Third snow and still the ground is brown.

The leaves have fallen, the time has changed, it is now dark when i leave work, shotgun season for deer has opened, our apartment is generally cold, and still, the ground is not white.  We have had three snows so far this season and during each snow, we have experienced accumulation.  However, the temperature can't seem to convince itself to stay below 32. lol.  I guess we are not complaining.  I just would have expected snow and winter temperatures by now.  The first winter i moved up here, we got a heavy snow the last week of October and we didn't see the ground until the January thaw.

I would say that we are fairly prepared for winter.  I'll admit that we don't have that much to do to prepare since we rent an apartment and have only one car.  Our preparations include putting the snow tires on the car and getting the snow brush out of the closet and putting it in the car.  Oh, and putting our bicycles and motorcycle away.  Yep that's about it.  I mean we do shuffle cloths around a little and I check the antifreeze in our car, but in general, we don't have that much to do to get ready. So, we are ready.

I/we have done a few things worthy of noting this fall:
1.  Fill out and submit my Pistol Permit Application.
I live in Erie county and early this spring, i took my pistol safety course with some friends.  It is my understanding from the course that in NYS, it is a felony to even handle a handgun that is not listed on your pistol permit.  In Erie county, it is much harder to get your permit than it would be in Cattaraugus county.  It takes 6-8 months minimum to get your permit after you submit your application.  In Cattaraugus county, it takes only 6-8 weeks.  Anyway, i wanted to get this out of the way while i have some time to do these things.  The fee for the application isn't too bad, but it cost $105 just for the fingerprinting process.  And I didn't even end up with a copy of my finger prints.  Also, the fingerprinting was by appointment only... it only took 10 minutes.

2.  Fill out and submit my Professional Engineers(PE) Application.
This application is very involved and it took me quite a while to finish.  There are many parts:  One to send to your college to verify your education, One to send to the state of Pennsylvania to verify that i passed the FE (Fundamentals of Engineering) exam, One to each of the Engineers that I worked under for verification that I did the work.  I also had to summarize all of the work experience that I had working under an engineer.  All of this filling out of application forms is to get qualified to take the PE exam with the ultimate goal of getting my PE license in NYS.  That would allow me to practice engineering on my own if I so chose.  Oh.  Did I mention the $377 application fee to NYS?  NYS seems to get alot of our money up here!

3.  Buy winter boots to be used for hunting, shoveling snow, and for general use in the winter time.   We got Muck boots.  They are very cozy and waterproof.
4.  Take our hunter's safety course in order to get our hunting licenses.
5.  Get our hunter's licenses for deer season.

We both got some clothing that would keep us warm and dry when we went hunting.  We tried them out Saturday (opening day for gun season up here) when we went hunting with Jake and Laura and Mark.  It was a bit warm for our jackets to be fully appreciated, but they were nice.  We both saw a deer, but we didn't get a shot.  We did however enjoy it so we hope to be out hunting again soon.  I particularly enjoyed being outside and seeing the beauty of God's creation.

I should mention that the night before opening day, we went as leaders with our Youth Group to an all night event in Rochester, NY.  We met the kids and other leaders at the church at 5pm and got back to the church the following morning at 7am.  I think the kids had fun.  It involved a Hockey Game, an evangelistic message, a few hours for bowling and eating pizza and pop, and then going to a sports complex to play all kinds of indoor games.  The sports complex had two soccer fields, a basketball court, three volleyball courts, a bunch of other areas for smaller games, and a dodge ball 'field'.  It was pretty fun.  We got home from that and slept for about 4 hours before we went out hunting.

I think one of the oxygen sensors is going bad on our vehicle.  The check engine light has come on two different times in the last 12 months.  I took it to AutoZone and both times it was the "catalyst system efficiency below threshold - bank 1" message.  Both times, the light has gone out on its own after a little while.  I read online some and my research has lead me to believe that it is the O2 sensor before the Catalytic converter.  I have experienced a small drop in fuel efficiency over the last 12 months which is one of the indicators that seems to support this hypothesis. At any rate, i think i will take the car into a shop next month to try to get the situation remedied.

We are going to Ohio to Dad's house for Thanksgiving from this Wednesday PM to next Monday PMish.  We are looking forward to it and to the plumbing project he has lined up.  We are spending the weekend of Christmas with Brad and Michelle and their family and then journeying on up to Maine for some time with Melissa's family.  Then it will be back to NY for New Year's eve with friends in Springville.  This time of year is very enjoyable with all the food and festivities and family and fun.  Wow, lots of f's.

Until Next Time....

