Last week a fresh yellow center line was painted down Cayuga Street. In hindsight it was a sure sign of the mayhem that would come to this small town, because today traffic is heavily bloated out there on the streets of Ithaca. Why? It’s commencement time again! That special time when ‘the parents’ descend on Ithaca, turning simple activities around here into a hassle.

Today I even spotted a car with Saskatchewan plates and was tempted to leave a friendly note of recognition and national solidarity on the windshield.

It’s not as hectic as it is just before classes begin in the fall though, when even a humdrum grocery run becomes a battle with ‘the parents’, who generously take their freshman kids on a shopping extravaganza to stock their new dorm rooms for the year ahead.

And tomorrow, following last year’s address by Bill Clinton, Gen. Wesley Clark will be speaking at Cornell. Tickets are restricted to graduates and their guests, however, so we won’t be attending.

I think after this weekend it will be significantly quieter around here. As I’ve mentioned before there are six units in our house, and come August (lease time) just us and one other tenant will be sticking around. The rest are moving on.

We’re off tomorrow morning to camp in the Thousand Islands area. When I drove to Montreal last month I wasn’t aware of the region and my jaw dropped as I drove across the Thousand Islands bridge - beautiful! Apparently a great place to build a castle even.

And so close - it’s only a 2.5 hour drive from here, in the St. Lawrence along the Canadian border. We’ll likely pitch a tent somewhere at Alexandria Bay as it seems there’s a few kayak rental spots there.

There will be no drowning in the tent either, cause the forecast looks reasonable. Fun fun!

We switched yesterday to digital phone. Since we were using Time Warner (Road Runner) cable for high-speed internet, this was a painless transition and we’ll save 30 bucks a month - not bad!

Previously we used the Verizon Freedom package for calls, which seemed like a great deal: $59.95 per month for local service and unlimited long distance to US and Canada. But once you add in taxes the phone bill was $80 per month. Also, Verizon’s billing service was ridiculous to the point where we received monthly disconnection notices. We had signed up for email billing, but never received the emails. When we finally requested paper bills we started receiving the email bills (and still no paper). Verizon can’t get their services straight.

Time Warner was far easier to deal with, so from here on the cost for high-speed AND phone with unlimited long distance, including tax will be $99.

The only drawback we could see with digital phone is if the power goes out your phone access does too. Considering we live downtown this would never be a real problem.

So the Time Warner guy came and installed a new modem yesterday, cancelled our Verizon service for us and that’s that. Here’s the TWC Digital Phone link for more info.

In case you don’t follow, Overheard in New York quotes are too much fun:

“Then I had an epiphany: I realized I had a mullet. And I started to cry.”

Now that spring has graciously arrived, streamlining and simplification is in order. I feel barred from having too much fun in the sun until I’ve purged all the clutter that has gathered through the winter. Also I’ve been meaning to sort through boxes that we moved from Vancouver, to make sure there’s nothing around that won’t get used. Our place is small (675 sq. feet) and we live fairly modestly, so it’s not like there’s mountains of extraneous stuff anyway. It seems I can never simplify enough though, especially considering attachments to things like books and photographs. They take up too much space!

So it’s inevitably a neverending cycle of purging and aquiring or upgrading.

Since I’ve procrastinated doing any organization for awhile I made a list yesterday of major areas I want to tackle. Okay, so it’s a spreadsheet! The projects are now underway (though this blog entry is an act of deferral) and some piles have been started:

The Salvation Army Donation Pile
(for stuff that can be bagged & hurtled out a car window without stopping!)

The Sell-it-on-eBay Pile
(for stuff other people would pay decent money for)

The Freecycle Pile
(for stuff not worth enough $$ to bother listing on eBay)

The Friends of the Library Book Sale Donation Pile
(to make room for a number of new books Matt just bought at the sale)

While Tiff was away in Montreal, various household duties fell to me. One was checking the mail. I came wandering home one day, and noticed that each mailbox for our building had a yellow sheet of paper with “urgent” written on it. Naturally, I thought it was some message from the landlord. Perhaps a pipe had burst, or something. But no, when I unfolded the paper, I saw this

Anybody care to take a stab as to what this means?