The kitchen table....and other notes.

What is it about the kitchen table, or in my case the dining room table, that makes us want to do all of our work on it? After all I have a perfectly good desk upon which to do my stuff. Yet somehow I am compelled to put all of my personal possessions on it's pristine surface. I think that there is probably something very primal going on here. Something that dates back to our caveman ancestors when Og would drag in the days dinner , mastodon ribs or rump of sabre tooth tiger no doubt, and throw it in the center of the cave where his wife,Raquel, would clean it and cook it. The kitchen table is today's equivalent of the center of the cave. Unfortunately my kitchen table has reached the saturation point. [see photo above]. It appears that I have room enough for lunch and that's it. I am going to have to start thinking about cleaning out the spare bedroom and use the table that is hidden somewhere under the pile of stuff I have collected and "stored" in there. I know there is a great dining room table in there somewhere.

OUT AND ABOUT DEPT. I ventured upstate a bit on Wednesday not out of any great need but rather to just get out of the house before I go crazy. It was a nice early Spring day and I found myself driving up route 9 in Duchess County. Located just off the highway about four miles north of Poughkeepsie is the home and library of my favorite president, Franklin Roosevelt. There are many reasons why I like this guy such as his economic policies which brought America out of a great depression in the thirties and his courage and leadership during the second world war. I know there is a lot of controversy about what he did and when he did it but the fact remains that we were in a war, a war we needed to win, and that his leadership and the courage of the extraordinary men he surrounded himself with, Eisenhower, Doolittle, Halsey, Patton, cannot be denied. A visit to FDR's home and library is an experience that you should not miss.

THE ADVENTURES OF "CONEY" THE CARNY DOG: Coney's infatuation with the Internet continues. Yesterday I found him once again at the "RUSSIANSTUFFEDOGBRIDES.COM"

website. Somehow he managed to get a hold of one of my credit cards. I hope he did not actually order something. When I put this question to him there was no answer forthcoming. I will have to check my credit card statement closely this month for any unauthorized transactions.

He still refuses to eat. Maybe he heard about the recent tainted dog food scare and is just being cautious.

In the Spring a young monkeys fancy.....

The official first day of Spring may have been last Wednesday but yesterday was the real first day. The temperatures here in the city reached well past the seventy degree mark. And nowhere was this more evident than in Central Park. The first signs of last Falls plantings were beginning to show in the flower beds surrounding the trees. The sprouts of what will soon become tulips poked their heads above the once frozen ground. Little green buds were cautiously starting to form on the hedges lining the park's walkways. But if you really want to know what Spring is like in the city you have got to visit the zoo.

The Central park zoo may not the best zoo in the world or the largest. In fact as far as zoos go it's pretty small. There are not a lot of animals in this zoo. Most of the animals seem to have just dropped in like pigeons and seagulls and ducks and geese. But what they lack in quantity they make up in quality. Take the penguins for example. The Central Park zoo boasts one of the best penguin exhibits in the country. Here you can view dozens of penguins of various species cavorting happily in their climate and light controlled environment. You may notice that I do not have a photo of this exhibit. The penguin enclosure is purposely kept dark and the birds are behind glass making it almost impossible to take a decent photo.

The zoo's two polar bears, one girl and one boy I'm told, appear to enjoy their little home. They seem to find delight playing with the strangest items like plastic gasoline containers and a large block of Styrofoam. Their fur also has adapted to city life. Instead of the nice almost pure white pelt that we see polar bears "wear" on those PBS nature programs, the New York polar bear's fur has taken on a gray tinge with rust color splotches. Not unlike those urban camouflage suits some kids wear. Like all native New Yorkers, they have adapted to city living. ( I wonder if they own or rent?).

Another group of live animals the zoo has are a colony of snow monkeys. They live on their own island in the center of the zoo. This relative isolation does not ,however, afford them the privacy they would have if they lived in the wild or on an island in Florida like Donald Trump.Like the rest of us who live in this city they are not protected from the prying eyes of the public. And like some of us they don't seem to care. Witness the young simian couple in the photo above. Despite the fact that on this fine early Spring day and with a hundred people watching they continued without abandon to engage in some hot monkey love. And after it was over he just walked away, without as much as a "thank you mam". She did not seem to mind. In fact she just looked bored. Sound like anyone you know? Ah, sex in the city.

