Here are some random things which have been occupying my time:

• My super Aunt Kathy passed away last week, and we drove to ONONdaga County to attend her memorial service. I was glad to be there for my family, and it was a nice service. An Irish style remembrance of all things which made her awesome with a great vegetarian buffet from a local restaurant they favored. It was tough to be sad with all these great stories about her going around, but I still managed. I was saddened to learn after her passing that she was a Buddhist. I would have enjoyed discussing that with her. I am SO glad that we were able to stop in and see her a few months ago on the way out to FUMN. I already miss her terribly.
• Learned some lousy news regarding our property today… The (aforementioned) DPW lot behind our house is also getting renovated as part of the huge roads project in our neighborhood. They are turning 2/3rd of the lot into public parking, leaving the middle section as DPW (which isn’t that big of a deal except during this roads project; Normally they just store some snow plows there). Anyway, along our back property line (and the rest of our neighbors as well) there will be a bike path, and they will be erecting a 6′ fence along our property line. But looking at the area, I’m pretty sure they are going to have to cut down all of the shrubs and trees to make way for the bike path… Our downstairs neighbors are pumped about the fence, because it will block 100% of their view of the DPW lot.. But if all those trees come down we not only lose pretty trees but I’m pretty sure we’ll have nothing blocking our view from the deck… Such is the price of progress, I guess, and hopefully my assumptions are wrong, but I doubt it. They are also going to hack down all the trees on our street when they redo that.. So it’s going to look a little grim around here for the next few decades…. :(
• Loving my new Macbook Pro.  While the Air was a great little machine, I had kind of forgotten what it’s like to have a balls-out monster laptop.  This thing screams.
• Doing well with our "no car" experiment…  We’ve been without a car for about 6-7 weeks, and so far it’s been fine.  We use Zipcar from time to time to run errands or save some time on a trip to a remote part of the city, but most of the time we use public transit or walk, which is great.  For long trips, like to Syracuse or NJ, we’ve been renting cars from the local Enterprise dealer.  Even with the abundance of trips we’ve had to take in the past 6 weeks, if you add up the Zipcar, Rental, and Transit fees we’ve accumulated, it is STILL lower than what I would have spent on payments and insurance for a new car.
• Going to NJ tomorrow night for the big summer party I’ve been throwing for a few years now.  The guest list has gotten so big that I’ve had to start removing names from the invite list, which sucks.  If you’re reading this and are upset, I apologize.  I tried to favor people I see less frequently due to distance on the invites, so if I see you a lot or you’re from boston, you might not have made the cut.   I plan on discussing some way to let this party grow a bit more for next year, but more than likely it would have to leave my parents house for it to do so…  Which would mean that the cost would go up, which is definitely not good eats.
• Red Sox have been playing terribly for awhile.  That is all.