I keep receiving calls from some supposed collector, NCO Financial Systems, a debt collection company. They ask me to call 1-800-295-6724 and ask for Kevin Monroe. When I call to speak to someone they tell me that all operators are busy and to hold but nobody ever answers the phone. It will say "press 2 to leave a message" and when I do that there is no beep no nothing, just absolute silence.

They have left messages with fake English accents and in Spanish too, but they never let me know who they are calling for. A real person called today while I was home and asked for "Neal Wesley Jr". When I told them that they had the wrong number they called again with a machine asking me to call the above number.

So I called Verizon and talked to some girl who didn't even provide her name when she answered the phone, who told me that there is nothing I can do and that is why she canceled her landline was because of collector calls. Actually, the idiot at Verizon suggest that I call the "Do Not Call List", which most people know does not pertain to collection calls. I hardly even use my landline and this is so frustrating because it is so invasive because it is my HOME and I can't make it stop. I am not delinquent in any accounts and need this to stop and I don't know how to make it stop.

I really should just turn the land line off since I really don't need it. I just like having it and it is probably a stupid waste of money anyways.

I was harassed before from a collector calling for an old roommate. One of the women who called actually told me I sound gay and couldn't possibly be my roommate and I told her she was a big f'ing C and hung up. I have also been called a faggot by Rent a Center people coming to collect from a neighbor who wasn't paying. I am so sick of this kind of harassment. I have had my delinquent debts in the past which I have settled long ago and don't appreciate this abuse. I have worked extremely hard at paying back my obligations and this is really not fair that I have to deal with this.

This is the most swollen I have ever seen the Scajaquada. I don't remember having so much rain ever either. My shoes are all muddy because the earth is so saturated.



I added several more boring and mundane youtube videos to my collection highlighting the collective run-off of cars, buses and trucks from Cheektowaga to the Niagara River.

I want this bunny pen so that I could take Coco to (e:pmt)'s backyard. I think he would love it so much and it would keep him protected from hawks and Basra. I don't know if he really has ever been outside and it makes me sad for him.



Maybe next year I could afford such a frivolous item? This one costs $75. I have a lot of things I need to get besides this item that I would hardly use at all.

I'm looking at craigslist for apartments and seeing what is out there. So far, I am not impressed with what's available for what I can afford. That being said, if I was choosing between the following two apartments, I would take the 2nd.

The first:

Luxury 3 bedroom Apt available August 1st.

Conveniently located in Vito the Barber and Simon Salon building, right in the heart of the Elmwood Village on Elmwood steps from the Blue Monk and Spot Coffee.

Just renovated in 2010, features slate tile backsplash in kitchen, vintage pantry cabinets, grey tile kitchen flooring and stainless steel appliances with dishwasher.

Vintage art deco tile bath, hardwood floors, and living room decorative fireplace with stained glass window.

Free parking and laundry in the basement.

Rent is $1500 inc. heat, garbage, water. TENANT PAYS HOT WATER AND ELECTRIC ONLY.

Call Jen at 716.578.5494.

Professionally managed by www.hurleymanagement.net

735 Elmwood Avenue (google map) (yahoo map)
Location: 735 Elmwood Avenue
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests









The second:

733 West Delavan is located just off Chapin Parkway, of the historic Olmsted parkway system. It is a short walk to the vibrant street life of Elmwood, or to the peace and quiet of Delaware Park. These Delavan Avenue Apartments have been carefully restored over the years to their original lustre, as the molding was delicately stripped back down to the original oak finish. It also received a well-crafted upgrade, as the face of it took on a change when an historic EB Green vestibule was rescued from a Summer Street home. As with most Buffalo Management homes, much of the hardware is antique, and if not original, tracked down from all across the country and brought home, like so many of us.
2 Bedroom/1 Bath
Available June 1st

$1650 A month includes Heat/Water

Features:

Large living room with Fireplace
Magnificent Oak Entryway
Hardwood Floors




















Porch with Awning
Maytag Laundry Room
Community Lawn with Gas Grill and Picnic Table

Optional:

Off-Street Parking
Garage Parking
ADT-Security System
Storage Locker

Near by:

Albright Knox Gallery
Buffalo State College
Millard Filmore Hospital
Children's Hospital
Elmwood Village Shopping and Restaurants
Delaware Park
Canisius College
Sisters Hospital
Lexington Co-op

REFERENCES REQUIRED
First, Last, Security Due at Signing
Call Myron for appointment: 716.883.3600 rentals@bmgapt.com

At least that is what my credit card company is suggesting.

"Get More Out of Life Online! Visit www.xxxxxrewards.com to see the entire collection of rewards that can be redeemed online."