But love is not wasted on monkeys alone. The zoo also has an enclosed climate controlled tropical rain forest. Lush plants and tropical birds flourish in this environ kept humid by a periodic misting of the area from nozzles located in the ceiling. It is so humid in this place that you have to wait a few minutes for your camera lens to adapt to the new climate after being out in the relatively dry, cool air of the city. This "paradise" evidently

stirred some sort of amorous feelings in the two (or at least one) of the turtles that began to engage in what could only be described as the terrapin equivalent of a hot date. Once again the lady turtle lady seemed bored and unimpressed and unwilling to "give it up". What's the matter with these creatures?

Are they expecting a better turtle to come along? Holding out for Mr. Right Turtle will not get those eggs fertilized baby.

Back outside ,at the centerpiece

of the zoo, the seals were doing what seals seem to do best. Sleep. They seem to

do a lot of this. I don't know if this is natural for them or the fact that they know they will get fed on a regular basis ( the sign next to the pond said the next feeding would be at 11:30) makes them lethargic. It reminds me of old folks at a retirement home in

Florida. Lots of old ladies wearing fur coats waiting for lunch.

Anyway, if you have the time this Spring, go to the zoo. You can learn a lot about city life. Just remember. Not all the animals live in the zoo.

Spring. Like it always was.

Thursday was the first full day of spring and nobody noticed. Well not nobody. The local TV weathermen make a big deal of it because,lets face it, weather is boring. They could do their reports in about fifteen seconds....

"And now the weather. The temperature is fifty degrees. It's going to rain tonight. Tomorrow will be sunny with a high in the sixties. Good night"

Somehow they manage to stretch this into ten minutes. Ah. the miracle of television.

Another person who would like to make a big deal out of the weather is Al Gore and the rest of the global warming yahoo's. Now don't get me wrong. I like Al. I think he should have been elected president. This world would be a different place if it were not for a few dangling chads in Florida. That being said I think he is entirely wrong on global warming. Where is it exactly? I see no signs. Except for one weekend in January when the temps rose into the sixties, we had a winter just as we have had winters around here since the Indians owned Manhattan. Most of the days were damp and cold with a moderate amount of snowfall. Fall was as it has always been. Mild sparkling days gave way to cool evenings and falling leaves. I did not see any snowstorms in July or hurricanes in December. Nor do I see palm trees sprouting up on Queens boulevard or people snowboarding in Miami. People were not stripping off their clothes on the nudie beach on Fire Island.(I know. I checked.) The weather has behaved just as it always has for millions of years. Unpredictably. And it will continue to act this way, on its own, for thousands of years to come. This is not to say that we should continue to belch out toxins and pollutants willy nilly. Who wants to breathe in all that schmutz. But I think it would be unwise to drastically change our lifestyles because of some predictions made by haters of the human race who think that the best thing for this planet would be to eliminate mankind completely and leave the planet to all the furry little creatures. This would be completely wrong. Do you think a chipmunk could stretch a fifteen second weather forecast into ten minutes. I don't think so mister.

THE ADVENTURES OF CONEY ,THE CARNY DOG: Background.I found Coney in a trash heap in the back ally of an amusement park in Coney Island.

Coney is beginning to settle in. Yesterday I found him sitting in front of my computer surfing the net. He seems to be looking for something in particular. He landed on a site called "Russianstuffeddogbrides.com" I think he may need a little companionship. I will try my best to spend some quality time with him.

A new friend with low maintainence...

I went for a ride yesterday and somehow ended up in Coney Island. Not a bad place to be if you want some interesting photos. Opening day is still about two weeks away (most attractions open around April 1) but on this chilly March morning with a stiff breeze blowing off of the Atlantic I managed to get some pre-season images and make a new friend.

