Fun and Games Dept

I’m on board United Flight 4671 from Chicago/O’Hare to Greenville-Spartanburg. I’m headed down for work; we are having team meetings through Thursday. I’ll fly back to Chicago and then drive home with Earl on Sunday. Have I mentioned how much I love Chicago? I’m looking forward to our big move later this year. 

As I sit on this EMB-145, enjoying Pringles and a pop for lunch, I look outside in awe. Fluffy clouds. Just a little choppy to gain your attention. The horizon way off in the distance. As a private pilot and as a commercial passenger, I’m still thoroughly inspired by aviation. I have my goals as a pilot and they all boil down to becoming a Certified Flight Instructor by my 51st birthday, which is just over two years away. 
As a commercial passenger I have goals as well. I really have no aspirations to fly for the airlines but I want to fly with the airlines, especially other airlines outside of the U.S. mainstays. I’m curious as to what it’s like to fly on Etihad Airlines. I wonder what service is like on one of the Far Eastern airlines. 

I also want to fly on a Boeing 747 before they’re all grounded. I wish I had the opportunity to fly the Concorde and as the U.S. airlines phase out the 747, I’m worried I’ll never have the chance to fly on one. 

The A380 seems cool to me, though it doesn’t excite me as much as the 747. I think that’s the legacy aviator in me, I’m in awe of what we could do back when the 747 first took to the skies. I wouldn’t pass up the chance to fly in an A380, but I don’t feel as motivated to do so. 
As I reach what I consider to be the halfway point of my life my bucket list just continues to grow. And many items will take place while airborne or include a flight element getting from point A to point Z. 

Someone tell our accounting department to fire up the credit card. 

I walked six miles this morning. Walking about the streets of Chicago is always relaxing to me. Once off the main thoroughfares I find it to be very quiet. I do love the neighborhoods that I’ve been exploring.

The trees and flowers are coming into bloom, about a month ahead of schedule when compared to home. I find this a little odd, since Chicago has a similar climate as we have at home, though we definitely get more snow.

I stopped and said hello to a cat, who apparently has a fan club that stops by everyday and she performs by climbing up a tree and then jumping over to the roof of her catio. A woman stopped by and filled me in on the details of this famous feline. We chatted for about 15 minutes.

That would never happen back home. People aren’t particularly chatty in the Northeast.

This fluffy black cat reminded me of Cinders, a fluffy black kitten machine I had as a teenager. She was a bit spastic and not as charismatic as this lovely cat but then again she didn’t have an audience other than the other cats. She was fine in her own way.

After 15 minutes of chatter I never did find out this cat’s name.

I feel very comfortable here in the Windy City. I’m looking forward to another morning walk tomorrow before going to the Cubs game.

I love the Central Time Zone, especially when our little family is together.

Our local casino has a reputation for having some of the “tightest” slot machines in the country. New York State is big on casinos these days, and the local casino was the first one in the state. While I have happy memories of the casino, after all Earl and I were married there and I have hit the big jackpot once or twice on a slot machine, the fact of the matter is that I have given more of our money to the casino than they have given us.

And that’s how casinos stay in business, right?

The thing that frustrates me about this casino and playing slot machines is that they have the exact same machines as every other casino. I can play the same game the same way at two different casinos, one of them being this local one, and I will never, ever hit the “bonus” round or the “bonus feature”. If I play the exact same game the exact same way using the same amount of money at the start, I’ll hit the bonus feature at least once or twice if not more. I still might not win but it makes me feel engaged with the game. Our casino never feels engaging or exciting, it’s more of a drain on the pocket and the psyche.

But, we keep going back.

Earl does well at keeping his head above water when walking out of the casino for the night. Me, on the other hand, I handle the guilt for the both of us.

Sometimes you just have to dance. After all, it’s Friday.

h/t to Mark at Voenix Rising for jogging my memory with this song. It had slipped from my memory, but when I saw this video I did remember that the video version is a little different than all the other versions, in that the lyrics are changed, “my good time radio” instead of “my midnight radio” and “dj’s radio” instead of “midnight radio”.

Here’s Taffy with “I Love My Radio” from 1986.

https://youtu.be/88FJd4xaYuk

Back in the early 2000s Earl and I watched “Queer As Folk”. While the storyline meandered in later seasons, we found the earlier seasons to be quite enjoyable for its time.  While I enjoyed the characters and the earlier storylines and, admittedly the sex scenes, I also enjoyed seeing character Brian Kinney’s loft.

His loft was quite trendy looking with lots of wood and steel and jaunty angles. Even back then I told Earl that if we were to live in a big city I would want to live in something that was lofty, or at the very least, something with a lot of wood and brick.

At one time I lived in an open space in downtown Utica (hardly a thriving metropolis by any means) that was quite lofty, though it was quite rundown. I think I paid $200/month rent back in 1992. The open space was on the second floor of a four floor building. The first floor was closed up retail space used by a local band for practice every Thursday night. The top two floors were a more finished loft owned by the building owner. He had chopped off half the fourth floor to make his living room extra tall with a spiral staircase to the top floor. It was quite trendy and modern for its time.

Meanwhile, my space was wide open with no walls, an abandoned elevator shaft and lots of brick. And lots of drafts. But I liked it and I made it my own.

Since Earl and I are looking to relocate to Chicago, I’ve mentioned that I wouldn’t mind looking at lofts if they’re the right size and in the right location. The thing is, they’re a little out of our price range when it comes to the locations we’re looking for. So then I started day dreaming about Brad and Jane’s condo from the sitcom “Happy Endings”.

