TCC for 1/20/09

The Caretaker took no photos today, he spent most of the day in the Ghetto following NPR's coverage of the Presidential inauguration. It was interesting to go from night to day at noon today.

--The Caretaker

1/30/08


10/13/08


1/9/09

TCC for 1/2/09

1/1/09


1/1/09


1/2/09


1/2/09


1/2/09


1/2/09


1/2/09


1/2/09


1/2/09


1/2/09


Not a whole lot to report on for today, the very early stages of ice-in have begun here on the Lake. The Caretaker spent most all of the day trying to get things in order in the Ghetto and preparing for a trip over to the mainland tomorrow to get more fuel for heat. He could probably get by without the fuel but he would be a lot colder without restocking his fuel tanks and since he doesn't want to be colder than he has to during ice-in he is going to take advantage of the open water and get more fuel.

Since this day was rather uneventful (or at least nothing too eventful can be remembered by the Caretaker) here's another story from December 2008:

Part of the work being done in the kitchen has required the Caretaker to keep one of the larger Island boats in the water far longer into the colder months of the year than it would usually be. It was the weekend of December 20th, the wind was blowing from the Narrows at a pretty good clip, snow was falling but not enough to limit visibility, the throttle cable on the boat was frozen and the Caretaker had to pick somebody up to bring out to the Island to assess something that needed repair. The Lake conditions weren't exactly great for travel, but certainly not absolutely terrible, not yet at least. Luckily it was only the throttle cable itself that was frozen and not the shift column at the helm nor the throttle linkage on the engine. The Caretaker was able to start the boat and shift it into forward and reverse but the boat would only operate at idle speed. The person the Caretaker was picking up was going to be on the mainland South of the Island, getting there would have been fine for the most part but returning against the wind at idle speed wasn't an option, the wind and waves would have blown the boat backwards. The Caretaker was seriously considering using the tin boat, but being much smaller (12 to 14 feet long with a 15 horse power engine) there were potential risks with using it given the current Lake conditions, especially with the additional weight of another person. Eventually the Caretaker struck on the idea of disconnecting the throttle cable from the engine and operate the engine with the cowling removed so he could control the throttle at the engine. He brought his tools to the boat and set to work on seeing if his idea would work, sure enough it did. Now all he had to do was wait for the phone call from the person he was picking up to bring out to the Island, eventually the call came and off the Caretaker went.

He started up the boat and at idle speed maneuvered it into the direction he needed to go, once in the right direction he left the helm, went back to the engine and raised the engine speed, luckily the throttle held its position so the Caretaker could then return to the helm to steer the boat. He certainly didn't pilot the boat anywhere near as fast as it could go but enough to keep ahead of the waves which were getting to some three to four feet by this time. This method of boat operation was a bit like juggling requiring the Caretaker to be quick on his feet, not exactly ideal but it got the job done. The Caretaker was able to pick the person up, bring him out to the Island and then bring him back to the mainland not too worse for wear. Now that the Caretaker was finished with the boat he had to get it out of the water so it could go into storage until Spring.

To read about that see the TCC for 1/4/09. Oh, and for more blathering:

http://www.theblatheringidiot.blogspot.com/

--The Caretaker

TCC for 11/26/08

The Caretaker's Concern 11/26/08

Lake Temp. 45 F.
Ghetto temp. 42 F.
Island tmp. 37 F. Yesterday's L/H: 36.5/38 F. Due to a cold front the morning was warmer than the evening.

Current conditions: Wind from the South, 10 to 15 mph, dark cloud covered sky, ever so slight precipitation.

11/26/08


10/10/08


9/16/08


The day was mostly dark and gray with clouds, hazy, but certainly on the warm side, at least in comparison to last week's temperatures, occasional flurries. The Caretaker was on the mainland for a brief amount of time, he went up and over the mountains to Warrensburg, what was rain here was snow over there, it was nice to see Winter's blanket. Perhaps we'll have a white Thanksgiving here on the Lake, hopefully it will be a white Winter. Now wouldn't that be nice?

The Caretaker is both happy and sad, happy because he was able to have his first cup of proper tea this morning it seemed like an eternity; sad because he ended up dropping his favorite glass tea cup and it shattered on the floor. He was being lazy, trying to do too many things at once, and so sure enough the one thing to fall was his tea cup, thankfully it had no tea in it--that would have been a total travesty. Not to be deterred he grabbed a less favored tea cup and brewed his tea in that. For the morning it was his usual Organic Scottish Breakfast tea (which is the smoothest of all the "Breakfast" teas), during the day the Caretaker usually goes with Green Pekoe and with dinner he usually has Java Kertasarie. Since he had gone so very long without proper tea he had two cups of Java Kertasarie, for a long time Scottish Breakfast had been a big favorite of his, but he is thinking that Java K. may just displace the Scotts, which is quite smooth, but Java K. seems to be even smoother. Once he finishes up his stock of Scotts he will probably just get more Java K. Always grand to find the perfect tea, at least until one's tastes change. Luckily for the Caretaker he is a patron of the world's greatest teashop, Sensibiliteas, which is owned and operated by the world's greatest teasmith, Donnalynn. She carries over 400 teas, if you are ever in the Glens Falls, N.Y. area you should definitely make a point to stop in at her shop, if you are into tea it's like being a kid in a candy store. Even if you aren't too into tea you should still stop in, Donna's always got some good conversation. Never going to make it to Glens Falls? Check out her website, you can order on-line:

