Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

We don’t usually do a big deal around Easter dinner. In the past Earl and I have had some sort of picnic regardless of the weather; this weekend in Arizona it’s rainy. We had a couple of friends over and had a very nice Easter celebration today.

Reach out and tell loved ones and friends how important they are and how much they contribute to your existence.

Here are some photos from yesterday’s hike along the Douglas Springs Trail in Saguaro National Park east. The wildflowers were really out and about, which brought a really nice touch of a color to the desert surroundings. It was a great hike.

I saw this posted on a bulletin board this week. I found it fantastic.

This week has been busy with meetings at work. My calendar has been quite jammed with all sorts of events, all of it important, I’m sure. As I get older I realize I take more and more after my father. When supper time comes, I don’t want to think about it; I just want someone to tell me what we’re having and if they need assistance assembling supper I’m there to help, otherwise I’m ready to eat at 6:00 PM.

I know June, I sound like I’m right out of the 1950s. I’ll talk to the Beaver.

When you live in a home with four other men and no one wants to cook, you figure things out. I declared to Earl I’d take him to a place down the street that we enjoy. It’s called “Serial Grillers” and they have several locations in the Tucson area.

I snapped this photo from their parking lot. The sunset was gorgeous and it made me smile. It was a good way to bring Thursday to an end and it made me smile. The smile continued through the work day today, where my calendar was clear aside from a semi-weekly touch point with my team. Smiling made me productive and I cleared my to do list for the day.

It’s a great start to the weekend.

It’s been about five years since I was first told I needed glasses. At that event I was basically told I should wear glasses when working on the computer and the fine local optician on the north side of Chicago helped me find a pair of glasses that fit the bill. A year later I went and got another eye exam, continued the trend of occasionally needing glasses, found myself a snazzy pair of glasses and off we went. A little while later I moved to progressive lenses and tended to wear them only when I felt I needed to wear them.

On Tuesday I had my biannual FAA mandated medical exam. As a private pilot of a certain age, I maintain a “Class 3” Medical Certificate, meaning I need to meet FAA health standards need to prove this every two years. I went to the same doctor I visited back in 2022. He is very nice.

Well, it turns out I should be wearing my progressive lenses more than “when I think I need them”. I’m lucky I had brought them along for the eye exam portion of the ordeal, because I definitely needed them to get through the whole.

It is now documented that I must be wearing my prescription glasses when I’m flying an airplane.

Earl and I went flying last night. While touring the area by airplane I remarked, “wow, I can really see what’s going on up here!”. It’s amazing how well I can fly an airplane when I can see things.

It’s like my vision has gone from standard definition to Ultra 4K.

As of today I have 50 days remaining in my countdown to my 2024 Storm Chasing Adventure. Instead of thinking that I’m going “storm chasing”, I’m thinking of this trip as a “Storm Hiking” trip, because I plan on integrating some hiking to keep the blood moving while I’m inbetween supercells. The supercells will always win if there’s a battle for my attention, but hiking keeps me sane and allows my mind to relax while building up my physical stamina. It’s a win-win.

Even though it’s been well over 300 days since my last storm chasing trip, I’m still processing what went wrong and what went right with my 2023 adventure, as I don’t want to replicate my mistakes and come back to Tucson wishing I had done X, Y, and Z and not feeling satisified with the trip. I was a bit too contemplative on last year’s trip. I listened to too many self-help type podcasts, I was too entrenched with social media, and I was too concerned of not losing my productivity momentum, even though I was on vacation. Plus, last year’s trip took place during an unusually quiet time for storms in May. This year’s forecast looks much more promising.

I’ve been pulling away from social media in general since the beginning of this year. Continuing that trend going into my “storm hiking” trip in 50 days shouldn’t be hard to continue; the only caveat is that I will still follow a feed or two so I know what other storm chasers are doing. Seeing their take on the forecasting models I’m looking at helps me be better at figuring out where to position myself for a storm.

I’m a bit surprised at how fast the year is passing by. After a January that seemed to go on forever, here we are at the end of March. We’re already into springtime in the Northern Hemisphere and work oriented folks are already looking at the end of the first quarter. Time sure flies when you’re having fun!