Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Another Friend



This is another friend that comes to visit every so often. On the upper deck off the living room we have a bird feeder that hangs out over the deck. The pole that it is on rotates so you can fill the feeder over the deck and then swing back out so it is over the ground....keeps the bird poop off the deck.

It is a little late to see then for this year but there are bears in the area. We haven't seen any yet but they have been spotted within a mile from us.

Turkeys

Two blogs in one week...wow.

I just ordered the last gift card so it looks like all the shopping is done, finally. I did my part in trying to jump start the economy by dropping some serious coin at all the usual stores...WalMart, Amazon.com, Target, etc.

Not too long ago we had some visitors. Every now and then we would go out onto the upper deck and there would be several deer down behind us. One time we were hearing a racket and I look out the window and there must have been 20-30 turkeys. Ok, I have seen that many turkeys before...one time comming home to this house I took a turn off the highway, made my 2nd turn and had to stop dead in my tracks and wait for all the turkeys, again 20-30, to cross the road.

This time at the house though they were flying. They would fly from tree top to tree top, probably some 50-80 ft off the ground. What a sight.



This one I caught in our driveway.




This photo gives you an idea of how high up these things were flying. It kind of looks a little odd to see something that big flying awkwardly, stumbling through the air.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Our Little Girl Is One Year Old!

I thought today would be an appropriate day to start blogging after several months of absence. It's not that I didn't have anything to blog about or to comment on it is plainly that blogging wasn't much of a priority. I was shocked to see that I had over 10,000 hits. This time of year they are mostly to do with the Tacky Christmas Lights.

Anyway.... As the title suggests our little girl turns one year old today. If you had suggested two years ago that a little one would be in our lives today I would have shrugged it off as mere fantasy but I can tell you, of course as a biased parent, that she has brought an unmeasurable amount of joy into our lives and I couldn't imagine life without Sammi.





We brought her home and put her in this little box as a surprise for Zachary. Any smaller and we would have been able to bring her home in my shirt pocket.





Here is a recent photo. This is her favorite spot. She can look out through the windows and watch the squirrels getting into the bird feeder. Today she weighs abt 6.5 lbs.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

New Obama Tv Ad

Monday, August 25, 2008

Our New Home

After two years here in our current home, we're heading south.

Ok, so it's only 11 miles away. We had an excellent opportunity to get into a contemporary 3200 sq ft house, three stall garage home overlooking the valley. Out the back deck you can see between 2-4 miles over the West Branch of the Susquehanna River Valley.

There's 2 and 3/4 baths, 3 bedrooms, den/office huge living room and finished basement.














Friday, August 15, 2008

New Web Site

Finally got the genealogy site up and running. Next task is to upload the photos and stories and add more to the front page.

www.fiske-bigelow.com

That's pretty much the reason why I haven't blogged in what seems like forever. I have almost 13000 people in my family tree, 200+ photos and lots of stories.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Ouch

If you see the little oil price chart thingy on the right then I feel your pain. I have not seen movement like this since the internet boom in the latter half of the 1990's. It was pretty hard not to make money and the movements were strikingly similar.

If the price of oil keeps going like it has been we are gearing up for $150/barrel within the next month.

Gas is never too far behind in this. Although the prices move so fast you tend to forget whether gas has caught up or not. From my observation, and this is just a guess, but it seems to be that the price of gas is going up roughly $.05 per gallon with every $2 increase in the price of oil. The national average of $3.81 today was based on $128 and change....assuming we were caught up.

If my theory is correct then if the price closes above $131 then we should expect $3.86 in the very near term. Of course locally can be very different. We're heading back to northern NY Friday morning and the tank is full but as I told Shelly last week I would be very suprised if gas in Northern NY WASN'T above $4/gal.

Heating oil futures are now running almost $3.90 which means to top off your tank in the basement should be in the nieghborhood of $4.60???

Have you put down that gass guzzeling heavy duty truck or super sized SUV yet? Put a fork in her, she's done.

Green will be the next status symbol.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Another 3am Crisis Call

When the phone rings at 3am as another crisis occures, do you want someone who can't get coffee out of a machine to answer? I think NOT.

Hillary Clinton - Gas Tax and the Economy



1. $.185 tax "holiday": In reality this amounts to:
a. 10 gallon fill up $1.85 per fill up or a savings up to x 12 weeks = $22.2
b. same car filled up 2x/week x 12 weeks = $44.4
c. SUV taking 16 gal on fill up once a week would realize a net savings = $35.52
d. same vehicle filling up 2x/week x 12 weeks = $71.04

So for the "average" family the savings would be about $30 over three months. For families that drive more, have bigger cars, SUVs and trucks and therefore fill up more frequently the savings would be significantly more. Truckers would save even more on top of that.

