New abode

Here are a few pictures of my new material possessions. Car and house. Temporary house, don't own.

I've done quite a bit of work on the inside, cleaning nooks and crannies, scrubbing grease on the walls, emptying and dumping out dresser drawers... I believe it's been Peruvian men that have lived here for the past few years, and then prior to that, who can know (<- in honor of my roommate last year, Jose, in a different house. He would say, "Who can know," in his best English accent instead of "Who knows." Hehe.) This little treasure has tipped me off to knowing that it's been at least two years that South American men have been living here, as I know the previous, different Jose from last year:

Here's a little before and after. Those curtains got a good washing. And I discovered the (shower) curtain (ahem, table cloth) soiled in the basement. Washed that too on hot:

Found these on the desk. Funny if someone had worn them out in the fields:

And I'm not sure who's responsible for this, perhaps Jose, Juan, and the crew of 5 Mexicans that come up every year to work on ze farm.

It's hard to let go sometimes

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I just saw this blown up huge in the DMV getting my new license plates today, as you may have noticed absent pictured above. The logo reminds me a bit of my little bungalow type house:

These are the new, New York state plates. They're called Empire Gold. The one above was first issued in 1993. Not sure if they've stopped making them. Here's the Empire Gold, brand new as of last year:

But a throwback to these!:

Pre-Empire Gold's were the, I should say CONcurrent, "Empire" series. New York is now a two-license plate state since the original plan to require switching to the Empire Gold last year to generate $130 million for the state failed. People got mad, signed petitions, and now it's not required to get the Empire Gold's. So you can stay with your "Empire" series. I happen to like the Empire Gold's better. My coworker disagrees and isn't biased because of being rubbed the wrong way by NYS government. She's a New Jersian/Coloradan/Oregonian. I like how people have different tastes in these sort of matters. I don't know why I've taken the time to learn so much about New York state's license plates, but there you go. I DO like the images on the "Empire" series, but they're really too small to even see when on the vehicle. I also have never liked how the little picture of the state is 1.) Hard to recognize at first that it's depicting the state instead of a dash, because of 2.) It looks like Goofy.

While we're on the subject of New York state history, I found this awesome blog of a photographer's visit to a rundown resort nearby here. This man takes cool photos of abandoned things, it seems, as is evident on his flickr stream.

A little preview of -- Modern Ruins - Grossinger's Resort --

photo courtesy: Walter Arnold

There are a lot of run down things around here. I've taken a few pictures myself, and always find myself out and about wishing I had a better camera:

And if you're in the mood for some youtube, here's a little video on some hotels in the Catskills. It's an interesting area in this way. Sorry, the footage gives a slight extreme headache inducing effect at (most) times. You probably shouldn't even watch this.