Tuesday, May 31, 2011

SOME PEOPLE DO LISTEN

Received the following email from my brother a couple of weeks ago.


"I bought the tassel cordovan shell Alden loafers in Aug of 1984 because that's what my big brother Pat told me to buy when I first got to Dayton with Motorists. 27 years later....I sent them to Aldens to have restored and they came back beautiful! But best of all.....they have that brand new shoe smell!!!"



Find a pair by clicking here. For a young guy, it is a worth while investment.


By the way, only his siblings understand Dino's smell thing, you don't want to.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

This weekend marks the unofficial start of summer, but it's also John F. Kennedy's birthday. And who better to model your easy-going summer style after than JFK? Sure, he was a sharp dresser when it came to suits, but the president was more known for his comfortable nautical style, which he developed while sailing around Cape Cod. Broken-in chinos, salt-washed polos and cotton cardigans topped with tortoiseshell shades and grounded with pragmatic boat shoes or canvas sneakers. They're the kind of effortless, masculine duds that looked just as timeless in the 1960s as they do right now.

Click here for Valet's blog post of JFK's casual wear.

Friday, May 27, 2011

DRINK LIKE AN ITALIAN THIS SUMMER

The classic Negroni as enjoyed yesterday in Venezia.

The Negroni, along with the baseball season, is one of the most welcome rites of Spring. Its devotees include Gabrielle Hamilton, Orson Welles, and, of course, Count Negroni, for whom the drink is named. According to legend the count wanted a stronger version of an Americano and asked a bartender in Florence to substitute gin for club soda. The result is downright historical. Never has so much been owed by so many to so few. Kingsley Amis, our best writer on drink, declares simply: ‘This is a really fine invention.’

The Negroni, a classic aperitivo, is Campari, vermouth, gin, an orange, ice. Simple. Yet it requires precision. Plymouth is our stalwart gin, but we don’t fuss over that. Equal parts sweet vermouth and Campari. It must be stirred to an icy extreme. Serve it up or on the rocks. As in all things sartorial, the secret lies in the proportions. You may add more gin to taste—but be gentle with the Campari. Like marmalade, Campari looks good but tends towards bitterness—add too much and the whole enterprise collapses.

Thank you to Valet for passing this along.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

THE POST-PC ERA!

According to the Columbus Dispatch article "Big Dose of Tablets", tablets have taken over and as a proud owner of an Ipad, I have found the following:


1. My tablet has not taken over the use of my desktop (office) or my laptop (home), but close.

2. I have never owned an Apple computer, but if one is anything like the Ipad I can see why people like Apple and brag constantly.

3. Traveling to China was a little more comfortable due to not dragging a wheeled laptop bag. Connection to the Internet via wifi in the hotel or on the bus or in a park via AT&T was not a hassle and had perfect connections.

4. There is no way you can know a thing about all 500,000 available apps. But have found apps so I can open Excell, Word etc. docs. Also apps that tune in the Newark Fire Department, find the weather, a compass for direction, to find a certain business with map by speaking, maps with directions, write out notes by hand, complete pdf files and actually sign the document and of course all of my social media outlets.

5. It is great to sit in your easy chair holding a pad compared to balancing a laptop on two legs.

6. An Ipad is great for making presentation to clients at their home, clear & crisp. I can email the presentation from their dining room.

7. I can be in my car and the Realtor.com app will locate all homes for sale in a set radius. If I am lost, the GPS is quick and easy to use.

8. AT&T has better coverage in Licking County than I thought it would. Also, I don't have to sign up for service if I will not be using a cellular connection.

9. Every time I turn the Ipad on, I have learned something new.

10. I understand what a cloud is and it has been very helpful transferring documents from a computer to the Ipad.

11. I now read more news, feel like I am a little more mobile than trying to search the web on my Blackberry (I will not trade it in for a Iphone).


I could live life without a tablet, but life is a little easier with it.



Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Monday, May 16, 2011

INTERESTING PEOPLE

This past Saturday evening was very entertaining. The Midland Theatre featured the famed Rockin-Rollers, the Drifters, theVogues & the Marcels. The theatre was full with very happy people. Below you will find three of the Marcels. I could not take a photo of all four, there was an attractive blond in shorter than normal short pants having her photo taken with the group. The center Marcel, Richard Harris was a classic. His tux fit perfect, his third of the show ended with him soft shoeing doing the splits. The best I can figure, he is closer to 75 than 70 years old.

Below you will find a photo at our next stop after the show: To the UDF for ice cream, this was the closest place we could find that may resemble a ice cream parlor with a real soda fountain. I found the tattoo very interesting since we just left a 1955-1965 world and was back out in the world of 2011.






Friday, May 13, 2011

MOTHER-IN-LAW'S SUITE IN YOUR REAR YARD



A tour of the Cube from Mike Page on Vimeo.

The Cube Project, whose first prototype was unveiled last month during the Edinburgh Science Festival in Scotland, is a tiny, cubical house, measuring just 3 x 3 x 3 meters.

Don't let the size fool you, though. The 27-cubic-meter (953-cubic-foot) housing solution, packed with intelligent use of space, is enough for one person. Or, as its website states, "two friendly people."

