I can tell you I am pretty upset about the state of affairs with our government. Generally, I am upset that i get to keep so little of my wages. Between all the taxes and fees there is little left. There is no check and balance on spending. The folks in government feel they have lost control and must keep increasing revenues to keep the spending going. In NY state 50 percent of the voters are either a govenment employee or an employee paid by tax dollars. Where is the money supposed to come from? I think the more important consideration is that when does a voter really get a say on spending? It in effect does not happen. We may have the chance to vote on a budget, but these budgets are all out of control spending. Unlike most folks I actively participate in my local Government. I believe it is not an us-againist-them situation. We are the government if you get off your butt. There is a huge silent majority that is just plain untapped. I am excited about my vaction in 2 weeks. I have...
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It has gotten unseasonable warm in the last couple of days. Anything above freezing is really welcome except for the mud that accompanies the warm weather. I still have the tire changer in the back of my truck because I don't want to create a mud pit with moving the machines around to unload it. I am selling furniture of my Mom's and charging extra for delivery. I often forget the conveniences of owning a pickup truck. I booked a vacation in Costa Rica. I will stop in in Florida to visit my Mom in her new home and then off to Southern Costa Rica. The destination is off the beaten path and there is not a lot of tourism there yet. There is fantastic fishing and it is really economical compared to other places. It is an "all exclusive" vacation. No tour, no resort, no planned meals, no organization. I will be checking out real-estate for sale. This is the plane at the destination airport for the last leg of the journey over the rain forests over Costa Rica.
I am back from the most recent NYC adventure. It was an easy drive at about 3.5 hours and another hour onto Long Island. We had dinner with a couple of ardent and interesting Jazz musicians. One of them teaches music in the public schools in the South Bronx. The other was an Irish imigrant. There was some excellent conversation in, from and about the Red Hook District of Brooklyn. There is quite a revitalization going on. You can feel the tension between property owners. Overall, it looks like it is going in a positive direction. I also got to do a couple of city-firsts for me. I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge which was quite a thrill as well as visiting the Egyptian obelisk in Central Park. The view from Red Hook over to the Statue of Liberty was very nice. The Tire Changer turned out to be an even better than planned deal. The seller was a great ebay'r. The glove on the constantine wire spoke of an interesting tale. What made the context even more interesting was the Pol...
I have been moving about a lot. This past weekend I was up in Rochester. I sold my Mom's car and a few other things. Spending time sorting through 30 years of accumulation is time consuming. I did run across the sugar jar I remember from my childhood. It brought back some memories of how I used to dump the sugar on my cold cereal. I am headed to NYC with DJ this coming weekend. We are staying in a friend's apt in Brooklyn. The main purpose of the trip is to pick up my new Coats Model 10/10 Automatic tire machine. It was a great deal. I use the windfall for fun and travel. I should have a vacation in Costa Rica booked this week. I took the following cat picture in the feed store. "Junior" really wanted to be in the middle of things. I had to push him out of the way to sign the credit card slip.
"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." -- Benjamin Franklin, Inventor I am back from Ohio. I went out almost to Cincinnati to pick up a "Tobacco Setter." I will be using it for planting blueberries this coming year. It is good for all sorts of transplant crops. It hooks to the tractor and two people ride on it placing seedlings in a spot that gets automatically planted and watered. The guy I bought it from said he has recently sold three of them all to people from NY. It was a great deal so I figured it was justified to spend some money on a nice place to stay. I learned a lot about the Amish. Of course as soon as I got back I won a great deal on a tire changer on ebay out on Long Island. I will be headed out there in a couple of weeks. Check out the Amish guy putting the stuff from Walmart in his buggy. I learned a lot. The Amish seem to like Mountain Dew. And of course, I have to get a picture of at least one of the wre...
Last week I had a special treat. I had dinner out at the Speedville General Store. They make subs and pizza and have a very large selection of smokless tobacco and lotto. They sell gas, beer and video rentals. I am not sure exactly why I feel it is such a treat, but the isolation of the place makes me feel secure. It is a place that is basically unknown and I feel as though I could hide there and no one could find me. It is especially true in the middle of a long January freeze like now. Everyone is locked down for weeks with the cold, ice and inhospitableness. It is remarkablly close to my house and Ithaca as well as being off the beaten path. You might as well be in northern Quebec or an island somewhere. I ordered a tuna sub and the shopkeeper came by me sitting at the formica booth seating, grabed some tuna cans off the grocery shelf and got me dinner. The big reason Speedville is so secluded is that there are no state routes involved. That and it is not on the way to anywhere un...
I need to do something different with this blog. I have been thinking about it for quite a while. This is my 836th post over the course of 8 or so years. I originally started blogging because it was new technology and a new way to communicate. It was novel. Now it is mature. I was impressed by the USAIR flight that ditched into the Hudson river the other day. Everybody was unhurt. Wow!! I understand that the aircraft has a "Ditch Switch" that is thrown to seal through-hulls and helps it float a lot longer. That must have helped. The event was definitely impressive in a lot of different ways. I am surprise the engines didn't rip the craft apart when they hit the water. I wonder what the angle of attack was like when it first contacted the water? My flight instructor and I have discussed the philosophical aspects of what our reactions will be in absolute emergency situation like that one. You never really know until it actually happens. A big part of flight training is le...