An Update on Boomer and Her Health

Bradley Farless4 Comments

I wanted to write this update to let you guys know what’s going on with Boomer, but also to say thank you for your support.  I was surprised at how quickly the donations for Boomer’s surgery rolled in, and then I was even more surprised when the donations exceeded the requested amount.  The amount requested was 75 dollars but a total of 100 dollars has been donated for Boomer.  To those of you that sent in donations, thanks!  They’ll make a big difference in Boomer’s life.

My information about how Boomer’s doing now is primarily drawn from a recent post on the owner’s blog.  If you read that post, you probably won’t see anything new here.  If you didn’t read that post, you should, because in addition to this information, she told some stories about some very interesting people she met while she was out with Boomer.  Fair warning though, one of the pictures of Boomer in that post look like something from a nightmare, so don’t look too closely if you expect to eat in the next hour or so.

The night before taking Boomer to the vet, the owner found out from a friend that she could go to the PSPCA (Philippine Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) and have Boomer’s surgery done for a lower price.  She decided that was the best course of action and commuted for four hours to get there.  The PSPCA is in sort of a seedy part of Manila that’s a long way from where she lives, but despite the travel, the costs would still be lower than what the local vet was asking.  I asked her about it, and she said she wanted to make sure that as much of the donated money was used for Boomer’s healthcare as possible.  She didn’t want to waste any of it.

Upon arriving and having Boomer examined, the PSPCA vet disagreed with the first vet’s recommendation.  The vet at the PSPCA said that Boomer was too young for the surgery yet, and that removing her eyes would cause her to bleed out and die, because the vessels would be too small to properly stitch up.  He recommended bringing her back in a month to see if her eyes could be removed then.

Photo from owner’s blog of Boomer on the table at the PSPCA after getting an antibiotic shot.

In the meantime, the vet gave Boomer an injection of antibiotics and prescribed an antibiotic eye drop to try to control the infection until they’re able to remove the eyes.

So, for now, Boomer’s health is still precarious.  She could die before she’s able to have her eyes surgically removed.  Just to be sure, the owner is looking for a third opinion.  She says the PSPCA vet was young, and perhaps inexperienced.

Let’s all just keep our fingers crossed for now.  I’ll provide more updates as I see or get them.

Help Save A Kitten’s Life (Help Needed Now)

Bradley Farless18 Comments

Someone I know who reads my blog from the Philippines posted an entry on her blog yesterday that I found really disturbing and upsetting.  I felt the need to share the story here, to see if I can help her out.

You see, this is a problem involving a very young cat that’s in need of some serious help.  I’m sure most people that have read this blog more than once know that I have a soft spot for cats.  I have two myself, and one more that I passed along to my mom, to complete her household with warm furry happiness.

Boomer, still active and playful.

The kitten’s name is Boomer.  She was named after the character Grace Park plays in the popular sci-fi show, Battlestar Galactica.  According to the owner, this cat was abandoned and, even though it seemed sickly, she took it in to try to improve and hopefully save its life.  Shortly after she took it in, she noticed that the kitten had an eye infection.  After pulling together the money required for a visit to the vet, she took the kitten to town.

This is where things get aggravating.  The vet she took the kitten to did an examination and then gave an eye drop prescription.  The owner applied the eye drops as prescribed, but instead of improving, the kitten got worse, so she again raised funds and took the kitten to another vet.  The second vet looked at the prescription and told her that it was completely improper for those eye drops to be used.  They contained a steroid that, instead of making the kittens eyes better, made them horribly worse.

Boomer, in a bag on her way back to the vet. Heartbreaking.

The infection had perforated the kittens eyes, leaving her blind and in constant pain as her eyes, quite literally, are rotting in her head.  The owner was told that in order to save the kitten, a very delicate surgery was required to remove her eyes, before the infection spread any further.  Yes, because of the first vet’s improper prescription, this kitten, Boomer, is now blinded for life.

If this had happened in the US, the first vet would be bending over backwards to do everything he could to avoid lawsuits and attention from animal welfare organizations.  Unfortunately, this happened in the Philippines, where pleas to CARA and other animal welfare groups or more often ignored than not.  I have first hand experience with that.  I reported cases of animal cruelty to them when I lived there and never even received a response.

