Swan lake.

Lawn ornament convention.

Zoo balloon.

Roadside protest.

Look, up in the sky.

While weaving through Philadelphia traffic a hot air baloon came into view. It was partially obscured by trees and at first several attempts to photograph it were unsuccesful. Eventually the road shifted and the view changed.

Wet highway.

This image represents a combination of two Bon Jovi album titles: Slippery When Wet and Lost Highway. As irony would have it, I am on my way to New Jersey. Don't worry, I am not driving.

Panorama.

Rose Marie's.

These are the bushes outside of a local Italian restaurant which used to be a local bar. The food here is phenomenal. If you ever visit Bloomsburg, check out Rose Marie's and you won't be disapointed.

Thought of the day.

Here is something that has bothered me for a while: is the boomerang a work of genius or a work of laziness. The boomerang was invented by the Australian Aborigines at a time in human history when the rest of the known, and unknown, world was using spears to hunt. Hunting with a spear requires a lot of walking, especially if you miss the intended target. Hunting with a boomerang, on the other hand, is much easier because it comes back to you if you miss. Therefore I can't decide if the boomerang is a work of genius, since it requires a great deal of intelligence to shape a piece of wood like a bird's wing, or a work of laziness, since it is a hunting implement that comes back to the user upon failure. Just a thought.

Spring cleaning.

Once the snow melts, all kinds of interesting junk starts showing up. This is something I found during a recent walk.

Intersection.

Thought of the day.

Every fourth year enough minutes are accumulated from the previous years to make an entire day. The thought that occurred to me is how come we don't have a leap month? I don't mean February with 29 days in it, but a month made up of leap days. If my calculations are correct, this should take place once every 88 years. This new month should fit snugly right between February and March allowing us to have three full months of winter and three of spring. Just a thought.

Primary fever.

During a visit to the Kingston Armory, I spoted a third party presedential candidate.

I canoe, can you?

Go west, young man.

Yesterday, after my curiosity got the better of me, I searched for and located an on-line version of a game my wife mentioned playing in her childhood. I decided to load my wagon with family and supplies and take a chance on The Oregon Trail.

My first attempt was disastrous resulting in several members of my party drowning during a poorly planned river crossing and ending with my own untimely demise out on the prairie. My wife joined me on my second attempt to make it to the West Coast and together we were far more successful. This time we only lost two members of our party and almost made it. But a sudden blizzard, we encountered while crossing yet another mountain range, caused the computer to freeze bringing our misadventure to a sudden end.

Despite the hardships we encountered on our journey, we have not been deterred from another attempt to cross this great nation of ours in a wagon pulled by a team of oxen. If the pioneering spirit strikes you as well, you can play The Oregon Trail at: http://www.virtualapple.org/oregontraildisk.html.

In between.

Today is a no-name day. According to the Catholic calendar, Thursday was Holy, Friday was Good, and Sunday is Easter. But Saturday wedged between the Good Friday and Easter Sunday has no particular significance. I guess that's because people usually spend Saturday cleaning and getting ready for Sunday.

My wife and I had every intention of joining millions of Americans in the joyful preparation for the first Spring celebration, but after a brief Easter egg hunt at the Town Park in the near freezing wind and brunch at Panera Bread we have succumb to laziness. Eventually we will get this place shipshape and buy the ingredients to make tomorrow's feast in honor of a rabbit who brings chocolate eggs. But for now my wife is playing with Lili in the living room and I am catching up on e-mail and the History Channel.

Easter egg hunt.

The Easter egg hunt at the Town Park was organized by a local chapter of the American Legion. People, along with their children, gathered by a low fence that separates the parking area from the park until the siren sounded and everybody stampeded. If it weren't for the bitterly cold wind, this might have been mildly enjoyable.

Displays.

Mannequins are creepy. Headless mannequins are creepier than the regular ones. Headless baby mannequins are exponentially creepier than the regular ones and the headless ones combined.

Easter Lili.

To celebrate the arrival of Spring we are taking Lili to the mall for pictures with the Easter Bunny.

