New York Now with Susan Arbetter

On Saturday night we went to the Brewmaster Pub in Williamsburg, Mass with my inlaws.  I usually don’t complain about restaurant food, but this was so bad that I feel I must warn you…like Code Orange on the terrorist alert watch-list.

It was so bad that it should have been banned by the Geneva Conventions. 

My mother and father-in-law paid.  The bill came to $181 for five people none of us really picked out anything extravagant. My sister-in-law made the comment that “If the dinner had been good I wouldn’t have felt bad about my parents footing the bill, but it was so bad that I really felt that I had to chip in.”   Thus, it was so tasteless, that it instilled guilt. 

Here’s what made it so bad:

As of Tuesday, the price of regular unleaded at the pump was $3.79/gallon. The price of diesel was higher: $4.55/gallon. The cost of gasoline is the current benchmark indicator for how middle-income New Yorkers are doing financially. Unfortunately for us, the high cost of gas is also affecting the cost of everything else from pizza delivery to dry cleaning.Last week Senate and Assembly Republicans proposed lifting the .33-cent/gallon NY State gas tax. Is that enough? Can New York State do more than that to help working families? We’ll speak with some experts about what you AND the state can do both in the short and long term about the cost of energy in New York.

LCA SHOW TICKETS:

Tickets for the 108th Legislative Correspondents Association show and dinner on Saturday, May 31 at the Crowne Plaza in Albany are available in the LCA press room on the 3rd floor of the state capitol or by calling “The Wonderful Jean” at 518-455-2388.

Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and Assembly Minority Leader Jim Tedisco are offering rebuttals. Gov. David Paterson has been invited to also offer a rebuttal.

***Editor’s note: It is hilarious. How could it not be.

The 3rd annual Prader-Willi Syndrome Walk-A-Thon takes place this Friday night at 6pm.

The event will take place at The Crossings in Colonie, just off of Albany-Shaker Rd.

The net proceeds from this walk will be donated to the Prader-Willi Alliance of NY and CCDS.

What do you need to do?

Line up some sponsors or sponsor yourself! For more information visit this link

On Wednesday Governor Paterson warned that the state was facing a 5 billion dollar budget gap next year.   On Thursday the Governor’s budget division released a forecast that backed-up his numbers. The bottom line? New York State’s financial picture looks bleak.  Here is a glimpse of things to come directly from the report:

Out-year Gaps

Based on current forecasts, the Enacted Budget is projected to result in out-year budget gaps of $5.0 billion for 2009-10, $7.7 billion for 2010-11, and $8.8 billion for 2011-12. In January 2009, Governor Paterson will submit a balanced budget that closes the entire 2009-10 deficit.

Bill and I are attempting to climb Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

About a month ago, we forced ourselves to take a critical look at our lives and our home.

It’s a nice house, but having no kids to hector about the link between godliness & cleanliness, we had allowed ourselves to de-evolve. We were no longer homo sapiens. We had morphed into homo piggyens, and our house was a reflection of that de-evolution. Our home had become a horror show of oatmeal-encrusted cereal bowls; piles of work-out clothes; half-completed crossword puzzles; a recycling bucket overflowing with Black Cherry Polar Selter cans; and the occasional baggy of liquified mini carrots from long-forgotten and aborted diets.

Every morning in L.A. Uncle Mort would get up early to make us breakfast: According to him “at 2 in the morning… anything for my family. Anything.” His best dishes were blintzes with cheese; blintzes with fruit and blintzes with eggs. Here is a blintz recipe from Cooks.com that appears to have the same ‘feel’ as Uncle Mort’s basic cheese blintz — a recipe he wouldn’t share.

Blintz itself:

2 eggs, well beaten
1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. milk
1/2 tsp. salt

Bill and I just returned from a week in California visiting relatives & sightseeing. (I’ll post photos when I download them).

When I asked him what his initial impressions were of LA, he replied, “It’s old. Not as shiny as I thought it would be. There were potholes in the roads just like here.” When I asked him what he liked about Los Angeles he said, “Uncle Mort’s neighborhood (Westwood) was fantastic. The weather was phenomenal. And your family was wonderful… since they all really liked me.”

The trip west was a success.

Living History in New York State

With the budget passed and a vacation week around the corner, lawmakers used this week to hammer home some familiar themes: The Assembly revisited the idea of a newly-reconstituted (and smaller) Millionaire’s Tax. Members of the both the Assembly & Senate rallied with pro-environmental groups in Albany for “Earth Day Lobby Day”.

A few priorities:

Bigger Better Bottle Bill
Brownfield Reform
E-waste recycling