Halloween Party

Hello everyone. Happy Halloween! This evening I went over to "help" hand out candy at Aunt Gwyn and Uncle Fred's. They usually get a ton of kids but tonight was actually pretty slow. Check out my cousin as a very force-ful Josh Vader...

And here's little Mr. cousin Joey as Micky Mouse...

Last Saturday we had a Halloween party at Ziegler's. It was a lot of fun! We had a whole bunch of food including Sloppy Joes, four half-empty gallons of cider, and Kim's grandmother's marshmallow/fruit salad which, despite looking like seagull diarrhea, tasted great. So, here are some photos for you viewing pleasure:

Kim and Dan, dressing up as each other. I'm not gonna lie... it was a little freaky.

Jon and Chelsie

Paul and Michelle.

Noah and Kailyn.

A gracious appearance by the lovely Miss Cara; always charting new territory in the fashion realm.

And finally, my favorite, the Party Princess himself, Josh Wright. Don't the shiny purple bangs really bring out the homicidal glint in his eyes? Okay, more soon but I'm off to bed now.

Birds: American Golden-Plover

I haven't been able to do much birding lately but last Friday I did get out to photograph this American Golden-Plover.

The bird was with roughly ten Killdeer in the parking lot of the State Fair off Route 690.

What a pretty bird! I'd never had the opportunity to study a non-breeding plumage Golden-Plover at such close range. Check out the pattern on this fella's back...

This wasn't a year bird for me but I really enjoyed seeing it. Hopefully I'll be able to get a few last birds added to my list up at Derby in the next month. Still looking for a jaeger or two, maybe a kittiwake, and a couple more species of waterfowl (eg Brant, Surf and Black Scoter, Red-throated Loon, Rudy Duck).

Pictures of Me

Just some pictues of me...

Tales from Pennsylvania

Hello again my faithful (I hope) readers. I am finally back to blogging now that I have the winning combination of 1) a working computer, 2) a working camera and 3) some free time. I've been a little extra busy recently. Last weekend Noah and I played two gigs in Pennsylvania with our friends Jay Ungar and Molly Mason. They are such great people to hang out with. The first concert was in Coudersport where we stayed two nights at the Frosty Hollow Bed & Breakfast, which I would highly recommend if you happen to find yourselves in that neck of the woods anytime soon. The second concert was in Oil City, a little north of Pittsburgh. It was a lot of fun playing with Jay and Molly as always. On the way back we came through the Allegheny National Forest and even though it was cold and rainy, the drive was absolutely beautiful. Now a couple weekends ago we had a not-so-picturesque encounter, also on the road in PA. Check this out...

Is that gross or what!? Some idiot tied two dead deer to the top of their car; there was blood dripping down the sides, all over the widows. Click here for another view (I mean, you don't have to if you want to). Okay, let's stop thinking about that now. Let's see... nothing much happening on the birding front recently. The material for the new CD is coming along nicely though. We've been practicing for a couple hours pretty much every day; tweaking the arrangements, adding tunes or verses to songs, recording demos. It's fun. More info on that soon. Yesterday I borrowed a mandocello from my friend Allen Hopkins. What an instrument! Hope to use that on at least one track. It's tuned just like a cello so the lowest note is a full octave below middle C. A few weeks ago Noah built me this really cool board / case for my guitar pedals. Right now I'm using a Dunlop GCB-95 Cry Baby wah, a Boss OS-2 OverDrive/Distortion, a Boss CE-5 Chorus Ensemble, a Boss DD-6 Digital Delay, a simple boost pedal for bouzouki solos and a Planet Waves tuner through a Fender Blues Jr amp. My guitar is a 1989 American-made Fender Stratocaster. I gotta say, I love my guitar. I got it a couple years ago from a music store in Oswego. The fingerboard was really worn when I got it but I thought it looked cool so I just left it the way it was. I just switched over to the new Beta Blogger and it's working much better now. We have a gig tonight and I'd kind of like to go for a walk or something before I have to go set up so this'll be it for now. This is the picture I've been trying to upload all day...

I love you honey! Thanks for putting up with me. See you tomorrow!