The Reservoir

Doxia was officially sworn in today at the Appellate Courthouse on Madison and 25th. A beautiful courthouse, but of course, no photos allowed inside. Four years of hard work and waiting for those precious little letters — Esq.

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I joined Rich Gagliardi and his friend Dan for my first real taste of winter paddling. I’ve paddled into late fall several times with air temps hovering below 40°F and have even started a morning or two with snow flurries swirling, but I’ve never been out in temps below freezing or when the water was this cold (35°). We launched at Cold Spring with the air temp at 30° and 10-12 knots winds and headed north to Pollopel Island, home to the Bannerman Island Arsenal ruins, in the shadows of Storm King Mountain. After exploring the island a bit and a quick bite to eat while trying to stay warm, we crossed the channel toward Plum Point and turned south along the western shore toward West Point. Despite the forecast for winds to build during the course of the day, the weather held and by afternoon the sun broke through for a magnificent winter afternoon.

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My little Serissa (serissa foetida) hasn’t had this many blooms since it was first given to me over a year ago. I’ve found it to be very challenging to keep this little fellow happy in our arid and drafty apartment. I also find it curious that it is now blooming so well when otherwise the tree is showing signs of really struggling with the winter conditions.

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A nice little getaway for the long weekend. Headed up to the Northampton, MA area for some downtime outside the city. Doxia and I have a way of finding the coldest weekends of the year to go north. Temps in the single digits and fierce winds kept it really quite frigid, but the lack of snow limited our options for outdoor play. We did stop to go bowling to warm up and I set a personal best with a 192.

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I’m not as upset about the recent acquisition for centerfield as are many Yankee fans — and apparently, many Boston fans. I’m of the opinion that eliminating an enemy’s asset is the same as adding one for yourself. In this case, we did both, even if the asset isn’t the one I’d have chosen to add. At least he isn’t working for the bad guys anymore.

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Doxia and I went to see Bodies, the Exhibition at South Street Seaport on Saturday. Really quite amazing. The human body is such a wonderfully engineered machine. Aside from the abundance of doctors and those who wish they were all reliving Anatomy class, the exhibit is really amazing. The specimens have been preserved with various processes that replace the water within the tissue with silicon, providing a high degree of rigidity which allows the bodies to be positioned and displayed in upright, lifelike poses.

The Blizzard of 2006 seems to be finally winding down, with the latest snowfall total in Central Park reported at 26.9 inches, making it the largest snowfall for the city since they started keeping records in 1869. I’ve been here to witness 3 of the top 5. By the way, the normal seasonal snowfall for New York City is 22.4 inches.

1. February 11-12, 2006 — 26.9 inches
2. December 26-27, 1947 — 26.4 inches
3. March 12-14, 1888 — 21.0 inches
4. January 6-7, 1996 — 20.2 inches
5. February 17, 2003 –19.6 inches

I’m curious to see where this storm lands on the Snowfall Impact Scale. I certainly remember driving from VA to CT just hours on the heels of the March ’93 storm.

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From Greg Brown.

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The media is calling this the Blizzard of 2006. For once, I think I agree. It has been snowing since late last night and the winds have been whipping, limiting visibility to almost nothing. Two interesting and in my experience unique aspects of this storm were the lightening and thunder in the early morning hours and the fact that this storm system formed a distinct eye much like a hurricane.

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The move finished last week while I was away. Boxes are getting unpacked and folks are starting to get settled into their desks. Construction in the kitchen is not yet complete, but should be finished by the end of next week. I’m pleased with the way its turning out and its such a welcome change to have the entire office to ourselves. Here are a few photos of the progress.

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Just a few photos from the NY Kayak Polo Tourney at St. Peter’s College. Eight teams, two days of games. Unfortunately, I was unable to participate but these images are for those of you that don’t believe me when I say it is a contact sport. Those of you who fear for my safety should probably not turn the page.

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Don’t you just love geek humor? I’d forgotten about this one.

ybin: Setting attributes on ofboot…
ybin: Setting attributes on yaboot…
ybin: Setting attributes on yaboot.conf…
ybin: Blessing /dev/hdb4 with Holy Penguin Pee…
ybin: Updating OpenFirmware boot-device variable in nvram…

I’m back from five days on Hunting Island, South Carolina (near Beaufort) for a four-day Sea Kayak Camp with Ben Lawry, John Carmody and Peter Casson assisting. I travelled down with Rich Gagliardi from AKT and borrowed his Anas for the course. Overall, it was a great weekend – I learned a lot, pleasantly surprised myself in a few areas and was appropriately humbled in many others. I’ve posted a few photos from the weekend. Unfortunately, I don’t have a waterproof enclosure for my camera and so I don’t have any action shots on the water.

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