So, the only thing to do is to raise the funding for the required surgery, which will, hopefully, save the kitten’s life.  She’ll never see again, due to the negligence of a so-called veterinarian, but even blind, she could potentially live a long and happy life.  I’ve seen books about blind cats that are very happy and content with their lives, like Homer, from Homer’s Odyssey (@HomerBlindCat on Twitter).

Every cat deserves a chance, especially when that cat was maimed by a human.

The total funds required for this kitten to receive the surgery she needs is 5500 PHP (approximately 125 US Dollars).  Between myself and the owner, 2,200 PHP (about 50 US Dollars) has been covered, so I’m hoping that I can bring this to people’s attention, people who are willing to pitch in and get this cat the surgery it needs to live.

That’s 75 US Dollars folks.  I’d contribute the rest myself, but I have to pay for textbooks at the end of the month.  If you have a few bucks to spare, even if it’s just 5 dollars, I’ve added a PayPal donation widget to simplify the matter for you.

https://giving.paypallabs.com/flash/badge.swf

Any donations made through this widget will go directly to the owner’s PayPal account, not mine.  She can be contacted through her Twitter account, @RunningTindera.  I’ll be adding this widget to my sidebar, and instructing the owner on how to add it to her sidebar as well.  The widget doesn’t seem to work in the sidebar on Blogger, so she added it to her original post instead.

If you want to read the original post (by the owner) about Boomer, please click Here.  It’s a bit of a sad read, though, and the pictures or completely heartbreaking, just so you know.  The images in this post are borrowed from her post.

If you can’t contribute, but know others who might, please share this story.

Astor Place Kmart Managers Are Incompetent

Bradley Farless8 Comments

Kmart, Astor Place

Today I went over to visit my grandmother’s place.  When we left, my mother and I stopped in Kmart on Astor Place to do a little shopping.

After wandering around the store a bit, we got in line to check out leave.  The line we got in was at a standstill.  The person at the register apparently needed a manager to confirm some action, likely a sale price that hadn’t been entered into the system.  When the manager finally showed up, instead of walking down the empty check-out line next to us, where she could access the register, she tapped my shoulder and pushed past me, then pushed through all of the other customers in line.  When she got to the end of the check-out counter, she went around to the other side to access the register.  Uh… hello!?  Why did you push us all out of the way and squeeze past us, and take a longer route, when you could have gone around the other side where there were no people to start with?

That’s not all.

When my mother finally got up to the register, the register locked up and had to be rebooted after scanning half of her purchase.  We had to wait for the register to start up again.  That took about 10 minutes, but that didn’t really matter much because we had to wait for a manager anyway.  My mother had picked up two sale items, one of which wasn’t showing the sale price when scanned.  Changing that price would require a manager confirmation and, for some reason, none of the managers were bothering to carry around their walkie-talkies, so finding a manager was a long, manual process.  The cashiers had to walk around until they found one.

When the register finally came up, the cashier scanned the item that wasn’t showing the sale price and then entered the price override.  All it needed was for the manager to confirm it.  When a manager finally showed up, she looked at the screen, which clearly showed the item with the adjusted price entered, waiting for the manager’s confirmation.  Instead of just confirming the action, she canceled it and rang up the item again, meaning the item was rung up twice.  When we pointed out what she had done she seemed confused, but when she finally figured out that there was only one item sitting in front of her, she voided one of the charges she had added, then had to redo the price change and add the manager confirmation.

That’s still not all.

Next, my mother handed over an item that was regular price, one of the things we’d rung up before the register had crashed.  She told the manager the item wasn’t on sale, and to just ring it up.  The manager scanned it, then scanned it again.  So, of course, we asked her why she rang it up twice.  She said she was price checking it, but in a tone that made me feel like she wanted us to know that we shouldn’t be questioning what she does.  Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, McFly. Think!  My mom just told her that it wasn’t on sale and to just ring it up.  I told the manager she needed to do her job correctly and stop wasting our time and confusing us.

