Earl and I are on our way to Hillside Campgrounds for the weekend. I’m looking forward to the downtime as I have had a busy yet very enjoyable couple of days. I plan to do some blogging from camp tomorrow in between naps and meals. It should make for an interesting read.
The new cleaning crew arrived right on time this morning. After a second walk through of the house, with three members they still thought it was going to take almost the entire day to give the house a thorough cleaning. I can only do so much between classes and assorted activities. Truth be known, I guess I haven’t done that much in the way of cleaning as of late.
Since I’m not starting work until next week (I don’t know where yet) and I have no scheduled classes today, I wasn’t about to sit around and watch the cleaning crew do their thing and feel guilty in the process for not joining in, so I sold off some prized valuables to put some gas in the car and hit the road.
I’m currently sitting in the Panera in the scenic city of Canandaigua. This appears to be a brand new location. There are no crayon marks on the wall from wild children. The furniture looks new. The carpet is fresh. (I smelled it to make sure, just kidding).
The women sitting next to me are lively. I believe they are in theatre. They are talking about theatre classes and stage performances. I hear those theatre types can be lively. They’re talking about their husbands (though one hasn’t specifically mentioned the gender of her partner) and getting them to do stuff for them. The conversation hovers around performing, photography, videography and husbands. They’re both very animated. They’re getting a little feisty too. I hear those theatre types can be feisty. I find them enjoyable.
I decided to do a little exploring around Rochester on this road trip. We were just here last Saturday and here I am again. I kind of forget about Rochester as a destination of sorts. Passing through on the Thruway you can see it but you don’t feel the city at all. The Thruway sort of bypasses it. So I made the detour and drove around the apparent artsy- and gayborhoods. The parts I have seen thus far are very clean and have a ‘chic’ feel to them.
A very hot man has joined the ladies at their table. He is lively too. I’m betting a theatre type as well. He is very animated. I hear those theatre types can be animated.
Ah ha! As I continue to eavesdrop I confirm that one of the ladies is a lesbian! Should I start singing “We Are Family” or wait until the regional meeting? Her name is Eleanor.
Back to Rochester. Each of the “Thruway Corridor” cities have a distinct personality, at least as I see it. Working right to left I’ve never been a big fan of Albany. It’s functional and I suppose very governmental, but it’s always seemed like a mish-mash of cities thrown together. I guess that’s why they call it the Capital District. I’d live there if I had to (which is always a possibility given the location of Earl’s second office and the fact that I’ll most likely be working for a state agency someday), but if we had to move to the Capital District I’d be picky about where we settled down.
Utica lost whatever little personality it had years ago. I’m surprised the lights are still on.
Syracuse seems to be full of hearty stock. Since Syracuse receives the most annual snowfall of almost any city in the world I guess that makes sense. Syracuse is very proud of the Orange and it’s very apparent. The color orange is everywhere. I equate Syracuse with sports and family, probably because I’m from that area originally.
Rochester is all about the technology. The smart people live in Rochester. Driving about the streets Rochester is a pretty cool city. As I mentioned before, I’m not overly familiar with it but it seems clean and more progressive than the other cities along the corridor. I’m looking forward to bringing Earl back here for more exploration. Oddly, I’m finding exploring alone a little boring. That’s not like me.
Buffalo is very blue collar to me (and that is not a bad thing at all). It’s where the workin’ man lives. They’re proud of their sports teams as well. Buffalo Bills stuff is everywhere. Like their counterparts in Syracuse, they seem pretty hearty. I guess it’s the snow. There’s signs of progress as well. I think they’re doing their best to cope with the economy.
All in all, it’s a gorgeous day for a beautiful drive. I should probably stop chattering on the internet and get out and enjoy some sun.
Earl’s Jeep Wrangler has been part of the family for four years. Every year we take advantage of the nice weather and take the sides and back off and put the top down. It’s a glorious way to bask in the sunshine. Today we decided to take it a step further and take the doors off as well.
We decided to go for a ride but stay rather close to home in the process, so we opted to drive through the various gorges and through the hills nearby. There is a particular road that winds through rural farmland and open fields; a similar road exists where I used to live in the western part of the state and that road is called the “Open Meadows Road”. This is the “Cedarville-Jordanville Road” but I like to think of it as an eastern version of the Open Meadows Road. It’s a beautiful drive, especially when you’re basking in the sun, the temperatures are mild and there’s no doors on the Jeep.
