Dryden Is Home

Return to the Cat Walk

This Thursday evening you are all invited to the 2005 Shangri-La Fashion Show! I will be making my Ithaca debut wearing clothing from T-Shirt Expressions (located at 210 The Commons). Show information:

2005 Shangri-La Fashion Show
Hilton Garden Inn
130 East Seneca Street
Downtown Ithaca, New York
Thursday, December 1st, 2005
7:30pm in the first floor Grand Ballroom

"All are welcome to this opening gala for the Ithaca Downtown Partnership (IDP) Holiday Around the World Celebrations!"

Nothing is Illuminated

(ed note: This post was about 60% done when electricity on the 1900 block of Slaterville Road went out. You have an abbreviated rant here.)

I just finished reading "Everything is Illuminated" (by just I mean 5 hours, 1 bowl of fried sweet potatoes, a crossword puzzle, a cryptoquip, a suduko, a reconstructed compost pile, a cleaned up garden space, a cleaned set of gutters on the shed in the backyard and a review of all of my emails from the weekend ago). I want to be the first to say that in my case eveything is not illuminated. I did read the book late at night and then got up and read it in the morning and I might have missed something. I don't really know exactly how to explain or understand what was missing, but I definitely have some questions.

Is the book good? Yes, read it - and then explain the ending to me. I know it is now hip to have something strange happen at the end of books, but I like mysteries to be solved. Again, this may have been solved, but in my reading from slumber I missed it, or because I don't have the intellectual capacity to put Jonathan's book together, I am left in a bewildered state.

I definitely feel a connection, having just returned from a Makar family thanksgiving with my sister, brother-in-law and the aunts, uncles, cousins and grandmother on my dad's side of the family. The Ukrainian side of the family. The side of the family that was displaced by train from the Ukraine to work in work camps and then live in Germany until around 1949 (when my dad was 3, my uncle was 4, my aunt was 6 and my grandmother was 29 and my grandfather was 27).  They arrived in Boston (or NYC, I need these details resolved) and then made their way to Woonsocket, Rhode Island where other Ukrainians were making a new home. I wonder why Safran Foer didn't mention where he was living in the United States in the book, it was just "America." (Again, there's a chance he mentioned it, though in the course of the month I was reading the book late at night I missed it).

Maybe, if nothing else this book will push me a little harder to interview my grandmother on a digital recording device and find out some answers and then make my own way to the Ukraine to find out if her Trachimbrod exists.

What kind of food are you?

From this blog:

You Are Chinese Food

Exotic yet ordinary. People think they've had enough of you, but they're back for more in an hour.

What Kind of Food Are You?

Twenty-Four Hour Tour

Well, it wasn't even twenty-four hours that Arthur and Kristen visited. Counting the time they were awake and in Ithaca they spent just as much time getting here as staying here. They arrived on my doorstep with wet shoes and a snow covered F-250 around 1:30 yesterday afternoon. We paused for a minute in the house with a brief tour, "see that, that's a closet; this here, its a bathroom (you can tell by the toilet); this here, it is the kitchen." My house tours always make me wonder why I even need to say anything at all ("Here's yet another bedroom.").

We drove to the Ithaca Farmer's Market. I bought some soup. We drove up to Ithaca Falls. We walked right up to the base of the falls (which I had never done before - sorry Matt, Mike, Justin, Wendy and Paul). This upclose walk was inspired by my sister (and tim) who showed me pictures Thanksgiving night of them right at the base of the falls on my sister's birthday, when she visited in August.

We drove up by the Ithaca Gun Company's two acre site on Lake Street (across from Gun Hill Apartments) and Arthur told me he owned a gun that was partially made by Ithaca Gun Company back in 1912.

We stopped in at the apartment building on Stewart Avenue and while I shoveled off the walkways, A & K walked out over the Stewart Avenue bridge to look down on Fall Creek and Ithaca Falls (btw, furnished apartments are available for next year, check out the web site for details).