She then got belligerent and told me, “What do you think I’m doing standing here?  I’m doing my job.”

So I told her, “No, what you’re doing is making a mess of things.  You show up and ring up that first thing again, even though you were just supposed to add your confirmation.  Now you’re doing price checks when we told you to just ring this thing up, and that it’s not on sale, confusing us and making us think you’re double ringing our purchase again.  Just do what we’re telling you to do.  Do your job.”

She then tried to argue with me about why she had to do the price check, but only made herself look more like an ass, because what she was really saying is that she thinks we’re stupid, and she knows better than us, when she was obviously making mistakes and doing something unnecessary.

In the meantime, the poor guy running the register was getting so agitated that he started making mistakes ringing up the rest of the stuff and instead of encouraging him, she started chewing him out in front of us, which only added to his discomfort.  It probably didn’t help that she kept sticking her hands in the way, pushing buttons, and not just letting him do his job.  She was only supposed to be there to add a confirmation.  I wanted to tell the manager to fuck off so the poor guy could calm down and get his head right again, but I just let it go at that point.

Total time at the register?  About 45 minutes.

I didn’t much mind when she made the first mistake, because everyone makes a mistake, but when she started acting stupid again, it just pushed a button.  I know what good customer service is, having recently spent some time doing it, and paying attention to your customer is a big part of that.  She obviously didn’t care what we had to say when she ignored us and did that price check.  I think that was the most annoying part of it all.  She ignored us completely and just did whatever the hell she wanted to do, confusing us and further screwing up our shopping experience in the process.

Of course, this is Kmart we’re talking about here, but still, I expect more than that from a place where I’m spending money.

(Photo by Joe Architect on Flickr)

NYC Sanitation Department, Killing Babies Is The Wrong Way To Protest Budget Cuts

Bradley Farless3 Comments

The news this morning made me look at the video I posted previously in a whole new light.

Was this done intentionally, as part of the plan to botch the cleanup as a protest?

A lot of people were saying that the cleanup after this recent blizzard was botched.  It was slow, ineffective, and lots of people suffered for it, and now we know why:

Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.

“They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important,” said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens)…

Read more at: NYPost

Their labor issues are more important than what?  The lives and safety of New Yorkers?  I read quite a few stories where people were seriously injured, or where deaths occurred because emergency services couldn’t reach people in need.  One that stands out in my mind was a woman who gave birth in the lobby of a building.  Her baby died before EMS could reach her.

Her baby died to protest budget cuts.  Good job, sanitation department.  You’re real fucking heroes today.  Someone should be made liable to criminal charges for the deaths caused by the unplowed roads, since they’re direct results of a plan to botch the cleanup.

Trash piling up after the December 26th blizzard in New York City.

Want to hear another problem this is causing?  Well, since the sanitation department was intentionally slow with cleaning up the snow, they took longer to get back around to their main purpose: picking up the trash.  Now, I don’t imagine we’re going to see any outbreaks of diseases just because the trash wasn’t picked up for a day, but the trash is really piling up, and it’s everywhere.  Additionally, with the sanitation workers still dicking around with the snow, or what’s left of it now, the regular cleanup of streets and the city trash cans on the corners is behind as well.  It’s disgusting.  Most of 14th street looks like one big garbage can.

Trash piling up on 14th street after the December 26th blizzard in New York City.

This whole problem seems indicative of a massive lack of common sense to me.  Whoever planned to have this cleanup botched should at the least lose their job.  Seriously.  And whoever took part should receive demotions and pay cuts, exactly what they were protesting against.  I’m all for protesting, but not when it endangers peoples’ lives.

You Might Have To Update Your Feed Subscription For This Blog. Here’s Why.

Bradley Farless2 Comments

I happened to look at my Adsense and I realized that it was still accumulating money, but in Singapore Dollars. That’s not going to work out too well for me since I’m no longer in Singapore, so I decided to change the address and country. Unfortunately, due to laws in Singapore and some other Asian countries, it’s not possible to change the country. Here’s the email reply I got from Google when I tried to request a country change on my Adsense account:

Hello,

We have received your request to update the country of your AdSense
account.

