Category: Dear Diary

Somehow we got 8 1/2 miles in yesterday. We walked down to the lake and had a chocolate custard at Don’s Original. Today we walked through the park and up Horseshoe Road, which as you can tell by its name, comes back out where it started, on the lake. A bit of the sandy beach has come back as the lake levels have receded and there were lots of swimmers in the water. We clocked (my watch clocks everything) almost seven miles today.

We’re considering another walk, from Porto to Santiago, an alternate version of the Camino. There is one route via the coastline and another that goes inland. John Brierley has a book about it. There is some urgency as people all around us are falling apart. Our neighbor had her second hip replaced yesterday and we stopped down to visit her husband on the way home from our walk.

I found this pine flattened on our street. It looked like the setting for the Virgin de Guadalupe and I didn’t really want to carry it the whole way so I set it aside on a fence post. Peggi used her Reminder app for the first time, telling Siri to remind us to “pick up the virgin in one hour.” We we’re still down at the lake when the reminder went off. So she set it again and this time Siri heard “Pick up the version in half an hour.” That worked just as well for this version of the virgin.

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Butler 8-3041. I still remember our phone number from when we were kids. If I can’t call that up someday I will know I’m starting to slip.

We thought we could beat the thunderstorm. We were inside Wegmans when the skies opened up. I had eight ears of corn from Aman’s in my backpack and one tomato (ours are are just starting to come in). The fish guy cleaned a red snapper for us. We had milk, onions, cherries, blueberries and canned beans in our buggy. At the door we saw lightning flashes. I panicked and called our next door neighbor. He came up to Wegmans and picked us up.

All the walking we’ve done and we have never done that. We could have waited it out. We had rain gear in our backpacks. We’ve walked in the rain before. I don’t know what came over me.

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The lake level is a little higher. The beach is a little smaller. This beech tree is hanging on by a thread.

I spent some time wondering whether the high school girls across the street were just shooting baskets to kill time or whether they were actually trying to improve their game. I still couldn’t tell. Peggi came right out and asked one of them as we walked by. She said she and her sister were playing on a summer team.

When we were kids we shot so many baskets in our driveway that we backed the nails out of the siding on the garage. So knowing the girls were serious, well, sort of serious, I felt bad that their net was in tatters and hanging on only two of the twelve hooks. There is nothing more satisfying in basketball than all net, a shot that drops through the hoop without touching the backboard or the hoop. It hangs for a second in the net and then does a controlled drop, right where you want it.

I bought a net and planned to hang it when they weren’t at home. I was up on my ladder in their driveway when a black car came down our street. The kids’ father, who is normally at work at his restaurant, had picked her up and they pulled in the driveway. The girl got out while her father sat in the car. The windows were up and the car was still running. I was almost finished. The girl got out and said, “Oh my god, where did you get the net?” I said, “Amazon. I was trying to hang it while you weren’t home.” I finished hanging the the net and left with my ladder.

I went down to Jared’s house, where we have our garden, and I picked some lettuce, basil and kale for dinner. While I was gone the girls’ mother came over, hugged Peggi, thanked her profusely and gave her two bottles of wine (from the restaurant). Peggi tried to refuse the wine but said they preferred this way because they are transactional. That’s the part I was trying to avoid.

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It was so hot today we decided to stay off the streets and take the path in the woods to our friend Kathy’s place. She has workers there constructing a deck in her backyard and we’ve been checking up on the progress. It is not your ordinary deck. This one is off her unattached garage and it is just above ground level. Tick safe.

The garage wall that meets the deck has been reworked as well with hand stained board and batten. And beams and supports for a pergola are being carefully considered. This is a work of art and it has been a joy to watch. The Harbor Town Belle was headed up to the Bay Bridge while we were there.

Peggi wore her backpack over in order to carry Kathy’s pasta maker home. We’re having handmade pasta with artichokes for dinner.

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We bought two quarts of local strawberries at Aman’s and put one in each of our backpacks. Our Wegmans purchases were nestled below. These mutant strawberries were on display near the checkout, right next to the refrigerator magnets. The one reading, “Somedays I amaze myself and other days I put my keys in the refrigerator” caught our eye.