The fuzzy little guy in the above photo was rescued, by me, from what would have certainly been a horrible death in the hopper of a sanitation vehicle. I was walking down an ally hoping for a better view of the Wonder Wheel* when I came across a heap of trash consisting of discarded artifacts from last seasons amusements. There, lurking behind what I believe to be a caveman (attention Geico) was the tail end of my new friend(see arrow). I pulled him out, dusted him off and found to my amazement that he was in perfect condition. I fell in love. He or she ,its sex not able to be determined

due to a lack of genitalia, appears to be of mixed breed but the coloration suggests a possible Doberman or Rottweiler combination. I named him Coney. I would have rescued the caveman too but he was too large to carry around. I guarantee that he is now adorning the grill of a 1985 Mack truck barreling down the New Jersey turnpike at breakneck speeds.
Upon arriving home I found Coney to be the perfect pet. He doesn't bark or shed. He does not seem to need food. In fact an attempt to feed him ended up with me having to wipe hamburger from his permanently stitched closed mouth. As the day wore on I was beginning to wonder if I should take him for a walk. I suggested this to Coney but, unlike other dogs I have owned, there was no tail wagging or ear cocking or running to the door in anticipation of an encounter with a nearby fire hydrant. This was OK because the prospect of me placing a stuffed dog next to a tree waiting for him to pee seems, well, nuts. I will not ask him to go for a walk again.
Sleeping arrangements also seem not to be a problem. Coney seems perfectly comfortable propped up on a stack of books in my living room. What a great dog.
The only problem is that Coney does not seem to be an overly affectionate animal. He has not licked my face or nuzzled my hand or for that matter shown any gratitude for rescuing him from the trash heap.I pet him and stroke his fur and this is OK for me, but Coney does not seem to gain any pleasure out of this at all. I'm not worried though. In fact I am used to this kind of response. My ex wife was the same way.


It's the first full day of Spring. I think I'll take a drive and look for a bud or leaf or blossom or something. Maybe I'll take Coney. He seems to like riding in the car.

*The Wonder Wheel is no ordinary Ferris wheel. Besides going round and round the individual gondolas run on tracks adding an additional roller coaster like dimension to an already maniacal thrill ride.

1040A....a reality

I finally broke down and did my taxes this weekend and once again it was a semi-traumatic experience. It's not that I mind doing my taxes. After all it is the duty of all Americans to pay their fair share and help support the various programs that our government gets itself involved in, like bringing peace and prosperity to the people of Iraq. We sure have been doing a good job on that one and I'm glad that a chunk of my tax dollars are going to such a worthwhile cause rather than helping people in our country to, oh lets say, pay their heating bills. Oh wait. The people of Venezuela are helping us with that. I just love those Venezuelans and that nice Mr. Chavez. Maybe next year I could pay my taxes to Venezuela. But that's not the trauma I'm talking about. The trauma part comes when I add up all the numbers and find out how inadequate I really am. It's remarkable. My income, when I had one, was pitiful. I can't believe I made such little money for the amount of work I did. What is even more remarkable is how I manage to live on it. I must be the best money handler around. I decided to find out how I did it.

After some collection of data, thanks to Quicken*, I was able to break down my expenses. There are some fixed expenses that I can't do anything about. These are things like rent, insurance, cell phone service and DSL internet expense. This leaves only a few things I can control like electricity, gasoline for the car and food. Unfortunately cutting back on any of these things drastically reduces my lifestyle. I've cut back on my driving. I drive my car just once a week. As far as grocery items go I have learned to live on house brands. Some are OK and some are really bad. Pathmark coffee is surprisingly good while their toilet paper is, well let's just say, is like 300 grit sandpaper. The house brand ketchup is worthwhile but the canned tuna taste like Little Friskies. You have to experiment to find out which products work best for you.

This brings us to the expenses that are on the borderline of control-ability, like electricity. It seems that no matter how much I try I can't make my electric bill vary more than a dollar or two from month to month. I know I shut the lights off in rooms that I am not in. During the daylight hours I don't have the lights on at all. I have even turned down the refrigerator so I'm not making things colder than they have to be. I'm not using the air conditioner or even an electric blanket opting to open the windows and using an extra blanket in place of those energy consuming appliances. Still, the electric bill seems to stay the same each month. The only other things that I can think of that may be using electricity are the "instant on" appliances like the two TVs and the computers. I also have a shredder that stays on all the time and a VCR who's clock has been blinking since 1989. I suppose I could turn these off, but who wants to wait for their TV to warm up. It would be like living back in 1952 when I had to wait for the 10" black and white Dumont to warm up so I could watch Captain Video on channel five. Of course this may have been the reason why my dad's gas and electric bill was only $7.00** despite the fact that my mom was at the stove cooking all day. I'm not saying that we should go back to those days but maybe we could all learn to live a little simpler.