On a Saturday

So.  A post actually posted on a saturday.  First, i want to bring to your attention something Melissa observed on our way home from Maine the last two times.  This time, like good engineers, we remembered to mark the coordinates on our GPS so we could look it up later.  It appeared to be a large, long pipeline and we weren't sure what it was for.  I looked it up on old faithful Google Maps when we got home and as it turns out, it crosses Route 9, but it begins at Searsburg Reservoir.  I stumbled upon another blog that shed much light on what it was.  Here is the link to the blog: http://isquangle.blogspot.com/2007/02/searsburg-dam-and-power-station.html.  It turns out that the pipeline is called a "penstock". It carries water from the reservoir 3.5 miles to a small hydroelectric plant.  It is 8 feet in diameter and it was all built in the 1920's.  Very impressive and i think we will stop there next time we go by....at least take a slight detour to the reservoir.  Of course, that will make our overall trip time longer, but i think we can handle the delay. lol


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So, today, I went with a group of 14 men from our church to Letchworth State Park http://nysparks.state.ny.us/parks/79/details.aspx.  We went on a Kayaking trip on the Genessee River. We put in at 42.598256,-78.006985  You can plug this into Google Maps if your interested.  I couldn't get it to plot a route along the river.  It wouldn't let me plot a route driving, biking, walking, or otherwise.  So i will have to resort to giving the lattitude and longitude of the 'put in' point and the 'take out' point. lol  The water was pretty low and we got hung up on some rocks here and there.  BUT it was very fun and I enjoyed hanging out with some guys from our church.  We put out at 42.615976,-77.993955.  Google shows this to be under water, but the level of the river was so low, it was not.  We had a bus drop us off and pick us up at the end.  It was really fun and a great day for a trip like that.

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Here are some pics of the fun we had.  It ended up being a pretty lazy trip because the water was pretty low and slow.

 Everyone getting ready to Put In

 Midway Group Picture

 A Picture of the river, people, and the 500 foot cliff beside us.

 We were hungry after all the paddling.

The Middle Falls at the Glen Iris Inn.

We also are having Abigail, a friend of ours from college, up for the weekend.  She and Melissa spent the day getting breakfast together, going to garage sales, and getting lunch together.  I got home from my outing and made a double batch of pizza dough for tomorrow, fresh tomato sauce for the pizzas, yogurt, and we ate spaghetti for dinner.  We are having a family from church over for homemade pizza and wings for lunch.  We love our pizza and wings and if anyone wants to come visit us and have some, we would welcome the company. :)  Not that we're bored, but we just like having people over.

Next weekend, we are going to the Geneva Homecoming and the following weekend after that we will be at a wedding near home in NY.

Until Next Time....

The Ending of Summer

As the end of summer is nearing, we are reminded over and over again how truly blessed we are.  God has given us many things including two good jobs (with two good bosses), a comfortable apartment that is cool in the summer, warm in the winter, and a relaxing place to which we can come home, a dependable vehicle (and a motorcycle that we can ride in the summer just for fun), great friends, and family on both sides that we love to visit.  We have a great church to attend and we are constantly challenged to seek the Lord and to grow in our faith.  Yes, we are blessed.  By God.

We went up to Maine for a long weekend at the beginning of this month to visit Dad Gulstrom for his birthday.  We had a very enjoyable time picking the last of the green beans from their garden and washing, cutting and blanching them and freezing them.  We got to visit with lots of family and we had MUCH good food to eat.  We were loaded down with lots of good canned goods, the green beans we froze while we were there, and several jars of homemade preserves and sent on our way back to Ohio at 5:00AM monday morning.  Well, we got up and left on our own accord.  We wanted some time to unpack before work started Tuesday. :)

On a somewhat unrelated topic, i find that I am often wanting to collect data about almost every aspect of our lives.  This could be because of engineering tenancies in my thought processes.  Some educated individuals allude that people like me and Jake (and probably lots of other OCD type people) exhibit behavior that would put us inside one end of the spectrum of symptoms that begins to indicate autistic behavior.  I wouldn't disagree that I like to have some things just right.  Why do I insist that we collect all kinds of data each and every time we fill up the car with gas?  Because eventually, i would like to look at that data to determine if we get better gas mileage with gas from Kwik Fill or Mobil.  And who wouldn't want to know the average miles per gallon that they have gotten with a vehicle over the life of that vehicle. (FYI: our Toyota Corrolla = 34.1 mpg over the last 100 fill-ups; Honda Shadow = 38.5 mpg over the last 41 fill-ups)  Yeah weird.  Cool, but weird.  All of this is made much more possible by the iPod Touch or the Smartphone.  There's an app for almost everything.  OH.  And Google Maps is also very cool for the analysis of road trips.  Let me get back to the whole reason I got on this topic.  Our Trip to Maine.  It is a 10 hour drive up to Maine without any stops.  We can usually make it up there in 10.5 hours.  There are two routes on which we have traveled since we have been traveling between the Buffalo area and the Maine area.


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The first route is shown above.  This route takes us through Massachusetts and it is pretty much highway driving the whole way.  It is 583 miles long.  It takes us 10.5 hours including stops and approximately 24.50 in tolls.