From there we headed into the Ilion Gorge, one of several gorges in the area. I think our gorges are related to the Finger Lakes but the Universe just didn’t put as much water into them. The windy roads and the isolated homes dotting the gorge are nice; I have to admit I like the feeling of solitude.
After our ride we ended up at the Park-Side Drive In in St. Johnsville, one of the many villages along the historic Erie Canal. The food was your standard local restaurant fare and quite good.
It has been an absolutely gorgeous day.
I don’t know why I’ve decided to add “thing” to my blog title entries lately. I don’t even know if the trend will continue. It’s kind of like the title of episodes from “Friends”, they all started with “The One About…”
Anyway, Earl and I headed west on the New York State Thruway today and went exploring in the Rochester area. We have several friends and some family in Rochester but we didn’t see any of them. No, we went to Rochester because they have a really good cinema megaplex called “Tinseltown”. On the big screen was “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. The Indiana Jones series is Earl’s favorite cinematic adventure, and I enjoy the movies as well, so it was an adventure to look forward to. The audience was well behaved and the movie was good. I wouldn’t say it was great, but it was good. The geek in me noted a glaring technology-related error near the beginning of the movie. E-mail me if you want the details, as I don’t want to drop any spoilers on my blog.
One of the greatest things about movie theatres these days is that they’re finally getting that attendees are REALLY fed up with the presence of cell phones in the auditoriums. The reminders to turn off your cell phones are relentless and numerous. I’d even say they’ve become obnoxious with the final reminder announcement, leaving it on the screen for nearly 90 seconds before rolling the previews. If you’re seated in the theatre and your cell phone rings now, you’re really an asshole or a dipshit. There’s no excuse.
We also made a stop at the Dinosaur BBQ near downtown Rochester. The waitress sat down in the booth with us and chatted whilst she counted the cash in her pocket. We’d never met her before but she was very nice. The honky-tonk bluesy music was good too. So was the food.
Being a civil engineering student and all, I had to drive us through all the construction projects in the Rochester area to see how they were progressing. In case you’re wondering, they’re progressing nicely. I tend to take photos of signs too:
Notice Route 33 West doesn’t go anywhere according to the sign. It really goes to several places such as Chili, Batavia and Buffalo. Extra points to the first person that can tell me the proper pronunciation of “Chili”.
I went on a rather lengthy road trip today. As I explored various towns scattered far and wide, I opted to listen to podcasts on from my iPod. Most of these podcasts are technology driven however there are some that are not. All are enjoyable.
I don’t know if I’m getting older or if the times, they are a changin’, but I find listening to music and podcasts that I have selected to be considerably more enjoyable to anything that commercial radio has to offer these days. I tried listening to a Top 40 radio station and found it to be very repetitive and loaded with badly produced advertisements. I switched to a country station and it made my head hurt and it was loaded with poorly produced advertisements.
I hate ads. I hate bad commercials even more. With today’s technology you’d think that the ads would sound better than ever, but no, they sound bad: the voice is bad, the message is mediocre and the grammar is worse than mine.
Maybe I’m a little more critical than most because I used to write and produce commercials for a living.
Nevertheless, I believe that everyone should go out and buy something that resembles and iPod. Yes, the iPod is the cream of the crop as far as MP3 players go, but if you want a Zune, buy a Zune. If you want something else, buy something else. Just make sure you can load it with the the music that you have selected and crank up the tunes on your next road trip.
It’s wicked fun.
The television networks are certainly missing the boat on today’s shows by deleting the groovy introduction in lieu of more commercial time. I mean, who can forget this? The trumpet blast at the episode title card is AWESOME.
By the way, this was the pilot for “Happy Days”. My friend Tim auditioned for the role of Potsie, but as he put it, “that fucking Anson Williams got the part.” I think Tim would have added more flare to the role.
