One more week...

Hello. It's been a while. I just had a week to forget, at least work wise. Apart from the 6 days I worked, I wasn't home very much and when I was I had company. I'm not complaining about the company. It's good that I still have friends that want to visit me. Two of the friendships go back over 40 years. The strange but true thing for me is that I can now refer back to things 40, no make that 50 years ago. A half a frickin' century! I remember hearing my parents and people of their generation making these references back when I was a kid.
"I haven't talked to him in 25 years."
You hear that when your 10 or 12 and it's a concept that you can't grasp. They are referring back more than twice the time of your whole existence. It's a foreign concept. But here I am talking like they did back then.
This whole ramble I just went on is nothing more than my way of dealing with aging. Most of the time I don't think about it. I wasn't thinking about it when I started this entry. It started when I wrote about knowing people for over 40 years. This blog is not about aging or work. In fact I don't know what it is supposed to be about. I just had some time so I thought I'd check in with you. I had no clue as to what I would write about and I don't know how it will end. I will visit after I post this entry. Oh and thanks to the people that gave me suggestions as to where I can post photo albums. I haven't decided yet. 

Yup. 3 more pictures of you know where. I have finally gone through all the pictures. I do have them all saved and separated basically by locale. Along with all the pictures I have a good amount of clips that I have assembled into  15 minute plus extravaganza that I put on a DVD for myself and a couple of friends. It's too long to post. I will probably squeeze a couple more short movies from from the lot of clips. 
On a lighter note, well I'm not sure if it's more humorous or ironic. A bit of both I suppose. I was sitting in the lunchroom at work and somebody had left a newspaper from the neighboring city. As I killed time turning the pages I came to the police blotter. There is a school for the blind in the area though I won't mention the name. The headline read something like this.
"Man Arrested For Indecent Exposure At XYZ School For The Blind". Yes I know there is nothing funny about being blind or being a flasher and yet, despite knowing no details of the incident, that headline made me chuckle. Maybe you just had to be there.

Alright I now know where this blog will end. Right here.
I'm outta here.

I'm back at work and as always happens whenever you take time off you pay for it. I am scheduled for 48 hours a week over the next two weeks. Let me just state this plainly. This sucks. OK. enough complaining. I am bleary eyed after looking at all the pictures I took. Over 2000. Now most of them were easy to delete. That's the beauty of a digital camera and memory cards. Picking out the keepers is one thing and enhancing them is another. Don't get me wrong I enjoy doing it. Then there are the movie clips. There's a lot of them as well. So this is pretty much all the talking I'm going to do. Here are two little movies then some pictures. The first one is taking the ferry over to the island and arriving at the hotel. The second one is of the Gingerbread Houses. There's over 300 of them. Most of them are concentrated on a campground that is owned by the city of Oak Bluff while the houses are privately owned. Some have been handed down through the generations and people live there year round. The others are rented out during the tourist season. Did I mention that I fell in love with the island? The second video does not work. I will post it again. Hopefully the second attempt will work.

Can anybody suggest a good site to post photo albums? I have found a few but I'd like some opinions. Now a few more photos.

 

So that's about it for now. Thanks to all of you who do visit.
I'm outta here.

Martha's Vineyard Part 3. I'm home

I'm home. After following the long range forecast it appeared that my time on the island would be spent with questionable weather. Well apart from the first day, when they got it right, they were way off. Monday it was supposed to be overcast with a 40% chance of rain and they nailed it. It rained hard overnight for about 5 minutes. The rest of the week just got better and better. Wednesday was just spectacular. It was 78 degrees and sunny. I retook many of the pictures I took on the first day. I fell in love with the place. Now I know why all those singer, politicians, artist, actors, journalists, authors, industrialists and other people of fame and note have homes or vacation here. I don't know where to start. How about here

Or here.

Or here.

Or...

I am currently looking for a place to post the entire album of photos since Spaces is biting the big one. Boy did they ruin a nice thing. I will lose many more friends thanks to their shenanigans. I love how they always couch things. They tried to make it sound like they were doing you a big favor every time they changed things and made it more complicated and convoluted (I think I finally spelled it right Beth). They improved it right into extinction. I would have preferred if they had just been honest with us and said, "Hey this blog service is not working for us so we're ending it." I wouldn't have been any happier but at least I would have had more respect for them. But enough of that. Back to Martha's Vineyard.

  

I took a 3 hour bus tour of the island. The tour route circled the perimeter of the island. We only stopped once. It was the place that I most wanted to photograph. It is the islands most famous and gorgeous feature. The clay cliffs located on the opposite side of the island from where I stayed. Unfortunately, unlike the east side of the island which was bathed in sunshine, this side was fogged in.

The cliffs are located in the town formely known until about 8 years ago as Gay Head but is now called the original Indian name of Aquinna. An improvement if you know what I mean. This is what the cliffs are supposed to look like. This is not my photo.

This is what I saw.

 Still it was an awesome site.

Here's A little movie I made on the third morning when I ventured out to get more sunrise pictures but the morning was overcast. It's basically me walking back to the hotel at about 6:45 am. There are more movies to come but I still have many clips to sort through and put together.

I would never travel there during the tourist season. The resident population is about 15,000. Over the summer it can swell by 50 to 70,000. No thanks. The streets are tiny and I have seen Cape Cod during the summer and it's just a mass of people and cars. As far as I'm concerned September is the perfect time. There are still tourist but no very many. The part of the island where I stayed, oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven which is to the west of Oak Bluffs is where the action is. The rest of the island is where the residents live and where all the large estates of the rich and famous are. They are, for the most part, all secluded. We did see the former residence of Diana Ross and Billy Joel. They were very close to the road. Billy Joel's in particular was on a lake only a couple of hundred yards from the shore and quite visible from the road. It looked pretty modest and blended in with the surrounding homes. I saw this from the tour bus but I was on the other side of the bus. I got a few shots but we were moving along and the windows could have been cleaner. Still it was a great tour and I highly recommend it. The driver had a great knowledge of the island.

I still have more photos and movie clips to go through. Thursday morning started out very nice weatherise so I took a final walk around the area about 3 hours before the ferry was to leave for the mainland. By the time it was time to leave the wind had picked up from the south. The water was choppy and you could tell that the nasty weather coming up the coast was approaching. It has been windy since late yesterday afternoon and a whole bunch of rain, which has just started as of this writing ( Friday at 1:20 in the afternoon) is on it's way.

I haven't even unpacked yet. Oh Beth you asked about what I ate. I had a variety of things including a fisherman's platter, which consists of scallops, haddock, clams, onion rings, fries, cole slaw and tartar sauce. It's all deep fried, which is not very healthy but it sure was good. Various omelets in the mornings. Some Jamaican food including Jamaican bean soup, but the best meal I had was at the most famous restaurant on the island. The Black Dog. It is a seafood restaurant right on the shoreline in Vineyard Haven but one of the specials was a 3 cheese ravioli in some kind of white sauce with prosciutto and mushrooms. Just spectacular and as good as any dish I've had in any fine Italian restaurant and there are many in the Boston area including the North End of Boston. Just make sure you go out to eat dinner fairly early because just about everything in the off season closes at 8 pm. Yep they roll up the sidewalks and then it gets very quiet. It's a wonderful place to visit. I love it and I'm going back. Maybe in May when the hotel I stayed at, The Pequot, opens it's doors again. Still it appears that September is the best time. The water is warm from absorbing heat all summer and the weather is nice, except for the threat of the odd hurricane. In May the weather is a bit more iffy and the water is cold. 

Ok. That's enough for now.

I'm outta here.