Domenick’s Pizza on Main Street in Carbondale and Jermyn are both fairly good places to get a slice. About as close to New York style pizza as you’ll be able to get in either of these towns.

After a bit of breakfast.

Taken February 2009 in Carwanna in Carbondale, PA.

Well, my Graceland anyway.

Had breakfast here yesterday. It was pretty good but I wouldn’t add Cozy Corner Cafe to my favorite places within 2 hours of my home list. It would do in a pinch, though.

Something has to be said that they don’t come up, at all, in a Google Maps search though. Hmm.

Update: Since Google Maps doesn’t know where Cozy Corner Cafe is – I’ve decided to update this post, and to request that Google update the address and information for the Cozy Corner Cafe. I think the Carbondale Chamber of Commerce has the address wrong (they have North Main and it should be North Church) so I’ve corrected it below as well as on Google. Roxanne Miller (owner of Cozy Corner Cafe) you owe me a free coffee.

Cozy Corner Cafe
49 North Church St.
Carbondale, PA 18407

Dude knows how to eat a lemon… rind and all.

Shopping list

1. Milk
2. Eggs
3. Inexpensive wines from all over the world
4. Bread
5. Cheez-Its

The Sambo Swag in his natural habitat.

WANTS! A personal life goal is to go across country in one of these babies.

I’ve never really taken any photos of the things I’ve caught over the years, but I’m going to start doing so and sharing them here. In Pennsylvania we have a fairly diverse ecosystem of creepy-crawly things and I’ll do my best to seek them out. First up, a snake and a frog.

On Saturday while visiting a nearby park I caught a few Garter snakes (probably about 6 different snakes) and frogs. The type of Garter snakes we have around here are the eastern version of the Common Garter snake, a relatively calm, absolutely harmless snake. The only way you’d be bitten (and these guys have extremely small yet sharp teeth so even if you get bit the wound is very minor) is if you pick up a female too quickly. The males could generally care less if they are picked up. However, it is all about the approach. If you approach these guys in a calm manner, you can pick them up gently without any fear of harm or even aggression from them.

And then, of course, a bullfrog.

I’m going to make a concerted effort to catch more wild things over the course of this summer and also to share some of my techniques with catching things, releasing them, and causing as little harm to the animals as possible. I hope you will enjoy a little something different here at First Initial, Last Name.

I’d be remiss not to mention that Carbondale, Pennsylvania is having a Wine & Music Festival on June 20, 2009. Mayor Justin Taylor, who is pretty active on Facebook, created a Facebook group for the event. (Not sure why he didn’t chose to create an event on Facebook, rather than a group, but at least he is using Facebook.)

Eliza and I really enjoy the Finger Lakes Wine Festival in Watkins Glen, NY. Huge tents housing hundreds of local wineries, brewers, local music talent, food, and more. The entrance fee, which I believe is $40 for two days, is more than worth it.

The Carbondale Wine & Music Festival’s entrance fee is far less expensive (though it is only one day and, I assume, much smaller) at $10. Steamtown, a national park in Scranton for trains, is sending a train to Carbondale for those in Scranton that would like to take the train. That price is $25. I’m half-tempted to drive to Scranton just to take the train ride from Scranton to Carbondale.

I’m happy that Carbondale is having such an event and I hope it goes really well for the city. I continue to have high hopes that Carbondale can dig itself out of its current state and, in some ways, return to what it was so many years ago (before my time). One way we can all help is by supporting local business, building businesses in town rather than out, going to events like these and trying to help promote them, and generally keeping your part of town clean.

Oh, and I’m not going to bring up Wingfest 2008. Because that won’t happen in Carbondale, right?

Date taken: February 3, 2004 | Carbondale, Pennsylvania.

Five years ago today: This photo was taken just outside our home in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. We then lived in a house on Wyoming Avenue that had no off-street parking and no yard. It did have an above ground pool that we only seldom used. This lamp, which was just outside our front door next to the entrance of our white-fenced-in “side yard” pool/deck area, lived among the bushes and gave us just enough light to get around outside at night.

This particular snow storm lightly covered most everything with enough snow to make it look like winter. If memory serves, only a few days later we got a fair amount of snow.

City Hall – Carbondale, PA

Last night my friend Sameer Barkawi, mentioned here a few times, and I wanted to take our cameras for a spin around our hometown of Carbondale, Pennsylvania. He recently picked up a Nikon D90 and I was using Eliza’s Canon Digital Rebel XTi.

I put a few of the photos that I took up on Flickr in a set.

Last night, while we were watching a movie, there was a constant flashing outside of our window.  The flashing kept getting more and more consistent and, seemingly, closer.  One of the strikes was close enough for the power to hiccup and so, after turning off and unplugging just about everything in the house, we managed to shoot a few photos of the lightning barrage.

These photos were taken with Eliza’s Canon Digital Rebel XTi in manual mode with an ISO of 100, F/3.5, and a 30-second exposure.  I think.

It took quite a bit of changing the settings, and snapping long exposures, to get the shots that I did.  Next time I’ll know what settings seem to work best and I’ll setup on a window without a screen.

Date taken: November 3, 2007 | Anything with the word “light” or “lite” need not apply.

Date taken: November 3, 2007 | Playing the piano while not crushing her fingers proved to be a challenge.

At the scenic overlook Carbondale, Pa

Eliza and I had our first “photo day” today. We’ve been meaning to do this for quite awhile but we’ve not been able to find the time until today. Oh, and the fact that the temperature hit 66-degrees fahrenheit didn’t hurt either.

One of my favorite things is having a great time while not spending a dime. Eliza and I really like taking and having tons of photos, so doing something like this is far overdue I think. After we get a few of these photo days under our belt I’m sure we’ll have some great photos to make some neat projects out of.

We managed to collect a little over 100 really nice photographs and had a blast doing it. Here are a few photos we took – and let me tell you it was extremely hard to narrow it down to just these to show. We traveled through many different towns and stopped in three or four to take photos – I tried to pick a few photos from each of the spots we stopped at.

Tree @ overlook

Thin branches

Windmills

Windmill

Crystal Lake

Burned building

Me shootin'

Melted glass

Cool tree

Mountain

We were going to give each other photo “assignments” where we focus on one type of thing like flowers or animals, but in retrospect I think simply driving to different locations and seeing what we come up with works much better. I look forward to our next photo day.