Gas Price Rises

So the price of gasoline at the Nice n Easy store in Chaumont, NY has risen another 4 cents a gallon. That's an 18 cent rise in a week's time. Makes me sick.

The Violinist

What I Did Today

My 78 year old mother reads a card made by one of her grand children as she recuperates in hospital.

Today is day 368 of this blog. I figured after one year I would quit putting the number in the title. We will see.
So I got up at 7:00AM. Got the wood fire going in the stove, started up the coffee and went to my guitar where I got in less than an hour of practice. It is a Saturday with no wedding to photogrpah, but I had two guitar lessons scheduled. One at 11:00 and one at Noon. I charge them each $25.00  for the hour. The music store, Musicology, gets a cut of that. ($1.50 per head). Well, before the lessons my celebrity brother needed a lift to the car rental agency, He wanted to be there by 10:00. So I drove him there. Then I went to the Samaritan Hospital in Watertown to visit my mother. She was taken there this past Monday night at midnight.

Cast iron drain pipe I busted out with hammer.

I do my guitar lessons and then go to my apartment house on Clay Street where I have a vacant unit that really needs some bathroom improvements. I spent some time there working on that. I also visited my son who lives just a few blocks away  to borrow his sledge hammer. You see, I absent mindedly left mine at home, 12 miles way. I needed one to finish removing the old cast iron drain pipe that fed the upper bathroom to the city sewer system. Cast iron is brittle and it only takes a whack or two with a 12 pound sledge hammer to break it apart and make the removal manageable. It will be replaced with CPV plastic drain pipe. (Which I will install).

More demolition and old drain removal
in apartment my Clay St apartment 3.

After that was accomplished my celeb bro & I checked in at our Mother's house, made sure everything was OK, got her mail, and the like. Then it was back to the apartment for some more puttering around. As long as the bathtub, sink & toilet are removed from the bathroom I am going to install a new floor. So I cut some plywood for sub-flooring. After that I decided enough was enough and headed home. Got there at 7:00pm. I proceeded to feed myself. I was starving. Got showered up. My Sweet Heart gets  home around 10:00. We watch a little TV, I drink some nice Merlot. She heads upstairs to bed, I pop a photo up on FaceBook, write this blog entry, and call it a day. As I wrap this up it is closing in on midnight.

My family is large. My life is full. My job is incredible, My love is photography, My passion is music, my friends are as varied as my interests. For all of it's ups & downs, I so much love my life. I thank Thee Lord, I thank Thee.  And World, I love you.

The Price of Gas

From Tuesday to Friday of this week gasoline went from $3.55 to $3.69 a gallon

On Tuesday of this week the price of gas in Chaumont NY was $3.55/gallon. Pretty much the same price all over Jefferson County. On Thursday I bought gas in preparation for Friday morning (today) because I would need to leave home early in the morning to work for the Post-Standard. The price was $3.65/gallon! Overnight the price of gas at this store jumped 10 cents a gallon! I don't believe a fuel truck delivered fresh gas to them overnight at a higher price. What the hell is this all about? I snap a picture of the price. This morning I head out to go to work and what do I see? The price of gas at the SAME place has risen 4 more cents, to $3.69/gallon. This is a complete outrage. There is no call for this.

How would it be if you you went to the grocery store one morning & forgot to buy eggs at $1.00/doz. So the next morning you go to pick them up and they are $1.25. And they are the same eggs that were in the cooler the night before. Suppose the next day they went up 5 more cents. A week later they are up to $1.69 a dozen. Wouldn't that signal something to you? Now, if it were happening at only one store chain. Fine. Shift your shopping from store A to store B. But how would you feel if you went from store, to store, to store, and everyone of them was selling eggs at the same inflated price, even though there had been no new delivery of eggs?

How can the gasoline sellers get away with this? This is a big scam that is going to once again undermine the recent gains in the economy.

Now we might accept the price gouging , oh, Im sorry, the price fixing, no, I mean price fluctuations in eggs because we might only but a dozen a week. Or, we could live without eggs all together if we had to. But when gasoline goes up 5, 10, 15, to 50 or 60 cents a gallon or more, we feel it because we must buy it in volume. We must buy it 10 gallons or so at a time. If eggs were the mainstay of our diet and we had to buy 20 dozen a week to survive we would be in trouble. It would be like the potato famine that hit Ireland a long time ago. As it is, we can live without eggs so we stop buying them to pay for the increase in the price of gas. Oh, let's not forget home heating oil.

One Year Ago My Blog Began

One year ago today I started this blog. I wasn't sure what I would do with it or how it would eveolve. I was optomistic that I could post something every day. Well, turns out I couldn't. Or, I didn't. I put up 271 posts. What has happened is that other more pressing matters get in the way. Even now as I write this I have other matters that I should be focusing on. I need to get a hair cut. I need to visit my mothyer in the hospital, especially since she may be going home today. I have a vacant apartment that I need to work on. I have the bathroom tore up and am in the midddle of replacing the toilet & drain. This afternoon I have some guitar lessons. This day is absolutely full.

So,  a year later I am still hustling, trying to line up freelance photo work and music gigs.

It was a mere 2 degrees this morning in Chaumont, NY.

I need to bring wood in for the stove, then I'll probably skip the haircut, go visit my mother, put a couple hours in at the apartment, teach guitar, be back home around 7:00pm.

