Fun and Games Dept



While it is is still very chilly today, there’s still a slight feeling of spring in the air. The sun seems more abundant, more powerful. 

We still have a lot of snow on the ground but my spirits are lifting and the winter blahs are starting to dissipate. 

Earl and I are sitting at the Albany-Rensselaer Amtrak station awaiting our train for our weekend in New York. The train is currently on a 90 minute delay. I am not surprised by this.

We are spending the weekend with Jamie in New York. Tomorrow night we shall see “Kinky Boots”. I am looking forward to relaxing a not driving in the Big Apple. It’s not my favorite place in the world but it will do for the moment.

If we ever get there.

Maintaining the winter theme of my last post (a week ago!), today I took some pictures of the beautiful day we had today. The only downside of the day was that the temperature barely reached 0ºF. The wind chill is predicted to be below -30ºF tonight, so we’ve been doing what we needed to do around the house.

I’m so ready for spring.

Yesterday, unable to fly due to the weather conditions, I decided to go out in the Jeep. My first stop was the visit my mother and nephew, who were home relaxing on a winter afternoon. We had a nice visit. It had been too long since we last visited.

Afterwards I was feeling adventurous but cautious. I originally intended on heading straight home, since there was more snow moving in, but I decided to go against sense and I drove north towards Lake Ontario. As I approached the City of Oswego, I saw flashes in the sky. A fireworks display was starting up. Normally this is a summertime thing, so it was kind of cool to see fireworks in a snowy sky.

It was all part of the “Warm-Up Oswego Festival”, which was underway. Folks were milling about the downtown area even though it was snowing pretty good. The restaurants and the like were quite busy.

I had fun walking around and taking pictures of the downtown area. I stepped away from where the folks were going to restaurants and the like and took a few photos of the snowy Port City.

Oswego was the closest city to my hometown. While it’s not the most spectacular city in the Empire State, there’s something interesting to me about it. I don’t know if it’s because it’s on the shores of Lake Ontario, it’s a college town or what, but Oswego does feel comfortable to me.

And I had fun playing in the snow there last night.

Here it is the first week of February and I’m proud to announce that my annual 48-hour bout with the sniffles is in full swing. Earl is out of town on business this week, so I’ve been kind of moping about the house, consuming lots of soup, making honking noises through several boxes of tissues and doping myself to nearly insanity via NyQuil.

It is my plan to be back to normal, well, at least my version of normal, by tomorrow night.

Unable to fly on Saturday because it was just too dang cold, Earl and I bundled up and went for one of our “crazy” Jeep rides. I put the word crazy in quotes because people always say that our rides are out of the ordinary. The ride wasn’t one of our longest, not by a long shot. At 7 hours and 15 minutes of driving time, we had time for wonderful conversation, reminicing, political debate and exchanges of socio-economic opinion. As always, when we spend time together, we had a blast.

Our ride took us through the North Country of New York State. The North Country is the area between the Adirondack Mountains and the St. Lawrence Seaway, right along the Canadian border. Admittedly this is my favorite part of The Empire State. I enjoy it in both the winter and the summer, for different reasons depending on the season, but one of the things that I enjoy most is the vibe. It’s somewhat economically depressed up there but everyone we’ve ever talked to in those parts seems to be down to Earth. Good ol’ boys and all that.

Along our travels we stopped at the St. Lawrence Centre Mall. Built in 1990, this modestly sized mall outside of the Village of Massena has seen better days.

A rough estimate tells me that about 75% of the storefronts are vacant. The western end of the mall wasn’t really heated anymore. We found it to be quite chilly. Only two of the five anchor locations are still populated, only JC Penney and Bon Ton remain. Hills/Ames, Sears and one of the anchor (we couldn’t figure out what it used to be) are all empty. Another typical anchor location actually houses an Ice Arena, which was part of the original plan when the mall was built.

On the bright side, the Food Court still had a decent number of options. I noted on the listed hours that the mall closes at 7:00 p.m. during the week; most malls in these parts are open until 9:00 or 9:30 p.m.  There wasn’t much in the way of shopper traffic when we walked around, stretching our legs. That’s what we do on these long rides, walk around and stretch our legs in a shopping mall.

