Ponderings and Musings

It seemed appropriate to see this reminder of “the good ol’ days” on New Years Day. This billboard stands along the Thruway next near another Holiday Inn billboard that features the new logo the company adopted a few years ago.

As I celebrate my middleagedness, I reflect on a simpler time as denoted by the more familiar logo. The world seemed a little slower, a little happier and a lot less plastic.

One of the things that I don’t enjoy about the holiday season is the barrage of repeats of our favorite television shows. Unfortunately, this trend of repeating material doesn’t seem to be limited to television, as I noticed that some of the politics-oriented radio I listen to has also adopted this approach, repeating the same top 10 or whatever countdowns over and over since before Christmas.

There are bigger things to worry about in the world, but sometimes it’s the little things that capture my attention.

Earl and I, along with Jamie and Phil, are stationed at a Hampton Inn in Danbury, Connecticut this evening. We made the drive down to celebrate New Year’s Eve at our friends Kevin and Brian’s New Year’s Eve celebration. That’s what one does, celebrate at a celebration. We are looking forward to this festive activity this evening.

I drove us down here and during the four hour ride I let my mind wander a little bit. Don’t worry, I was still paying attention to the road and swearing at other drivers like I usually do, but I was able to think about 2014 in general and I decided that it was a pretty good year. I think 2015 is going to be even better, but 2014 wasn’t bad, not bad at all.

I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year’s celebration and a great start to the New Year.

I haven’t made any resolutions for the New Year in several years. I’ve been pretty happy with the way life has been going along and while I have accomplished a few goals I had for 2014, I didn’t really resolve to accomplish those goals, I just did them. I figured this was a good approach and it must have been, because I feel that I have been successful.
 
 However, the idea of making a few New Years Resolutions has weighed on my mind over the past couple of days. Since I consider myself to be a work in progress, it isn’t surprising that I want to improve some aspects of my existence. I’m never satisfied with my health as I have dreams of becoming some sort of middle-aged superhero, apparently powered by mid-life crises or something. I consider myself a good-looking fixer-upper of sorts, I suppose. I started making the typical list: lose some weight, regain perspective on my career, take the next step in my aviation adventures, etc. But then I decided that I needed only entry on my resolution list:
 
 

Live each moment as if it was your final moment.

 
 Living this way inspires me to be at the top of my game all the time. Am I happy? Am I productive? Am I contributing more than I’m taking? Am I doing something in that moment that I would want to be part of my legacy?
 
 So instead of making a list of resolutions, I’m going to do my very best to do one thing in 2015: live each moment as if it was my last. I have a few goals that I will strive to achieve and few things I want to do and I few adventures I want to experience, but they will all be a string of moments.
 
 And I will make those moments be the very best they can be.
 
 
 
 

Jim Cantore from The Weather Channel® has set up shop in nearby Syracuse to cover the Nor’Easter that promises to wreak havoc on Central New York over the next 48 hours. There’s probably a name for the storm but I think naming winter storms is the epitome of stupidity so I’m not going to bother to look up the name. Yes, I’m one of those people that complains when someone tells me that “Wanda Wind” is blowing through on a sunny day.

Our electronic gadgets have been buzzing, beeping and vibrating various states of Weather Catastrophe™ since midday yesterday. So far we have had quite a bit of rain and above freezing temperatures. It is currently 33º. Not to be deterred by the unpredictability of weather, folks are driving as if we are in the midst of a blizzard and adjusting their driving “skills” to maximum unpredictability in a predictable manner. I can’t wait until it is socially unacceptable to have an IQ lower than the speed limit.

The reason people are driving like idiots in what amounts a mediocre amount of rain, and then stocking up on bread and milk in mass quantities, is because the media is telling them to do this. I’m sure Mr. Cantore is standing on Clinton Square in downtown Syracuse begging Mother Nature to throw a snowball at him. He’s probably dancing around in some sort of Weather Channel® Ritualistic Dance that involves chanting names of clouds and pellets of precipitation and waving off folks that run behind him on camera having a grand ol’ time in whatever Mother Nature is offering at the moment.

The thing is, folks in these parts don’t really get that hysterical about a snow storm. Well, at least, we never used to, until King Andy™ decided that all of New York State should be gripped in typical downstate terror when it comes to “severe” weather. Who knew that pearls clutching could be such an art? I can’t wait until that’s out of style and pearls are back on Mrs. Cleaver where they belong.

