Dryden Is Home

House Pic - March 8th, 2008

House Pic
Originally uploaded by dmakar

An ice storm slammed Dryden, Ithaca, Lansing, Trumansburg, Danby, Groton, all a lot of other places throughout the fingerlakes yesterday. I spent some of the day in the city of Ithaca (taking pictures and shopping) and some of the day on the couch watching "The Wire" and some of the day sitting in the house with Arjan and without any electricity and some of the day picking up and moving large branches from the driveway and some of the day driving in the snow and some of the day handling fire calls for downed wires in the Varna Volunteer Fire District (downed live wires HUM REALLY LOUD).

We went to bed without electricity and wondered how we would keep the house warm without a wood stove or any backup plan to our natural gas furnace that requires electricity to run.

At 6:30am the power came back, I raised the thermostat (the inside temperature had sunk to 51 degrees), shut off all of the lights, and got back in bed under a pile of blankets.

Pictures of the ice on things around the house here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmakar/sets/72157604078386008/

February 2008 - House Pic

IMG_1899
Originally uploaded by dmakar

This month's house pic features a light dusting of snow (in the form of 24 hours of intense microhail drizzle). The precipitation is small and dry when it is in the air, melts when it hits the ground, and then freezes into ice overnight.

You'll also perhaps notice a Barack Obama, February 5th sign. Arjan and I picked up the signs last Sunday afternoon, but it wasn't until Friday morning that I used a sledgehammer and metal post to pound a set of holes into the frozen ground.

If you need a sign for Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday, let me know and I'll swing by with signs and sledgehammer.

Vote Tuesday!

Closeup of Signs in Yard: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmakar/2237847498/

View from Balcony at the State Theatre in Ithaca, host of the February 1st, Obama Benefit Concert: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmakar/2237057031/

Peace in the Neighborhood

I wrote about why I put a flag on my campaign yard sign last August (at davidmakar.com) and first put up a flag in my yard last September. I brought the flag inside for most of the winter and put it back out in April. As Arjan and I started talking about living together we talked about the flag being in front of our house. We worked out a good compromise that I wish I had thought of myself. We bought a peace flag and have it below the American flag out on the flag pole. Within just a few days a few neighbors made positive comments and a couple of my customers mentioned that they liked the two flag combination.

Having the peace flag out front reminds me of a lot of war and peace and government and travel I've participated in for the last few years. It also reminds me of the Paul McCartney song, "Peace in the Neighborhood" from the 1993 album "Off the Ground".

Best Thing I Ever Saw
Was A Man Who Loved His Wife
In A Place Where Things Were Good
I Felt Peace In The Neighborhood
That Feeling In The Air
Something Was Definitely There
It Was A Time When Things Were Good
I Felt Peace In The Neighborhood

I Was There, I Really Was.
At The Center Of A Love Vibration.
People Sharing With Their Friends.
Helping Each Other Out
Peace In The Neighborhood
Helping Each Other Out

Then I Woke Up From My Dream
To See Things As They Really Are
People Struggling To Survive
How Can Peace Hope To Stay Alive?

Well I Was There...I Felt So Good
At The Center Of A Love Vibration.
People Caring For Their World
Helping Each Other Out.
Peace In The Neighbourhood
Helping Each Other Out.
Peace In The Neighbourhood
Helping Each Other Out.

Best Thing I Ever Saw
I Saw A Man Who Loved His Wife.

Peace In The Neighbour Hood
Helping Each Other Out.

Snow!

I can't believe I don't have a weather category! Well, today it snowed all over Dryden, Tompkins County and upstate New York. I checked the local bloggers and media to see what pictures they had to report. Looks like Gary, Kathy, and then Melissa beat me to it, followed by the Journal. They only have one picture each though. I have 23 pics. Take a look here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmakar/sets/72157600082756106/

Enjoy the snow day!

Web-Media-Blog Snow Coverage to watch:

• http://grpottersblog.blogspot.com
• http://drydendailykaz.blogspot.com
• http://littlewoolgatherings.blogspot.com/
• http://www.ithacajournal.com/
• http://simonstl.com/dryden/
• http://fivewells.blogspot.com/

Are you covering the storm on your blog?

Checking In

Blog readers from Freeville to Florida to Folsom (Hi Tamie, Hi Mom, Hi Roger) have checked in with me for more updates than the blog is providing. I'm going to try to blog each morning before getting into the work day. If there's something going on that you'd like to hear more about, let me know.

I'll start with a picture from March 23rd - 10 days ago. The snow was melting like crazy on Thursday and I made a pair of snowmen. On Friday I took another yard picture that goes along with the set of house pictures I've been taking for the last two and a half years.

Finally, on a gardening note, Matt Cooper from the Dryden Courier interviewed me on March 23rd for an article that appeared in the March 28th issue about Gardening and Blogging. I submitted the following picture that ran with the article.

Simon blogged about it here:

In the Home Garden section, Cooper talks with Dryden Town Board Member David Makar about his gardening and his blogging about his garden. He got started cheaply, paid attention to the plants but didn't devote his life to them, and got a sizable return for his efforts. He also notes fellow Board Member Mary Ann Sumner's blogging and my own efforts.

I tried to steer Matt in the direction of my neighbor Melissa's blog, as well as Mary Ann's blog - they both blog about gardening. Melissa: http://littlewoolgatherings.blogspot.com/, Mary Ann: http://fivewells.blogspot.com/

The article did encourage me to start planning for the 2007 season and over breakfast on Monday Arjan and I discussed fruits, vegetables and flowers for the yard and garden for this summer. I spent about an hour Saturday cultivating wild blackberries (can you cultivate something that is wild?) and cleaning up part of the yard that had a lot of uncontrolled brambles.

So, I guess you aren't moving back to Boston, eh?

The campaign started officially at the Dryden Democratic Committee nominating caucus on August 15th. I unofficially started preparing for the run in mid-July and in mid-June I started thinking about running. Now, it is mid-September and the campaign is really in full swing.

The signs (designed by Flourish Design Studio) have been printed and are starting to appear all over town. I put out about 20 of the signs in my yard to get started. As I need to deliver them to people for their own yards I will take them from here. A bunch of requests have already come in and hopefully by Monday I'll only have a few left.

For now it will be really easy to find my house - it's the one with all of the Makar Dryden Town Board signs!

1960 Then and Now

1960 is the address of my house. Recently I was contacted from the outside from Beth. Beth's parents built the house at 1960 over 50 years ago. This week Beth is on vacation (from being a nurse). For her vacation Beth decided to clean her garage, dig through boxes of old house photos, scan photos that had exterior shots of the house, name the digitized photos and email the photos to me!

Today (since I work from home) I took my lunch break and went out into the yard and photographed my house and yard from the same (approximately) places that Beth's family took pictures from 1959 to 1975. Above you see that there was once a carport, a stone walkway, and a little tiny maple tree. Below you see my car, a stairway of stone and wood and a much, much large maple tree. Fourty-seven years later and we are still using gas propelled cars. I wonder if Beth's parent's car had better mileage than my VW Jetta. Any ideas? Look at the other pictures here:
http://www.544productions.com/2006/BeforeAndAfter/index.htm

Beth posted some of the pictures on her blog here:
http://mysteriousladyclues.blogspot.com/2006/07/house-my-dad-built.html

Being Productive

Once in a while I am really productive. Today I was productive more than usual, though I wasn't really productive. I'm still working on that skill. I did get a few things done today, but that just leaves more things for tomorrow. There are only so many hours. I have realized one thing, I actually can get up early and get work done before 6pm (and before noon too!).

Today I found a blog post (from yesterday) that my neighbor wrote about me. It was really fun to read a little bit of her side of my walking up the driveway and introducing myself in person. Read it all here. One of the topics Melissa covers is me borrowing her push mower (which she blogged about here), which I actually did today. I saw her at home with the kids so I went inside my house, grabbed the Saturday paper's coupons and headed over to her house. A few minutes later I was clipping away at the dandelions and tall grass that really came up overnight. I toiled for about 15 minutes or so and I started to try to calculate gas savings to hours I wouldn't be billing as I was doing this work. Then I just counted the walking around and pushing of the no-gas, no-electricity mower to be my exercise for the day. Tomorrow I might get up early and do some more mowing. With the push mower there is almost no noise so a 7am mow shouldn't wake up anyone in the hood.

I ended my outdoor part of the day with a few pictures of the yard and once again I took a picture of the house from the same location at the corner of my property. This time I brought the camera down to ant height so you could really see the clipped grass. See past pictures of the house including one year ago and from the previous winter in the "Home Owning Details" category.

House Picture Update

I've finally posted a new picture of the house. This one is from yesterday, July 25th in the early morning. You can compare it to the May 19th picture if you like. I kind of feel like this short post is a cop out but I am sooo very tired and I'm still getting over whatever I started to get last Friday morning. I blame the fan in my parent's house blowing cold air on my mouth and throat all night while I slept and caused me to get a sore throat. I'm now dizzy with tiredness. I had a few productive meetings this morning and yesterday but the week is starting to cruise by and I have much much much to do and I'm not mentally able to get anything done at all.

To make matters even more complicated - my sister Julie will be coming to visit with my brother-in-law Tim this weekend (Saturday) until the following Friday. Yes they will be staying in Trumansburg at the Taughannock campground and I won't have to put them up here, but I do want to spend a lot of time with them - show them around and introduce them to some of my friends here in town. Since I've meandered to that topic I guess I should put together a list of things to do:

• Sounds on Susquehanna Drum Corps Show, Saturday, July 30th, 8pm in Endicott
• Boating on the lake, Sunday, July 31st with Dave & Marta or Joe and Chrissy
• IDBC Practice on Tuesday evening from 6-8pm, I should invite Julie to paddle
• Ithaca Practitioners of Alemaking also on Tuesday evening from 7:30 - 10pm, I should invite Tim to bring some of his own homebrew
• August 3rd, Wednesday, Julie's birthday
• Thursday, August 4th - another IDBC practice from 6-8pm
• St. John's Ukrainian Day Weekend Festival, Johnson City, noon-10pm Saturday, 11am-7pm Sunday

Plus mix is a trip to the farmer's market, Cornell campus, some gorges, Ithaca Brewery, Wine Tour, kayaking, a walk on the commons and I'm sure I'll get about zero real work done next week. Which means tonight - after IDBC - early sleep and then tomorrow - much much work!

Spring is in the air

It is really spring. Some days in Ithaca the sky is clear and the temperature is in the high 70s. Other days, like today, there is some mild wind and the air temperature is 44 F. The high today was 49. Brrrrr...

I did get outside a little bit because unlike many days it was all blue sky and cloud free. I looked at some of the flowers in the yard and went out to take a picture of the house from the same location I did throughout the winter.

Here's the house today:

And for comparison, here's a picture during the heavy snow of January:

As you can see the house ate one of the large green shrubs from the front of the house. The only other house news for the month that I can think of is that our house has increased in value, which means we get to pay more in taxes! Yeah!