So Turbo Tax and I have finished doing my taxes. I'm getting back some money from Uncle Sam but the state of New York has the nerve to want $28 from me. Hey governor Spitzer! I'm out of work you know. I opted not to file electronically. They want sixteen bucks to do it on line. I'll wait for my refund. And New York State can wait for my $28. Now where did I put that roll of Charmin?

*Quicken is an accounting program made for the home user. It can give you a good idea where your money is going.

** In the "olden days" the gas and electric bill often was provided by the same vendor like ConEd.

It's not nice to fool the Nature family.

It's a funny time of year. I like to think of it as Mother Nature's way of getting back at us for f...ing up the environment. One day it's mild and clear, and the next day there is a chance of three inches of snow. I can see it now. There is MN sitting up there with the rest of the nature family. Daddy Nature ,who takes care of things like coal mines and lava flumes. Teen Nature, who rules over adolescent zits and lip hair and raging hormones, and Baby Nature who, well, just poops a lot.

Mother N is looking over the days news and tsk tsking at the headlines. Over fishing in Mexico...tsk...tsk. Dumping raw sewage into the great lakes...tsk...tsk. Ozone layer getting thinner..oh my. "What can I do to really screw these people up" She looks at the weather page. "What"? "Seventy degrees in Newark"?"Who the f..k is responsible for this"?

"Don't look at me"says Daddy Nature. " I was here watching the game all day yesterday"

"It ain't my fault", says Teen nature. " I was busy placing a giant pimple on the nose of that blond cheerleader just before half time at the basketball game"

"Was that your work"? , says Daddy Nature. "I was watching that yesterday" "Good work. It stood out like a locomotive headlight on a foggy night".

Baby nature just gurgles and spits up.

"I think the weather is under the control of Uncle Nature" says Teen Nature.

" You mean that old geezer who lives in Miami and wears a white patent leather belt"?Say Mom.

"Yeah, that's the one". Says Dad. "He hasn't been all "there" since the blizzard in March of 1888. Just look at the New Orleans fiasco last year.It was supposed to be a brief afternoon shower".

"Well I'm going to put a stop to this craziness right now" Says Mom. "Get me GOD on the phone". And so it goes.

So on Tuesday I was driving around the Poconos in Pennsylvania and enjoying the mild sixty degree temps. There was still a lot of snow on the ground which probably kept the temps from going higher. The photo at the top of the page was taken at Promised Land State Park in Bethel Penn. The snow on the rowboats belied the fact that the air temperature was rather mild and the drip drip of melting snow could be heard coming from the roof of the boat house nearby. I was all alone in the park. It was just what I needed. Every once in a while I have to get away from the drone of the city and just chill out.

I came back to reality Wednesday when I arrived home to find my building lobby being torn up due to some maniacal renovation project the board of condo owners cooked up. It seems they would rather spend the money on cosmetics instead of fixing something that really matters like the plumbing which dates back to Roman times or upgrading the fireproofing.They do this, of course, to attract new tenants to the building so that their investment goes up. I'm waiting for the day when there is a fire in the building and all of us will be living out of a Red Cross hotel for three months. I'm sure just a good coat of paint will fix that up.

I need to go food shopping today. I checked the fridge and all I have is a turkey cutlet and a jar of jalepeno peppers. Even I can't make a meal out of that.

Of daylight saving, art portfolios and hookers.

