Fun and Games Dept

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.

Scooter is not feeling photogenic today. He asked me to contact his publicist.

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.

I have a check-up with my primary physician tomorrow. It should be a hoot.

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.

Struggling with a piece of code today, my assistant was helpful until he decided to lay down on my desk.

Since the beginning of the year I have noticed a marked decrease in the number of entries on many of the personal blogs I read, my blog here included. I have spoken about this before and I still attribute this shift to the rise of social media, namely Facebook and Twitter and the like. I’ve wondered if our increasing expectations of immediacy and short blasts of information in life are fueled by the instantaneous nature of social media or vice-versa. Whatever the reason, I’m sure they are here to stay for a while.

Another contributing factor to the decline in personal blogs is the shuttering of Google Reader a while back. Google Reader was an excellent aggregator of RSS feeds, or blog data, and when Google shut down the application they did a real (purposeful) disservice to the blogging community. Google Reader was thorough in its capabilities. I have tried other services, Feedly and a couple of others, but I reinstalled my own copy of Tiny Tiny RSS, a Google Reader-like aggregator that runs on one’s own web server space.

When I was looking for a solution to replace Google Reader I found Feedly too cumbersome with its way of organizing incoming feeds; Tiny Tiny RSS fits the void left by Google Reader quite well.

I don’t know who still reads me blog but by whatever method you have arrived, I’m appreciative of the fact that you read my ramblings. Though I routinely contemplate the closing down of this blog, in the long run I feel that I still have much more than 140 characters to say.

So I guess I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing.