Fun and Games Dept

Here it is the first week of February and I’m proud to announce that my annual 48-hour bout with the sniffles is in full swing. Earl is out of town on business this week, so I’ve been kind of moping about the house, consuming lots of soup, making honking noises through several boxes of tissues and doping myself to nearly insanity via NyQuil.

It is my plan to be back to normal, well, at least my version of normal, by tomorrow night.

Unable to fly on Saturday because it was just too dang cold, Earl and I bundled up and went for one of our “crazy” Jeep rides. I put the word crazy in quotes because people always say that our rides are out of the ordinary. The ride wasn’t one of our longest, not by a long shot. At 7 hours and 15 minutes of driving time, we had time for wonderful conversation, reminicing, political debate and exchanges of socio-economic opinion. As always, when we spend time together, we had a blast.

Our ride took us through the North Country of New York State. The North Country is the area between the Adirondack Mountains and the St. Lawrence Seaway, right along the Canadian border. Admittedly this is my favorite part of The Empire State. I enjoy it in both the winter and the summer, for different reasons depending on the season, but one of the things that I enjoy most is the vibe. It’s somewhat economically depressed up there but everyone we’ve ever talked to in those parts seems to be down to Earth. Good ol’ boys and all that.

Along our travels we stopped at the St. Lawrence Centre Mall. Built in 1990, this modestly sized mall outside of the Village of Massena has seen better days.

A rough estimate tells me that about 75% of the storefronts are vacant. The western end of the mall wasn’t really heated anymore. We found it to be quite chilly. Only two of the five anchor locations are still populated, only JC Penney and Bon Ton remain. Hills/Ames, Sears and one of the anchor (we couldn’t figure out what it used to be) are all empty. Another typical anchor location actually houses an Ice Arena, which was part of the original plan when the mall was built.

On the bright side, the Food Court still had a decent number of options. I noted on the listed hours that the mall closes at 7:00 p.m. during the week; most malls in these parts are open until 9:00 or 9:30 p.m.  There wasn’t much in the way of shopper traffic when we walked around, stretching our legs. That’s what we do on these long rides, walk around and stretch our legs in a shopping mall.

It kind of makes me sad to see these shopping malls slowly dying, but things change and people change and it’s important for those that market to the public to keep up. I hope that the St. Lawrence Centre finds it’s way to a new found glory someday.

The rest of our trip was wonderful. We stopped at our favorite Buffalo Wild Wings in the Empire State, on Arsenal Street in Watertown. Admittedly, we enjoy seeing the soldiers and such from nearby Fort Drum. The place is always packed, the beer is always good and there’s always cheering of the various games on the televisions.

It’s snowing. But then again, it’s Monday. Welcome to Central New York. It’s January.

This morning I stumbled into the kitchen all groggy and blurry-eyed, in search of a glass of water. I just needed one glass of water and I would feel better. I’m not much of a coffee person and I tend to drink iced tea in the afternoon, and because society frowns on beer for breakfast, I just wanted a glass of water.

I noticed that there were a few dishes stacked in the sink. This is odd when I’m around because I do not enjoy dishes in the sink. Dishes in the sink make me crazy. Not as crazy as when I find garbage in the sink, but moderately crazy. I don’t bay at the moon or anything, I just get surly, unless I’m in search of my first glass of water in the morning, then I get surlier.

The dishes in the sink meant two things. A certain someone might or might not be home for a few weeks before he heads off to college in a city that may or may not be windy. It also meant that a certain someone of the married persuasion dared not open the dishwasher because something hideously awful could be hiding in the dishwasher.

CLEAN DISHES.

Now, I know that clean dishes ranks right up there with “whites in the dryer” in the frightful department. I know that sinking feeling when you steal a glance at the dishwasher and you see the “Clean” light illuminated. The feeling of dread has been eased slightly with the march of technology; before the days of the “clean” light there was the “bounce sound” of the detergent dispenser in the dishwasher, its ringing out a startling announcement that the dishes in the dishwasher needed to removed and put in their proper place in the various cabinets that adorn our kitchen.

I’ve never figured out Earl’s system for where the dishes go. The glasses are to the right of the sink when I expect them to be to the left. There are round plastic tubs in one cabinet and square plastic containers over the Radarange microwave because apparently one heats up stuff in a square container but not a round one. The Pyrex bakeware is filed next to barbecue sauce and the brown bakeware is next to the bread machine. Cookie sheets go under the stove unless they’re used for something else then they go on their side next to the Bundt Pan.

The one that might be going to college where it’s windy and the one that could have marital ties to me both avoided the dishwasher during their travels and treks across the kitchen. That is when the fear totally gripped me and I realized that it was 2015 and to stay true to one of my goals, I must face my fear square on and do something to conquer this fear once and for all.

I emptied the dishwasher.

One of my Christmas gifts from Santa was a new camera. I did not expect this gift at all, which made the surprise that much more special.

The new camera is a Canon G15 point-and-shoot type affair. Apparently Earl watched me fumble with Canon DSLR enough at places like Walt Disney World and the like to decide that I needed something that was a little more point-and-shoot friendly. My iPhone 6 has a great camera built into it, but I’m not a huge fan of taking photos with my iPhone, even though that’s what’s encouraged these days.

I decided to try the new Canon out for a night shot tonight. The moon was hiding behind some clouds and I thought it made for a somewhat interesting photograph. Here’s what I captured from our driveway about 30 minutes prior to the composition of this blog entry.

I’ve noticed a large number of folks on Twitter and Facebook mentioning the removal of their Christmas decorations today. I think I’m a little surprised by this because today is, after all, New Year’s Day. With the positioning of the holiday on a Thursday this year, I thought that folks would leave their decorations up until this coming weekend but apparently I was wrong. People want their decorations down and apparently move on with their lives.