After reading stories about the Discovery Channel staging a man being eat by a snake earlier this week, I’m pretty much giving up any sort of semblance of credibility when it comes to the media.

In the meanwhile, I hope that Mr. Cantore remembers to chant the names of the various stages of sunshine, (Sally Sunshine is a favorite) and that he gets his wish of lots of snow.

We’ll be able to show him that yeah, it snowed, and life goes on just fine in these parts.

Today I was suppose to fly with an FAA examiner for my Private Pilots License checkride. Because I have a habit of getting stressed about this sort of thing, I haven’t had a lot of sleep over the past three nights. I was able to eek out 6-7 hours each night, so it isn’t like I’m a walking zombie, but I’m not feeling like I’m at optimal levels. This sometimes happens to a middle aged man such as myself.

I arrived at the airport about 90 minutes before my scheduled time. This gave me the opportunity to do my thorough pre-flight of the airplane and then I had time to take the airplane up and go around the pattern to get a feel for what the winds were like up there. It was windy on the ground but the direction of the wind wasn’t awful, there’d be a little crosswind but nothing out of my comfort level.

The short flight was routine. I took a few moments to marvel at how wonderful it is to fly and to relish in the disbelief that I am fully capable of flying an airplane all by myself. There are days that I can’t believe that I can do that sort of thing, but there I was, flying an airplane at pattern altitude, talking to Air Traffic Control like it’s second nature and buzzing along at 100 MPH.

As I came in to land, it was evident that the winds were picking up a bit. I describe them as “burbly”, where the windsocks at each end of the runway are basically pointing in random directions and occasionally at each other. This made landing the airplane slightly tricky, but again, it wasn’t anything outside of my general comfort level. I wouldn’t fly in this kind of wind for fun, but I would do it for training purposes.

I then wondered if that was the type of weather I wanted to be flying in for this checkride, which is basically the final exam to earn my pilots license.

I decided to hold off on the exam. The examiner was gracious; we covered some ground school stuff that we needed to cover any way and he indicated that he would be available all week with a little bit of notice. I let my instructor know the same and he urged me to reconsider; he knew I was more than capable of flying in those particular conditions. I did reconsider and conctacted the examiner, letting him know that I’d touch base with him in an hour to reassess the situation.

The winds never died down. I had the option of doing part of the exam and then finishing up when the conditions were favorable. Basically, this would mean doing all the manuevers during flight and then putting the evalution on “pause” and then just landing the airplane without fear of failing the exam if the landings were to go less than great.

I decided against that approach. I ended up sitting at the airport for nearly two hours, trying my best to will the winds down to a more manageable level but Mother Nature had other plans. I finally called the examiner and gave the final no-go of the day. I advised my instructor of the same and headed home and took a nap.

My apparent indecision added to my stress level today and stress isn’t good for a person flying an airplane. I’m confident with my decision today, but I’m not completely happy with the way the day went.

Nevertheless, with the Winter Storm Warning being blared about these parts for the next few days, it looks like I’ll have 72 hours or so to get my head straight, get some sleep and then think about flying again. I’m hoping either Friday or this weekend.

Whenever it happens, I know that I’ll be more decisive about it.

UPS has stopped at the house every day this week. Packages have been delivered fast and furiously with care. My Christmas shopping is almost complete. I’m excited about this because I haven’t stepped one foot in a mall or big box store with the intent of Christmas shopping. Like a true blooded geek, all of my shopping has been done online.

I made my shopping experience a little easier this year by taking photos of UPC codes and price tags on items all year long. Now that’s it’s officially the shopping season, I simply Google the information from a photo and I strive to buy it from a small or mom and pop type outlet. If I can’t do this, I go to Amazon. I’m really good friends with Amazon.

I thought I would be a little sad about not being engaged with the traditional holiday rush of battling others for a parking space, honking the horn, sliding down decorative landscapes outside of the mall when trying to traverse remote parking locations and then frivolity of passing gas to get people to get away from me at the JC Penney. I don’t really miss it at all. As a holiday treat I’m going to leave our UPS man a nice tip because he’s been good to us all year and remembers where we like our packages to be left without prompting.

Click a way click a way, click your joy today. Oh what fun it is to shop in a most technological way, hey!

I just made that up.