For tax and security reasons, we are unable to change the country or
territory field of an existing payment address. Therefore, if you would
like to change your country/territory field, you’ll need to close your
current AdSense account and then submit a new application with your
updated mailing address.

Prior to closing your account, please be aware that the account settings
and reports associated with your original account cannot be transferred to
your new account. This means that you’ll need to update your webpages with
the ad code generated by your new account and duplicate any existing
channel settings.

Additionally, you must also be able to receive a Personal Identification
Number (PIN) via standard mail at the new address that you submit.
To close your existing AdSense account, please visit our Help Center at
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?contact=request_cancellation
. Once you receive confirmation on your closed account, please submit a
new application at http://www.google.com/adsense/g-app-single-1 , making
sure to use an email address other than the one associated with your
closed account.

We’ll review your application and provide you with a response within 2-7
days.

We appreciate your patience and cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

And here’s an excerpt of the Google FAQ page that covers this subject:

However, there are two situations in which you won’t be able to change your country directly within your account:

  • The reporting currency in your account isn’t available as a reporting currency in your new country. View a list of countries and their reporting currencies.
  • You’re located in or changing your country to one of the following:
    China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, or Singapore

Due to system and legal constraints, we are unable to change your country if you’re located in or need to change to an address in one of these countries.

In either of these cases, we’ll work with you to close your existing account and open a new account using your desired address. Please contact us to begin this process.

Thanks guys.  That’s all very helpful, but doesn’t change the fact that it turns something that should be simple into a complicated mess.

As you can see, I have no choice but to create a new Adsense account, using a US address, which is what I should have done to start with.  Of course, I had no idea when I started using Adsense how long I’d be in Singapore.  This whole thing with bouncing from country to country is a  real pain.  My Google Apps account is listed as being a Singapore account as well, and I can’t find any way to change that either, even though I’ll likely never see Singapore again.

Part of updating my Adsense is updating Adsense for feeds.  Since I had to create a new Adsense account under a new Google account, I also have to create a new Feed in Feedburner so I can have the Google Adsense show up in there under the right account.  That means I’ll have to cancel the old feed and start the new one up.

So, long story short, when you read this post in your RSS feed reader, please click through.  The following post will have the updated feed address included in the body.

Thanks for your patience while I get my digital life aligned with my physical location.

Going Back To School After Almost 12 Years

Bradley Farless4 Comments

Townsend Harris Hall, City College of New York campus.

My educational record is a little crazy, I suppose.  I took classes part time from both Park University and UMUC while I was in the Army.  Between those classes, the CLEP tests I took, and the college credit value of my military training, I have about 50 or 51 credit hours.  I also have a 3.7 GPA.

I recently heard about the Post 9/11 GI Bill, which is a VA benefit that will allow me to go to school full time, have the tuition and books paid for, and even receive a living allowance (BAH (ignore the warning, the site is legit) at the rate of E-5 with dependents).  I realized that’s a pretty good deal, getting paid to go to school, and I wanted to jump on it as soon as possible.  It’s time to finish my degree!

So, what to do?  Well, I applied for CUNY to start with.  I figure I’ll start out with them and then perhaps at some point in the future I’ll move to another school.  I don’t know.  I suppose it depends on how I like the place.  CUNY is the City University of New York, and is a university that encompasses a large number of colleges scattered around the greater New York City area.

CUNY is also a public college.  It’s not a private school.  I didn’t think I’d have any bumps in the road getting admitted.  So far, though, it’s been nothing but a pain in the ass.  First off, I applied for admission past the deadline.  I wasn’t even back in the US when the deadline passed, actually.  So, my initial application for Hunter College was rejected.  Hunter was already filled and closed to new registrations.  So, I chose CCNY, City College of New York, from the list of schools in the CUNY system that still had openings.  I went to the school and did a direct admission.

This is where things got complicated.  I understood that the other school was full, but when I yet again received a rejection letter from CCNY, stating this time that it was based on my “academic record”, I was more than a little agitated.  Besides the fact that I was running out of time for enrolling, my academic record was more than good enough.  I thought about it, but I just couldn’t figure out what the problem could be.  The only thing I could guess at was that it had something to do with my CLEP tests.  That couldn’t be right though, because CCNY accepted up to 90 credit hours for transfer students.