I hated to see England lose the the third place match today. I really, really wanted Ellen White to get another one but it was not in the cards. Sweden came out like gangbusters and scored two early goals. The rest of the match was England’s. Most of the items on our shopping list were for tomorrow’s match. We’re having a few friends over to watch it live and then a pool party to celebrate!

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We passed a neighbor on our way out. He was completely lost in thought as he hovered over his weed whacker. Peggi identified this flowering bush as a Honeysuckle and geotagged it with the iNaturalist app. We use that everyday now, cataloging the world in some small way.

We waited out a thunderstorm and then headed into the park. The temperature had dropped ten degrees but it was still just as humid. The park was almost empty. No dog walkers parked at the entrance. At the top of Zoo Road we spotted some teenage girls standing by a car. They saw us and quickly got into the car. One kid, a guy, was still standing near the car but he turned his back to us. A small time drug deal was going down.

Up at the lake the parking lot was empty. A couple of Asian kids were playing soccer. We heard people swimming but couldn’t see them. We looked down one of those steep paths and l saw that the beach is still underwater.

On the way back through the park we saw a familiar pickup truck, a dog walker with wacky pro gun bumper stickers on his bumper A little further up the road we saw a guy standing near his car, smoking a cigar. A big branch fell in the woods behind him and we all looked in that direction. He didn’t acknowledge it but told us we were brave to be out walking without an umbrella.

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Still no strawberries. The clerk behind the counter a Aman’s said they had two suppliers and both said they expected their strawberries to be ripe enough for market by the end of this week.

I finally won at horseshoes. First time this year. My neighbor keeps track of these things. We’ve played eight times, best out of three, and he had won them all until yesterday.

We may be overusing our iNaturalist app. We are stopping at every strange looking tree and ordinarily ones that we should already have in our database. Today we identified something we thought was an unusual oak as a Silver Maple, and two different Locust varieties.

We stopped in RoCO’s 6×6 show and this furry guy caught my eye.

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Watching Gerhard Richter run a huge squeegee over his wet painting in a YouTube clip, the interviewer asks Richter, “How do you know when a painting is done?” Richter answered, “When nothing bothers me. And I don’t know what to do next.”

This afternoon we walked a dvd of “Dazed and Confused” over to the library. We always find something there to bring home and when it’s due we walk back with it and start the cycle all over. We had seen the Richard Linklater movie before. But it was more fun this time, maybe because we are so far out of high school. Talk about archetypes, this movie nailed them. And the soundtrack has aged really well.

We walked along the lake yesterday looking for the beach. It’s there but underwater. We knew it was supposed to rain but we thought we could get a walk in. What we didn’t count on was the Open House detour we took when we saw the sign in front of the Highlands on Lakeshore Boulevard. There are seven gorgeous homes up there, all but one looking out over the lake from that big hill. The house we looked at used to be owned by the owner of Edwards Restaurant downtown. We used to go there when Peggi’s parents came into town. Coming back through the park we noticed they had cancelled the Arboretum Tour and then, boom. We were caught in thunderstorm.

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We buy Canaltown’s Rochester Choice blend and were getting low so I called Pete and had him put together a couple of big bags. We parked in the empty parking lot of the old Tops, our store of choice when we lived in the now hot North Winton neighborhood. We decided to take a walk before picking up the bags so we headed downtown on the north side of East Avenue. I had something to drop off at RoCo and we took a last look at the local landscape show while we were there. I was struck by how good looking this show is. Nine widely different artists and yet it hangs together.

We found a flyer there for a used book show at the library so we kept walking. Peggi found a small Rouault book from 1959, just one year after Rouault’s death, from a time when art books customarily had color plates glued to the pulp pages and these are knockouts. Clowns, prostitutes and religious paintings. The book was a dollar. Two of the four Rouault prints my father had on our living room wall can be seen in this family photo. I am a fan.