John McCain says with the $$ a family saves at the pump it may be able to allow them a "better meal" for themselves or their children.

yeah "up size that happy meal for me"

The amount saved at the pump upon fill up is insignificant and it does nothing to change driving habits.

2. "Finally get tough with OPEC. OPEC is basically a monopoly of the 13 biggest oil producing nations" "OPEC has refused to increase production"...

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_pro-energy-oil-production

a.#1 Saudi Arabia: 9,475,000 bbl/day
#2 * Russia: 9,400,000 bbl/day
#3 * United States: 7,610,000 bbl/day
#4 Iran: 3,979,000 bbl/day
#5 * China: 3,631,000 bbl/day
#6 * Mexico: 3,420,000 bbl/day
#7 * Norway: 3,220,000 bbl/day
#8 * Canada: 3,135,000 bbl/day
#9 Venezuela: 3,081,000 bbl/day
#10 UAE 2,540,000 bbl/day
#11 Nigeria: 2,451,000 bbl/day
#12 Kuwait: 2,418,000 bbl/day
#13 Iraq: 2,130,000 bbl/day

* Denotes NON OPEC member Countries

Two question here:

a. Is OPEC daily output of crude oil at or near its peak? If they are at or near their peak output capacity then there is nothing they can do?
b. It has been stated for several years now that refining capacity here in the US is very close to capacity. We have as a country built a new refinery in 20-30 years. Even if we were to see more oil flow we do not have enough spare capacity to handle it. The emerging markets of China, Russia and India are using increasingly more and more oil and their economies continue to expand.

3. "Make sure the price of oil is not being determined by speculators and market manipulator's"

Certainly we don't want any laws broken but in light of the flight of investment away from the US Housing market it seems that investment in not only oil but commodities is a rational trend when considering the continued expansion of emerging markets which are mainly Russia, China and India.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Conversations With Zack

Zack went to bed last night at his usual time. Normally it takes him half an hour or so to wind down and actually get to sleep. Last night about the 45 min mark after he went to bed he comes out to the living room. "I don't like the springs in my mattress"..."they're keeping me awake".

Like he knows there are springs in his mattress huh. Then as he was heading back to bed....

"I don't like it", "I need a therm-o-pedic mattress".

Where the hell he came up with that idea I have no clue.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Alittle Bit Of This And That

I don't blog as much as I used to. So it is time for an update and so here goes my thoughts on a number of thoughts.

2008 Presidential Race I have been a registered republican for my entire adult life. If I had to place myself in any category I would describe myself as a moderate republican, that is to say that I don't follow everything... I am anything but a Lemming. I am all for smaller government, less taxes.

until now

As with many others, the Iraq war has left a bad taste in my mouth. I have seen people I am close to go into Iraq three times and at least at this point there is no indication there will not be a fourth. At the onset I was for the war even if we were to the moral police force of the world....it was the right thing to do. To free a people from the years of bondage Sadaam Hussein had put them in. It was a heroic a noble action even though misunderstood. It could equally be argued that this is just my initial rationalization of the lost cost.

The war aside, it is time for change. If you have even remotely followed congressional acts over the last several years the partisanship has gotten worse. It is time to bring the country together, for both sides of the aisle to meet in the middle and work together to get things moving again. Too many politicians are indebted to others than those who elected them.

McCain.... look at the new boss, same as the old boss. He might have a history of being "independent minded" but we don't need a third term of the same old song and dance.

Hillary... Although her reaction to or how she handled the soiling of Monica's blue dress might rightfully be a "personal and private family matter" as Chelsea has stated it would tend to give us some insight on how she would handle a crisis. If that phone ringing at 3am was not a foreign policy crisis, nor a economic crisis but rather a personal family crisis, perhaps in the like of William's stray usage of the family seed. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger and in that we deserve that insight.

Other that that it is my opinion as well and the opinion of many others that Hillary is divisive. I guess it is the aura of the wining at any cost but I don't believe there is any way she can heel the wounds of divisiveness this country has gone through the past 7 or so years. In that essence, it will be be more of the same.