Hopefully you remembered to set your clock ahead one hour(or was it back one hour? No,definitely ahead)this weekend. If not, your late. Or is it early? I've lost tack of time anyway. Unemployment does that to you. I couldn't care less if it's eight AM or four PM. My only real relationship with the clock comes on Thursday morning when I have to move my car to the "legal" side of the street before eight thirty AM. After that the rest of the day depends not on the clock but on what I feel like doing at that particular moment of time. I could take a walk. Do my laundry. Go on line. Take a nap. Take the subway into the city. Go to Coney Island. Visit the zoo or a museum or stop into Starbuck's and look at people who have jobs. These people can be identified because they are constantly looking at their watches. A lot of these people are young women all of whom seem to be carrying those large art portfolios. What the heck is in those things anyway? Is it art that these girls have produced themselves? Or are they delivering it to someplace for approval or something? I demand to know! How can a girl who does not look older than nineteen get a job peddling her own art work. Maybe it's not real art. Maybe it's those funny fashion sketches illustrating some concept for a schmata* they think would sell. But why would they need a giant 19 x 24 inch briefcase to carry this around? They could just as easily fold it neatly and tuck it into a lap top case. It's a puzzlement. Couldn't they just carry a laptop and some Cd's and show their work as a slide show presentation. I think there is something funny going on here. Maybe the portfolio is a euphemism for something more interesting. I remember when I was young and naive and working on 33rd Street. I noticed a lot of neon signs in the shape of cocktail glasses with an olive and swizzle sticks in them blinking on and off from the curtained windows of offices on the third and fourth floors of factory buildings. Who would go to a bar on the fourth floor of a garment district office building? When I got back to my office I asked my older and more worldly boss about it. He smiled and informed me that these were not cocktail lounges but brothels and that the neon signs were a way of advertising the services, to those "in the know", that could be obtained within. The cocktail glass was a euphemism for sex. This brings us back to the giant art portfolio. Think about it. If stopped by law enforcement the portfolio carrying concubine could always say she was looking for such and such fashions or so and so advertising agency or this and that printing company. All perfectly legitimate businesses that would operate in the area. The girls could even carry some phony art work to make it look good. It might even be designs they created. Most of the hookers walking around are frustrated fashionistas who somehow got lost on their way to F.I.T**. anyway. The big question is whether their mothers know they are carrying portfolios.

But back to daylight savings time. The hour difference is only slightly annoying for most of us. It'll be nice to have a little more daylight at the end of the day. Good for photogs. You have an extra hour to catch that magic twilight time when those city skylines look best. Don't forget to take off that polarizing filter. They only work for blue sky and clouds. I left mine on by mistake a couple of weeks ago and ruined a half a days work. I still have those photos. I keep them in my portfolio.


*"schmata" is garment industry lingo meaning inexpensive dress. As an example. When complimented on what she was wearing to Oscar's the starlet turned to the camera and said..."what, this old schmata?"

** F.I.T. Fashion Institute of Technology. If you want to learn the fashion business, this is the place to go.

Gas. It's like sex.

Hey out there. Hasn't anyone noticed that the price of gasoline has gone through the roof. I'm not talking about a two or three cent rise but rather a whopping twenty or thirty cents. I'm not as much surprised at the increase as I am about the lack of yelling and screaming from the motoring public. Have we become complacent? Have we resigned ourselves to the fact that we can't do anything about it and that we truly are at the mercy of those bandits in bedsheets sitting in their desert palaces who control the worlds oil? And I'm not forgetting that maniac in Venezuela who has become a "friend" of poor Americans by providing cheap heating oil through the toadies at Citgo. Every time I see that giant sign over the wall at Fenway park in Boston I want to puke, Redsocks aside. All of a sudden it's OK to sell gas at what ever price the market will bear. Which brings us to the sex part. Think about how similar "getting" gas is to getting sex. Keep in mind that I'm speaking from a male point of view. I haven't a clue what women equate with sex except maybe shoes.

We are driving along sedately listening to the radio when, not unlike a sexual urge, we feel the need to get gas. We glance at the fuel gage on the dashboard and watch the red needle slowly rise to "E". Ecstasy or empty it's your choice. We need gratification and we need it now. We search the streets for the telltale sign that our needs may soon be fulfilled. The blue and white Exxon sign beckons. It might as well say sEXXon. We drive in and pull up to the pump. We are all a flutter with anticipation that we will once again be FULL. We WHIP OUT our credit card and quickly slip it into the appropriate slot. Some pumps have the slot on the right some on the left but most have the slot right in the middle where it's supposed to be. The little screen assures us that the card has been correctly INSERTED and that we have been approved. A quick flashback to senior prom and Wendy Jocoby in the back of the Buick. Only her approval came afterward.