http://www.sensibiliteasonline.com/

If you don't feel like copying the link, there is a hyper-link to the left under "Favorite Links", it's at the bottom of the list. Tell Donna the Caretaker sent you. If teasmithing were an art-form, well, were nothing, it is an art-form, Donna is teasmith artist extraordinaire.

Whenever the Caretaker stops in he usually ends up having three cups of tea, originally the Caretaker wasn't expecting to be stopping in for a while because he is pretty well stocked with tea, but now that he needs to replace his favorite tea cup he really has no choice. YES!!! That means more Java Kertasarie. Hm, maybe the Caretaker should break more of his tea-wares, wait, that would be stupid, not that stupid ideas ever stopped him (oh boy is that list ever so long). However, the Caretaker is quite surprised that he has managed to not break his glass teapot for the stove. Should that ever happen though he does have his stainless steel teapot he uses for when he brings tea on the trail. Ah tea. The Caretaker will pass on a tea making secret that he practices, only boil enough water for the tea you are brewing at the time. Once boiled water that has begun to cool goes flat, thus using left over once boiled water for an additional cup or pot of tea flattens the taste of the tea, AND this method conserves energy, the lower the volume of water brought to boil the less energy consumed. Yes it is true that if you know you will be having an additional cup or pot quite soon after the first, the remaining heated water will require less energy to return to boil, but when it comes to preparing tea the best way possible, well, the environment takes a back seat--it's tea for Heaven's sakes.

--The Caretaker

TCC for 11/3/08

The Caretaker's Concern 11/3/08

Lake Temp. 51.5 F.
Ghetto temp. 49 F.
Island tmp. 49.75 F. Yesterday's L/H: 36/44 F.

Current conditions: Faint touch of wind if any at all, totally cloud covered night sky.
Totally cloud covered sky all day, strong wind from the South for most all of the day.

11/3/08
It's Election Day here in the States, add your color:

Go Vote! Go Vote! Go Vote!

9/27/08


7/30/08


The Caretaker's day did not exactly go as planned, not that he ever expects it to, but overall it was a good day. An unexpected turn of events was losing a cap to one of his back molars, luckily for him he happened to have some tooth adhesive on hand and so was able to glue it back on. One day, a while back he was in a pharmacy and came across this tooth glue product and figured that since he lived on an Island and dentists being a very scarce commodity on the island he figured it could possibly come in handy some day, and sure enough it did. The Caretaker is glad to know that his 7 dollars and change didn't go to waste. Unless of course the glue lets go at night while he is asleep and he ends up swallowing his cap, then he will have wasted his money because should that happen he would have been better off just living without the cap until he can get to a dentist. Oh well, guess he will find out the true adhesive powers of this tooth glue. Now the Caretaker is debating between finding a local dentist or going down to Jersey to use his own dentist to have the cap reattached--proper.

For those who are interested, the Caretaker finally got the narrative for yesterday's post up, it focuses almost entirely on his description of irisation.

Another unexpected turn of events for the day was the Caretaker's proofs from RedBubble came in the mail, this wasn't totally unexpected, but he hadn't much of an idea of what day it would be they'd be coming in. Well today was the day, and since he was very pleased with the results he shifted his schedule around to do more work on his Redbubble site. For those of you who are interested to see the results so far, you may do so at the following website:


http://jeffreydmoore.redbubble.com/

So the Caretaker ended up spending much of his day in front of his computer, but since it was mostly cloudy, gray, and windy outside for most all of the day, it was probably a good use of his time.

A voting we will go, A voting we will go, high-ho the derr-io a voting we will go.
--The Caretaker

TCC for 10/30/08

The Caretaker's Concern 10/30/08
Happy Cabbage Night to all those who celebrate.
Lake Temp. 52.5 F
Ghetto temp. 40 F.
Island tmp. 40 F. Yesterday's L/H: 37/36 F. (The morning was warmer than the evening.)
Current conditions: Stars are out but not brilliantly so, thin clouds here and there throughout the night sky with mild haze. Gentle breeze from the North, North West, mostly calm. The Caretaker was off Island for most of the day so he can't tell you how the day went here on the Island, but when he left there was a mild breeze from the North, some clouds with sun, getting progressively sunnier.