So that leaves me with Barrack. When he won Iowa I said to myself that we finally grew up as a country. It made me feel proud. In that sense I know what Michelle Obama meant when she said it was the first time in her life she was proud of America. It was a mainly white state (91%) voting for an African American to be their president. That was and is undoubtedly awesome....

baby steps

If you have had the chance to listen to recordings of JFK's speeches or MLK's you cannot come away from that without feeling moved and that is what Barrack Obama does for this 43 year old white male. I changed my party affiliation from republican to democrat just so I can vote for Barrack on April 22. I believe there are more people in my demographic out there than people have realized.

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Oil & Gas

Some say at $4/gal for gasoline people will begin to really take a hard look at how they live their lives and cut back. Whether that holds true or not remains to be seen. I have always believed in prepare and expect the worse and if something less materializes then it will be a pleasant surprise.

Oil and gas has been going up for quite a while now. If I remember correctly last year we had a bit of a respite from high prices during towards the tail end of winter and before the summer driving season. This year the only respite we are seeing is a plateau of gas at $3.29 locally...or $3.319 nationally. When we start to switch over to the summer driving season and those different blends we might see $4/gal in more and more parts of the country.

It's coming, just a question of when.

To even fill up your tank for heating the bill for a fill up has gone from under $400 to almost $700. Can you say ouch.

Here's some food for thought. Look back ten years ago and picture yourself and/or your family and compare the differences between then and now. Now think ten years into the future and the one difference you will see or rather not see is Water. It will not be here in the quantities that we have been accustomed to in the past. If you think food prices are high now wait ten years when the lack in abundance of water causes those food prices to even run higher.

Look around your neighborhood. Do you see downspouts from rain gutters running right into the street and into your town's sewers? 10 years from now you may see those downspouts running into the basement and into a cistern for use in gardens and other outside watering....or with minimal treatment perhaps even some laundry

Now onto my genealogy.

When I got back into genealogy last August I had 100 or so names and my thought was to get enough to publish the work for a Christmas gift to my parents. Well, needless to say that didn't happen. The more names I added, the more I uncovered and the more I have yet to add. Today I have 7,622 names. I have 120 photos and numerous stories. Actually, my "Barker Family Tree" is far outnumbered by some other lines in my family.

MY Family Tree

Barker - Can trace back to 1750 in Suffolk County England

Fisk(e) - Paternal Grandmother's line can be traced through to first settlements in Massachusetts and then 1400's in England

Cranker - Maternal line, Can be traced to 1750's in Montgomery County in NY

Stevens - Mother's Maternal Grandfather's line can be traced to 1793 in VT

Bigelow - Mother's Maternal Grandmother's line can be traced to early settlements in Massachusetts and then 1400's in England.

Monday, March 31, 2008

it puts the lotion in the basket

My brother sent me the link to this and I just had to share.

Busy Busy

Alot of changes sine my last post. I have been busy in my research on my family tree and in the course, helping others as well. I think I started last Aug with maybe 100 or so names going as far back as England in early to middle 1800's. To date I have almost 7,000 names in my datatbase with lost of stories and photos. I have at least 4,000 or more to transcribe into my records. On two main lines from my mother's side I am stuck at late 1700's. Another line from my mothers side I can go back to the first two generation in the Massachusetts colonies and beyond. The same can be said for my father side. A great uncle of my fathers headed west from Prescott Ontario to settle Alberta.

I have made many connections and found distant cousins from Canada, all over the US, England, Australia and New Zealand.

Doing this much research you often dig up many interesting family members and stories to boot. Essentially, if you can trace your family history back 400 years in New England you should be related to someone famous. I have found my family related to several US Presidents, a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a handful of civil war generals, a NH gouvernor, and several wall street financiers.

That can pretty much take up alot of my free time, aside from the household duties, etc etc.

Physical Thereapy went very well and I was done a couple of weeks ago. I still go in a few times each week to use their equipment for a nominal fee which is very nice. All they need now is a sauna. I ended up with a rangle of motion of 2 degrees to 120 degrees. Walking in the yard or walking parallel to the slope of the ground doesn't do my knee any good so I try to keep to the sidewalks.

We did have a new addition to our family on February 15.



Her name is Sammi. She was born just before Christmas. She is a toy poodle. She's a little bigger now but not much so. I think at full grown she will get to be about 7-8 lbs. The above photo was taken before she went to the "day spa". The after photo is below.



She has been a very much appreiated member of our family. She was housebroken in lesss than two weeks and it did't take her too long to sleep through the night.

Zack is busy with school as usual. He lost all but one day of his Easter vacation so he will have school until they are done for the year in May. She has been busy as well. She is a quilter and always seems to be working on one project or another. She does beautiful work. We may have an opportunity soon to relocate to Nrth Carolina which will be very nice.....closure to her siblings and out of the snow. It's a longshot but we'll see where it goes.