Now this is where the real sex comes in. It's so obvious that I feel almost ashamed to relate it here. We are instructed to LIFT THE NOZZLE AND BEGIN PUMPING. We ram that mother into the gaping hole that is the filler tube. Not unnoticed is the fact that these are always located towards the rear of the vehicle. Wendy Jacoby not withstanding. Sorry.

At this point it gets a little weird. If this were real sex we would have negotiated a price before we began to insert nozzle. With gasoline the price goes up as our pleasure of fulfillment increases. The more we are gratified the more we pay until we are full (finished, spent, gratified). We withdraw the nozzle making sure we don't spill any on the finish (sheets, dress ,Buick seat cushion). We put the nozzle back where it came from. We are asked if we want a receipt. It's a lot like Scores. We quickly jump back into the car and start the engine. At this point we usually light up a cigarette. If you are like me and don't smoke we pop a handful of David's sunflower seeds into our mouth reliving some oral fixation. We drive away never to visit that pump again unless we really liked the "service" and will go out of the way to get it again.

So there you have it. Sex, gas, it's all the same. We need it and we don't care what it cost to get it. Yesterday it cost me almost twenty five bucks to put about a half a tank of gas into my Civic.Wendy Jacoby was cheaper.

*You may use the photo at the top of this page for free.

Crushed hope, crumpled dreams.

You have probably guessed by now that I did not win the lottery. Chances are that you didn't win either. In fact, at the time of this writing, they have not determined if anybody won. If in fact there was not a winner and the prize goes up to an amount that compares favorably to the defense budget of a South American country I wonder how many of us sometime lotto players will shell out another couple of bucks and get suckered into doing it again. I know I will. The way I figure is that the reason I did not win a measly $370 million bucks was that ..........(fill in favorite deity on dotted line)was saving me for the really big one. So, yes, I will buy another ticket. And no, I don't think it's dumb. It's only a buck or two. What's really stupid is the folks that buy twenty, fifty or even a hundred dollars thinking they will improve their luck. To these people I say it's time to face the facts. If [deity] wanted you to win he would have let you win by just buying one ticket. He, She or It didn't let you win because He, She or It honestly hates you. It's time to reflect on your life and try to find out what you did to piss them off enough not to let you win over $300 million dollars. It must have been something really, really bad. I, on the other hand, do not believe in any god which is probably why I will never win. It's a conundrum. If I believed in god why then did I not win? If I don't believe in god why then did I not win? It's enough to make any self respecting humanoid fry a processor.

BULLETIN...BULLETIN. This just in. The lottery commission has just announced that there were two winning tickets sold. One in New Jersey and one in Georgia. To you winners I say "f----you. I hope you choke on it. At least I won't have to buy another ticket.

VINDICATION DEPT. Stamford University out in California, where there are no fat people, just released a study that finds the Atkins diet to be the most effective method of loosing weight. I have been a proponent of this diet for a couple of years after loosing 70 lbs myself. But a word of caution. You have to commit yourself to the Atkins lifestyle. This means giving up almost everything we have been brought up loving. That means the end to eating pasta, potatoes, rice,bread and of course any cake, candy and yes, dare I say it, pizza.

It's snowing out. I didn't win the lottery. I can't stay on my diet. I'm out of work. My right foot hurts. My computer is giving me problems and I feel out of touch with the world. Other than that I'm doing just fine.