I think I mentioned earlier this year that our merry little household is on the cutting edge of technology in that we are cord-cutters. We got rid of our very expensive satellite TV service, shunned the offerings from our local cable company and did what our forefathers did back in the good ol’ days, we put a TV antenna on our roof. With the conversion to digital television signals at the end of the ’00s, the TV antenna grabs us nearly 40 channels, many of which are actually enjoyable. We have classic television, home shopping networks, a wide selection of offerings similar to what you see on cable or satellite. We supplement our free TV reception with iTunes, Amazon Prime and the like. It is all working quite well for us and we are enjoying the money we are saving on our entertainment bill (at least as far as television is concerned).

There are three new shows from this season that we have ended up becoming invested in, the first being “Madam Secretary”.

Photo courtesy of Broadwayworld.com

Téa Leoni stars as Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord. This show has to be my top pick for the 2014-2015 season thus far and I look forward to a new episode every week. What I like about this show is Hollywood’s version of DC and various politics; it’s like it’s “The West Wing” of the Two-Thousand-Teens. I was sad to see that the show is on break until mid January but am happy to see that it will be going for a full season. The show gets better with each episode. The characters have depth and the plot weaves in and out quite well.

Just last week Earl and I discovered what I have already dubbed my second favorite show of the season and that’s “How To Get Away With Murder”.

Photo courtesy of ABC

We caught a repeat of the pilot episode Thanksgiving night and was delighted to see that ABC ran the second episode on Thanksgiving night as well. We are still getting used to where we are in the plot and what characters are doing and the like but this one roped us in quick and hard. It’s part of Shondaland and I have to admit that while we were never “Grey’s Anatomy” fans, we did enjoy “Private Practice” early in its run and this one blows “Private Practice” out of the water. There’s an intensity of this series that is quite appealing and honestly, the gratuitous sex scenes (gay and straight) are quite nice for this middle-aged viewer.

Our third pick of the season is “The Mysteries of Laura” starring Debra Messing as detective Laura Diamond.

Random photo courtesy of lareputada.com

I wasn’t sure how this was going to pan out, I mean, when people see Debra Messing they still think “Grace Adler” from Will and Grace, well, at least I do, even if I did enjoy her during the first season of “Smash”. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to accept Ms. Messing as a detective, but the quirky show has me hooked and it’s because of its quirkiness. Like “Madam Secretary”, the characters are fleshing out nicely and the twists and turns in the flow of the plot keep me engaged. Another one that I look forward to.

The only thing that I’m not enjoying about these new shows is the abbreviated seasons that we now get from the networks. Back in the day shows had 25, 30, heck even 35 episodes in one season. Now we’re lucky if we get 22 episodes in one season and they’re all split up between ratings tallying months.

So these are our three winning series of the season thus far. Thank goodness for streaming on demand so we can watch them again until the new episodes come out in late January.

Hopefully they won’t interfere with our “Downton Abbey” viewing.

I have become one of those people that does the majority of Christmas shopping online. My family members have been instructed to not get the mail nor are they allowed to shake, inspect, rattle or open any packages that come by the myriad of delivery services we have in this area. Honestly, I wish our packages were delivered by drone, but that technology hasn’t caught on yet.

When someone was programming me to be born, they left the shopping option completely out of my gay gene. I don’t get breathless over shoes, I don’t enjoy the challenge of slugging blue-haired women that try to grab a cheap television out of my hands, I don’t relish the merriment of tinny, crappy Christmas Carols coming out of a low-fidelity speaker.

I used to amuse myself during the holiday shopping season by figuring out which stores were using the point of sale software that I contributed to back in the 1980s, but now they all run the same generic crap on beat up computers and even the geek side of me is no longer interested in the “merriment” of shopping.

Thank goodness for Amazon.

I’ve been in a funk for the past couple of days. Moody. Glum. Blue. My usual joviality hasn’t been around and while I have been feeling this way, I have been bothered about feeling this way. I don’t like feeling this way.

As I slept in this morning, weaving in and out between reality and the dreamworld, I asked myself why I was feeling glum and blue and I couldn’t really find an answer. My life is great. I’m happily in love. My health is good for being in my middle ages. My career is on track and I’m able to engage in my passion for flying with ease.

I’m thankful for all of these things.

To pull myself out my funk, I decided to go back and review old entries in my blog from around the same time of year. As I virtually flipped pages through the last 13 years (the length of time this blog has been around), I found more and more reasons to celebrate Thanksgiving. And realising how good my life is, even when I feel glum and blue, made me realise that I really had no reason to feel the way I was feeling.

So on this Thanksgiving I am thankful for too many things to mention, and this makes me smile.

Happy Thanksgiving, unless you’re visiting from outside the U.S., then a happy Thursday to you.