Sorry about the lack of posts but unfortunately some other stuff has been going on not to mention that March has been as boring as sitting and watching a turtle run the 100 yard dash 😉 Warning – Personal Stuff Below!

My Moms been in and out of the hospital a couple times since the beginning of December with her last visit at Crouse ending this Monday. She’s a tough cookie though and pulls through every time and seems to be on her way to a full recovery from pneumonia once again. Of course seeing how I live with her I was lucky enough to catch it myself. The finger pointing hasn’t started yet as to which one of us gave it to the other yet though 🙂 I’ll have to figure out how my two sisters manage to avoid getting sick because they are always around helping out big time.

A big Thanks and Kudos to the doctors and nurses at Crouse hospital. Both of her visits started in the emergency room with them working on her and actually treating her within minutes of arriving. Both times she ended up in intensive care and the Dr’s and nurses were very caring and did their job in an outstanding manner not to mention friendly.

As for the nurses and staff on the 6th Floor North not enough can be said about how happy my mother was and our family was with them both visits. They always had answers for us and if they didn’t they would get them. I think what my mother liked and us was that they were always uppity in spirits along with a smile to go with it. Thanks to the Crouse staff for what you do and do well 😉 Thanks!!!

Another reason for the lack of posts was my oldest son just moved about a trillion miles away in hopes of starting a Career. OK, maybe not quite a trillion miles but it sure seems like it’s that far. He is in New Mexico training to be a Boarder Patrolman. He graduated last year with a degree in criminology and kind of had his mind set on being a police officer. Both of the civil service tests he took he passed but most likely not a high enough grade to get a call. That said he decided to give the Border Patrol test a shot and of course he had to go and almost ace that one. I wish I could say I was cheering him on for that test but, but, but…..

So right now as I type he is in New Mexico probably being yelled at as he does some physical training along with a ton of book work learning laws and so on. I was hoping he would end up working with the Manlius Police Dept which would keep him close to home 🙁 Now all I can do is support him, which I do and accept the fact that he will be living across the country if he passes the training for boarder patrol. At least we get to talk every night or two. So far he is liking it other than being so far away from everyone. I know he’ll do good and will be fine. It’s Dad who will be struggling for awhile 😉

The main reason for the lack of posts is there is NO SNOW! Ummm, that could change in the next day or so but at this point who really cares? The teaser days have already hit us and now the long drag out period begins. You all know the drag out period. We’ll get a 65 degree day only to be followed by a 30 degree day 😉 The good news is we made it through another winter and we all know what is right around the corner.

I could talk B-Ball but I am not going to do or say anything that could possibly jinx my favorite sports team so I’ll leave it at that. Have Super Weekend All!

1:00 – Jeeeshhhhhhhhh, I missed it. Just heard from a friend on board and they have been in for over an hour now. Hopefully we can catch it when it leaves tomorrow 😉

12:40 – If it came it may have come in from the North and I missed it otherwise it may be flying late. Stay Tuned!

OK, It’s a plane but it’s a huge plane and most likely the biggest you will ever see. A little Birdie told me to look up in the sky around the Syracuse area at around 11:40 – Noon today and you may get a look at what I believe is the biggest military plane we have and the second biggest in the world. plane flying in.

The chances are you’ll hear it coming and to see something that big in the air is pretty cool. I’m out to start looking right now and hopefully a few pictures will follow later on.

Wow,wow,Wow,wow,Wow,Wow pretty much summed it up for the Syracuse UConn game doesn’t it. And how about another WOW (just One) for the SU – West Virginia game. Da Cuse is in Da House at Madison Square Garden and exciting is probably a word that just doesn’t quite justify Thursday nights game. Make that Thursday night and Friday mornings game against a good UConn team. The big question now is that do they have enough steam left to follow it all up with a win tonight against a great Louisville team. Oh yeah baby! Steam left or not they look to be on a mission right now and that mission is bringing home the Big East Championship even if it has to be won with just heart which is what this whole team has show us. Enough said and Good Luck and GO CUSE!!!!

The ST Patricks Day parade is tomorrow here in Syracuse so I’ll just do my normal repost of what I’ll be up to tomorrow along with a group of friends and family and a few tips. Below is pretty much a tradition from year to year with a few tweaks here and there. Have a great weekend all and sorry about the lack of posts as always. I may have to hang the On Vacation Sign up do to basketball fever 😉

Tips and Tales of St Patty’s Day in Downtown Syracuse

St Patrick’s Day Weekend is here in Syracuse. Unfortunately only one of the few times I get to get out and enjoy Downtown Syracuse. A bunch of us every year, about 20 or more of us which is a mix of men and women normally hit a local soda pop bar early in the day. OK day meaning morning what can I say? Yes in the morning and don’t be coming to any conclusions. It’s only once a year we do this. Anyways family and friends come to town just for this day downtown. From Virginia, Poughkeepsie, Boston and so on. St Patty’s Day downtown is so much fun that people come from all over the country for it.