10/30/08


10/30/08


10/30/08


The Caretaker had much to do on the mainland today so he got up early and got himself off the Island without even having breakfast, although, he did have his morning dose of wheat grass juice. He took the past six months off from wheat grass farming and he did rather miss the juice, so he decided it was time to get back on the tractor and start sewing seed again. His first crop came in rather nicely, his second crop still needs some time before he can harvest, he tried something different this time around, the Caretaker is not so sure that this new method is working out the way he would like. He may just have to lay in a third crop now to hedge against the possibility that the second planting won't harvest well. Talk about boring, unless of course you juice your own wheat grass, but even then, how many out there bother with it? Probably not many.

While down in the local consumer center, otherwise known as Queensbury, N.Y. the Caretaker saw two rather interesting sights, one more so than the other. Just now the Caretaker realized something else about Queensbury, it is just like a town down by where the Caretaker grew up, the town is Paramus, N.J. The Caretaker lived two towns away. Both Paramus and Queensbury have no "village center", there is no walking around town, both are dominated by shopping centers and malls. Rather convenient when you need stuff, not so convenient when you need a community, not that neither of these towns lack a sense of community, at least not that the Caretaker is aware of, but there is not main-drag to walk down, at least this Caretaker wouldn't want to walk down. For Queensbury it is basically route 9 and route 246 (or is it 243?), which isn't too terrible, the Caretaker has done it out of necessity but he would prefer to not make a habit of it, you're basically walking alongside traffic going 30 to 50 mph. In Paramus it is routes 17 and 4, these are major highways, the Caretaker has walked part of 17 once, a long time ago, he would prefer to never have to do it again, and route 4? You only walk that road if you have a death wish, on both thoroughfares the traffic goes from 40 to 80 mph. The Caretaker's opinion: poor community development, lacks pedestrian space. Although both Queensbury and Paramus each have a great pedestrian path that links to parks and is closed to automobile traffic, a lot of towns don't have such communal amenities. The Caretaker's heart goes out to those whose towns lack pedestrian paths and/or parks, if you've never had such things then you are probably not missing it, but still, it must be hard to go without such things, especially for the elderly or those who have small children.

While driving South on route 9 towards the hardware store in Queensbury, N.Y. (which happens to be one of the greater hardware stores in the country, so sad that they are a dying breed), off to the East, over in Vermont, upon the Green Mountians, the Caretaker noticed they were white with snow cover, brilliant in the light of the sun. In the immediate foreground to the Caretaker were trees with Autumn colored leaves, uncloaked of snow, Autumn here, Winter there. The contrast of the two seasons made for a rather wonderful sight. The views of the Green Mountains from both this spot on Route 9 and the East parking lots of Aviation Mall are rather splendid, the foreground scenery works well to couch this part of the Green Mountain Range. Now that the Caretaker remembers it, there is also a pretty nice view of the Green Mountains from the old dump in the town of Fort Ann(?), well, where ever the old Canal Path Locks are, the ones in immediate succession, where the defunct dump is, the one that some crazy developer seems to be building on, sure it's a great view, but do you want your home on top of decades of trash?

The other interesting sight, which is actually an understatement, this other sight down in Queensbury was probably one of the coolest sights the Caretaker's seen in Nature second only to a Luna Moth in the wild. After the Caretaker left his favorite tea shop in the whole wide world, he stopped in at the tool rental place to fill up a few propane tanks (yes the Caretaker would like to use as little fuel as possible this season but eventually it is going to get too cold even for him, so, better to have than have not when the time comes for turning on the heat. What was I saying about the Caretaker?) Oh yes, so he's driving down route 246, West, heading back towards the Northway, when he notices up in the sky something he had never seen before, it was so impressive he had to pull over to the side of the road so he could view it better. The Caretaker was wearing his usual sunglasses which have gray lenses, they serve to raise the contrast of everything he sees, making things more vivid, as far as the Caretaker knows these glasses do not fabricate sights out of thin air, but he must say that when he took his sunglasses off at this time what he saw with them on he could not see with them off. At the time he was of the opinion that with his sunglasses off he couldn't see this rare thing of beauty because of the glare from the sun. Basically you had to look directly at the sun while holding up your hand blocking it out. Later on down the road, while heading North on the Northway at one point while observing this phenomenon, he took off his sunglasses again and at this point in time he was able to view it with his naked eyes, but much of the brilliancy that was seen through his sunglasses was not seen without them. Because of this the Caretaker expects that few if anyone noticed this rare thing of beauty. The Caretaker's heart goes out to all of those who have never seen such a thing in Nature, and it's probably true that to have always gone without probably means little has been missed, but still it must be hard, especially for the elderly, and those with small children.

You know, the Caretaker has been toying with the idea of switching to the First person.
--The Caretaker

TCC for 8/31/08

8/28/08


8/7/08


8/19/08

TCC for 5/28/08