I'm sorry but I just don't feel like I am getting so much more out of my life because I requested my rewards online.

So I think I just found where I want to be buried when I die. You don't have to be embalmed and they don't have grave stones so it doesn't look like a traditional cemetery. I can even have my wish of being buried in a sheet or (shroud). Basically, I want my body to decompose and become nutrients for the soil. The site is called Greensprings Natural Cemetery and it is near Ithaca.

Now I plan to get the life insurance I am being offered so my family can pay for it when I die. The burial lot is $750 and I only want a sheet and for my body to be transported so it shouldn't be too much but I also don't want to leave any of my private student loan for my dad who co-signed. It also would be awesome to MAYBE leave a little bit of money to the people I love.

Just wanted to put it out there just in case...

I started to smoke cigarettes when I was 11 years old, the first ones I stole from my dad. Most of my earliest cigarettes were smoked behind our barn, in the woods on the train tracks, at school, anywhere I could sneak them really. Surprisingly, it was rather easy for me to get them. This one store in the village I went to school in sold them to me during my middle school years. The dependency set in very quickly probably due to the young age at which I started, and the many additives that cigarettes contain used to manipulate and increase their addictiveness.

Smoking for me was a great escape, a small shelter from the problems that I had during my developing years. Before leaving middle school the physical addiction was strong enough for me to make great risks in sneaking out of the building while my classmates ate lunch to have a cigarette. I got busted and wasn’t allowed to go to Washington DC for the class trip. My mom got me nicotine replacement but I wasn’t really serious about quitting. I told myself that I needed the cigarettes to get through high school. If I could just make it through high school my life would be easier and I would be able to stop.

High school came and went but the cigarettes stayed in my life. By the time I graduated, I had been at the pack a day mark for a couple of years. I regret having smoked; I really wish that I never ever picked up one of those damned things. I hate cigarettes, I really do. I hate what kind of destruction they have done in my life, in the lives of so many other people and to our environment. Since I can’t change the past I have to accept and to live from this moment on. Cigarettes are not an option in my life anymore and I haven’t touched one in four years. Even though it’s true, I don’t believe it because it doesn’t seem real. I think to myself I must have smoked between now and then and that I must have forgotten but it is really true, I have not smoked in four years.

It was a combination of strategies that really made me successful in quitting, that and that I had realized that cigarettes were the cause of my unhappiness. I chanted a lot, I prayed to never ever smoke a cigarette again in my life. I didn’t just pray, I took action. I used nicotine lozenges to calm physical withdrawal, exercise to release endorphins that made me feel good, lots of water, lots of sleep and I avoided alcohol in the early stages.

I had tried lots of things over my lifetime to quit; patches, gum, Wellbutrin, self hypnosis, acupuncture and “cold turkey”. Wellbutrin gave me such bad insomnia that I was an absolute wreck of a person going through a very intense physical withdrawal. I was literally jumping at anything that moved or made a sound. Acupuncture was just as bad as it didn’t do anything at all to a make it easier and then I had to suffer through another torturous round of the awful “cold turkey” withdrawals. When I went through withdrawal of nicotine I would go into an immediate depression that was nearly debilitating. I would sleep all day or just sit in bed crying, it was really bad. Withdrawals really often do make people sick because of the extreme stress it puts on the body. I really don’t think I could have gotten through it without the nicotine replacement.

I also read Alan Carr's "The Easy Way to Quit". Well this book had some good points it failed miserably in saying that nicotine replacements are counterproductive but in fact is shown in multiple studies to double successful quitting rates.

It has been difficult but well worth it. I am so proud that I quit and enjoy the numerous benefits of being a non smoker. Sometimes I miss it; I miss my escape, my being bad, I miss sneaking out! Despite this, despite the fact that I still yearn for the punch of nicotine and other drugs hitting my lungs, the immediate relief I feel as I inhale and exhale the smoke; I am so afraid that I will relapse. So many people can stop for as long as I have and go back to it in an instant. I know that if I have “just” one that I won’t be able to control it, I will immediately be a smoker again. I can’t afford to let that happen again.

So, If you want to encourage someone to quit (e:tinypliny), you need to have true compassion. You really have to understand and acknowledge the person’s suffering and to acknowledge that the challenge that lies ahead is a difficult one. Discussing the evils of smoking might cause fear but fear isn’t enough. They need help, they need information, strategies to cope and they need to be supported and encouraged. Sadly, this type of support is rarely truly achieved in smoking cessation.

For free help with quitting smoking you can call the National Quitline 1-800-Quit-NOW. It will take you to the State's Quitline for the number you are calling from.

hehehee, I just found this on my desk top and I don't think I have posted it before.

