The Other Side of New York

City Island Yacht Club

OSoNY — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:07:35 +0000

In the heart of New York there is a yacht club where my father races and keeps his boat. Recently he won the City Island Cup at 70 years of age!

There are all kinds of races for men and women alike offered by the club and included on the website are sailing instructions for these races as well as race results.

The club also hosts regattas and cruises and the clubhouse has a pretty decent pub and restaurant that is open during the sailing season.

If sailing in the city is your idea of fun, this yacht club is a good place to drop anchor! Just ask my father.

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I am an ODP Editor

OSoNY — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:00:35 +0000

If you are submitting your blogs or sites to Open Directory Project I am an editor for all cities in New York beginning with the letter S.

ODP as it is called or DMoz, is a very important directory to get listed in as it is used by many of the major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo.

So if you begin with S, submit away and I will be reviewing it!

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Tools of the Trade

OSoNY — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:13:05 +0000

Because we are on a farm and in a very rural area with lots of forests, the tools we have and use will either make us or break us. We gather our own wood and split it ourselves. The better the tool, the easier the job. We use this wood to heat our home. Thankfully this relieves us of a huge oil bill. We use some Black and Decker tools and their alligator chainsaw is a monster. We like their garden tools and I love my hedge trimmer. I also have a lithium ion battery set that has a killer LED flashlight, a saw and a screwdriver. The battery pack powers each of these tools. We’ve gone the economy route before, and found it doesn’t pay in the long run. You definitely get what you pay for.

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Foxes Shriek

OSoNY — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:59:53 +0000

This time of year is usually pretty busy in the red fox world. Where we live we often see them. Hearing them is a whole different ball of wax however. It is the scariest most blood curdling, spine chilling sound you are ever most likely to hear in the real world. You get used to it though, but let me tell you, the first time we heard it, and didn’t know what it was, we were a little frightened. And of course it was at night time! If you’ve never heard the haunting sound they make check it out here.

This is a photo I took of a nearby den showing the cubs playing around and scratching. It was far enough back from the roadside that I wasn’t able to get a great shot but you get the idea. The hole is in the sandy patch.

Frequently we will hear them shriek and then see one run across the front lawn! The cubs sound even worse. With all our sheep we have never had a problem with the foxes. Even the lambs haven’t been bothered. The dog likes to chase them though!

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Scuba in New York

OSoNY — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:05:22 +0000

Yes you can go Scuba diving in New York! Lake George has many divers and even a dive shop. There are plenty of lakes for diving as well as the Long Island Sound where my husband got his certification. Personally I prefer the warmer waters of Florida. When I was doing a lot of diving I whet my appetite by looking at diving magazines. In the UK they have a pretty cool diving magazine called Sport Diver. Diving is diving and I don’t care where the magazine comes from as long as they have pretty pictures and useful diving advice.

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Tomato Growing Woes

OSoNY — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:59:38 +0000

As is typical of Central New York weather we’ve had a week of 70 degree temperatures when it should be warmer. We ‘ve also had lots of rain. My garden has fared the best ever for cucumbers and lettuce, but not so much for tomatoes. Is anyone else from this area having this problem? It’s like the bottoms of the plants are dying off and they are still spindly and lacking in fruit. Here I am all ready to can tomatoes and I have 18 plants, but I am still wondering if I will have more than a few tomatoes!

Below you can see a load of cucumber leaves and they all have flowers. behind those are the prolific heirloom black zucchini plants.

Check out my heirloom cabbage, started from seed!

And we had our first fresh local corn last night with dinner.

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Tin Mapping

OSoNY — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:21:09 +0000

We spent 10 days up at the cabin in Black Lake and saw this helicopter flying around every week day. I was totally intrigued and figured it was collecting something but what? The net it was dragging had holes big enough to fit a football. Now and again the net would be tilted upward about 20 degrees. The chopper was flying very low at times and at other time higher up. I asked around and found out that the “net” was a magnet and that they were mapping tin deposits. Some time ago, this area was mined for lead, and lead and tin apparently are found together frequently. Is tin mining in the future here? I’m not sure how I feel about that. Does anybody have any information on this?

It was almost frightening at times, how low this guy flew and made me think about whether my term life insurance was paid up!

Mining doesn’t generally leave an attractive landscape behind and the beauty up here knows no bounds, so naturally I am a little nervous about what all this portends.

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Bucket of Fish

OSoNY — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:23:50 +0000

A bucket of fish caught by my boys this week gave me an idea for a Halloween costume. Why not dress up as a bucket of fish? I think it would be unique. My kids are now too old to go trick-or-treating but every once in a while we get invited to a costume party. Maybe some Halloween invitations will come in the mail this year.

The fish are a few large Blugills and two Crappie, my favorite fish to eat.

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Only in New York?

OSoNY — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:16:39 +0000

When you think of New York, do you think about guests like this by your back deck?

We were greeted with this cute wild turkey family, waddling across the back lawn. I took these photos from inside the house. Too bad the screen door wasn’t pushed all the way over to the other side. It looks like two hens and their chicks. I was actually pretty pleased with how they came out considering they were taken through the glass door.

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EBillme Can Help

OSoNY — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:17:19 +0000

If you don’t have a credit card but need to make an online purchase and you don’t even have a Paypal account, what can you do? Sign up for EBillme and take the hassle out of online purchase payment. Or if you don’t feel like divulging your credt card number and want to pay cash, this is a way to keep things private. I ordered some in-ear canal headphones for my Creative Media Player and a quick battery charger from Tiger Direct, and used EBillme to pay for the purchase. All I had to do was pick the items I wanted to purchase. Then where you select payment options you simply pick EBillme and get invoiced. Then you go to your bank account and your bill pay page and add EBillme as a payee and pay the bill. Of course once the EBillme account is setup in your online bank bill pay system you just pay for the purchase with a click of the mouse. No fuss no muss!

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