Here is how the whole day plays out or should I say is suppose to play out. It hardly ever goes as planned which makes it even more fun. We normally start out at the Park Hill Tavern in East Syracuse where we get dropped off by our designated driver for the day. Normally one of our kids who BTW get paid well for for driving us but it is well worth it. Don’t drink pop and drive. We catch the bus from the Park Hill to the city. So far in the 15 years give or take that we have been doing this I don’t think we have ever caught the bus we intended to. Either all of us aren’t there yet or we weren’t watching for the bus and we miss the one intended. Once we even got on the wrong bus and ended up in NYC. Well not NYC but definitely the wrong bus that had a lot of detours on the way. It would of been faster walking there that year.

Finally we end up downtown for the Parade. Once we were even fortunate enough to see the parade. That was only because when we got off the bus the parade happened to be right there. Don’t get me wrong, we do see the parade it’s just that we watch it from inside the fine city bars that are heated and by the way are always packed when we arrive there. I just wanted to point out that we are not the only ones that start out early in the morning on St Patty’s Day . One thing we do before we start is we each pitch in 20 bucks a person and elect two people to be in charge of buying the drinks all day. The bars are crowded so it would be foolish for 20 + people to go in together and stand at the bar, or should I say attempt to stand at the bar. Another note is that the first 20.00 we pitch in won’t be the last and when I say drinks I’m talking soda pops of course . Tip – One thing I have learned about being elected to the Most important job of the day which is by far buying the drinks is that the first round you buy make sure you order the opposite of what the people wanted. You’ll be the bad guy for a little while but it is well worth the shame, the boos and dirty looks of not being able to order a round of drinks correctly when they impeach you from that position and you get out of ordering the drinks for the rest of the day. Trust me, someone else will take over As for being the bad guy, sooner or later someone else will do something stupid to earn the title of bad guy so you’ll be off the hook in no time.

Most of the day pretty much consists of freezing our tails off but having a Super time in the process. The way we do St Patty’s day is pretty much just bar hop all day and test out all some of the different variety’s of brews that are on tap at the bars. I suppose you could say that we aren’t there so much as to have fun but let’s say we are doing research work on the brews. Maybe this year we will even take notes on our research. I do know that most of the men with us prefer the darker soda pops. Another good tip is to elect a leader to lead your group to the different bars. Someone who actually knows their way around the city of Syracuse. Remember, most of the time it is pretty cold out and for some reason almost always without fail the wind is blowing pretty good. The worse thing is to make a wrong turn and walk for a half a mile or so only to find out you have to go back the other way. For that my Brother in-law normally gets elected and does a fine job most of the time but every now and then he makes a wrong turn. That’s normally a good thing for who ever is the bad guy at the time enabling him to pass the title over to my brother in-law for getting us lost. Like I said the “bad guy or gal” gets passed along throughout the day and always has a ton of laughs to go along with it. Jeez, now that I am typing and keep seeing the word elected. I’m starting to see that St Patty’s Day is actually a fine example of the democracy in progress with all the elections we have going on. Most of the time the person being elected isn’t and to be frank doesn’t want to be elected

All in all we hit maybe 5 – 7 bars. We’ll normally order appetizers, wings or something at one of the bars early and then end up at Clark’s sooner or later for one of their great roast beef sandwiches. If you go to Clarks don’t let the lines fool you. They rock at moving the customers along and you have your food in no time. The roast beef is well worth standing in line for. It’s truly awesome. I wish I could plug all the bars that we hit but to be honest with you I’m just a follower the whole day hoping I don’t get lost or left behind and never really check out the names of the bars we hit. I can only guess that any bar you end up in you’ll have a great time. One thing that bothered me a bit last year is that during the day a lot of the bars weren’t playing Irish songs. I don’t know what was up with that. To the bar owners Please at least play Irish music in the daytime.

The biggest tip I can give is to dress warm. When your ready to leave the house and feel that your dressed up warm enough, go back and grab 3 extra coats. Only then will you be prepared for a great St Patty’s day downtown. Then again I think it was a couple of years ago when the temps went up to 60 degrees and here was the Golden Snowball dude carrying a coat and 2 sweatshirts around looking like a fool. I did try the “can you hold this for a second while I do whatever” trick but that only worked for so long. I should of trusted the weatherman that time.

The day downtown or sometimes night downtown (depending on how much research some of us have done) will end with one of us calling our designated drivers to come pick us up. We use to try and catch or call a couple of taxis to get home but that is another story or two in itself. The last time we called for two taxis only one showed up. Being the gentlemen that we are (yes only gentlemen in our group ) we told the ladies to go ahead and we would suffer and wait it out until the next taxi shows up. Well what are the chances of not one of us having a watch on and you all know how time flies. Before we knew it almost a couple of hours went by. Anyways I’m sure you already figured out that the ladies weren’t too happy with the men. Something to this day I haven’t figured out because we all thought the women would of been impressed with how patient we were waiting for the taxi to arrive. Everyone knows men aren’t known to be patient and so what if our patience was being displayed at a hopping bar. That shouldn’t even come in to the picture should it That was the end to taxi’s being used for the ride back to town.