I decided to go up to the school to figure out what the problem was.  When I got there, I described the issue to the girl at the counter and she went and brought out the person that had sent me the rejection email to better explain what the problem was.  Turns out, it has nothing to do with my academics, per se, so much as the lack of evidence for my math ability.

Eleven years ago, I knew for sure that I was going to join the military and I knew for sure that I was just going to go ahead and do twenty years and retire from it.  I knew I should take the SAT and ACT, so I did, but I didn’t put any effort into them, so the results were crap.  I didn’t really care back then.  Now, something I did eleven years ago has come back around to bite me in the ass.

Since I haven’t taken any college level math courses, my SAT and ACT scores were crap, and I went to high school out of state, meaning they can’t check the regional math score, I was up shit creek in regards to admission as a matriculated CCNY student, 3.7 GPA or not.

The next thing was to discuss options.  There are almost always options and ways to work around things like this, and this situation was no exception.  The VA counselor knew just what to do, and less than 40 minutes later he had me out the door, still on track to start school at the end of January.

You see, I can start taking classes at CCNY as a non-matriculated student, take an online math course from another university, and then have the transcript sent to CCNY.  I could continue to take classes during the summer as a non-matriculated student, but officially enroll and declare a major in the Fall.

This was really the best solution, because it keeps me from wasting time doing a dead end job between now and Fall, it gets me started on my education, and it’ll still allow me to collect on my VA benefit payout.

Hopefully this is the last bump in the road.  I’ll be receiving an email in about two weeks, hopefully, letting me know what to do next in regards to starting classes at the end of the month.  I wish it were sooner, so I could register for classes, get text books and get a head start on studying.

Winter 2010 Blizzard in New York City: Part 3

Bradley Farless4 Comments

The roads are finally getting cleared.

Ok, this is the third day of snowy fun and activities and things are starting to die down.  Temperatures went back up above freezing today and the snow in the roads was already turning to slush.  That’s worse than snow, really, because you’re more likely to get wet from splashes when it’s really cold out.  Plus, it could refreeze at night into ice.

Slushy areas where people have to cross the street.

The slush also hides other things, things which could cause you to slip and/or hurt yourself.  You’d think more effort would be put into clearing pedestrian crossings.  This isn’t a back area.  This is at Union Square.

A bus stop that's blocked by snow.

A lot of the bus stops are still blocked by the snow that was plowed off the road.  In a few places paths had been shoveled through the snow by workers, but most still looked like this.  We had to stand in the road while waiting for the bus.  Passing vehicles greeted me with sprays of slush that splattered all over my pants and coat.  Damn!

Earlier today I heard a radio address by the mayor saying that they’re doing the best they can given the circumstances, but I get the impression that response efforts are disorganized and the workers weren’t trained very well.  Besides the snow plow driver that got her snow plow stuck in the snow yesterday, there were still 58 ambulances that were stuck around noon today.  Why were ambulances on roads that hadn’t been plowed yet?  Why weren’t they responding by foot from the nearest clear street?

Anyway, the roads aren’t the only thing being affected by the blizzard.  I know this was a coincidence, but our boiler broke the first day of the blizzard and because roads were impassable, it’s still being worked on now.  This whole no heat, no hot water thing is really annoying.  To cap things off, Time Warner Cable is having an outage that started early last night.  The problem is ongoing.  I suppose snow is hampering repair efforts.

I am no longer interested in the joy and beauty of snow.

Winter 2010 Blizzard in New York City: Part 2

Bradley Farless4 Comments

Yesterday’s blizzard started innocently enough.  When I left church it was already snowing.  It was really cool.  It was real snow, unlike the flurries from a few weeks ago.  The blizzard went all night long and then into the morning.  When I got up, we still didn’t have heat or hot water.  I don’t think that’s going to get fixed until tomorrow because the roads are pretty jammed up with snow.  I was thinking about going up to Central Park today for the photo opportunity.  I figured Central Park would look nice under a blanket of snow.  After listening to the news though, I decided against it.  The transit system isn’t working properly either and I didn’t feel like getting stranded or having to walk all the way back home from Central Park, if I could even get up there.  I thought about going to Union Square but that was still too far away given the conditions, so instead I just went to the grocery store.  There was more than enough to see on the way there.