We walked out of downtown on the south side of Eastman, picked up our coffee and took it across the street to Wegman’s Italian restaurant where we split calamari, roasted beet salad with pistachio vinaigrette and octopus. With all the great Italian restaurants in this town Wegmans gave it a good shot.

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I asked our smart speaker to play some Peggy Lee and the first one out was “Is That All There Is?” probably her most popular song. Personal Effects used to do a version of that. But this setlist went deep and reminded me how much I love her. I was especially struck by how good “Where or When” sounded so I went to my library to mark it as a favorite. I only have so much time left to listen to music, as we all do. It already had five stars on it.

We tried to track down Peggi Lee when we were out visiting Peggi’s sister in Belair. We even bought one of those star maps that had her house marked on it. We were on foot, a dangerous way to get around the Hollywood Hills and her house was just too much of hike.

I thought the song below was the most interesting from last week. Nothing like Where or When. That’s my nephew’s drone on the cover.

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I knew something was up when I saw our neighbor, Jared, coming back from the corner with his noise cancelling headphones in his hand. We were still reading the morning paper but we waved to Jared and he came up to the door. He told us his wife had gone out for coffee and had to drive under the power lines that were stretched to the max under a fallen oak.

Jared said Spectrum TV was down there and a “cute little reporter” had interviewed him, inquiring how residents were impacted the storm. He said he told the reporter he likes a good storm. By the time we got down there the power company had stung yellow tape across our street, sealing us in. They cut the power and tree surgeons were preparing to go to work. When the power came back on we found Jared’s interview online. He told us “they cut out all the good parts.”

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Wegman’s was wacky before the snowfall. We walked up there along Sea Breeze Way and had spaced out enough on the way to have forgotten about the impending storm. We remembered when we saw cars backed up trying to get in the lot. Shoppers were almost giddy. A guy from Custom Brewcraft was pouring tall samples of their new IPA. Every cashier lane was open and our cashier was moving so fast she put a jar of Miracle Whip from the guy behind us into our bag. Of course we had paid for it so we had get in the Customer Service line to get our money back.

It snowed enough on our walk back that we decided to put our skies on and try the woods. There was just enough to cushion a fall but we both stayed upright. It snowed so much last night that by this afternoon we couldn’t even see yesterday’s ski tracks. There were seven deer standing in the creek. We stopped on the bridge to watch. Only 9ºF my fingers were too cold to take a picture.

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When the holiday fanfare dies down and the neighbors leave for Florida the heart of the season is just beginning. The lakes in Durand have ice fishermen on them, high school kids are playing hockey in the coves and hundreds of ducks are flocking together beyond the ice formations along the shore of Lake Ontario. The slate grey skies make the male cardinal look like it is on fire. And the threat of 18 inches over the weekend has made us giddy.

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Warren Philips framed a print for us. He called to say it was ready for pick-up so drive over there this afternoon and found him sitting in the window of shop, eating lunch with the lights while listening to Christmas music. From the looks of what was left it was a healthy lunch, both fruits and vegetables. We got a total cost from him and then walked down East main from his shop near Goodman to ESL at Winton and Main to pick up some cash. The five mile loop took us though our old neighborhood and brought back all sorts of memories.

About half the houses on the North side of Main have been torn down and there’s a lot of new buildings like Auto Zone. The giant Eckerd’s that put in where Kadri’s gas station was is now a Dollar Store. The Comic Book Store is gone. East High was letting out when we passed. Amazing how much energy those kids have. I found a Trump playing card on the ground near the school, the queen of diamonds with “Melania, Supermodel” on the back. We used to get a Friday Fish Fry at My Brother’s Place, now Club Soda where the bikers and cops hang out. Economy Paper is still in business. We had a salesman from that place call on us at 4D. Eastern Printing is still cranking. We did many jobs there.

Fleckinger’s Meat Market is a tax service place. That guy knew my grandfather. Salvatore’s, the original location at Wisconsin Street, has the whole block now. The founder’s father, Fred, owned the grocery store across the street. Bertha’s is gone. It’s a laundramat. We stopped in there to go to the bathroom. There is a Puerto Rican restaurant where Mooney’s was and Effinger’s German restaurant before that and Jamaican place across the street. Carroll’s Irish Bar painted their place dark grey for some reason. Fam’s disco is a teen center. The greenhouse is a coffee shop for recovering alcoholics. Mustard Street, where French’s used to be, looks as bleak as ever. Nobody remembers any of this stuff.