I’m not a fan of taking down Christmas decorations. Honestly, I’m not really a fan of putting them up either, but once they’re up, seeing the decorations put me in a jovial mood. Twinkling lights and tinsel and the like make me smile. Holiday joy and all that.

I’m not ready for a cold winter without twinkling lights and decorations of merriment. We’ll be taking down the decorations this weekend, but in the meanwhile I’ll continue to enjoy the festive beauty.

So this morning I headed to the airport for the weekly class, which I call our “safety briefing”. Once a week, every Saturday morning, the members of our local flying club get together for coffee and donuts and an hour long presentation on various ways to better ourselves as pilots. The vibe is wonderful and similar to the events I remember from growing up around airplanes and flying clubs when I was a kid.

Right before the end of class, my (former) instructor told me that the student scheduled to fly right after the briefing had canceled and he told me I could take the airplane out earlier if I wanted to, since no one would be using the airplane. I had originally scheduled the airplane from 2:30 to 4:30 pm for Earl and me to enjoy a flight this afternoon.

After chatting with a few other pilots, we all decided that it would be fun to take three airplanes to a field about 50 miles away for lunch. We decided to go to Fulton County Airport (NY0) near the city of Johnstown. The airport in question is about three miles from where I work. I had never flown into the airport but I had been by the field many times.

I called Earl and asked if he wanted to fly with me per this new plan. It took some convincing; he was still in sweats and hadn’t showered for the day. I told him none of this mattered, because we would get to fly! He finally caved to my hints and met me at the airport 20 minutes later, just as I was finishing up the pre-flight of the club Cherokee 140.

Since this was a spontaneous flight of sorts, I didn’t get the chance to do hours of preparation like I had during my training. I knew where I was going and I knew that I was fully capable of the flight, but it was a weird yet exciting feeling to be doing this. We needed to fuel up the airplane; the others left ahead of us by about 15 minutes. Fueled up and ready to go, Earl and I made the flight. It was a little hazy and I was a little nervous about all these new elements that I hadn’t experienced before, but overall the flight to Fulton County was quite enjoyable. Earl asked me many more questions today. He’s really intrigued by this General Aviation thing and he seemed to be having a great time. Fulton County doesn’t have a control tower, it’s “pilot controlled” in that we watch for airplanes that might not have a radio and we announce our intentions all along the way to landing. I made my radio calls and before we knew it, I made an excellent landing on runway 28. Our fellow pilots were waiting for us and let us know that the restaurant was closed. Ack, no food after all.

Earl and I took a selfie, something that we’ll probably do at many airports over the coming years. Earl then took a photo of the group of us.

While we were there shooting the breeze, another pilot based at the airport went up and practiced some touch and goes and then various stunts. If you look closely, you can see his yellow airplane in the gorgeous sky.

Afterwards, we all departed, one right after another and flew to our home airport. Earl and I were in the Cherokee 140 while the other two airplanes were Cherokee 180s, so they had a few more horses to play with, but we brought up the rear and was able to watch one of the other airplanes land just as we were arriving at the airport. Another excellent landing and it was time to put the airplane away.

Days like today are the reason I became a Private Pilot. The adventures have just begun.

There’s no snow on the ground, the winds are howling at over 30 MPH, but there’s warmth and happiness in our home this Christmas morning.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a joyous day, no matter what you are celebrating today!

I have dreams of turning this space in our basement into a game area.

I want to drape a tarp along the right side of the space as a makeshift wall from the storage area and then put our dart board and maybe a card table and whatnot and make a man cave. Earl thinks I should just build a wall instead of draping a tarp but honestly, I have no idea how to build a wall. My dad’s business used to do that sort of thing and we hired them for that.

Earl asked who we would invite over to enjoy this area and I told him we could make friends. Folks in the area, folks passing through the area, it doesn’t matter, we’d grab them off the Thruway and play darts or play board games and drink beer or whatever.

I feel like I need a new project in 2015.

There can be something just wonderful about taking a shower in a hotel room. I’m picky about my shower experiences; the water must be able to get fairly hot (I know, it’s not good for my skin) and the water pressure should be able to pin me against the opposite wall. The shower in this Hampton Inn meets the designated requirements and it seems to have an unlimited supply of hot water. I was decadent today and I took a 30 minute shower. I’m usually in and out in seven minutes.
 
 I feel wonderful this morning. Maybe I should take longer showers more often.
 
 The one thing that I did find about this shower this morning involved the glass doors, which I would otherwise find enjoyable. This Hampton Inn is brand new. It has that new building smell to it and the number of electrical outlets, placement of Internet information, etc. is indicative of the age. The glass door in this brand new shower has a mind of its own. It doesn’t want to stay closed. I fired up the water, hopped in the shower when the optimal temperature was met and closed the shower door behind me. It opened up. I closed it again, it opened up again. Every time I closed the door, it opened itself back up. Water started making a good sized puddle in front of the toilet. I finally grabbed an extra wash cloth and wedged it behind the door so that it would stay closed. On one hand I find this surprising, you would think that a contractor would make sure the shower doors were level during the installation of them, but on the other hand, I’m not really that surprised because it’s rather indicative of the general expectation of quality in the United States in the 21st century. “Meh, good enough” gets a standing ovation.
 
 After my shower I went to show Earl what he had to do to get the shower door to stay closed and it started staying closed on its own. So apparently when no one is in the shower, the door stays closed but when someone is standing in the shower, something goes off level.
 
 It’s a good thing we are on the ground floor.
 
 On the bright side, the shower door slides and isn’t one of those open and closed things that you occasionally find. That could be interesting.