiderails going pretty fast.

When the roads are wet with a little bit of slush, there’s no reason to panic. Just ease up on the accelerator a little bit and take your time getting to where you’re trying to go. And put down the phone and pay attention to what you’re doing!

All it takes is a little bit of common sense to be careful. Happy motoring!

So today we are doing something at Disney that we have never done before. We are not going to a park today. Instead of getting on a bus/boat/monorail train, we are going for walks, relaxing by the pool and just taking a few moments to slow down, breathe a little bit and just chill out. Later tonight we’ll be headed over to Downtown Disney for dinner and a little bit of strolling amongst the shops.

The weather has been gorgeous thus far. My spirits have lifted considerably with seeing all the sunshine. It feels good. I walked a couple of miles through the woods this morning and organized some of the extraneous thoughts in my head. I had a brief conversation with a woodland friend.

Sunday upon our arrival we carried on our tradition with our first stop being Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom. We always ride the TTA first and we enjoyed our annual ride. Afterwards we stopped at the Carousel of Progress (which is starting to show a couple of technical difficulties that I’m sure that Disney will correct soon) and then we were onto Space Mountain. For the first time ever we rode the ride on the “right” side instead of the “left” side (using the line into the attraction as a guide), even though we didn’t use FastPass. The lines at all the attractions thus far have been less than 20 minutes. Riding Space Mountain felt like an entirely new ride because it was assumedly a mirror image of what we’re used to. It felt faster, but I think technically the ride is the same regardless of the which side you ride on.

We had dinner at the Crystal Palace for the first time and was able to hang out with Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore.

Yesterday we went to the World Showcase at Epcot. This was the first time that we took the Monorail instead of a bus. Since we are staying at Wilderness Lodge Villas instead of Saratoga Springs, we took the boat to Magic Kingdom, then the monorail to the Ticket and Transportation Center and then a second monorail train to Epcot. It was kind of exciting for me because I had never ridden the Monorail through Epcot before. Even though this is my ninth time here there’s always something new happening. I love it.

World Showcase is one of my favorite attractions in all of Disney and we toured it clockwise this year. Like at Magic Kingdom on Sunday, wait lines for the attractions were less than 20 minutes; we were able to get on most of the attractions immediately. In the past we’ve usually waited 45-60 minutes for the ride at Norway but not this year, however, I was able to sneak a quick picture of the Norway Cruise Line lady; I take her photo every year. I don’t know why I do this.

While walking through China I snapped a photo of a Happy Cat.

Another first for me this year was enjoying one adult beverage while in Germany. I didn’t snap a photo of the Altenmünster Oktoberfest I enjoyed, but it was quite enjoyable. One is enough though, after all, we’re at Disney.

Of course we made a stop at Canada where we enjoyed the “O, Canada” film in 360 Circlevision. This is my favorite film in World Showcase and the geek in me enjoys the fact that many elements of the original film from the 70s are still present in the new version that was produced in 2007. Canadian Idol winner Eva Avila rerecorded the beautiful “Canada, You’re a Lifetime Journey” track at the end of the presentation.

Last night we went to Downtown Disney for dinner at Earl of Sandwich. I bucked the trend and went with a salad. It was delicious.

The stress has melted away considerably and I’m finding my solid footing again. Ah, the magic of hearing the words “Welcome Home”.