There’s some wood, there’s some patio, a little exposed beam, a fireplace and a lofty upstairs with X number of bedrooms and a bathroom or two.

Now that works for me and the best part is, it works for Earl too.

Now, we have no plans on movin’ on up to that deluxe apartment in the sky, but a nice condo that fits within our budget, location and decorating possibilities… totally gonna happen.

I don’t find our aspirations to be that lofty.

So I spent the weekend avoiding Twitter as much as possible. There were two reasons for this, one being that yesterday was April Fools’ Day, one of two holidays that I dislike as much as I dislike clowns. The second being that being on Twitter for extended periods of time starts to feel like this (it’s a short, 38 second video):

I almost forgot that Trump was president for 48 hours. What a wonderful feeling. Remember what it was like when Washington, D.C. wasn’t a complete swamp of chaos? When class, intelligence and dignity was more important than screaming, making money one’s God and focusing on destruction instead of unity and creation?

Maybe this will help.

I feel rested enough to tackle the upcoming week. Maybe I’ll avoid the political side of Twitter for another 24 hours and see if that makes things even better.

So with Earl out of town this weekend, the weather not being conducive to flying and it being April Fools’ Day, I decided to go for a road trip in the Jeep.  I am currently stopped at a Starbucks in Worcester, Mass. on my way home, after making my way on the “back roads” to get from Central New York to suburban Boston.

The sign above is from the intersection where one would turn to go to an apartment I lived in back in 1989 and 1990. From memory, without GPS and without any paper map, I was able to drive to all four locations that I lived at between 1988 and 1990 when I worked for Digital, then the second largest computer company in the world. Many of the old Digital (or commonly called “DEC” by non-employees, DEC standing for Digital Equipment Corporation) buildings are still for lease. Digital was purchased by Compaq in the late 1990s, which in turn was purchased by Hewlett-Packard. Had I stayed with Digital, I could be a VP at HP by now, but that was not meant to be my destiny.

I have lost contacts with all but one friend in this area and outside of Facebook I had no way to get a hold of her. I can see Earl and I coming back for a visit on another road trip and then I’ll give Donna (my friend) proper notice so we can get together for lunch or something. The OCD in me likes to plan these things out.

The direction of road trip was inspired by a dream that I had last night. Actually, the dream was right before I jumped out of bed for the day. It was a frustration dream about working for Digital but with modern technology and not knowing how to log into the network with this new equipment. When I worked for Digital, the computer at my desk was a Digital Rainbow 100+. That was supplanted by a Digital DECstation 386 running Windows/386, as we were testing Windows connectivity to our “DECnet” network products. I was a pioneer of Windows testing back in 1988. Some dialog boxes haven’t changed since then.

I had one personal demon that I needed to address while I was in Clinton, Mass.   Since I feel like a rejuvenated man after this recent surgery, I’m trying to get rid of my old baggage. I don’t have many bags to get rid of, but this one has been lurking in the back of my brain since 1990. Some things are not meant to be shared in public, and the details of this one thing fits that category, but I’ve made my peace with nature and universe, standing in the rain under the cover of the dark of night in Clinton, Mass.  No worries, no one got hurt and I got some stuff off my chest.

Other than seeing where I could navigate without electronic or paper aid, I had no plans for this trip. I ended up stopping at the Burlington Mall in Burlington, Mass. and visiting “The Art of Shaving” store, where I pampered myself with a Royal Shave from the very capable barber named Jamal. An hour of pure bliss. I’m probably more vain than I should be, but I believe that this vessel that carries my soul should be treated as nicely as possible, and spending an hour getting my face shaved, buffed, shined, cleansed, buffed, steamed and massaged is one way of enjoying my life.

Life should always be enjoyed. I’ve made it thus far, and I’m not even halfway through my lifetime journey. There’s so much more to see.

Sleet is pelting against our windows. The wind is whipping. The creek in the backyard is barely holding its own within the confines of its banks. 

Ah, the joy of spring in Central New York. 

My kindergarten teacher, a woman by the name of Mrs. Mosher, once told us how March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. I never really understood what that was suppose to mean since we’d often have snow on the ground and how in the world were lambs suppose to do their spring like thing if there’s snow on the ground? Of course, Mrs. Mosher also told my parents that I was probably mentally retarded and wouldn’t amount to much. My mother resisted the urge to show her my consistently top notch report card for the first few years of my primary years. I didn’t color in the lines. I didn’t really want people around me that much, I tended to play alone and in my own little world, I burped in appropriately and one time I was spied drinking out of the sink in the bathroom because I was thirsty and asking for a drink of water and I was told that it wasn’t time to drink water. Oh, one more lingering nugget of kindergarten fun, I would never stay on my rug during nap time. Do children still take naps in kindergarten?  I was always thankful we didn’t have bomb raid drills during nap time, though looking back it would have made sense because in our school you were to get under your group table and put your nap rug over the back of your head. I can remember it like it was yesterday. They called them bomb raid drills but I think we were doing nuke drills, because there was a fairly new nuclear plant not too far away at the time.  In first grade we just sat under our desk during these drills. I was so thankful that the desk was going to save me from a bomb.

As the spring time sleet and wind pelted the house last night I dreamed of a high school classmate (actually she was a year behind me) that I knew only casually. No idea why I dreamed about her but I stalked her on Facebook to see if she is still alive and she is. She hasn’t changed much in 30 years, either! Good for her.  She was just there in the dream. Nothing of real significance.

I am anxious for real spring-like weather to get here. I went flying last night and it felt a little spring like, though the delay in spring weather is probably good for my last two weeks of recovery from my surgery.

But I’ll be happy when I can go outside and enjoy the warmth of the sun on my face.