Thought for the Day

Don't wear flip-flops to hike on a trail used by horseback riders.

Well, somewhat more to the point, used by their horses.

But I'm glad to be able to tell you that this is an abstract, rather than an object lesson; I only had to pay a little more attention to my footing than to the scenery. The above picture (and, if you click through on it, the others with it - or click on yesterday's link; I've just been adding photos to that album as I take them) was taken from a trail under some powerlines that march up over the hill near my parents' house. Their subdivision sits in a small valley, and was very recently farmland. There are still a few old farmhouses and barns scattered about.

It was an unseasonably warm day, with a high somewhere around 90; very unusual for this time of year. It's enough to make me forget that, come winter, there are likely to be several yards of snow covering pretty much every surface. You might not even be able to go outdoors in shorts!

We went to Thornton Park, to survey Syracuse spread out beneath us from the city's highest vantage point:


We visited the rose garden:


And coming back, we drove up to Tipperary Hill. To give you a very brief, probably wildly inaccurate outsider's description of the story there, Tipp Hill is an old Irish neighborhood, and boasts the *mumble's* only upside-down stoplight. The Irish residents took umbrage at the old red-on-top stoplight because it reminded them of the English, or perhaps because they were drunk; so they threw stones at it and kept knocking it out. And finally they got not only their very own, special, green-on-top traffic signal, but also a rather naffy bronze statue commemorating the event.

That just goes to show you what fierce, alcohol-fueled nationalism can do. Not that there's anything wrong with that: I'm approximately 1/8 Irish myself, and quite fond of wine.


Driving back, we passed so many beautiful old houses, I think the three-martini break group should all move up here and go to work for NYDOT, which probably has a massive budget because they get all of Texas' hard-earned gas tax money and squander it on incomprehensible, very frequently-placed reference markers, of which I have not yet been able to get a clear picture due to the fact that my father insists on driving past them at speeds that won't cause a 15-car pileup.

Some people need to work a little bit harder on their priorities.


Two or three of these adorable places would easily house us all. And if the NYDOT thing didn't work out, we'd have a sitcom just waiting to be filmed. Can't you hear the theme music now?

Every episode would have to end with one of us stepping hilariously into a fresh pile of horse dooky.