Our next stop was the small parking lot near the Fall Creek footbridge - the bridge that spans between the Johnson Museum and the upper fall creek historic district.

Then we coasted through Cornell campus, down through college town and managed to find a parking spot near the commons on Albany Street. We visited T-Shirt Expressions, Center Ithaca and CognoscenTea. Our next stop was the Ithaca Beer Company, then we drove the back way (spencer street) to green to 79 to 366 to college ave to have dinner at the Nines.

After dinner, it was only 6:30 by then, we headed back to my place to play some cards, talk, play pass the pigs, talk, play horse, talk and have a couple of drinks. We all called it a day around 11pm.

This morning we had omelettes, bacon and toast and then before I could convince them to see more of the town they were off for the easterly road to Massachusetts. They were here just about 21 hours. They both promised to make a return trip sometime in the summer. I promised them sailing, boating, dragon boating, hiking, fishing and of course lots of gorges.

It was good to entertain more company. When are you coming to visit Ithaca?

Winter Surprise: Part 1

Did I remember the forcast from Monday that said it would snow today? No.

Did I make plans for the day thinking that there wouldn't be any weather to take into consideration? Yes.

Did I prepare for snow? No.

Is the snowthrower attached to the tractor yet? No.

Is the lawnmower and leaf bagger still attached to the tractor? Yes.

Will is be 60 degrees on Thursday in Ithaca? Possibly.

Does this sound like a Donald Rumsfeld conversation with himself, only relating to the snow at 1960 Slaterville Road in Ithaca instead of the war? A little bit.

When you don't know that snow is coming and you just lay in bed thinking about the day ahead, you can start to get into some trouble. I've now been up for about three hours and before that I just thought about getting up, eating a quick breakfast, getting up to the office and starting some work. I knew my friends from Massachusetts would be arriving around 11:30 or 12:00, so I wanted to get started early.

When I went to bed the yard had a powdered sugar like frosting of snow from Tuesday's first blast of the winter. It totalled less than a 1/4 inch and was only staying around because the temperature outside only ranged between 18 and 23 degrees this week. This morning with my plan of attack in my head I pulled back the curtain to find the entire backyard was white and the air was full of giant floating flakes.

*Ring Ring*

That was the guests calling. They are in Whitney Point at the Arby's. They are about 25-30 minutes away (with no traffic and friendly road conditions).

So, my morning plans turned into some shoveling, some putting out rock salt, some additional cleaning of the house for the guests, phone calls to see if they were still coming, phone calls to catch up with a neighbor, breakfast, and then it was 12:15 and I hadn't gotten to the office yet. I just took that picture from my office. Now I have to shower and and make up a plan for a 24 hour sight seeing tour of Ithaca with my guests (now just 20-25 minutes away!).

Visitors IRL

Tomorrow I am expecting two visitors from Massachusetts! That will bring the total number of non-family visitors to Ithaca 1/1000 of the number of virtual visitors to this blog. Stay tuned for a full report.

Taughannock and the gang (Obligatory Water Falls Picture)

Taughannock and the gang
Originally uploaded by dmakar.

Rumor has it...I've had visitors to my great new hometown in the past few day. Last Thursday evening, three of my good buddies from Boston appeared on my doorstep after a lengthy drive from my former homecity.

Justin, Wendy, Paul and I spent the rest of the weekend touring Ithaca, meeting my new friends, taking pictures and seeing all sorts of things in Ithaca that even I hadn't seen before. I should give a complete update of what and who and when and where, but instead I'll just direct you to the pictures from the weekend.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/bostonvisitors/

Voting Rites

On Saturday and Sunday and Monday I made mental notes to vote on Tuesday. I kept thinking I would forget. On primary day in September I ran around doing errands all day and almost made it back to Bethel Grove (my polling place) to vote, but just didn't make it. I thought I lost out on my chance to vote for Wilkenson for D.A. and Robertson for County Legislature. Fortunately both candidates made it past their primaries and into the November elections.

