So this morning Earl and I woke up in lovely Maumee, Ohio. For those unfamiliar with the geography of The Buckeye State, we are just outside of Toledo. Our intention was to find a hotel somewhere just west of Cleveland, but hotels are very popular in Ohio and we ended up here in Maumee.
Yesterday after work we embarked on our summer road trip to Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The drive is a long one but well worth it.
I’m always up for a good adventure.
I’ve mentioned before that I make a living by writing software for one of the largest telecommunications companies in the United States. I enjoy writing code, and the software that I work on the most is an application that I first inherited from my predecessor five years ago that has grown into an important part of the foundation of the company keeping track of what’s going on in the network. I’m not boasting but it’s good to know that I’m making an important contribution to the well-being of the millions of customers that the company has.
One of the best parts of this gig is the fact that I get to do my work from a MacBook Pro. Years ago, my at-the-time future supervisor asked what he could do to make my job more enjoyable and I told him, “let me work from a Mac.”
Within 48 hours I had a brand-new 2010 15-inch MacBook Pro and my productivity soared. It was a win, win for all involved. Unfortunately, my this particular MacBook Pro was part of a batch of machines that might have a video card glitch in them. I didn’t know that this possibility existed, so for years I put up with a rare, random freeze up or lock up that I attributed to a bad application. Apparently there was a warranty fix, but I didn’t realize this until after the opportunity time frame had expired.
Over the past couple of months my work MacBook Pro has been rebooting and freezing up more. This has made my normally most excellent, premium Apple experience a little more frustrating. We all know that work can be frustrating enough; having more frustration is something that we should avoid. The thing is, I wasn’t sure that I could get another Mac from work, because 99% of the employees have Windows computers and there was a rumor on the grapevine that stated that the company wasn’t buying any more Macs.
I put in a request for a new Mac, spouting my justification as to why I needed a Mac in lieu of a snappy new Windows machine, and my supervisor approved the request right away. Tech support responded within a couple of hours and asked me for the serial number of my current laptop; perhaps the company would get it fixed if it’s under warranty. I already knew that it wasn’t under warranty.
Imagine my surprise when I opened my email Monday morning and saw that I was getting a brand new MacBook to replacing my aging machine. On Thursday I will have a new brand-new, 15-inch MacBook Pro Retina for work. I have already designated Friday as the day for me to copy everything over from my old computer to my new one.
Now, I know it’s a little weird for a 46 year old man to get giddy over a new goody, especially a new work computer, but I’m a little beside myself with excitement.
It’s little things like this that make me realize that in the big scheme of things, I have a pretty good gig at work.
The desks were arranged in a circle. This was a way for the teacher to foster an open dialog between the students in my junior year Ethics class. Being part of the accelerated Social Studies program gave me the opportunity to take the Ethics class. The other choice was an Introduction to Psychology class, but there was not enough interest in Psychology from my fellow students, so we all had to take Ethics.
I don’t remember how the class conversation steered toward basically evaluating one another and their odds of being successful in life, but that’s where we were at that moment.
30 out of 41 minutes left before the bell, and I was the first one that came up for conversation.
“John will never totally fit into society because of his mannerisms.”
“John will never be able to be President, or even the leader of a company, because of the way he is and the potential for blackmail.”
“The only thing that John could really do to be successful is pursue his talent in music, but then again, he couldn’t really teach in a school district because parents wouldn’t let him near their kids.”
These were things that were being said that morning in Room 113. The teacher let the students speak their piece, none of them were hostile. There were no raised voices. They were speaking with all the confidence of a 16 or 17 year old and there was an eerie calm about the conversation. No one jumped to my defense or point of view, not even the one other student in the class that I was sure was in the same “situation” as me (we kissed after school a year or so later).
I fought back tears. Nothing tears flowed from my eyes until after the bell rang. I remained silent. The teacher countered the conversation with a progressive point of view, but the words of my fellow students, sank, stayed and locked into place. Because I was a young gay adult, I shouldn’t set my hopes and dreams to lofty places. I was destined to do what society expected of gay men, and one of those things was to be artsy and teach others how to be artsy, as long as we maintained a huge distance between ourselves and those we would teach. The discussion had mentioned remaining in the closet. Perhaps that’s what I would do too.
But that just wasn’t me.
A lot of the words that locked into place that morning stayed locked into place for nearly three decades. I put artificial restrictions on what I could achieve because I didn’t think that’s what gay men were suppose to do (join the military, build roads, fly airplanes, be a leader). I know those words were wrong and while some may have been malicious, the other words were the result of naivete. I know better today. I can do anything because I am who I am. I shan’t break into song here.
I have no regrets, but I wish I had figured it all out many years ago.
It’s not everyday that Air Force One passes over your house when you live in these parts, so I was very excited to see Air Force One on its approach to the very same runway that I use on a regular basis. So, there’s been a lot of stuff going on at the airport in anticipation of the event. I got to see Air Force One!
I was on the schedule to fly with my instructor today but the weather forecast looked dicey. The folks that make these predictions were talking about high winds, rain showers and thunderstorms. I always hold out hope until the last possible minute but when I awoke this morning I did not expect that I would be airborne today.