I'm visiting my mom in Florida and found out the gift I got her and and her husband for Christmas have faded in the dishwasher.



They wouldn't replace them because it has been longer than 3 months. They were for xmas 09. I never get my Mom good gifts.

Today was the Buffalo Niagara River Clean Up. I volunteered again at Squaw Island. This really awesome woman picked me up since it was raining and not a good bike riding day. She has hiked the entire Appalachian Trail and is part of the Women's League of Voters. She said she was in her early 70's but seemed ages younger. After she dropped me back at home she went on to volunteer at Tifft Nature Preserve.

We got one of those metal water bottles as a gift. it reads, "Drink Local. The Great Lakes provides drinking water to over 40 million people daily." I think that statement is so powerful. It really just screams look at what you are doing to our drinking water!!

I picked up a lot of plastic bottles and a lot of stuff from people fishing. So much of it was plastic bags that are for hooks and fishing line. So much Styrofoam from containers for night crawlers. I picked up probably 50 or so plastic tampon applicators. I got this huge long cable that took me and this woman to carry to shore.

There is still so much trash out there but for now the Island looks better. Last spring within days there was trash all over from the fisher people. It's a very daunting task, very discouraging really, but it feels so good at the same time to volunteer and to actually do something about it. Doing this today and meeting that wonderful woman makes me want to do more. I met other nice people too, it's like you know everyone is awesome and share a special bond almost.

When I got home I spent the rest of my day cleaning my apartment. After all this work nothing is perfect but my environment is a little bit nicer and I feel really good.

As Earth Day Approaches, Cleanups Abound

Rachel Kingston Reporting rkingston@entercom.com

Buffalo, NY (WBEN) -- Earth Day may not be until Friday, but that didn't keep literally thousands of volunteers across Western New York and across the state from heading out over the weekend and doing a little "cleaning and greening" of area parks and waterways.

Groups picked up trash and debris, planted new seedlings, trimmed back overgrowth, removed graffiti, the works - tending to messes both man- and nature-made.

Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper is one of the local groups that organized cleanups. It recruited a record-setting 1,600 volunteers to focus on 40 sites, including the Buffalo River at the Ohio Street Boat Launch and the Scajacquada Creek trail this past weekend.

"Twice a year, we send volunteers out at 40 sites, along our Western New York waterways. If you added the shoreline up, it would total 77,000 linear feet," explains Kerri Li, the director of Citizen Action Programs for Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper. "So we have legions of volunteers going out twice a year, and they basically are out there - like this weekend - they picked up tons and tons of trash. It could be anywhere from 30 to 50 tons of trash. And we find all sorts of things. Bottles, heavy things like pieces of scrap metal, propane tanks, shopping carts... all sorts of debris."

"We're down along the shoreline, removing this debris, for about three hours on a Saturday morning. We work up a sweat, we make a few friends, we make a difference. We do something good for Western New York water."

But Riverkeeper does more than just pick up trash, and it doesn't confine its debris-removal efforts to only the water.

"What's important to understand is, evne though you might see trash on the streets... when it rains, those streets are connected to our waterways through storm drains. So even though you may not see the connection, because the storm drain goes underneath the street, ultimately that trash and debris ends up going out into our rivers and our streams," says Li.

Over the weekend, while Riverkeeper's volunteers were at work, volunteers with other groups were doing similar work along the length of the Erie Canal, in the Niagara Gorge, and on the Lake Ontario and Erie shorelines.

The "Friends of Times Beach" got to work at the site from which they take their name beginning Friday.

They cleaned up debris from the trails at Times Beach, and this year, are getting some assistance from county workers, who are helping to rebuild boardwalks that were damaged during a 2008 storm.

"Earth Day just kind of focuses us on the fact that we've got these wonderful areas that need to be preserved, need to be taken care of," Erie County Environment and Planning Commissioner Kathy Konst remarks. "Various groups get together... Friends of Times Beach, our Environmental Management Council, Buffalo Riverkeeper... a lot of them 'adopt' [an area] and go out there on a regular basis, so that they kind of manage and take care of a property all year long."

Their work doesn't stop on the 364 days of the year that aren't Earth Day.

"It's being a steward to the environment, and taking care of it. You know, the birds that come out to Times Beach - there are over 243 species of birds that migrate there on an annual basis - they don't just come out for Earth Day," Konst says. "It's one of the most significant bird areas in the Great Lakes. We want to make sure that that ecosystem is protected."

Interested?

You can find literally dozens of cleanup groups in Western New York on Google. You can also start your search with Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper or the Friends of Times Beach.