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It appears my mother will remain in the hospital for another day or two. She is weak, unable to walk about without assistance. She is 78 years old.

Day 365: A Year Gone By

So today is day 365 of my blog as well as the days I have been on Facebook. I shoulod celebrate. Review. I am tired, full of desire, but don't have it in me. I have been working on my vacant apartment. That has left me tired. I simply do not have the money to hire the work that needs to be done. I am replacving the old, cast iron drain pipes in the bathroom. That stuff is heavy & difficult to remove. I got home in time to get cleaned up & watch Survivor on CBS. Now it's about 10:00pm and I am so tired I cannot give this any more effort. Good night.

Day 364: Snow Street Shot

I am completely burned out. Long day. My mother is in the hospital. Went there last night at midnight. It was scary for awhile, but she will be fine. I have an apartment that still needs my attention (& I really need to get it rented & get some cash flow from it).  I had a brutal day photographing baslketball and on and on. I'll try to elaborate tomorrow.

Day 362: Ladybug Photo

I never know when a photo opportunity will present itself. Last night as I reached for the pull cord to turn off the dining room light I spotted this Ladybug crawling about on it. Well naturally I grabbed a camera & began photographing the creature. What makes this photo work is the repeating circular shapes. The beads on the cord, the large bead at the bottom, the round shape of the insect, the spots on the insect. I do not have a macro lens for this particular camera so I couldn't focus as close as I would have liked. So I had to crop the photo to what you see here. Consequently it suffers some degradation. But I still like it.

Day 361: Guitars Lessons & Plumbing

I began some Saturday guitar lessons at Musicology in Watertown, NY. For some people saturday is the only day they  can schedule a lesson. Sturdays are wedding days for me, so I will have to cancel the guitar lessons on days I have weddings booked. Anyhow, today is a Sturday & I have lessons until  1:00, after which I will go back to my Clay St apartment and get back to work on that plumbing project.

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8:00PM update: My celebrity brother & I removed the toilet & bathtub, and tore up the old flooring  from the apartment I have been working on. It is long overdue for such maintenance.

Day 360: Plumbing

Five days away from a year since the creation of this blog. Three days since my last post. Time. I just don't have enough of it. I tore into some old plumbing in one of my apartments on Clay St., Watertown, NY.  The galvanized water supply lines to the kitchen & bathroom sinks were so corroded it is a wonder any water could pass through them. The drains appear to be clear & functional, however, I would like to rplace them with some PVC pipe. But then the project get more time comnsuming than I wish. I am under a bit of financial pressure to get this apartment rented sooner than later.  So I will probably save the drains for another day.

Day 357: Update and Inspiration

So it has been 357 days since I started this blog. The past few days have been a bit hectic, I have been a bit tired. I konw that I should sleep in some days & get properly rested up, that way I function much better and get more things accomplished. But recently I do not and the blog suffers.

I would love to have written more about my outrage against the Somalia pirates and the Mexican drug lords because I have not expressed myself adequately.  But I truly do not have the energy.

Let me talk about the photo uploaded yesterday, the shadow on the wall.

Once again it was just a scene I came upon. IT was closing in on Sunset and I was driving by a Syracuse high school and simply saw the shadows of houses and trees cast upon the brick wall. It was like a mural. I just stopped and took the picture. It was that simple. IT was an observance of my surroundings.

Likewise with a photo from a few days back. I was stopped at a traffic light and was struck by the shape and contrast of all the dirt revealed by the melting snowbanks and how they were juxtaposed against the brick building and windows. The light was right too, which  was a blessing. This was at a busy, busy street light. There were no shoulders on the road to pull over. I quickly looked about and could see no convenient place to park & walk around to get a similar angle as that which I saw from the drivers seat. So I quickly snapped it while sitting in my Dodge Caravan waiting for the light to change.  Hmm... maybe there's a book or exhibition idea forming here: Photos From The Drivers Seat. I certainly have taken quite a few from that perspective.

Oh, get this: the above idea was a sudden bit of inspiration. Simply writing this blog entry evolved into this sentence  "Hmm... maybe there's a book or exhibition idea forming here: Photos From The Drivers Seat. I certainly have taken quite a few from that perspective."

It's quite a good idea. It was inspired by my act of writing. It goes with what the great, legendary Spanish artist Pablo Picasso said, "Inspiration exists, but it must find you working." For it is always within the act of doing one thing that our minds reveal other options. Like pathways.  We are enroute to a destination and the road forks, or intersects and another direction is presented to us with the promise of a different opportunity. Had we never embarked on the journey ( or set out on a specific creative goal), the new opportunity or INSPIRATION would not have popped into our psyche.

Tuesday morning. It was minus 2 degrees here in Chaumont, NY. The Sun is shining which is always a plus at this time of year. I am photographing high school basketball this evening for thye Post-Standard newspaper.
I was most distressed to learn that pirates off the cost of Somalia killed four Americans after hi-jacking their yacht. This is a breaking story. Evidently US forces stormed the yacht after they heard gunshots as the pirates were killing their victims. At least two pirates are dead and and a dozen taken captive.

A short while back there were two American teens killed in Mexico. Then a week or so ago US agents were gunned down in Mexico, one was killed, the other wounded. This country should retailiate against the Mexican drug lords and the Somalia pirates without mercy, and without regard to the mexican government.