Friday, February 15, 2008

The Traveler - Nags Head North Carolina

http://www.nagsheadguide.com/



We just had our next trip confirmed so I thought it was now safe to post.  Shelly and I have families stretched up and down the east coast primarily.  Since we don't get to see her's all together in one place because all three of her siblings are in the military we thought it would be nice to maybe get a house rental somewhere in the middle and hopefully all her family can get the time off around the 4th of July this year to be together with us.

Shelly loves North Carolina as she had spent several years there and she loves the beach atmosphere so she wanted somewhere on the beach in NC.   If everyone can come it will mean there will be 5 families including us with a total of 15 people.  So I was looking for something that slept at least that many with parking for enough of us that was on or close to the beach and was a little upscale.

So this is what we have....  There are three floors, 5 bedrooms and 4 full bathrooms.  There is also a hot tub on the third floor deck.  The beach is within 500 ft and there is also a community pool that we will have access to.  There is also alot of shopping and sightseeing as well.  I am also looking at booking a charter fishing boat fo the guys depending on who is interested and who will be there.







Thursday, February 14, 2008

4 1/2 Weeks Post Surgery

I know I have been kind of lacking in keeping up on how my knee is doing.  I had the surgery on Jan 11th and came home from the hospital Jan 13th.  They neglected to mention that my vital signs at the hospital were high so when the home health nurse checked it the first time my pulse was 120 resting....a wee bit high.  She sent that info to my fmaily Dr and they sent me to the ER.  I was having no signs of anything and a CT scan, EKG, etc and all they could say was that all of the tests were comming up negative.

My family Dr still can't explain it.  All his blood work came back negative as well so there was nothing to explain why my resting heart rate was so high.

So he changed my bp medication to a beta blocker which has lowered the pulse a little but now I think (from my home bp monitor) that my bp is now running high.  The diastolic is running into the 90's where before it was in the 70's.  On top of that I have no energy.  I can get done with my physical therapy and sleep for a couple of hours.  We will talk about changing back to the previous med when I see him again.  One of the side effects of beta blockers is loss of energy.....go figure.

On to the knee.

For the first couple weeks home I had a home health nurse to draw my blood for the coumiden I am taking (for six weeks after surgery to reduce the chances of blood clots).  I was also having physical therapy here at home as well during the first couple of weeks.  

I was given the clearence to ditch my walker about Jan 24.  I really wasn't using it anyway but my Physical Therapist who came here thought I was doing well enough not to need it.  

I started my outpatient physical therapy on Jan 31.  I started using a bike late last week and yesturday I used one of the weight machines for the first time.  Nothing too serious just 15lbs. working on the flexion and extension....using just the left knee alone.  Today they had me on the leg press machine which kind of looks like squatts but you are more in a horizontal position.  On this I did 150 lbs with both feet trying to use left leg about 70% and right about 30%.  3 sets of ten with that and then I tried the 150 lbs with the left leg alone.  I did manage 10 reps.

Flexion I am past 120 degrees.  Extension is a little more of a problem (only cause I set my goals high) and I am able to get my leg straight to 10 degrees which is not bad.  The swelling has gone down considerably since surgery.  I think the more it goes down the easier it will be getting that last 10 degrees before my leg is straight.  I told one of the therapists I am ready to take a pain pill, musle relaxor or whatever and drop a cinder block on it to straighten it out.  lol

We had nothing but ice here the last several days but the roads look pretty clear and tomorrow it is suppose to be in the 40's here so maybe I can go for a little walk.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Day 9 Post surgery


Oh that will leave a mark


I started my physical therapy yesturday, well at least formally.  Everything you can do on your own to keep up the strength and flexability on your own will only help out in the end and lead to faster shorter length of physical therapy overall.

Yesturday was the first that the therapist has been to the house.  I guess I have my age working with me that I am able to get around pretty mobile.  Shhh, don't tell Shelly but I am hoping to get the clearence to drive when I go back to my ortho Dr on Monday.  I think Monday the stitches come out which means the first thing to do when I come home is to take a nice long shower.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Day 5 Post Surgery

I have always been rather lucky with my knee surgeries in that it seems that I have always had them in the early morning....not so this time.  I had to check into Geisinger Medical Center at 10:30 Monday morning.  I think I was told I was scheduled for a 11:55 am surgery.  I never did go up to pre surgery until 12:10 pm.  That's a whole lot of waiting.

