Dryden Is Home

Listen Live: WVBR.com: Fresh Roots Radio

Tonight Arjan and I were invited to a party to celebrate a new bathroom. We stayed home. The party is about 30 minutes away in nice weather. This afternoon, around 1pm, the snow started to fall in Ithaca, Dryden, and Freeville. My normal 10 minute drive from my office (where I was working for about 4 hours today, in Ithaca) to the house (in Dryden) took about 25 minutes. I figured it would be safer for both Arjan and me to stay in this evening.

We spent a couple hours watching episodes of Season 4 of the West Wing. Now we are kicking back and winding down from a busy day and tv time. Arjan is working on a cross word puzzle from the Ithaca Journal and I'm working on one from the NY Times (I'm also blogging, of course).

We are also both listening to Fresh Roots Radio on WVBR (online at wvbr.com). Our friend David Gould (DJ Solid Gould) hosts a reggae show every Saturday night from 10pm to midnight.

Tune in every Saturday:

http://www.myspace.com/freshrootsradio

or here:

http://wvbr.com/listen

"Support the good music around here!" -DJ Solid Gould

Overheard...in Ithaca

This is one of those sites that I could just read and read all day...

http://overheard-in-ithaca.blogspot.com/

Cheers!

From Park Ave to Podunk Rd

Friend of the blog Stephanie V. has her own blog, check it out here:

http://www.fromparktopodunk.com/

One of my favorite daily bloggers

Gary and Penny
Originally uploaded by dmakar

I wanted to give a quick shout out to local Dryden/Etna/Ithaca blogger Gary from Potter's Blog. Gary's been blogging for probably just about a year and a half now (since a little after he moved to Dryden - must be the water). He's posted thousands of posts, and usually posts 4 or 5 times a day.

I try to check in on him a couple of times a week to see what new wonders he's bringing to the world. From pigs to worms to fine art, he's building and creating every day.

Check out his pottery, his music selections, his dogs and cats, and his life at:
http://grpottersblog.blogspot.com/

Roads and Stripes

Originally posted to Dryden Democrats Blog (http://www.drydendems.blogspot.com/) on November 17th, 2006.

Hello to the reading audience of Dryden Democrats (I'll have to ask Mary Ann to update the header)!

A few hours after the election results were made public I received my first constituent phone call. I quickly started to search for the answer and here's a brief synopsis for the public.

Issue: Stripes on roads faded and missing from some town roads

Notes: In the last week with all of the precipitation and changes in temperature we in Dryden had a lot of fog roll in. The most noticible fog was on the roads and driving visibility was around 20 feet in some places (sometimes less!).

Answers (via Mary Ann Sumner, Town Board Member and Jack Bush, Dryden Highway Superintendent):

• When a municipality decides to stripe a road it then has to continue to maintain the striping
• There was a time when none of the Town roads were striped
• As with everything in the Highway business it is expensive
• Last year approximately 18 miles were striped and the year before 22 miles (There are 163 named roads in the Town making a total of 117.3 miles of Town highways)
• Every year it is difficult to get the striping companies to stripe Town roads
• They are limited to their window of time to apply paint to the roads because of weather conditions & equipment failure
• State & County roads become higher priority obviously because of higher traffic counts and miles being painted
• The Town does not own a paint striping truck & it would not be cost effective to buy one
• The Town uses the contractor that has the Bid with Tompkins County
• This year has been a difficult one for the contractor who received the bid because of rainy weather & a truck breaking down & it looks like they may not ever get to us
• Three other contractors have been contacted by the highway department and they are all behind because of the weather
• The weather will continue to get colder & snow will fall; this probably will mean no striping this year

Jack mentioned that he recieved 5 phone calls on Tuesday because of fog on Monday night. When he personally was driving through the fog he knew he would be getting calls. He tries to be proactive with highway issues however he is at the mercy of both the striping contractors & mother nature.

For a complete set of Town highway projects completed in 2005 and the goals for 2006 see the Town of Dryden Highway Department homepage and scroll down:
http://www.dryden.ny.us/hiway.html

Free Hugs

Something inspiring...

'Free Hugs' Campaign Video Sweeps Web

Reading Ithaca Blog

My friend Steve and I started IthacaBlog back in July. He has been writing - about four posts per week and I've been doing editing of the layout and design for the blog. We're trying to keep it simple for now.

http://ithaca-blog.blogspot.com/

There will be more writing be others someday. I might even contribute once in a while. Steve has been writing posts about September 11th and has a few you should check out this week.

Remainder'd Links

Dirk calls them "Uncategorized" and "Tidbit". Jason calls them "remaindered links". I don't have a good name so I'll just put them in the category I just added called "Links".

Trying to identify if the domain you want is available? Now you can do it in an instant: http://instantdomainsearch.com/

I guess with this then there is a chance I'll be dating again someday: http://matchingsox.com/

A shout out to "The Show" by Ze. If you haven't seen it, you haven't seen the Internet.

And while I'm hooked, but can quit anytime, here's a link to RocketBoom

The Meatrix II

In 2004 GRACE (the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment) introduced "The Meatrix" a spoof of the Matrix to educate people about the meat supply.

I just got an email this morning with news that a sequel has been produced. Going back and watching the original Meatrix makes me a little dizzy with the thoughts about all of the meat and dairy I've eaten over the last 29 years.

Check them both out here:

http://www.themeatrix.com/index.html

http://www.themeatrix2.com/

Fenway Faithful Tees

Baseball season is here and now there is a new way for Red Sox fans to show thier Red Sox pride anywhere with localized fenway faithful t-shirts!

http://www.fenwayfaithfultees.com/

I'm having one sent here that says "New York" on it, since I am now in New York, but there's no chance I will become a Yankees fan (Red Sox up 1 game in the standings).

The are planning to eventually roll out t-shirts custom for different cities and states and for different teams. Check them out!

http://www.fenwayfaithfultees.com/