Goodbye, Arthur.

It is a sad day for all Sci-Fi fans. Arthur C. Clarke, the man who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey and invented communcations satellites, has died. I remember reading 2001 in Russian when I was a kid and thinking how magical and yet realistic he made the whole experience sound. HAL 9000, the artificial inteligence commputer, was a fantasticly flawed character whose actions resulted in people's deaths because of the commands given to HAL by the people back on Earth. HAL was the first of his kind and paved the way for William Gibson's A.I. Wintermute.

If you think about it, a lesson about responsible use of computers at a time when computers were the size of apartments and had the computing power of a modern calculator was a brilliant move on Clarke's part. Even though 2001 came and went without a manned mission to Jupiter or an artificial inteligence of any kind, Clarke's contribution to science fiction and the world in general still remains valuable. And at the end of one's life that is all anybody can hope for.

Team blogs.

The Ignorant Immigrant is a one man, I say "man" because I am not sure that I qualify for personhood, operation. To put it simply, whatever I feel like writing about I write about, no topic is taboo and no topic is sacred. This is also due in part to the fact that this is a personal blog which is another way of saying that The Ignorant Immigrant ought to be called The Aimless Immigrant. But regardless of rhyme, or reason, the freedom to ride the rails is great.

This, I belive, is not so with team blogs. A team blog is first and formost a colluboration between co-authors and collaboration breeds conflict. Conflict can be good because sometimes conflict creates content, but conflict can also bring the machinery of a team blog grinding to a halt faster than a well aimed sabot. Another issue is who controls the posts on the blog. Do all team members vote on a post or is there an Editor-In-Chief who decideds if a post doesn't fit the format?

In my opinion, a team blog has to be run like a newspaper in order to provide its readers with a consistent message and quality content. Chaos, which spices up individual blogs, could ruin a good team blog if left unchecked. These are some late night thoughts that I had on this topic. Feel free to tell me what you think.

Electric chair.

Found art.

Time and the elements turned a simple sign into something artistic.

And we're back.

I have not posted in a while due to lack of a working computer. The old Compaq workhorse which ran Windows ME finally bit the tiny particles of matter. My friend Daryl was kind enough to give me an old Acer which runs Windows 98 SE. This, of course, is an improvement since the Acer actually works.

After all the grief I went through with the old computer I am a big fan of the web based software and storage. This would have solved the data retrieval problems I now face. In the past, I thought that the idea of a computer which does not have a hard drive and stores all of its files on the web was impractical since without an Internet connection you are left with a glorified calculator.

But the upside of such a device would be the ability to pour tea onto your computer and still have all the necessary data readily available once a new computer was acquired. Data, after all, is far more valuable than the microchips that store it.

Cycles.

Soda can.

Self portrait.

As I was walking along, I happened to see my own shadow. Since it's March, and I am not a groundhog, I don't know what to make of it.

Family lunch.

While Lili and I were running errands, I got a call from my father who is visiting our wilderness for the weekend. So the three of us had lunch, along with complementary danishes, at Panera Bread, our favorite impromptu gathering place.

Away message.

I haven't posted much lately because Lili knocked over a cup that contained my unfinished ice tea right onto my laptop. This was a feeting end to a computer that has been abused by all of us for six years. My wife and I bought this laptop from a Sears store when she was student teaching and needed a computer to write her lesson plans. It was a display model but we didn't care since we absolutely had to have one. We even took it to my father's house once to have dinner and watch the 2002 Olympics. It relocated with us to the new apartment to make room for a crib and its future occupant who eventually killed it. Otherwise it sat on my desk throughout its useful life. Now the decedent remains where it always been, facing the window above my desk and the world that lies beyond. And in case you were wondering, I wrote this on my sister-in-law's laptop while watching The Simpsons at her house.

Out of order.

This sign was posted on a photo printer by a person unfamiliar with the English language. "Broke" implies an absence of money, while "broken" means that something no longer works. If you don't speak English, you can't tell the difference.