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The second, and preferred route is shown above.  This route takes us on route 7 and 9 through Vermont and New Hampshire.  It is a mix of two lane, State Route driving and highway driving.  It is 537 miles long.  It takes us 10.5 hours including stops and approximately 12.25 in tolls.

Now, because we keep track of our gas mileage, i can tell you that we get the same mileage on both routes.  The only explanation for that is that I think our gas mileage is diminished on the highway when we are driving over 65 MPH.  Because of air resistance.  Anyway, to make a long story short, even though our miles to time ratio is slightly lower on the second route, it doesn't take any longer overall and it saves us over 10 dollars in gas and 25 dollars in tolls when you consider a round trip.  Also, we enjoy the trip better.  Some might say that there is no way it doesn't take us longer to take the second route.  But it doesn't.  Maybe its because we don't drive as fast on the highway as some and don't make as good of time as we might on the first route. LOL  Anyway, I find looking at these types of comparisons fun.  If you find it boring, then don't worry about it.  I won't always bore you with this analytical talk.

Moving on to more interesting things.  We bought a new tent last week for camping and got to try it out Friday night.  It was about 45 degrees F, and we had lots of blankets and....yes, a queen air mattress. :)  We were camping in Jake and Laura's back yard with them.  They had their tent and we had ours and it was quite fun.  When I woke up in the morning, I was so cozy that I had forgotten that we were in a tent!  I hope we get more opportunity to use our new tent.

Dad and Rose came up to visit Saturday evening.  They arrived in time to enjoy a cajun chicken alfredo dinner.  We also had some peach crisp that Rose had brought.  Everything was delicious.  They went to church with us Sunday morning and after a picnic in Chestnut Ridge Park, they went on up to Niagara Falls before they headed back to Ohio.  We thoroughly enjoyed visiting with them and it was great.

As I am writing this, I am listening to some music that we have recently discovered.  http://theodesproject.net/2010/05/youtube-the-lord-is-our-mirror-dr-james-h-charlesworth/
The Odes Project is a really cool.  They have put the Odes of Solmon to newer music.  The Odes of Solomon is said to be the earliest Christian Hymnal.  The above link is a reading of one of the Odes of Solomon.  http://theodesproject.net/media/odes-accompaniment-tracks/  This link is a link to the accompaniment tracks that they have produced.   You can preview the music there.  We were able to download an album from iTunes.  You can also buy and download them here at their website if you want.

Also in my spare time, I did some work on our companies website. Sort of inspired by Melissa who did the same at her company. You can check them out here if you want.
www.mdaengineers.com
www.clearcreekls.com

Anyway, I better get going.  Have a blessed week.
Until Next Time....

It been a good summer so far...

Well, it has been the better part if a year since my last blog. I must say that I have been failing to make it a priority. I'll start by saying that I recently have been convinced that we had been saying that we were REALLY busy a lot...maybe too much. Every time someone asked how we were, we would reply, "Busy". We have started to try not to say that. And I think it has been helping us be more productive. We try to no longer let ourselves have that excuse because we do have unproductive things that take up our time and if we feel busy, we cut some of that out and all of the sudden we have time to hang out with friends or help someone out.....or clean our apartment. Lol.

There have been several things we have been doing this summer:

1. Trying our hand at making our own pizza and wings. Buffalo wings are quite the thing up here in buffalo and we have come to enjoy them quite a lot. We have had several friends over and they seem to think that our pizza is quite good. And our wings. I grill the wings on the charcoal grill and then put the sauce on them. We got all the recipes from the Internet and we think they are great.

2. I have been riding my motorcycle MUCH more this summer as compared to last summer. Last month, I rode it 20ish days. Over the last two weeks, I think I rode it 9 work days. I actually noticed that the rear tire is wore out. I need to get it replaced before the end of the summer. Probably before the end of the month. It has been averaging a solid 40 mpg.

3. This morning we had the first rain since probably 4 weeks ago. The grass has gotten quite crispy almost everywhere. Last week it reached 95 one day and one of the major freeways around buffalo buckled in one place because it expanded so much in the heat. The heat was more than we are used to. All of the lowes and sears stores were sold out of air conditioners. We have managed to survive without one so far.

4. We have been able to hang out with a lot of people from church and we have also been able to get to know some of our neighbors better too. It is nice in the summer weather because it's easier to go places and hang out. We can stay outside too. We have been riding our bicycles more too. Melissa, of course has been riding hers the .75 miles to work most days. If friends of ours want to meet for ice cream, we just ride over to the ice cream shop. We can even ride over to a couple of our friends' houses too.

5. This weekend, we got invited to go with a friend, Jeffrey, to Buffalo for a schooner ride. It was a first for both of us, and it was really fun. We ate at the Anchor Bar afterwords. It is famous for being the originator of the buffalo wing. They had good wings. And the other food we had was great too. After that, we ended going up to Niagra falls too, another first for me. :)

So, I guess that's all for now.....