A quick trip to Paris

Well...Syracuse really, but it was nice anyway...I had to make a trip over to Fort Drum to pick up some metal containers some Zombie Squad-ers and I picked up at auction, and since Ben and I had the day off, we made a day of it...


As always, Dog is my co-pilot...Cedar was on duty, patrolling the property, keeping our home safe from all manners of beasts, but Penny would have had a hard time in her crate all day, so she came along...this gave us a good excuse for frequent stops to walk the Penny-monster...


Ben passed some of the drive watching a movie on my I-pod...it's a beautiful drive through some empty and wild country, but the snowstorm cut down on the pretty in some ways...

We got to Fort Drum in great time (not much traffic on the quietest road in Upstate NY when you head out before 7am), loaded the boxes into (and on top of) my Element...the guy working in the surplus-yard couldn't believe how much room my toaster-like car has...

The snow picked up to near white-out conditions for a bit, but we pushed on South to Syracuse, hoping for tropical weather...or at least less sliding and windiness (with some of the boxes on my roof, it felt as though we had a sail on top of the Element...


Our first stop in Syracuse was the Rosamond Gifford Zoo at Burnet Park, it's a great zoo with lots of great animals both inside and out...Ben loves aquarium exhibits because of the variety and colors of tiny beasties inside the tanks...



His favorite exhibit and animals of the entire zoo were the naked mole rats, maybe the coolest animals on the planet...


We checked out the sloths, which were, shockingly, sleeping...I don't know why I was surprised, but the young sloths were also slothful...


One of the cool features of the animal exhibits at this zoo is the closeness of some of the animals to visitors, specifically the lions...we spent some time talking to this lion, who responded by patting and licking the glass next to Ben (Ben insisted that it was because the lion liked him, I thought that he looked hungry, but kept my own council)...at one point, the lion jumped up on the glass, and it shook/rattled exactly like our sliding glass doors when Cedar wants to eat a squirrel on the deck...the docent hanging out and talking with us assured us that the lions had never "yet" escaped or broken through the glass...


Maybe the best part of our trip to the zoo was the outside trail to various animals living outside...the weather had cleared, and we were almost the only people brave/tough enough to walk around outside...

The penguins seemed lonely, and were ecstatic to play with Ben for a couple of minutes...


One of the few people we saw while touring the the outside exhibits was this multi-pinked princess, who fruitlessly tried to horn in on Ben's playdate with the penguins...


Here's the zoo map, in case you were interested, I had originally thought of going to the zoo in Watertown, which is nearer to Fort Drum...but I read some unflattering reviews, and their collection is much less impressive...our next target zoo in our part of NY is the one in Utica...probably in the Spring...


Ben doing his impression of a Collared Peccary...the actual peccary was a grumpy and sluggish little guy who sat looking at us in exactly the same way that Cedar does when he thinks that we're being stupid...


After the zoo, I had to make a drive-by assault on Dinosaur Barbecue, a favorite eatery of mine since Gail and I were at Syracuse for our graduate studies...


Our next stop was the Carousel Center, where we had some more food and shopping and rode on the namesake carousel before watching...




Madagascar 2, a fun movie that Ben and I had been excited to see for awhile...


With 4 big metal boxes on the roof, it wasn't any trouble finding the Element...I may leave them on forever for just this reason...we headed back up North and into the snow-globe...before we reached Watertown it was snowing, and it kept coming down, thick and heavy during the whole drive...

at some points, I couldn't see the road except as the flattest white space in front of me...there were no other cars (or plows, for that matter), and since both Ben and Penny were snoring and sleeping hard I didn't listen to my audiobook...I drove slowly and surprised/scared a Stewart's employee in Star Lake who apparently didn't expect anyone to stop in during her shift, but was happy to sell me a big coffee to keep me going through the white stuff...

After a double-shift in the cold, Cedar was happy to see us, and spent a snuggly night under the covers...Penny slept draped across/over both of us...



This morning, Ben was eager to assemble the 3D puzzle that we bought in the gift shop at the zoo yesterday...he also enjoyed some daddy-made yogurt (my homemade stuff ends up thinner than store-bought, hence the mug, but is yummy nonetheless)...


When it was completed, he wanted to lick it to see if it was really poisonous (testing shows that it's not)...those of you who know his great-grandmother, please don't tell her, but Ben spotted an owl in the gift-shop yesterday, and suggested getting it as a present for her because he knows that she loves owls...he's a sweet little boy...

Election Day

Last night, we all stayed up late watching the election results online and on TV (for Ben that meant a bit after 8pm, for me it meant almost 10pm, and Gail was up until about 1am)...

To show our support for our Presidential candidate, we had a Chicago style pizza with Hawaiian toppings (basically, a deep-dish pizza with ham and pineapple on it)...



Either the pizza or the candidate's well-run campaign worked its magic, but Barack Obama won the presidential election, and will be the next President of the United States of America!



Obama should win 338 electoral college votes to McCain's 163...Democrats also have control of the senate and congress...cnn.com has a nice page showing the results...