It sports a comfy sofa that sits two, energy saving LED lights, a flat-screen TV, a "space saving staircase" that might be a bit tricky to negotiate if you have a few too many beers, a double bed, a full size shower, a sliding table for romantic face-to-face dinners, cork flooring and a toilet.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Dawes Arboretum

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Friday, May 6, 2011

A Man’s Guide to Pregnancy

How to Deliver a Baby in a Pinch

As you count down to the arrival of your progeny, you may read some books on pregnancy or go to a childbirth class with your wife, and feel like you can picture in your head how the whole thing is going to transpire: your wife laboring in a hospital bed (or at home for you earthier types) and you holding her hand while the folks in the white coats take care of business and bring your baby into the world. And there’s a good chance that it will go something like that. But there’s also a small chance that your baby, precocious little kid that he is, will try to make his escape from Uterus-traz before you even get to the hospital. If that happens, are you prepared?

Read the quick step by step process by clicking here.

Thank you to The Art of Manliness for another great post.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

EARLY OHIO REAL ESTATE SPECULATOR


Every year just about this time, a small grove of apple trees surrounding a grave in Fort Wayne, Ind., bursts into bloom in tribute to the man thought to be buried there -- John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed. Note the "thought to be." There's a chance Chapman was interred across the St. Joseph River. With Chapman, the record is rarely entirely clear.

We know for certain that Chapman was born Sept. 26, 1774, in Leominster, Mass., and that his mother died two years later, while his father was serving in the Revolutionary Army. But solid evidence of Chapman's first decades amounts to two thin entries. On Feb. 14, 1797, he bought a small auger at a Warren, Pa., trading post. Three years later, the U.S. Census found him living a day's walk south in Venango County, near Franklin.

Of Chapman's Ohio and Indiana years -- beginning roughly in 1803 -- the record is more certain. Chapman leased or bought land in eight Ohio counties. He also appears to have planted nurseries in an additional eight counties, including Licking. In Indiana, he operated in Jay and Allen counties.

If the record grows clearer as Chapman ages, though, Chapman himself has long been a hidden part of the American story, inseparable from the 1948 Disney cartoon version of Johnny Appleseed -- a celluloid sermon that stresses simple saintliness but mostly ignores the actual man.

One early Ohio chronicler calls John Chapman "the oddest character in all our history." Chapman dressed in rags and slept in hollow logs. He was a loner, a roamer, as restless as the new nation, and yet for all his eccentricities, he was deeply a part of the America of his day: a real-estate speculator and tireless evangelist who carried the revelations of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg to rude cabins at the edge of civilization.

Even Chapman's famous nursery work had a calculated quality. The development companies that owned huge swaths of Ohio required purchasers to plant orchards as proof they were staying put.

Chapman remains increasingly relevant to our own times, as well. Nearly two centuries before the Simplicity Movement was born, Chapman had created a lifestyle that was simplicity itself. Long before all but a handful of people realized what a fragile creation this Earth is, Chapman was there, too, showing us by example how to love this whirling globe better.

The myths that built up around this infinitely gentle man during and after his life were many. No myth, though, can top Chapman's real final days in this world. He had walked 15 miles roundtrip on March 17, 1845, to repair a bramble fence that protected one of his nurseries. On the way back, he got caught in a snowstorm. Near sunset, Chapman reached a cabin and asked to spend the night. As was his custom, he refused a place at the table, taking milk and bread by the fire and later treating his hosts to "news right fresh from heaven."

That night, Chapman slept on the hearth. By morning, a fever had gripped him, and by noon, he was dead. The physician who attended him later said he had never seen a man so at peace in his final passage. Years afterward, those present would describe the corpse as almost glowing with serenity. Chapman was 70 years old.

Howard Means is the author of "Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story," published by Simon & Schuster

Copied from Newark Advocate, May 4, 2011.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

ANOTHER REASON WHY FIREFIGHTERS & EMTs EARN THEIR PAY



PSYCHO PUSHES EMS CREW OUT AND STEALS THE AMBULANCE
and: The Tip of The Day.

In Albuquerque (New Mexico) on Friday, a screwball drug filled patient went nuts, pushed the rear crew out of the unit, pushed the driver out and took the ambulance for a ride, while not wearing any clothes. The patient's father said his son had also climbed onto the rooftops of neighbors that morning and that's why his wife called police.That'll do it every time.
APD cops finally gained control of the patient. However, both Albuquerque PD and Albuquerque FD crews still recommended that Albuquerque Ambulance Service staff restrain the patient before taking him to the hospital BUT the Albuquerque Ambulance crew decided not to.
"At the time of transport he was cooperative so the restraints were not used," an EMS spokesperson said. "We would rather not restrain people if they're being calm and cooperative."

TIP OF THE DAY: If a patient is acting irrational, is found climbing amongst the neighborhood rooftops and the cops have to taze him to get him to calm down, consider having the cops restrain the patient and if EMS must transport the patient, do it WITH a cop in the back.

This report sent via The Secret List by Fire Fighter Close Calls.

Monday, May 2, 2011