Earl and I are back from our little adventure to Ithaca, where I was the guest DJ at The Common Ground last night. We had a really good time. The dance floor was busy from 11 p.m. onwards (that always makes me happy) and I had quite a few folks compliment me on my mix of music. It was different enough from the house DJs to keep in interesting but familiar enough that the folks were still able to know what they were hearing and enjoy accordingly. I had the opportunity to meet one of the house DJs, Dr. DJ Mike, who asked about the particular version of “Apologize” by OneRepublic and Timbaland that I play (it’s the Tony Arzadon Club Remix that I heard when we were in Dublin last fall). There were a couple of other inquiries throughout the night. The Common Ground also has a computer system with every song they have in their massive CD library, and one computer on the network is available to the crowd to make requests. I didn’t use their CDs but I was able to accommodate several of the requests throughout the night that scored me points.
The crowd was an interesting and somewhat amusing blend of folks. The club is larger than what we have here in Utica. It was Leather/Levi and Bear night (I spin best at these kinds of nights) and at one end of the club most of those guys were congregated around the bar chatting, playing pool and enjoying the music. At the other end of the bar were the club bunnies, twinks and a smattering of transgendered folks that I couldn’t tell which way they were transgendering. On the other hand, perhaps they were just creatively dressed. They celebrated my end of night selection of pseudo-disco tracks (“Coming Out Of Hiding” by Pamala Stanley, “The Rumour” by Olivia Newton-John) by clogging with their high heels.
The DJ booth at The Common Ground blew me away. They have a REALLY nice setup. The DJ booth was nicer than the last radio station studio I worked at! I hadn’t expected as much high-tech equipment as they had, nor did I anticipate the amount of volume that was available at my fingertips. I was in eargasm heaven. It was also a good opportunity for me to hear how my MP3s and such from various sources compared to each other. I have a couple of tracks on the PowerBook that I have to weed out simply because they don’t sound good over a relatively powerful system. Luckily they are mostly old tracks that I dug up from somewhere on the internet years ago and can easily replace by rerecording the vinyl here in the studio at home. Earl assured me that everything sounded fine with these couple of tracks but that I was probably noticing things that others wouldn’t pay a moment’s notice to.
This morning we slept in a bit and then came home by way of the Finger Lakes, stopping for lunch and a little shopping excursion at The City (formerly known as ‘Circuit City’?). I picked up a couple of new speakers for the studio here at the house as I was obviously inspired by last night’s setup. I expect to be making more mixes to share very soon.
Bearpupuk tagged me for a meme. So here we go.
1) What was I doing 10 yrs ago?
I was Program Director of Top 40 radio station WOWZ/WOWB, “Wow-FM, The Beat of Central New York”. Earl and I were still in the honeymoon phase, even though we were two years into our relationship. We were experiencing our first spring in our first house.
2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today:
1. Answer awaiting e-mail in the inbox
2. Take a shower
3. Plan out tonight’s gig (I should get hopping, less than two hours until I spin)
4. Take a short nap
5. Avoid beer
3) 5 snacks I enjoy:
1. POPCORN!!!
2. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
3. M&Ms
4. Peanut butter on saltine crackers
5. Chocolate Chip Cookies
4) 5 things I would do if I were a billionaire:
1. Contribute at least 10% of our wealth to the For All Kids Foundation
2. Pay off the bills of my immediate family members and other equally important people in our lives
3. Invest for the future well-being of our nieces and nephews
4. Buy a few homes – especially one in Ireland
5. Invest in our local economy to improve the local presence and give the corporate hogs a run for their money
5) 5 of my bad habits:
(Forgetting to go back and edit parts I skipped in a document!)
1. The excessive use of the word ‘wicked’
2. Looking for greener grass on the other side
3. Analysing any given topic six ways from Sunday before making a decision
4. Putting up my own blocks that prevent me from losing inhibitions
5. Retreating into my own space and not reaching out to others when they could use support
6) 5 places I have lived:
1. Upstate New York along Lake Ontario (my hometown near Pulaski, N.Y.)
2. Jamestown, N.Y.
3. Boston, Mass.
4. various towns between Boston and Worcester, Mass.
5. Utica, N.Y.
7) 5 jobs I have had:
1. Department Coordinator/IT coordinator level 3 at Digital Equipment Corporation
2. fastest cashier in the store at Hills Department Store #66
3. Community Residence managers at The Resource Center (Chautauqua County ARC) and The Arc of Oneida County
4. Just about every position available at a Top 40 radio station
5. IT Technical Support for a regional telephone and internet connectivity provider
I could tag five folks, but I’d rather see just who grabs this and runs with it.
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!
