The Rowe Family Blog

Recently I rented a car from Alamo for a family vacation.  I was amazed at how successfully car rental companies rip people off.  Some of the ways are obvious and some are not quite as obvious.

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Last Saturday we held the first (annual?) Matlyn Drive Street sale.  We had a pretty good turnout.  Traffic was constant from a little before 8 AM until a little after noon.  I think the traffic came a lot from people going to and from the farmers market.

We didn’t sell as much stuff as we wanted to.  We were hoping to sell all of the furniture but very little of it sold and it sold for less than we were hoping to get.  It’s hard to sell furniture at garage sales because few people are out looking to spend hundreds of dollars on antique furniture.  Oh well, it’s off to craigslist we go!

While we didn’t sell the furniture we did sell…the garage.  Actually we sold the entire house.  A couple stopped by and bought an item or two and I had a nice conversation with them.  They soon returned and asked if they could look around at our landscaping.  I thought it odd but since I had the house locked up I said “sure.”  Then they admitted that they came back because they wanted our house!  They said that they’d like to have the first bid if we decide to sell our house!  I took down their name and number and I’ll keep it in my “house” file.

Who knows, in a few years (or sooner…or later…) we might look back at this garage sale as the best thing we ever did.

On Friday August 1st I did two things I don’t usually do.  I got to see an old friend and I ran a 5k, the Father Murphy 5k.  I don’t usually run 5ks because I tend to prefer longer races.  It’s just not a good value paying $20 for 20-30 minutes of racing!  Three times now I have splurged and run 5ks.  The first time I wasn’t yet a runner and threw up before I finished the race.  The second time was at Geneseo on a hilly course.  This time the course wasn’t as hilly and it was on my home turf.  The race was about 1.5 miles from my house and was partly in an area that I run often.  Read the rest of this entry »

This post is about 3 weeks late but here it is none the less. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve paid close attention to this website you already noticed that I added a link (on the left) to a shark attack map. Most people that know me know that I’m rather fascinated by sharks and particularly shark attacks. For quite some time I’ve been helping to maintain a map cataloging shark attacks around the world.

The shark attack map is not my map. It was started quite some time ago by “Bianca2000.” I’ve never met “Bianca.” I started contributing to her map because she was cool enough to leave her map open for contributions from anyone. Attacks posted by “endOfPath” are from me.

The map won an award from Platial (where it is hosted) in the outdoors category for 2007. I’m not sure why I never got around to posting here about the map. Since it is Shark Week I thought the timing was right to post about this. This is the one week out of the year that I actually wish I paid for television service (luckily I can rent Shark Week DVDs!).

Mary has organized the first (annual?) Matlyn Drive Streetsale.  It will be on August 16th from 8 AM to 4 PM.  More than 10 homes are participating.  That’s almost the entire street.  Photos of some of the items are available here.

There will be a lot of different items for sale including:

• 4 Poster Queen bed frame
• Solid mahogany bedroom set including double bed, mens dressers, womens dresser, two night stands, and mirror from Kling (Kling became Ethan Allen)
• Glass dining room table
• Glass coffee table
• Solid wood dining room table, chairs, and hutch
• Every day Pfalzcraft dish set of 6
• Silver China Set
• 13″ TV/VCR combo
• Movies
• Toys
• Tools
• Items for babies and kids

View Larger Map

Tonight Cassie took her first independent steps! Normally Cassie won’t walk unless she’s holding someone’s hand. Actually she’d progressed to the point where she’d run while holding hands. As soon as you’d let go she’d stop and slowly sit down and then crawl. Tonight she walked, over and over, between Mary and I taking more than a dozen steps at a time and being greeted with big hugs from us at each end of her journey. We were able to get a short video clip of her walking to the door on her own.

I don’t want to waste our vacation complaining but I must share the bad luck we had while traveling yesterday.

1. Our first flight from ROC to JFK was delayed by about 2 hours.  Read the rest of this entry »

Today was the first scheduled day of my training for the 2008 Marine Corps Marathon!  I’m already deviating from the schedule.  Last week I was running and had to stop a few times from the pain. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I set out for my weekly long run. I did set out to run my usual route, the Rowe Half, at about 7 AM. The weather was great! It was about 70 and “partly sunny.” There were more clouds than sunshine but it was very comfortable for the entire run. It was humid but 70 degrees and humid isn’t a big deal.

Since it is now summer there’s plenty of roadkill. I saw what I think was an o’possum. At least it may have been one…some time ago. At this point it’s just a twisted mess of leathery furry grossness that has left a stain on the road. It’s not easy to stain asphalt! I also witnessed an alarming PRK (phantom road kill). PRKs are never pleasant but they are somewhat easy to deal with. Holding your breath while running isn’t fun but it’s necessary sometimes. What frightened me about this PRK was that I witnessed it running past the butcher shop. Read the rest of this entry »