Luckily, those who predict these things were wicked wrong.
When I called into Flight Services for my weather briefing the briefer said, “they were predicting all sorts of stuff but radar is clear and winds are relatively calm.” Score! I contacted my flight instructor and told him we were a go. We decided to try a short cross-country flight and I would be using radio-based navigational aids for the first time. We flew to Cortland County Airport and back. Nicole was in the back seat taking photos, Chuck was in the right seat doing the instructor thing, the GoPro was fired up and the weather was absolutely gorgeous.
The GoPro captured this moment as I lifted off of Runway 24 at Cortland County Airport for the first time. It was a beautiful day to fly and I count my blessings for having the opportunity to make this dream come true.
I love flying airplanes. It is awesome.
The past several weekends have been very busy for us. Flights to North Carolina, visits to Chicago, family gatherings, life is tough, right? Earl and I decided we needed to relax so we purposely kept this past weekend commitment free. It was a wonderful feeling.
On Friday afternoon I sent Earl a message letting him know that it was suppose to rain over the weekend. No surprise; that’s what it’s been doing for what seems like forever in these parts lately. I suggested that on Saturday afternoon we take the Jeep out and get it really dirty. I said, “Let’s go muddin'”.
We ended up driving into the Tug Hill Area of Central New York. The Tug Hill is the area you see on the Weather Channel during the winter. East of Lake Ontario, the Tug Hill gets a lot of snow each year. Driving through the area on Saturday we saw several places where there was still snow on the ground.
We checked out quite a few of the “Seasonal Use Only” roads in the area and played around with a little mud.
It was fun exploring these barely used roads, but I was in the mood to really kick up some dirt. After driving around and taking a necessary bathroom break in my hometown, we ended up in the Happy Valley Wildlife Management Area. It turns out there was a lot of mud to play in at Happy Valley.
The road through Happy Valley had quite a few spots where you could pull off in 4WD or on an ATV and basically have fun maneuvering through mud holes. A couple were particularly deep and Earl sounded cautious when I mentioned we should try them. I remembered that the Jeep doesn’t have a winch on the front and when I suggested this to Earl, he mentioned that we could always call AAA. This made me laugh as I could just imagine trying to explain to AAA as to where we were and why we were in the mud. I don’t think AAA helps out in those situations.
Driving through Happy Valley we ended up following a couple of guys in a jacked up pick up truck who were kicking up mud along the same road. It was fun to purposely find the mud, spin the tires and throw mud all over the place. Earl and I bounced around in the Jeep and had a grand time.
I felt like one of the big boys when we went to a local family restaurant for supper afterwards. Several looked at the amount on the Jeep, a couple of guys nodded.
We did it right. I’m looking forward to doing it again.
Something in my head clicked last week and I’m finding myself to be a lot more relaxed. I don’t know if it was two days off from work, the trip to Chicago last weekend or a recent trip to North Carolina, but I shan’t fret about the trivialities. Perhaps it’s the arrival of spring in these parts. Whatever the reason, I’m not nearly spun as I have been for the past few months and this is a good thing.
It’s good to feel a smile on my face.
So I have a little bit of a confession to make. As I’ve mentioned on here before, Scooter moved in with us at the end of January. We don’t know much about what Scooter did before he ended up in a friend’s barn over the winter, but he seems to have had a few adventures. He has a skittish side and he has some habits that indicate that he lived outside for a long while, for example, he still gobbles his food down at an alarming rate.
I have been concerned that Scooter is lonely here. He often seems bored and when he’s bored he gets into all sorts of mischief. If there is a door between us and him he is very loud about his discontentment with this. He is still learning the basics of staying off of kitchen counters and the table. He’s still figuring out how sleep works in that if he’s not screaming about our bedroom door being closed, he’s ramming around the bed at all hours of the night and trying to leap onto as many elevated surfaces as possible. Last night he ran up and down the piano keyboard a few times. I couldn’t figure out the tune.
During a particularly frustrating moment I decided that he wasn’t very happy here and I thought about finding him a new home. I even put together an ad for Craig’s List. While I read over my description on the “review” screen before submitting the ad to the popular site, I looked at the photo I had selected of him and found that I just couldn’t do it. I don’t give up on people and I’m not a quitter, so I certainly wasn’t about to give up on Scooter. I found myself misty-eyed and I deleted the ad before submitting it. It was at that moment that I decided that the latest feline in the family had won my heart and that we would have to come to an understanding.
Yesterday I installed a sleep mat for him near my desk in my home office so he could relax while I worked. His new vantage point allows him to keep an eye on the proceedings. Yesterday morning (before the bad weather moved in) I gave him some outdoors time so he could engage in his spring fever ways. Last night’s sleep cycle was good, but not great, but it showed improvement. Last night when I mentioned to Earl that I had contemplated the Craig’s List maneuver, I was scolded for thinking of such a thing. He’s still get used to us and we’re still getting used to him and that’s all there is to it.
I guess we still have some mutual training to do. But I’m not giving him up and I wouldn’t trade him in or exchange him for another. And that’s something for everyone to purr about.
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!
