Driving home from an excellent IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) Club meeting at the airport, I realized how incredibly lucky I feel to be driving at night to our home on the North Side of Chicago. My love for this city is true and I consider our relocation here 18 months ago to be a magnificent achievement and a fantastic adventure.
Life is good. Especially when you make it that way.
I’ve started playing around with Logic Pro X on the MacBook Pro again. I enjoy editing and remixing music. I don’t really feel the need to DJ in a club or on the radio anymore, but making remixes and exclusive edits of songs? Totally my jam.
So Friday night the family got together and we went to Allstate Arena to see Kelly Clarkson and her “Meaning of Life 2019” tour.
What a thoroughly fantastic evening.
I’ve been a fan of Kelly Clarkson since her American Idol days. She has always seemed so genuine in her public persona; I’ve always felt that we saw as much of her ‘real self’ as we could on television.
The show was wonderful; the music was well balanced, wasn’t too overpowering, and she had a nice mix of her own songs in with a couple of covers thrown in for an extra nice touch. Her banter between songs was quite enjoyable and didn’t feel contrived or scripted. The pleasant personality I associate with her was intact and I felt like she’d be fun to share a lunch with.
One of the things I immediately noticed about her was that she really appears to love what she does. She loves to sing and she clearly enjoys expressing herself through her art. I’ve been to so many concerts where it was clear the performer was working (Madonna instantly comes to mind); Kelly truly felt like she was sharing her art while hanging with new friends.
I like that vibe. We need more of that.
At the beginning of her set she talked about all the chaos and turmoil in the world today, and that the space was an all inclusive space and that everyone was welcome to join in the fun for the evening.
She made the two hour show appear effortless simply because of her demonstrated love of her art.
More people need to do more of what makes them happy. Sharing joy; perhaps this is how we bring the world to a more positive place.
If Apple wants the iPad Pro to be taken seriously as a laptop replacement they should probably look at some of the smaller details in iOS. For example, displaying the Apple logo and update progress bar in the proper direction when one has a keyboard attached to the device.
To be fair, I don’t know if the latest iPad Pro corrects this issue, but this has always bothered me on iPads.
Please are sometimes surprised when they find out I don’t like elevators. They say, but you fly small airplanes miles above the ground, yet you’re nervous in elevators? The truth of is, yes, I don’t like elevators. Actually, I don’t mind elevators as much as I don’t like confined spaces. If I can see outside, I’m fine.
We live on the fifth floor of our building. I walk the stairs a lot but I also take the elevator at least once a day. I’d enjoy the experience a little more if it had a window, but I know every nuance of how this elevator works so I don’t sweat it too much.
Now, on two occasions I’ve been riding along with a “belt slipped” or something and the elevator rapidly dropped a couple of feet. The emergency brake snaps on, the panel lights and indicators do a quick reset and the elevator slowly descends to the closest floor. Pressing the open door button will then open the door or you can press the floor you’re going to again and it’ll try to sort things out. I’ve read several maintenance manuals on this particular brand and make of elevator (Kone EcoDisc) and a month or so ago I watched numerous videos of elevator geeks going up and down in broken versions of these elevators. They didn’t panic, so why should I, right?
I just don’t do well in confined spaces if I don’t know my way out. If I can see beyond the space I’m good, even if it’s through a small crack in the door or something.
That’s what I like about airplanes, I can see out all over the place. The only time I’ve ever not enjoyed an airplane flight is when I ended up in a row without a window.
You’ll never find me on an airplane where they substitute the windows with large LED screens to simulate the outside.
By the way, tunnels don’t bother me; I can see my way through and I know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I really want to drive through that 20+ mile tunnel in Europe.
In the meanwhile, I’ll keep riding up and down in our Kone Eco-Disc elevator to try to break this concern.
I couldn’t help but look around this evening and marvel as to how much I’m enjoying life in Chicago. I’m a very lucky man to live here.
Today is President’s Day. Or is it Presidents’ Day? Perhaps Presidents Day?