He gave a great speech at the end of the night, which you can find here...

My New Canoe

Ben and I headed south and out of the snowbowl that is the tri-lakes region today to pick up my new Hornbeck canoe...




We stopped in Long Lake to play in Ben's favorite playground...


We ate lunch at the Long Lake Diner, and afterwards saw this deer right outside the restaurant, behind our car...Penny, the perfect puppy, hadn't noticed...


We headed down to Olmstedville to pick up the boat, which they had to make for me, because they don't generally have the size that I was interested in on hand (14 foot solo boat)...they measured me for the seat and for the foot-pegs...


Peter Hornbeck, the designer and originator and maker of Hornbeck boats in general, and my boat specifically, signed my boat with an engraving tool, "Built for Jamie Sheffield by Peter Hornbeck", he also did a beautiful hand-drawing of a loon...


After leaving the Hornbeck offices, we drove over and explored Tahawus, a ghost-town near Newcomb...this huge old blast furnace is around 150 years old...



On the way back home, we stopped off to play in the playground Long Lake again...it was a really nice day...sunny and warmish and my new boat is beyond awesome!

Halloween 2008

The other night, we spent some time drawing up plans (yup, we're that family) for the perfect Jack o' Lantern...


After multiple drafts and revisions by Ben, Gail drew the sketch on the pumpkin, I did the surgery, and we took turns disemboweling the pumpkin...Ben loves pulling the guts out of pumpkins...afterwards we roasted the seeds in the oven...


This year's version turned out really well...


The field-test worked out nicely also...


Halloween at Lake Placid is always fun...most of the students dress up...I hear that more and more schools are doing away with Halloween activities, which seems a shame...I hope that we never go that route...


This year, the 6th grade team dressed up as N. Cognito...I was Norm Cognito...I wore a coat and tie and dress shoes, which freaked out everyone as I generally avoid dressing up...


Over at the Lake Clear School, Gail helped Ben get into his Darth Vader costume...


The other 1st graders were also getting ready for the afternoon activities and eventual trick or treating...


Ben's buddy Joseph was Anakin Skywalker...


Another great friend, Jacob, was Commander Cody...


There were a lot of Star Wars characters in the 1st grade in Lake Clear, and in Saranac Lake later when we went trick or treating...



Here's a movie of the kids in the parade...


This is Ben's friend Kelsey, she's in kindergarten, with Ben in the background...



Another movie of the Halloween parade at Lake Clear Elementary...the last time they'll do this, as the school district is closing his school down after this year...


Here is Ben in the parade...the mask fogs up a bit after walking around...I bet the same stuff happened with Darth Vader, unless he had A/C...


After school, we headed into town for some trick or treating...


This man in what must be the "weird stuff" store quizzed Ben on Star wars facts before giving him candy, he couldn't stump Ben...


I was able to wander through town in my Sith Lord robes without being recognized, and occasionally scare the crap out of kids when I said hello...


When we got home, we posed for a group shot...Penny was Princess Leia, which she tolerated because we gave her lots of praise...please note the beautiful hair...


Gail was an intimidating Emperor, holding the princess hostage...again, note the Leia hair on the top of her hair...sorry about the searchlight effect...

Snowday!!!

The grass was green and bare when I got home from work yesterday, with snow just starting to stick...it fell hard all afternoon, and by the time Ben and I went to a scout meeting at 6pm, the roads were essentially impassable (we saw a couple of cars off the road, and 2 went off in front of us while making the 6 miles drive back home from the SL firehouse)...

Not entirely surprisingly, I got the "snowday" call this morning...


Words cannot adequately describe the feeling of getting the call at 5:45am telling me to take the day off, the unexpected surprise aspect of it; but the picture above does a good job of explaining/expressing my happiness...




The video above is a dramatic reading of my world famous snowday haiku...


The snow shown on my Element fell since last night at 7:30pm...


Ben also has the day off, so we suited up and went out in the snow-pocalypse to play and hurl snow at each other...


He kept trying to fool me that he was all done throwing snow at my head, but would then sneak up and rub some more into my balaclava and/or face...luckily, my camera is waterproof...


Our house is really at its best in the wintertime...warm and cozy feeling on a cold and windy day, with snow still falling on us...


After running and rolling and diving and such for a while, Ben got overheated, and shed his balaclava while we walked down the driveway to see how the rest of the world faired in the storm...


McMaster Road is cold and snowy and quiet...


Ben noticed that different trees looked different in the snow...the white pines at the left of the picture keep their needles and hold more snow, the tamarack trees to the right lose their needles and hold less snow...the tradeoff in photosynthetic potential versus energy expended to build branches of different strength works out differently for the different trees in our forests...it was a cool discussion with Ben...



By the time we headed back up to our house to warm up, Ben was pretty wiped out and dragging...I almost left him behind when he fell, it was a close call...in the end he played on my hyper-developed paternal instincts, and I gave in...


We made up some hot-cider to warm us up...the dogs are sleeping at my feet by the stove, and life is good...