Summary Finally – Sorry about the rant. I really could of kept going on. To sum it up I always thought St Patrick’s day was a great big party downtown. After typing this up I discovered it’s actually a democracy process in the works with all the electing we do in our group along with research work. Research on the different brews of beer downtown. The research work by far is the hardest part of the day. Now knowing that it’s not the Big Party that I always thought it was I probably won’t be able to enjoy it like I have in the past. I’ll give it my best shot though

Have a Great Weekend All!

Both Rochester and Buffalo have now hit their average seasonal snow totals and any snow from here on is bonus snow. With the storm that’s taking place right now unfortunately too far to the east of most of the GSB cities I don’t see any real threat of Buffalo or Rochester making up much in way of the snow gap that Syracuse has put in place so far this season. It will be interesting to see if Albany can pull in some snow from the storm.

Right now Syracuse is still looking really good for a top 10 finish. As of right now DaCuse has had it’s 11th snowiest season on record and needs just 5.3 inches to take a top 10 spot. Click Here to check out the top 15 seasons for Syracuse snowfall courtesy of a link from Brian Cubbison at the post standard. I was just thinking (OK, dreaming) that if that storm to the east would have come to the west and hit Syracuse it may have set up the possibility of a shot at the all time record for the Golden Snowball cities which Buffalo still has bragging rights to at 199.4 inches. Could have, should have but didn’t though. If we’re lucky maybe it can pull in some moisture that may be around and hopefully get the lake effect machine to fire up. I’m still thinking perhaps a top 5 finish… Go Figure Huh 😉

One thing I noticed while looking at the top 15 snowiest seasons is that 5 of the seasons in the top 15 are from this decade. Thats a 3rd of them which I kind of thought was pretty interesting.

Have a Great Week All!

Syracuse set another date record yesterday with 5.6 inches of snow (kind of wimpy if you ask me) but it looks like a warm up for the next few days may put a sudden stop to things temporarily at least.

If my math is right which remember it normally isn’t, Syracuse has had it’s 12th snowiest season so far and a top 10 finish is in reach. I was looking over the stats here at the Snow Stats Page and it looks like if Syracuse can end the season with 153.1 inches that will put them in the top 10. Syracuse has a chance of having their 5th snowiest season if they can keep piling up the snow and reach a total of 168.9 inches. With Syracuse needing just a couple more feet of snow and with March’s average snowfall of just under 19 inches it’s definitely doable. What about that long sought after 200 inch mark? March has been known for a good storm or two and I think it would take something like the March blizzard of 1993 to put us in reach of that goal.

One of the comments left here was how it’s pretty much over and that even a good Nor Easter wouldn’t move the cities close because Syracuse would also get the snow. Not a Nor Easter like last season where Buffalo picked up something like 23 inches and Syracuse got a little more than a dusting. Of course I think it would take a couple of them for Rochester and Buffalo to have a shot at a comeback like they made last season. No doubt though that it’s looking pretty good right now for Syracuse as we wind down the home stretch.

I’m feeling pretty confident about the Golden Snowball Winter Prediction this season. Well other than picking Rochester pulling an upset. With the Rock and Buffalo both ready to hit their seasonal averages and Binghamton still above their normals at least 3, of the 5 GSB cities will have an above average snowfall season for 2008 – 2009. Here is the 2008 – 2009 winter outlook that was posted back in December. Yeah, yeah, I know my totals are pretty off right now other than DaCuse so Rochester and Buffalo best start piling it on. Have a Great Day All!

Syracuse picked up another 9 1/2 inches of snow to widen the lead over Buffalo and Rochester. The 9 1/2 inches set a new date snow record which was previously 7.2 inches set back in 1960. Rochester piled up almost half a foot of snow pushing Buffalo back down the snow hill and into third place once again. Binghamton has added a few inches here and there but they have probably run out of time now. As for Albany, they’re history in the 2008 – 2009 Golden Snowball contest being almost 90 inches behind the leader Syracuse.

My thinking is that if Rochester and Buffalo can close February out trailing Syracuse by just a couple of feet then it will still be a good contest to the end. If ever there was a time for the cities to do a snow dance it’s now. A good Nor Easter or two can definitely help both of the cities out which is what happened last season. Maybe I’ll try and do a snow dance for both the cities and see if it works 😉 40 or so inches of snow is a lot to make up this late in the season but I think it’s doable still. This is New York remember and who knows what the Snow God has in store for any of the GSB cities. Hmmm! Maybe we should contact NYCO, the keeper of the Snow God and see if she can put the Him/Her away for a couple of weeks to see if The Rock and Buffalo can catch up a bit. NAHHH! Have a Super Weekend All!!