Dream on...and on

A$ the lottery commission says "all you need is a dollar and a dream". In my case it was $2 and a dream. I figured I would improve my chances of winning almost $355 million from one in one hundred and seventy five million to two in one hundred and seventy five million. I know I am going to win. I may not win the whole shebang. There are too many people buying tickets, but I feel I am going to win something. I hope it's a substantial amount. I think $250,000 would do me just fine right now. I'd like that all in one lump sum please. I need to spend it quickly and furiously. After all I'm not getting any younger.What?, you say, are you going to do with all that money? Well, after I put most of it in the bank or some other safe investment and buy some toys for myself and give some to charity I would do what most of you would do or like to do. I would spend it on revenge. I don't mean ill spirited bitter

blood thirsty revenge filled with lawsuits and financial ruin. I mean the kind of revenge that's the sweetest of all. Disregard. Total and complete ignorance. Who are you again? I think you're mistaken. I don't have any aunts or cousins. Would this twenty help you out any? See ya.

Come on. You all know you want to do that to someone. And you all know how good it would make you feel. In fact you probably would not actually have to do anything. Those louses know who they are and the very thought of you winning anything is already making their blood boil. At this point you could pull the old reverse. You could seek them out and give them an anonymous gift. Something expensive but tacky.Like a lifetime supply of Tootsie Rolls. They'll know who it came from and hate you even more. Mmmm. I can taste them now.

Yes, there is nothing sweeter than sticking it to those who stuck it to you. For once you would be the stickor rather than the stickee. So good luck to me. And yes, good luck to you. If I don't win I hope you do. Just remember who gave you all this good money advice.

BTW:If I do win I probably won't be doing this blog for a while. I'll be too busy with my real estate broker out in the Hampton's looking for a house right between Billy Joel and Jerry Seinfeld. "Hey Billy. Come on over tonight. Bring Jerry.We''ll watch the game on my 200" flat screen drive in movie theatre. Bring cake.

Officially Monday.

Cheap cruise. A ride on the
Circle Line to the Statue of
Liberty, $15. A ride on the
Staten Island Ferry, free. A
spectacular Saturday in NYC.
Priceless.

Some days feel like the days they are. Huh?, you say. You know what I mean. Sometimes you know it's a Friday without ever looking at the calendar. In fact if you never owned a calendar or or listened to the radio or TV you would know it's a Friday. There is just something in the air. Every day has a "feeling". Tuesday's are a day filled with compromise. You have resigned yourself to the fact that the week has only just started and that you had better make the best of it. Wednesday has the feeling of submission. They can do whatever they want to do to you. You've had it with the whole lot of them. Thursday is a day filled with hope. Hope that you will actually make it to the weekend. Hope that the things you screwed up at the beginning of the week somehow went unnoticed by your boss. Hope that maybe that guy (or gal) you met at that bar last Friday might still give you a call. I don't know why but everyone waits until Thursday to make weekend plans. I think we all secretly want to be rejected. Which brings us back to Friday's. Friday is a "I just don't give a shit because it's Friday" kind of day. Do to me what you will. I don't care. In fact I care so little I'm leaving early.Go do me something*. Saturday and Sunday are self explanatory. Only Sunday evening is tainted when the realisation that you are but a few hours away from having to do it all over again sets in. For me this goes back to when I went to PS 131 in Queens and I would put off doing my homework until 7 pm on Sunday. I thrive on deadlines.

So how do we know it's officially Monday? I feel it in the bones. I mean I literally feel it in my bones my joints my knees my neck and every other place in my body that bends, twists, flexes or beats. I ache all over and it's not from old age. It's from Monday. Monday, when my body pays me back for enjoying the weekend. Monday, when I realise that I have waisted another two days of my life. In fact the only good thing about Mondays lately is that I don't have to go someplace and work. This is two edge sword. It' nice not to work. It's not nice having little or no income. But hey, life is a trade off isn't it?

This past weekend was worth the pain I feel today. Saturday was the prettiest day I've seen since October. It was warm and cool at the same time. You had to wear a jacket but you could wear it open. You could feel your fingers again. The sky was remarkably clear and brilliantly blue. It was a magic day for taking pictures and riding the ferry. Which I did. The best free thing you can do in NYC gets better on days like Saturday. If you are a tourist and are in NYC for only a short time and you just have to see the Statue of Liberty up close and don't want to spend a couple (yes, a couple) of hours waiting on line at the Circle Line pier in Battery park ,you can hop on the ferry for free and get within a hundred yards or so. It's close enough that you can tell your friends you've been there. And you can take a picture to prove it. I did.