13th Street and Avenue B covered in snow.

The side streets were still covered in snow.  Some of the sidewalks had been cleared of snow, but not everywhere.  In some places, the snow had been packed down into chunks of ice by people who had walked over it.

Partially cleared sidewalks.

Yes, that is a delivery guy trying to ride his bike on an icy sidewalk.  I wonder if he managed to bust his ass?

People working to clear the sidewalks.

People were working to clear the sidewalks in front of their businesses on 14th street.

Chunks of ice that were scraped from the sidewalk.

These chunks of ice were scraped from the sidewalk.  It had been packed down into chunks like that by people who had walked over it before it was shoveled clear.

An NYPD cruiser that got stuck in the snow.

This NYPD cruiser was abandoned, stuck in the snow.  It wasn’t the only vehicle like that.

A partially cleared road.

The city really looks empty today, with most people not bothering to leave their homes.  You could actually walk around in the streets because there wasn’t any traffic to speak of, and what traffic there was couldn’t move faster than a crawl, when they weren’t getting stuck.

An abandoned taxi, left parked at an odd angle on the road becuase it was stuck in the snow.

Like the police cruiser, this taxi was left abandoned in the street, parked at an odd angle because it was stuck.  The front of the car is pointed out into the street.

An M14A bus, stuck in the snow on Avenue A.

The bus behind it was also stuck in the snow. It looked like it had slid off the beaten path and gotten hung up.

Another M14A being towed out of the snow.

Just past the bus was another M14A bus that was also stuck in the snow along Avenue A.  It was being towed out by a tow truck.  A guy I talked to said that there were quite a few M14A buses stuck along the road.  He said he saw 3 more than these two.  I wonder why they even bothered to use Avenue A for buses when it obviously hadn’t been cleared well enough yet?

Speaking of clearing the roads, the buses weren’t the only ones having a hard time with the snow.  When I was just about back at our building, I saw a snow plow truck slide on the road and almost slam into a parked car.  I figured I’d record the truck for a while to see if it did anything else interesting, and it did!  The snow plow driver managed to get the snow plow stuck in the snow.  If that isn’t a fail, I don’t know what is.

If you look at the road behind it, it looks like the driver got ahead of herself, probably in a rush to get done and get home.  When I was walking away I turned back to look and people had come out of nearby buildings with shovels to help the driver get the truck unstuck.  I imagine she would have been really embarrassed to have to call a tow truck to pull her snow plow out of the snow.

Anyway, I’m back home now, getting ready to eat hot chicken soup and read a good book.  Tomorrow, the temperatures are supposed to come back up above freezing, so this snow should all start to melt.  By the weekend, it’s supposed to be up to 57 degrees again.  Really weird weather!

Winter 2010 Blizzard in New York City

Bradley Farless2 Comments

A few weeks ago, there was a bit of snowfall that had me really excited.  I hadn’t seen snow in years.  That sad little bit of snowfall was nothing compared to the white madness going on outside my window right now.  My mom was saying they haven’t seen snow like this is December for years here in New York City, so maybe this is my welcome home snow?

The beginning of the snowfall in Times Square, New York City, December 26th, 2010.

Yesterday, we started noticing the reports on the radio saying that there would be a lot of snow today.  We didn’t pay too much attention to it, because weather typically hits everywhere but in Lower Manhattan.  Still, I was hoping to see a little snow.  This morning when we got up, everything looked the same as it had for the past few days: grey, overcast and cold.  Right on schedule, though, the snow started coming down around noon.  I was surprised by how accurate the weather report was.  We came out of a church service at Times Square and the snow was coming down.  I got so excited, I Tweeted about it.

The big tree at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, December 2010.