Shelly's parents came down to help look after Zack until I got home from the hospital so they were there until the point where they needed to come back here to be home for Zack when he got off the bus.

Pre surgery was pretty much routine.  You get prepped with an IV or two, vitals are taken and you get ready for the call from the OR that they are ready for you.  The anesthesia Dr came in and gave me a nerve block which was something new for me.  In prior surgeries I have had mostly spinals, and maybe a couple general.  To block the knee they press down between your thigh and groin to find your femoral artery and near there you get an injection of the block.  It's kind of freaky cause it makes the knee cap jump about a dozen times or so until it takes effect.  That and a little something to make me sleep and not remember the surgery and I was good to go.

Shelly tells me that I went to pre surgery at noon, started surgery at 2:30 and didn't get up to my room until after 8pm.  

Everything is pretty much blank the rest of that day.  

Tuesday they started me on some exercises and took me down to PT/OT.  They also put me on the machine that flexes your knee for you.  Tuesday morning I finally got to eat which was the first in 36+ hours.  I know I didn't sleep very well that first night.  I don't think anyone can in the beginning as the nurses are in every so often to take your vitals, ect.  My surgeon came in the first thing to look at my dressing and to check on me.  He told me the surgery went very well.  I asked him how it looked in there and he said I had bone spurs the size of his pinky......ouch.

I  am on coumadin for 6 weeks after the surgery so they have you monitor a couple of blood levels.  

Zack came to see me Tuesday after school.  That was very nice since I missed my buddy.  He still is concerned at times, although he helped Shelly a bit this morning when she changed the dressing.  He pats me on the head and gives me a little kiss and tells me I am doing well.

Tuesday night I slept very well and mwhen my dr stopped my avbout 7am Wednesday he asked me how I felt and if I wanted to go home that day.  I was out of there by 1pm I think.

The plan is that I have home health nurse stop by and draw my blood and administer my case and someone will come by to give me my physical therapy here at home.  When the nurse came to visit Thursday morning my resting pulse rate 120-130 which is high.  There was no signs of infection or chest pain or anything that would readily explain the increased heart rate.

The Nurse called my primary care Dr and let his office know of what was going on.  Just five minutes after she left the my primamry Dr's office called and wanted me to head to the ER.  They processed me pretty quickly, not those horror stories you hear about someone waiting for hours.  I was in and out in 1.5-2 hours.  They ran all kind of bloodwork on me, they did chest x rays, CT scan with contrast and an EKG and everything came out normal.

So here I am today.  I still don't know why my heart rate is what it is but I see my primary Dr  Monday afternoon and if he thinks it is warranted, he will give me something to lower it.

Shelly took off a cople of weeks from work so I could come home and not go into a rehab facility so I owe her alot of thanks....if not more jewelry ;) to pay her back.  

The best news is that from the time I woke up in my room at the hospital to now I have not needed anything for pain.....and not for the lack of them trying to give me something.  I have a walker that I am using to get around the house but, although certainly not a pretty sight, I can manage some unassisted walking on my own.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Zachary's Totally Gross Birthday Party

We had a birthday party for Zachary yesturday.  This was Zack's first party where he has had neighborhood friends over.  I don't know where she got the idea but this was all Shelly's work. 




Of course there were games to play and food to eat and all sounded pretty disgusting but everything was certainly edible.



There was Boogers On A Stick which was just a pretzle with green food colored cheese dip



Brain Jello was just green jello using a brain mold



Chili N Fingers which was for show




I thought Dirty Diapers was pretty cool.  You take some baby food and smear it into the diaper and then the kids have to guess which food it is from the list of choices.  The grown ups got into this one too.



Find The Body Parts cinsisted of body parts hiden in a ton of spaghetti.  You had to find two each of the same part and the first one done wins.



This might be the most interesting.  Kitty Litter Cake consists of two cakes, one chocolate and one vanilla.  Crumble the two together and add just a little vanilla pudding so it clumps together but not overly moist.  Then you crumble vanilla oreo cookies setting aside a little to add the green food coloring.  Spread both over the cake and then you add the poo which is just tootsie rools that you heat in the mirco wave just a bit so you can mold them.  It actually tasted pretty good.




Then of course there was the Moldy Pizza

Saturday, January 12, 2008

New Surgery

I met with a new DR. yesturday and am all set for surgery Monday morning.  I have to be at the hospital at 10:30 so I don't expect to be back home until Wednesday or Thursday.  For a little time I will have physical therapy here at home and that doesn't work out I will be placed in a rehab hospital.