*The phrase "go do me something" may be unfamiliar to some of you. I believe it may be indigenous to the New York area and specifically to Jews and Italians. It may be translated as " so what are you going to do about it?" or "so what".

On a rainy day...just some photos...

It's a rainy Friday here in the big taco and I have nothing to do and nowhere to go. Well, I should really do some food shopping but I don't feel like driving around in the rain. I'm sure I'll find something in the house to eat. Oh!, I know. I have some leftover chili I made last night. I'll just heat it up and roll a low carb tortilla around it. Just like a fast food restaurant without the rats.

I should really do some laundry but I like to wait until I have a full load. Since I've been out of work I don't have as much washing to do. I've been wearing the same shirt for three days only the underwear and socks get changed. Too much info for ya, huh? OK I understand but I bet you've done the same thing when you had a few days off or were on vacation.

So as not to leave big ugly blank blog spaces I have decided to post some recent photos. Sorry for the watermark but there are photo pirates (not you of course) out there that like to use your pictures for god knows what purpose and not give you credit or cash.

For some reason, know only to blogspot, some of the photos do not "enlarge" there is nothing I can do about it. It's some technical glitch in blogspots program. If you really got to have a bigger picture e-mail me.

The railroad photos were taken at the Essex Steam Train in Essex Ct. They also advertise a steamboat but I was unable to find it. Since the town of Essex is not on the water I guess the idea is to take the train to the boat. I'll come back in the spring when they reopen.

The other pix are self explanatory.

Enjoy, and have a nice weekend.

BTW: The folks at Shutterstock, the place I post some of my fotos for sale, told me they don't want "artsy" type pics. They prefer the more generic white bread and mayo kind of photographs. So I decided to send them my best WB and Mayo effort.

Wall Street or the Connecticut woods....

This week I found two ways to loose money. One way took place in the canyons of Wall Street the other on an Indian reservation in Connecticut. Both involved gambling. Both took my money quickly and dispassionately. The market "correction" which took place Tuesday dipped into my pocket and relieved me of a few hundred bucks. The Indians in Uncasville did it with a machine that sucked up twenty's like a cheap whore at a frat party. The only difference was that in the casino I knew how I lost it and I actually had control over how much I lost. The Wall Street folks don't give you that choice. In less that three hours I had lost over five hundred dollars. Not a great deal of money I know, but right now every little bit counts. The worst part was that I could see it slipping away and could do nothing about it. Most of my meager wealth is invested in mutual funds. Unlike individual stocks these funds cannot be traded (bought or sold) by just calling your broker and placing an order. It could take up to forty eight hours to buy , sell or transfer a mutual fund. We have to rely on the managers of these funds to make wise investment choices for us. Hopefully the people at my mutual fund knew what they were doing. I guess I could have lost more. On the other hand the people at the Mohegan Sun Casino don't have any control over your money. They make no claims as to return on investment. Past performance is no indication as to how you will do now. How true this is. If you remember I won $120 in AC a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday I gave most of it back. My only consolation is that I gave it back to a different

casino. Take that Harrah's. But what the heck. It was a nice day and I had a little fun and I got out of the house. My only problem with the Connecticut casinos is the restaurants. They're expensive. Unlike Atlantic City where you can go outside and find a restaurant to eat, in Connecticut you are pretty much limited to eating on premises. Lunch cost me $23 yesterday. The food was only OK ( I think the food tastes better when you win) and they did not offer refills on the very expensive ($2.25) diet Coke I ordered. Next time I'll eat before I go.

The day was not a total loss. On the way back I stopped of in the town of Essex to visit the Essex Steam Train. This place is part museum and part working railroad. It's off season now so there was no activity. But there were some nice old locomotives and Pullman cars to take photos of. I'll have to come back in the spring. These old trains must look great with smoke and steam billowing out of them.

Hey, do I take great photos or do I take great photos?

BTW: I had two hits on my Shutterst0ck account this week.

Apparently someone else likes my stuff. The only problem with

submitting things to a stock photo house is that they do not

identify who the buyer is. Oh well. My name is on the photos. I

guess they could contact me directly if they wanted to.