We took the time to walk over to Rockefeller Plaza.  I’d been pretty busy working over the past month so I didn’t get a chance to see the tree.  I thought I’d missed it for the year, but it was still up and lit.  It was really impressive looking.

The Swarovski crystal star at Rockefeller Plaza, December 2010.

This is the Swarovski crystal star, a copy of which is on top of the big tree in the previous photo.

The snow falling outside the PATH train Newport / Pavonia station in New Jersey, 2010.

From there we took a trip out to Newport / Pavonia in New Jersey to visit the mall.  The snow actually didn’t seem as bad there as it did in the city, and that was more evident when we left New Jersey and went back to Manhattan.  We had a good stack of coupons we wanted to cash in on and needed a new tea pot.  We wound up picking up a good picture frame too.  We bought 80 bucks worth the goods, but had 53 dollars in savings, paying only 33 bucks.  Not bad huh?

Driving snowfall on 14th street on the night of December 26th, 2010.

Driving snowfall on 14th street on the night of December 26th, 2010.

By the time we made it back to 14th Street in Manhattan, the weather was turning from amusing and fun to near miserable.  The wind was picking up, the snow was being driven into our faces, and it was beginning to pile up on the roads.  When we were heading out in the morning, the buses already had chains on the back wheels, leaving marks on the roads.  It’s a good thing they took that precaution.  Definitely.

The corner of Avenue B and 13th Street, December 26th 2010.

The road we live off of isn’t a main thoroughfare and it hadn’t been plowed at all, so everything looked sort of pristine.  The small businesses hadn’t bothered to shovel the walks and you could hardly tell where the road ended and the sidewalk began.

Our cat, Marble, exploring snow on the balcony.

Even our balcony has a layer of snow on it, which our cat Marble decided was worth exploring.

Cooling down two cans of Coke in the snow and cold on the balcony.

That snow and the cold is also good for quickly cooling down drinks!

The weather is turning worse.  The wind is picking up.  The tree outside our balcony is swaying back and forth nonstop and the snow is flying in every direction out there, getting thicker as it gets later.  All I can say is I’m glad I’m home, relatively warm, and hadn’t planned to do any serious traveling today.  Over a thousand flights were canceled out of New York City today.  I feel bad for the people who will have to camp out in the airport.  I feel worse for the homeless who will have to find shelter tonight.

I’ll have a cup of hot chocolate in a bit and do a little reading.  It seems like a good night for it.  Tomorrow, I think I’ll go visit Central Park.  I bet it’ll be a good day for pictures, before the snow all melts later in the week.  This snow is supposed to come down until around noon tomorrow.  Hopefully I don’t get lost in any snow drifts!

A “Bah! Humbug!” Kind of Christmas

Bradley Farless8 Comments

A little tree and nativity scene on the dresser.

Ok, so maybe it’s not all that bad.  In fact, it could be a lot worse.  The fact remains, however, that I spent this Christmas apart from my wife, and that seriously put a dent in my holiday spirit.  This year just feels different.  The ‘spirit’ of the holiday seems to have gone around me without touching me.  The lights are up.  The tree is there.  The gifts are under it.  The food was good.  I had family around me.  And yet, without my wife it seems pale.  All I can do is look forward to next year, when we can do things right.  Next Christmas will be extra special.

Some of my photos came out fairly decent, so I thought I’d share a few.

Roast pork, black beans with rice and yuca.

Traditionally, my mom’s side of the family does Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, so last night we had a simple meal of roast pork, black beans with rice and yuca.  It looks simple, but trust me, it tasted great!  We also had cake and homemade oatmeal cookies.

Bacon, frying on a griddle.

Potatoes frying.

Fresh biscuits.

This morning we followed up the dinner with a really good, traditional breakfast of bacon, biscuits and gravy, fried potatoes and eggs.

Christmas isn’t completely without joy this year, but like I said, it’s just not the same.  My wife and I spent every day together for almost 2 and a half years until we had to temporarily part ways.  It really puts a damper on my holiday spirit, and instead of really enjoying this Christmas, it feels more like another step on a path to something more fulfilling, when my wife and I will be together again.  I’m looking forward to it.