Personal Effects “Silver Finger Nails” from “90 Day In The Planetarium” 1987

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I know I’ve been out of sorts when I don’t find any interesting photos on my camera. It is always with me and I usually start a blog post by looking back at what I have brought home. And then I sort of write to the photo sometimes. Just as often the text has nothing to do with the visuals and that makes its own statement. It is at least a starting point.

It has been a few days and this is all I found. The deer are nearly camouflaged and the photo reminds me of those old Highlights magazines. I remember them in our house but I mostly remember them at Dr. Cleary’s, our family dentist. He had an office on the sixth floor of the Medical Arts building on Alexander Street and my mom would take all six of us, Amy wasn’t born yet, to the dentist at the same time. We usually all needed his attention but there wasn’t a babysitter if you didn’t. We devoured the Highlights magazines and there was always a feature where you had to find a list of things hidden in a photo. I’ve gotten pretty good at it but I could never spot these three deer before they spotted me.

Turns out our car is totaled so we took to the internet to shop for a new one and a few days slipped by. And then there was that whole day we spent looking for the title of old car. If they still made the Element we would already have a new one but they don’t make them anymore. Bob Martin thinks we oughta be looking at panel trucks.

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Years after this photo was taken an Academy Award winning movie was shot in Bloomington Indiana and this quarry was featured in a scene. My father took this photo when he came out to visit and I love the body language. I look scared and my brother, Fran, looks like he’s having the time of his life. Funny, too, that I took diving at IU as a PE requirement. The teacher was, Hobie Billingsley, the US Diving coach. The first thing he had us do was climb the ladders to the high platform, walk to the edge, turn our backs to the pool and fall backward in a stiff, plank-like position. If executed properly you do a full rotation and land first. If not, ouch. He was building trust.

I just called my brother for some advice. Our insurance company has passed our claim on to the “Total Loss Department” and we’re waiting to hear what they plan to offer us for it. My brother knows cars. I have no idea what goes on under the hood. We love our car but it a 2003 Honda Element and they don’t make anything like it anymore. We moved the contents of our city house to this place in the car. My drums slide in with room for Pete and Shelley. We carry firewood from down below in it. My brother recommended a bay sho and we hope to have them get our car back on the road with insurance pay out. My uncle was our insurance agent in the old days. I don’t know if I can trust these guys.

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And I don’t mean Brooklyn Academy of Music. The jolt was like the ones you got in the bumper cars at Willow Point Park when your friend slammed you in the rear. We were turning left into Jeff and Mary Kaye’s driveway and we weren’t quick enough for the driver behind us. He/she closed the gap and clipped the right rear corner of our car. Took the whole section of the car that holds the taillight right off. And he kept going into the night. When the Monroe County Sheriff showed up he said, “Welcome to 2018.”

We tried to shake it off and got down to business. Jeff’s stereo was acting up. His amp kept turning off. I plan to bring my old one there next time. He clicked on a Flash update and inadvertently installed something that gave him error messages but it wouldn’t come up while we were out there. His Airport extreme, a device Apple no longer makes, was flashing yellow. I opened Airport utility and updated the firmware. Mary Kaye never got an Apple id when she bought her phone so she was signed in as Jeff and was getting all his work related email. Peggi set Mary Kaye up we with her own id. Jeff’s Pages docs were all showing invisibles.Jeff didn’t know what they were. They look like the old typesetter marks and “Show Invisibles” was turned on. I turned it off. Last on the list was getting Jeff’s photos on his tv. You have to have the Photos app open before you can find them from your tv.

We drove home with one taillight and made it. Peggi installed the Allstate app, took photos of the damage and we expect a quote for repair tomorrow. They cover most of the cost for a car rental so we walked up to Enterprise and came home with a little white thing from Korea.

