Some Pictures in Advance

Speeding Thru Hartford and along Rt 84 I arrived in Pennsylvania on Wednesday afternoon. It rained all day and other than some traffic on 95 early on the traffic wasn't bad.

Today I got out and took several pictures and tomorrow I plan to get a bunch more as I will be headed to the Jacob Javits Convention Center`on W34th Street in Manhattan's west side. NYC...The Big Apple, where I will wear`my Red Sox World Series Champs hat and take in the annual Car Show at the Javits Center

Above:

I am standing in the doorway of an old foundation I suspect from an old mill

Below:

A natural Rock Formation, notice the chunk of rock that fell down to my right under the branch.The Stream/Waterfall has caused this formation over the years .

Road Trip

I'm headed out on a road trip tomorrow. Pictured above is a photo of the Bridge that crosses the Delaware river and connects Port Jervis, New York and my dad's birthplace of Matamoras, Pennsylvania

Dad and I are driving down to visit our relatives there and see how everyone doing. I will of course continue to check in at Tom's Trivia Challenge.

While my last couple of scores on the have been rather lame..I will continue to match my wits against all comers throughout the week. Congrats to PG from Annoyingly Boring.He topped the Trivia Scores on Monday, but it's a long week and on Easter Sunday I'll announce this weeks winner...every day you play will earn you points!!

Of course with every road trip there should be pictures and I will try and take some good ones to share here when I return....

Trivia Update Week 1 Winner

Top Cumulative Scores For This Month

Player	Days Played	Wins	Avg Pts/Game	Total Points
1. kathlock	6	5	--	38
2. Tom	7	1	--	38
3. darkglamour	7	1	--	38
4. Operator9	5	0	--	29
5. Sally	5	0	--	29
6. momzy	6	0	--	29
7. fatback	4	0	--	24
8. PG	3	0	--	21
9. pixiepants	3	0	--	20
10. Rambo	2	0	--	10
View All Cumulative Scores

As Of Sunday Morning

The Top finisher this week was Kath Lock, aka author of Blurb From the Burbs, noted Chocolate Lover and great storyteller...She's shown us that she's got a lot of Trivia Knowledge at her fingertips... Hat's off to Kath...While the trivia site does not allow me to reset the numbers each week, I will always highlight the winner for the week on Sundays.

While Tom...Who is he?? and Darkglamour both finished with as many points as Kath, she took 5 out of 6 possible wins which earns her tons of Tom's Hideaway dollars, which are now purely a fictional currency but one never knows, someday I might actually win the lottery...If so all my Trivia Winners will be flown to the celebration party..ALL EXPENSES PAID!!

For those who I may not know...Darkglamour, for one...and would like a little attention for their blogs or just a little more recognition...My email link is on the side bar...Drop me a note and let me know.

Thanks to all the other contestants and hope to see everyone back again

Old Paint Factory Gloucester, MA

The old paint factory in Gloucester, MA

Apparently there is an effort to turn this building into a single family home. The city requires the owners to keep the exterior as close as possible to the present look.

Hopefully they'll get the lead out of the inside as well> I am sure there is a toxic waste zone around that building. It is cool to look at sitting on the edge of the inner harbor in Gloucester, MA. Aside from the Gloucester Fisherman, the one you see pictured on the front of Gorton's Frozen Fish products, the Paint Factory is one of the most recognizable places in Gloucester, MA

It would be nice to make it habitable and nice to look at.

Another building that is just a few miles away in Rockport, MA is Motif #1 which is an old fish shack off Bearskin Neck on Bradley Wharf in Rockport, MA. It's been called "America's most-painted building" I am not sure how accurate that claim is but I do know that in the Blizzard of 1978 it was swept into the harbor and was subsequently re-built to look like it always had. Below are Before and After pictures:

Above, this Picture taken by dad in early 70's

Below , a picture of the same building after it was rebuilt

Photographer: Ian Britton

After the Blizzard it was re-built by the people of Rockport because it had been such a landmark for the town and the thousands of tourists that make it there every year

I think that city of Gloucester may very well be right in asking any future owners of the Paint Factory to try and keep the same look as it has today.