It kind of makes me sad to see these shopping malls slowly dying, but things change and people change and it’s important for those that market to the public to keep up. I hope that the St. Lawrence Centre finds it’s way to a new found glory someday.

The rest of our trip was wonderful. We stopped at our favorite Buffalo Wild Wings in the Empire State, on Arsenal Street in Watertown. Admittedly, we enjoy seeing the soldiers and such from nearby Fort Drum. The place is always packed, the beer is always good and there’s always cheering of the various games on the televisions.

It’s snowing. But then again, it’s Monday. Welcome to Central New York. It’s January.

This morning I stumbled into the kitchen all groggy and blurry-eyed, in search of a glass of water. I just needed one glass of water and I would feel better. I’m not much of a coffee person and I tend to drink iced tea in the afternoon, and because society frowns on beer for breakfast, I just wanted a glass of water.

I noticed that there were a few dishes stacked in the sink. This is odd when I’m around because I do not enjoy dishes in the sink. Dishes in the sink make me crazy. Not as crazy as when I find garbage in the sink, but moderately crazy. I don’t bay at the moon or anything, I just get surly, unless I’m in search of my first glass of water in the morning, then I get surlier.

The dishes in the sink meant two things. A certain someone might or might not be home for a few weeks before he heads off to college in a city that may or may not be windy. It also meant that a certain someone of the married persuasion dared not open the dishwasher because something hideously awful could be hiding in the dishwasher.

CLEAN DISHES.

Now, I know that clean dishes ranks right up there with “whites in the dryer” in the frightful department. I know that sinking feeling when you steal a glance at the dishwasher and you see the “Clean” light illuminated. The feeling of dread has been eased slightly with the march of technology; before the days of the “clean” light there was the “bounce sound” of the detergent dispenser in the dishwasher, its ringing out a startling announcement that the dishes in the dishwasher needed to removed and put in their proper place in the various cabinets that adorn our kitchen.

I’ve never figured out Earl’s system for where the dishes go. The glasses are to the right of the sink when I expect them to be to the left. There are round plastic tubs in one cabinet and square plastic containers over the Radarange microwave because apparently one heats up stuff in a square container but not a round one. The Pyrex bakeware is filed next to barbecue sauce and the brown bakeware is next to the bread machine. Cookie sheets go under the stove unless they’re used for something else then they go on their side next to the Bundt Pan.

The one that might be going to college where it’s windy and the one that could have marital ties to me both avoided the dishwasher during their travels and treks across the kitchen. That is when the fear totally gripped me and I realized that it was 2015 and to stay true to one of my goals, I must face my fear square on and do something to conquer this fear once and for all.

I emptied the dishwasher.

One of my Christmas gifts from Santa was a new camera. I did not expect this gift at all, which made the surprise that much more special.

The new camera is a Canon G15 point-and-shoot type affair. Apparently Earl watched me fumble with Canon DSLR enough at places like Walt Disney World and the like to decide that I needed something that was a little more point-and-shoot friendly. My iPhone 6 has a great camera built into it, but I’m not a huge fan of taking photos with my iPhone, even though that’s what’s encouraged these days.

I decided to try the new Canon out for a night shot tonight. The moon was hiding behind some clouds and I thought it made for a somewhat interesting photograph. Here’s what I captured from our driveway about 30 minutes prior to the composition of this blog entry.

I’ve noticed a large number of folks on Twitter and Facebook mentioning the removal of their Christmas decorations today. I think I’m a little surprised by this because today is, after all, New Year’s Day. With the positioning of the holiday on a Thursday this year, I thought that folks would leave their decorations up until this coming weekend but apparently I was wrong. People want their decorations down and apparently move on with their lives.

I’m not a fan of taking down Christmas decorations. Honestly, I’m not really a fan of putting them up either, but once they’re up, seeing the decorations put me in a jovial mood. Twinkling lights and tinsel and the like make me smile. Holiday joy and all that.

I’m not ready for a cold winter without twinkling lights and decorations of merriment. We’ll be taking down the decorations this weekend, but in the meanwhile I’ll continue to enjoy the festive beauty.