 

Tuesday morning I went to bed at 1:30am, I woke up four hours later for my weekly drive to Binghamton for my business networking meeting. I left before the polls opened. I had a few meetings after my meeting, the final one being over hot tea and a cinnamon stick at Dunkin Donuts. By the time I got to Slaterville I really wanted to drive directly to the polling place, but instead I pulled into my driveway to take care of some bathroom needs.

Then I checked my mail - since I had been gone for five hours and I wanted to see if there was anything pressing. Then I did a few customer tasks. Then . . . It was getting close to 1pm and I hadn't gone to the poll! I looked outside and saw that I had parked at the bottom of the driveway - near the mailbox and street - because my plan was to run in and run out. Instead I was in for over two hours taking care of things.

I hopped in my car, drove to Bethel Grove (a straight shot down rt.79/Slaterville Road) from house at 1960 to the polling place at 1749. I found the place, wandered inside. The greeters were being very friendly with the lady in front of me in line. They were just chatting and perhaps gossiping about something that I had no backstory on. Finally they saw me looking out the window to the field behind the Bethel Grove Church Activity Center and they asked me for my information.

Two minutes later (and one signature that matched my signature from when I was at the DMV in January) I was in the booth. When I got in I wondered why they didn't ask for ID. I thought that was required.

I use a computer most days - mostly all day - and when I use an ATM usually I know what I'm doing and I'm in control of the machine. When I walked into the voting booth and pulled the lever and the curtain closed I was shocked. The ballots in my past usually had the title of the job the candidates were seeking and then the candidates. Then completely seperate would be the next job title or question and choice for an answer.

In this booth there were the two state wide questions at the top with yes and no levers under them. Then there was a grid of job titles across the top (the column names in Excel) and a list of party affiliations along the left side (the row names in Excel). Then inside of the body of the spreadsheet / voting booth were names spaced out here and there. Some parties didn't have candidates for all jobs, some jobs didn't have more than one candidate. Some candidate names appeared in more than one box for a particular job - for example Dentes for D.A. was running as both a republican and as a member of the "independence" party. So if you wanted to vote for him you could vote in either box - but flipping the lever in both would possibly not get counted.

Either way having his name on their twice didn't exactly work out in his favor. At the end of the day both candidates I voted for ended up winning. Also, Governors' races in New Jersey and Virginia went Democratic (or stayed Democratic in races with no incumbents) which was good for the Democratic party (no matter what the White House says to spin it).

I hope you voted with ease. If you are really interested in Tompkins County elections and Dryden elections (the actual town that I live in), there is a great blog called "Living in Dryden" that covered every candidate in every election and even made recommendations. Check out the blog.

MakarFest 11 - A House Warming Party

From evite:

Host: David Makar
Location:  My House in Ithaca, 1960 Slaterville Road, Ithaca, NY
When: Saturday, November 12, 8:00pm
Phone:  607-342-3009

When I moved to Ithaca I wanted to continue my annual tradition of an autumn party called MakarFest. The only problem is that a year ago I didn't know any of you! So, now that I've been in Ithaca a year I figured now would be a good time to have a house warming party (no gifts required). Here are some details:

• Four of my Boston based friends will be coming to visit for the weekend to see the town of Ithaca
• The party will begin with a dessert party at 8pm. Bring your childen, your favorite dessert, your home brewed beer and a smile. I want to include all of my crazy friends who have decided to already started to have kids!
• Sometime later stop by for a glass of wine, a glass of beer, a glass of vodka, a glass of water or a glass of anything else you might want to bring and share
• And then around the same time I'll light up the camp fire in the backyard (weather permitting) and we can stay warm by perhaps the last good open fire of the season.
• Sometime later the tradition of destroying a television will continue with 1 tv and 1 sledge hammer, come check out a MakarFest tradition since 1999!

So come on over next Saturday night and meet some of the other great Ithacans that I've met in the first 12 months here!

Sorry if the evite didn't get to you, send me an email, or give me a call and I'll evite you!

Now I'm off to clear some brush and build a fire!