And that's all I got today and it was tough. I had no idea what to write about because my score on Tom's Trivia Quiz was so high it was difficult to come down from the euphoria of finally getting a good score!!

Try to ruin my day and PLAY Tom's Trivia Challenge

Spring is coming !!

And that means baseball here in the Boston area The Red Sox in spring training now have all 40 players on their roster signed to a contract for 2008. That's good management. Their first regular season game will be in Oakland on April 1st and their Home Opener will be April 8th at historic Fenway Park, pictured below.



That Tuesday afternoon the World Champs will be introduced for the first time in Fenway since beating the Rockies in the 2007 World Champinship Series...

Can they do it again??

Who will win the World Series in 2008 ??

I'm going with the Red Sox...what about you??

Less than a month away and we are supposed to get snow tonight and over the weekend!!

How Smart Are You??

I've set up Tom's Trivia Challenge Tournament at the Fun Trivia site. You can sign up and play against other visitors to Tom's Hideaway...The first step of course is signing up, so follow the link above and warm up...The first week of the challenge will be to get people signed up and Next Week I will erase the stats and we will begin a weekly points challenge..

Of course if you don't sign up then it won't be any fun, I'll just have to post my name every week as being the smartest one out there..

At the ended of every week I will list the Top Point Getter and post there names and web site if they would like me to and....Even though this is sign-up week..I will include this week as well..

Next Sunday will be the first posting of winners

SIGN UP and we will see who will win Tom's Trivia Challenge

Eating lots of food and getting fat, It's FUN !!

Despite what the medical community, dating services and friends will tell you, eating lots of food and getting fat is kinda fun!!

It's like living without restrictions, taking everything that comes at you and just eating it.

Sometimes I feel like a LION after a kill, of course I didn't kill anything but sometimes I think I would kill for chocolate or even really good onion rings!!

I spent the weekend cooking...We fed a party of 30 here at Tom's Hideaway Manor and it was a Italian Festivus I'll tell ya.

I made Manicotti, even the shells were from scratch, Chicken Cacciatore, Beef Bracciole and lots of Italian Sausage, Salad, cookies, cakes, candy and plethora wine.



The Manicotti (top) Cacciatore (Bottom)

My extremely Easy Going Assistant (Lil Sister) helped by assembling a great Salad and chopping parsley among other things.

It was great to see people could just lounge on the couch and nap after the feed.

Another great thing was to have so many people that when the eating was done there were plenty of cleaners to go round..I don't think I washed a dish!!

I realized though that with all this consumption...I've put on a few pounds...but it was fun!! It was a party I don't eat like this every day...but I could and it would be fun!!

Music, Deezer a new Music Playground, Mahjongg

I don't know about you but I like having music playing when I am writing a new post or playing endless games of Mahjong...So I found a new place to listen to about any kind of music you want...There are some songs that you cannot listen too, but I understand Deezer is trying to reach an agreement with those Artists and Labels.

Now I have had a Pandora Radio account for quite awhile..That's the Music Genome project where you plug in the Artists you like and then it builds a radio station based around the music you tell them you like...It works and I listen to it a lot...but Deezer is different in that you can pick a favorite, say, Bob Dylan: and get just about every song he ever wrote. Then you just click on a song you want and it just starts playing and keeps playing one after another.

I did this with The Beatles and it just gives you page after page of their songs.

You can also create your own playlists from their extensive catalogs. I have started a few like this one

Girl Songs

Girl appears in every Title

What was I thinking About??

So if you like to have some tunes playing in the background while you are playing solitaire, writing your next post or constructing a witty comment to leave here visit Deezer ...if you like to make your own playlists.

I will continue to use Pandora as well because they offer up a lot of music I've never heard before. Plus they do a lot of the work for me.

Now if I could just figure out how to get these things to work in the Shower!!