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Don Hershey designed our house with with a very slim roofline. The one story structure has a low 2/12 pitch and as the roof is pitched down the four foot overhangs have a slight pitch upward. The facia board is very narrow and there were no gutters. A previous owner added a gutter around two sides of the garage and to get enough pitch for the water to roll they had to replace the facia with a wider piece of cedar. The gutter prevented ice from forming near the door but over time the the corners leaked. I patched them a few times but it didn’t last and the corners were especially treacherous in the winter. I thought there had been an innovation of some sort and gutters were were now made without any seams so I asked around for a contractor to replace ours.

A guy came out to give us an estimate and he was very professional. He told us a crew would do the work and he scheduled the job. The forecast called for rain that day so they rescheduled. They called the morning of the new appointment and said they would have to cancel again because of the rain. I said it wasn’t raining here but that didn’t matter. We were given a new appointment, a month away, when we returned from Spain. It was raining that day but they showed up anyway.

There were two guys. The foreman told us the other guy was new and he didn’t speak much English. I told him Peggi could speak Spanish if that helps. He bent over to pick up a tool and I noticed he was wearing flannel boxer shorts with cartoon characters on them. I went in the house and they started work. About five minutes later the main guy rang our bell and said he had to go to Urgent Care because he smashed his knuckles with his hammer. He had his blue stocking cap wrapped around his hand.

They came back out the next day but this time there were three of them. The new guy seemed sharper than the others but he kept his cell phone in his pocket playing music the whole time. They cracked the facia board ripping the old gutters off and used long screws to attach the new gutters. They came out the back of the facia board and are visible if you look up. I came out to check up on them and the lead guy showed me the pitch by holding a six inch level along the bottom of the gutter. My neighbor has a six foot level. This looked like a toy. When they left we found scraps of metal and nails in the driveway and I noticed a long sections of the new gutters wasn’t even screwed in. They did me a favor. I’ll do that with shorter screws.

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We were in Target trying to get a look at the new iPhone XS when everyone’s phones sounded an alert at once. Peggi found it kind of creepy. I was thinking how we were all connected in some new, magical way.

Outside a woman in a big black Suburban hit the curb behind us and then zipped around us to park. We were on foot and I was thinking how our yoga teacher got hit by a shopping cart which had been propelled by a car in the parking lot of Cosco. You have to walk defensively.

Target is the only thing left in Irondequoit Mall and walking across the vast empty parking lot is a surreal experience. The pavement is a cracked and littered with cigarette butts and tiny bits of of trash, mostly plastic. We are already here from the future doing a cursory, shallow archeological dig. I found this broken snow shovel and stuck it in ground at the end of the pavement.

We are only one Rochester walk away from Camino part two. I’m already thinking rocket fuel at Starbucks for that last loop from the house.

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This old lumberyard on Holt Road in Webster looks like a movie set now. I took this shot from the side of the place as we walked the Hojak Trail. We started at North Ponds Park and walked to Drumm Road and back seeing only a handful of people the whole time. We felt like we were on the Camino again, an easy straightaway portion of the Camino, with a natural stone or mud surface and a clear trail, the old railroad line. We were almost to the lake when we turned around and will push it that far next time. I’d love to see where that guy drove through the barricade and into the water on Lake Road.

Our credit card has been compromised three times in the last year. Is that average? I don’t feel like we’re reckless but maybe we are. The repercussions are crazy. When we told the Visa representative that this was the third time our card was compromised she told us that our card was not “compromised” but someone had committed fraud with it. An interesting technicality. So that would be one compromise and two frauds in the last year.

We suspect the other fraud happened when we bought gas up near Niagara Falls. Someone skimmed our number when we inserted our card at the funky pumps. About five months ago a vendor where we used our card had their database attacked so we had to get a new card and that was a “compromise.” On Friday night we bought gas at Herrema’s down near Charlotte. Visa had told us to pay in person rather than use our card at the pump but the place was closed and the only way to pay for gas we desperately needed was to pay with a card at the pump. We pay most bills on line and contacting all our vendors is a pain in the ass.

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