As I write this it’s 0850 on a Monday morning and I’ve already navigated through multiple fires at work. The only thing that’s keeping me moving forward is one thought.
“Would I want to feel what I’m feeling right now if this moment I took my last breath?”
Life is too short to sweat the small stuff.
I’m reading a book that suggests by remembering how we felt in the past, we possibly stunt our growth for the future.
There are many things I miss about the past. Eating food without worrying about calories. Big metal bowls of popcorn drizzled with real butter. Grandparents that called butter “oleo’. The smiles of loved ones that have passed. The friendly faces of a supermarket cashier named Ruth. The smell of decades old books in the library. Old school penmanship. Mom yelling into the back 40 trying to figure out where I was. Riding in the back seat of a car listening to AM radio. Watching airplanes come and go from a small grass strip. Enough cash to buy things. Going to church and noticing everyone seated in the same place week after week. Shopping in a downtown. Watching the Christmas decorations go up in the village. Wondering what the rest of the country was like and resolving to find out on my own.
The past builds our present. It’s all in the soup. Can’t take it out now. Stir it in and enjoy.
We celebrated Truman’s five year anniversary of “Gotcha Day” this week. He just wanted extra kibble.
He has been a little more social with the dogs lately and the three of them chased a laser dot together. He then retreated to his cat tree to watch activities around the house.
I call this photo “hope”. While out for my walk, this sunny spot on the darkened mountain caught my eye. It reminded me there’s always a bright spot, somewhere.
While going through a few general aviation related forums this morning I came across some sad news. A pilot associated with ATP (a flight school) in Addison, Texas, took a brand new Cessna 172, told Air Traffic Control that he was intending to take off, go up through the clouds and “look at everything”, and that he would not follow ATC instructions and was pulling the circuit breakers on the comms equipment. He took off, flew east to a fairly rural area of Texas. The last recorded flight track showed him descending at a very high rate of feet per minute and he subsequently crashed. I believe his name was Logan and he was in his early 20s.
This prompted discussions about suicide and things that lead to this in today’s modern society. The conversation on the forums swung to discussions about bullying in general. When us middle aged pilots were kids, we might have been bullied at school but that generally fell away when we went home. In today’s always connected society obsessed with social media, youngsters don’t get that reprieve. Instead of being bullied just at school (which is horrible in itself), kids continuing the bullying online using all the available social media outlets, and an incident that may have been forgotten in a few days at a school is now recorded, shared, and endures in perpetuity.
Kids have it very rough these days.
I don’t know what led Logan to take his life in a brand new Cessna 172 last night. I just know that it’s heartbreaking when any person finds no answer or no hope anywhere and decides to take their life.
And this happens way too often.
Forty years ago today, the world was introduced to Macintosh.
And here’s the famous commercial (4K Restoration) that prepped the world for what was coming from Apple.
This alarm clock has been a staple on my nightstand for over 30 years. Every time I wake up in the middle of the night, and that happens quite a bit, I glance at the clock to see what time it is. I then do math to figure out how much more sleep I can get. And the result often causes a bit of midnight anxiety.
I don’t need anxiety in my life.
The truth of the matter is that if it’s dark and my alarm hasn’t gone off yet, do I really care what time it is? The facts (darkness, no alarm) point to my eligibility for sleep and who really cares how much of that sleep remains? Sleep is sleep so get some sleep.
So I have stored this old faithful alarm clock in my drawer for a few nights to see if it helps reduce my anxiety when I wake up in the middle of the night and decide I must know what time it is. A few more steps to controlling the chaos.
The Doomsday Clock is once again at 90 seconds to midnight. This is the second year in a row the clock has been at this position; it is still at the closest point to “doomsday” in the history of the clock. Prior to 2023, the clock was at 100 seconds to midnight. Near the end of the Trump presidency, the clock was moved from two minutes (120 seconds) to 100 seconds to midnight. I find it somewhat interesting that the clock has moved closer to midnight and remained there during the Biden administration.
As a Gen-Xer that was constantly reminded of the threat of armageddon during the Reagan years, it still makes me quite nervous to see the Doomsday Clock so close to midnight, and things not getting better.
It’s an extreme clock setting in extreme times.
I know I’m not alone of really being tired of the constant chaos in the world. Wars, grandstanding, childish social media posts, focus on anything other than what’s important, greed, and a looming U.S. Presidential Election that will probably boil down to the “vote for the least worse of the two very old guys”.
I really want the chaos to calm down. I want to live to see the Doomsday Clock ramped to a less volatile territory.
But most importantly, I want the world to get better, not “less bad”.
Joyce Randolph, most famous for her role as Trixie in “The Honeymooners”, passed away earlier this month. She was 99 years old.
Joyce was not the first actress to play the role of Trixie; the role was originated by Elaine Stritch. Joyce took over the role after Elaine’s first and only outing as Trixie, and in the process the character was toned down a bit with a bit more wholesome image.
Here’s a shot of Joyce as Trixie in one of the early episodes on the DuMont Network, featuring Pert Kelton as Alice.
It’s rained most of the day here in the Sonoran Desert. At times the rain has been pounding on the roof quite hard; the forecast calls for more rain through Wednesday. It is that time of the year, after all.
While my husband watches the football playoffs, I’ve been studying up on aviation and weather. I’ve been organizing my flight bag a bit. For the past couple of years I’ve been trying to go “completely electronic” with organizing my weather, notes, and other flight bag goodies in the cockpit. I started off with paper on the my kneeboard and during the last flight I migrated back to that, using my EFB, or Electronic Flight Back, for approach charts and as a reference. My EFB lives on an iPad mini 5, which is still quite capable but the Apple Pencil, which is a generation 1 of the plethora of pencils Apple now offers with specific iPads, can be spotty. Pen and paper are more reliable in that regard.
I’ve also been studying up on the weather, watching videos from various sources on using the various tools, improving my forecasting skills and the like. I found this video from MeteoTechWX, a storm chasing channel on YouTube. I really liked the vibe of this team and look forward to watching more of their videos this week.
Amongst all the other things I talk about on Ye Ol’ Ancient Blog, I’ll be mentioning my Storm Chasing toolbox as it gets assembled for chase season coming up this spring. The Accounting Department (otherwise known as the love of my life, my husband), has blessed a solo storm chasing trip again this year. I haven’t figured out the timing yet, as it’s a bit too early in the year to pinpoint that timing down, but the smart people out there are saying this year could be above average for severe storms and I find that quite exciting. Unless, of course, I’m flying an airplane. Then I want Mother Nature to be as calm as a cucumber.
It’s a shame the New York State curriculum for Earth Science back in 1982 made for a duller than a dishrag experience when I was a freshman in high school. This stuff is super interesting to me.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!