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I decided to visit friends in upstate New York in Ostego county which is near Coopers Town New York home of the baseball hall of fame and museum and all that good baseball stuff. But we don't go there much and we stay in our friends country home which is small farm house and a couple of barns. I will post some pictures later, my camera and my new asus eee don't seem to get along very well so I am working on my friends mac. I am trying out my new fuji finepix s700 which I  bought awhile ago but haven't used much and am trying to learn how to use it properly. I have gotten some shots I like and am feeling much more comfortable with it. We went out to view some fireworks and I got a couple of interesting shots out of that and out of an outdoor fire we had where we made smores. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a marshmallow cooked over the flame of the fire, squished between two graham crackers with a piece of chocolate with it. The hot marshmallow melts the chocolate and the crackers hold the whole thing together.

I am not really much of a country person, I like all the birds singing and the trees and the relative quiet from the city and everything is very pretty. I don't like the sulfur smelling water and all the bugs and flies that are all over the place inside and out. So roughing it is not my cup of tea. I think roughing it should be when you go down to a one or two star hotel. Not that I hang out at those places much either. But we missed our friends and they missed us so it was time to do some driving get out of the city and head into the wild upstate. Of course they also have such things as Walmart up here so there was a bit of shopping spree with much better prices and all that and I was able to find a nice sago palm for my desk at work. As I sit inside a converted storeroom with harsh fluorescent and lousy ventilation finding a nice plant was very important to me. I am on the lookout for a nice peace lily which is supposed to be very good for improving the air quality, and that is one of my goals. A nice plant to improve my emotional outlook inside the office and also one that helps my physical environment.

Writing about my cousin really helped clear my head and I am coming to some peace about my work situation so I think this trip was actually just what I needed, country life or not. And it was a good deed for me to agree and make this happen. It is hurting our vacation fund a bit more than I would have liked, especially with the gas pricing but hey you only live once.

ta ta for now

So we adopted another cat "Stretch" and have been slowly introducing him to the household. Well the girls Stella our youngest and Sadie our first adoptee who is 8 are not happy. Sadie handles things a bit better, she whacks and hisses but Stella is beside herself and is reacting as if Stretch is killing her even when he is just approaching her. Now Stretch has been very good making approaches and then patiently backing off but it is wearing thin and Stella is just not adapting yet and is still acting as if he is the worst thing that has ever entered the house. So today he lost patience and whacked her and chased her around and poor Stella pooped on the floor and I had to put her in the bathroom to calm down. He isn't being mean or even trying to hurt her, I watched and his ears were not back and he didn't seem to have claws out, but I think he has had enough. And all this drama is not going over well with the alpha lady of the house who finds it very unerving. So I don't know what to do but I am going to ask our cat specialist lady what to try next.

So far I have bought 3 baby gates for the apartment which Stretch still manages to get through and we have started to bring him into the same room with the girls. Right now Stretch and Sadie are the first to start working things out, which means Sadie hissing at him, Stretch chasing her and then more hissing then some judicious hiding by Sadie. But she is more dominant and I think will work things out a little faster. Stella on the other hand is being a total drama queen with much hissing so much that she starts to drool and now in the chase have broken at least one item. But we are going to make this work, by hook or by crook. It just takes more time, or at least that is what I keep telling myself. I joined the bulletin boards of the ASPCA which is the primary animal rescue/protection group here in the US and tried to get some help but their discussion boards are proving not to be much help. My friend has kept us on the same track and I guess again it is just patience and time. At least the girls are getting along better.

Today is my 55Th birthday so I am celebrating with some friends over to our place for dinner and possibly a movie if we can do that. We might go see Hellboy II which we saw the first one and enjoyed a lot. My brother saw Batman and said it was all that the hype made it out to be, so I do want to see that. Generally I am not a big blockbuster person except for certain movies, like the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and for some reason I really liked the old Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. There are a lot of movies I haven't seen due to laziness which some day I will get around to viewing. I like movies with a story, action is OK sometimes but I don't think special effects make a production they just add to it, so if the story sucks I don't care how much technology you put into it, it will still suck.

I find as I get older I seem to becoming a bit of a crank, as you can see by some of the things I say about where NYC is headed culturally and socially. Diversity is not just a "nice" idea it makes for such a more interesting and enjoyable place to be, the white-bread quality of New York is just boring. And yes, young well off couples with kids have their place, they just shouldn't be the totality of the milieu around us.

ta ta for now

So death has reared its finality in my life again, a manager that I have worked for off and on for a number of years who was about 5 years younger than me had a motorcycle accident due to a seizure and has passed away. I didn't really think that he was a very good manager for a number of reasons but not because I didn't like him, I and many others liked him allot. He was a very charming and nice guy. I am truly saddened by his passing. But I am not going to get all morose or go back to that place I was before, and part of what has inspired me today has been a lecture by a young professor at Carnegie Mellon who gave a series of what are called the "last lecture" and on you-tube is his actual last lecture of his life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo  This man has a number of interesting and useful points to make in his presentation and his personal balance in doing this is extremely inspiring and impressive. I would recommend it for watching by anyone who passes through this blog.

So while life and death hang in the balance throughout our lives and the universe so to speak, more mundane issues weigh heavy on my mind. Mostly it is the issues with a cat war zone that I currently have in my house. So now two of the cats the "girls" are getting a herbal kitty trank so they will not be so stressed. It has been hard and it looks like the end of the tunnel will be far down the road but I love all my cats so we persevere.

Oh and I am reading an interesting book on the neuropsychology of listening to music by a former rock musician turned scientist. I have always wondered how we perceive "beauty" and how does music reach us in such a primal way. As the author ponders, we use music to shape our perceptions in advertising, movies, and how we feel when shopping, ride elevators and pass through our lives. The question of music and art and our brains has always piqued my interest. What goes beyond the culturally shaped values and what is at bottom the firing of neurons.

ta ta for now