Short Vacation: Long Slide / Small Trip: Big Photos

Finally............... after spending endless hour sorting out my record-breaking 980 shoots during the Western New York trip, here is the slideshow (4 MB / appx 3 min) featuring my favorite New Age artist - Kitaro 喜多郎.

Niagara Falls & Western New York

Powderpuff & I went on a 5-day trip to Western New York for sightseeing. It was a more relaxing trip compared with our previous vacations. Even the driving during rush hour was easy. Thanks to our Tom Tom GPS system which made our trip less hustled. It is also our first time flying Jet Blue which rocks! There is a TV screen & leather seat for every passenger. Some of the places we visited: Buffalo city, Niagara Falls, Lockport's Erie canal, Old Fort Niagara, Lewiston.

Used Car for sale

TRANSFORMERS Movie Props Bumblebee '77 Chevy Camaro

this is crazy... a used car would cost more than a brand new one.... bidding war is not over yet.
Current bidding price as today: US $24,300.00

Friday the 13th

Interesting reading about Friday the 13th. Stay home if you can...

From a study published in the British Medical Journal in 1993 entitled "Is Friday the 13th Bad for Your Health?" With the aim of mapping "the relation between health, behavior, and superstition surrounding Friday 13th in the United Kingdom," its authors compared the ratio of traffic volume to the number of automobile accidents on two different days, Friday the 6th and Friday the 13th, over a period of years.

Friday 13th is unlucky for some. The risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52 percent. Staying at home is recommended."

Paraskevidekatriaphobics — people afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th — must be pricking up their ears just now, buoyed by seeming evidence that their terror may not be so irrational after all. But it's unwise to take solace in a single scientific study — the only one of its kind, so far as I know — especially one so peculiar. I suspect these statistics have more to teach us about human psychology than the ill-fatedness of any particular date on the calendar.

Friday the 13th - The Most Widespread Superstition?

The sixth day of the week and the number 13 both have foreboding reputations said to date from ancient times, and their inevitable conjunction from one to three times a year portends more misfortune than some credulous minds can bear. Some sources say it may be the most widespread superstition in the United States. Some people won't go to work on Friday the 13th; some won't eat in restaurants; many wouldn't think of setting a wedding on the date.

Just how many Americans at the turn of the millennium still suffer from this condition? According to Dr. Donald Dossey, a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of phobias (and coiner of the term "paraskevidekatriaphobia"), the figure may be as high as 21 million. If he's right, eight percent of Americans are still in the grips of a very old superstition.

Exactly how old is difficult to say, because determining the origins of superstitions is an imprecise science, at best. In fact, it's mostly guesswork.

13: The Devil's Dozen

It is said: If 13 people sit down to dinner together, all will die within the year. The Turks so disliked the number 13 that it was practically expunged from their vocabulary (Brewer, 1894). Many cities do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue. Many buildings don't have a 13th floor. If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil's luck (Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names). There are 13 witches in a coven.

Bad Friday

It is said: Never change your bed on Friday; it will bring bad dreams. Don't start a trip on Friday or you will have misfortune. If you cut your nails on Friday, you cut them for sorrow. Ships that set sail on a Friday will have bad luck – as in the tale of H.M.S. Friday ... One hundred years ago, the British government sought to quell once and for all the widespread superstition among seamen that setting sail on Fridays was unlucky. A special ship was commissioned, named "H.M.S. Friday." They laid her keel on a Friday, launched her on a Friday, selected her crew on a Friday and hired a man named Jim Friday to be her captain. To top it off, H.M.S. Friday embarked on her maiden voyage on a Friday, and was never seen or heard from again.

The Unluckiest Day of All

The astute reader will have observed that while we have thus far insinuated any number of intriguing connections between events, practices and beliefs attributed to ancient cultures and the superstitious fear of Fridays and the number 13, we have yet to happen upon an explanation of how, why or when these separate strands of folklore converged — if that is indeed what happened — to mark Friday the 13th as the unluckiest day of all.

There's a very simple reason for that — nobody really knows, though various explanations have been proposed.

Fireworks

Out of expectation, we saw firework display from home in all directions.... it was a very busy & noisy night on 7/4... we all wonder where these fireworks came from.

4th of July "BeBeCute"

Powderpuff & I stayed home for the entire day and had some BBQ + photo shooting + car wash on 4th of July.....
Photo slideshow