I’m old enough to remember when we had Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s Birthday, but I think we had only Washington’s Birthday off. Later in my elementary years we started getting the whole week of Washington’s Birthday off; since that was usually the snowiest week of the winter. Sometimes, but not always.
Whatever we are calling this holiday this year (it varies from state to state), I still don’t feel compelled to buy a mattress, a car, or Turbo Tax. I’ve never understood why mattress companies go right crazy during this week in February. It’s not like anyone is going to want to haul a heavy mattress in and out of their home at this time of year. Is it because we’re working our way through the winter and we should have worn out the mattress by this time? I’m getting old, we don’t bounce the box spring as much.
Today was not a work holiday. Today was a normal day at work and it was fairly intense. I could probably handle it better if we had a new mattress but I still don’t feel the need to buy a new mattress.
I could go on a political tirade at this point of the blog entry but we don’t really have a president to talk about, so there’s no sense on going on a tirade. The country is pretty much on auto-pilot with occasional threats of the complete and utter destruction of democracy as we know it, but as long as La Marmalade can tweet the news channels are happy and the speed limit IQ folks feel vindicated.
I look forward to when we have a reason to celebrate Presidents’ Day again.
My father rarely cursed. My father was generally a man of few words, but when he did share verbal expressions of emotion he rarely swore. The closest things he would say that would come close to cursing was “Jumpin’ Mice” or “If it’s going to be a pain in the nuts…”, which the latter is probably more crass the cursing.
I followed his lead for the first two decades or so of my life and rarely swore. I can actually remember the first time I swore. It was 8th period gym class in 7th grade. I had dropped the watch from my grandfather’s estate between two lockers in the locker room and I was really bothered by it. When the teacher asked why I had put the watch in this precarious location I simply said to him, “I fucked up”. That was the first time I had swore to anyone other than myself and he instantly knew that I was really bothered by losing the watch left to me by my grandfather.
We successfully retrieved the watch.
It wasn’t until my radio days that I started a tendency of swearing like a sailor. It was the most effective way of communicating with the owners of the radio station because they were yelling and screaming most of the time. I can still remember my father’s wince when he asked why I wanted to leave that particular job and I replied, “because the owner is an asshole”. But the fact of the matter is, my language adapted to the situation because circumstances dictated that the only language they would take to heart was when someone yelled and swore at them. Then again I did witness the husband and wife team throwing a knife across the room during an argument, so swearing was probably the least of my problems at the time.
Michelle Obama famously said, “When they go low, we go high”. In a sane society, or at least in a society that doesn’t consider pajamas as an outfit to wear on an airliner, Ms. Obama’s declaration would be absolutely valid. But we live in a time and place where we are deeply, horribly divided. Truth, the validity of facts, and the elimination of a general moral compass has rapidly distorted our values. We are living in “the low”. To take the high road merely means to tell the truth now, and when bad actors no longer care about the truth, they’re sure not going to understand anything unless you lean hard on your intent, and that means dropping f-bombs to get people’s attention.
Look, I’m not a fan of talking like a sailor. I still have a microsecond of shock when David Rose drops a “fuck” on “Schitt’s Creek” or Patsy and Eddy drop all sorts of profanity of “Absolutely Fabulous”. But this is where society has taken us, and this is how our language is transforming to keep up with society.
A recent tweet passed by on my timeline criticizing the use of profanity on “The Circus” on Showtime. As host John Heilemann responded:
You've got to be fucking kidding. https://t.co/RiqG4OIco0
— John Heilemann (@jheil) February 17, 2019
My response? A super condensed version of what I’ve written in this blog post.
https://twitter.com/thatjpwing/status/1097219087137210370?s=21
I’m not going to walk into a church and start a “blue set” behind the mic at the pulpit. I’m not going to walk into a fancy restaurant and start swearing like a sailor nor am I going to begin a profanity laced litany in a room full of ladies (I still have an ounce of chivalry that I show once in a while).
But when it’s time to call the President of the United States a fucktard, I’m going to call him a fucktard.
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!
