Ponderings and Musings

During my work day at home I often go for a 15-20 minute walk in the morning and again in the afternoon. My walk involves walking along the shoulder of our fairly busy road because we don’t live in an area with sidewalks. I’m not sure that I would want to live in an area with sidewalks, what with being a farm boy at heart and all that.

Traditionally, not having a sidewalk hasn’t really been an issue; folks would simply move over a little bit to give the pedestrian a little bit of breathing space. However, I have noticed that over the past year or so, people haven’t been driving in as friendly a manner down the road and they’re driving a lot faster. I need to leave the shoulder of the road and take refuge in the adjacent lawn at least three or four times a week. This makes my walk less enjoyable than it is intended to be.

The county Department of Works must have noticed that tendency of motorists speeding down the hill as well, because a week ago they added an electronic speed indicating sign. Random observations during my walk have confirmed my suspicions. People are driving faster than the posted 45 MPH speed limit.

I’ve noticed that quite a few drivers are slamming on their brakes when they see that they’re exceeding the speed limit by 10 or 15 MPH. I fully believe that they’re afraid that the display has some sort of camera embedded in it, but I don’t believe that it does. I think it’s just a velocity indicator and nothing more.

Nevertheless, I wish people would use some common sense and slow down just a little bit to keep our quasi-rural area somewhat enjoyable. Actually, I wish people would just start using common sense, period. But I doubt that’s going to happen anytime soon.

So earlier this year my primary physician awarded me a year’s supply of Norvasc, a medication used to treat high blood pressure. As my luck would have it, he has the pharmacy dish this out on a monthly basis, however, as I mentioned, I did win a year’s supply. Earl likes to call this my distemper medication.

Shortly after starting the Norvasc, I received a letter from the administrator of the company prescription plan, advising me that I needed to get routine and regular medications in 90 day increments by mail. I was discouraged from using the local pharmacy, because apparently that’s a more expensive proposition. I was told to go online, use the provided credentials to register with the mail-order company, and then I would reap the savings in medical costs.

The website is wonky at best.

The provided credentials don’t work.

I lost interest.

Squirrel!

I decided to ignore the directive from the company prescription drug program and stick with the local pharmacy. The cost varies from month to month and I end up paying anywhere from $6.00 to $9.95. The name of the mail-order prescription drug company is emblazoned across the label from the local pharmacy, so this tells me that somehow the local pharmacy and the mail-order provider are in cahoots.

Despite the cahoots, I continue to receive letters from the company insurance provider, reminding me that effective the next refill, my prescription price will skyrocket unless I use the mail-order plan. This has been going on for months. Tonight I refilled my prescription at the local pharmacy and it went from $9.50 to $4.75.

Somehow, somewhere, the cahoots are on my side.

I don’t know how people with crappy medical plans, well crappier medical plans than what we have at work, and multiple medications, keep all of this rigamarole straight. It’s bad enough that I have a deductible on my body, like I’m made up of front fenders and rear quarter panels, but I’m sorry, I’m not going to rely on the US Postal Service to deliver my medications in a timely manner. They can’t even get a package from 75 miles away to my house in less than a week, and even then the tracking information indicates that it’s been routed through Bogalusa, Louisiana on it’s way from one Upstate New York city to another, why on earth would I trust them to get my medication on time.

Once upon a time we relied on our friendly neighborhood pharmacist. I refuse to give and I will continue to do so.

Yesterday Earl and I raised $185 for the Ali Forney Center in New York, an organization that helps provide housing for homeless LGBT youth. A couple of years ago I raised money by shaving off my awesome ‘stache, this year Earl and I had a garage sale and donated all the proceeds to a worthy cause.

Having a garage sale is weird to me, because it strikes me odd that people would want stuff that we are trying to get rid of. Nevertheless, several friends came over and perused through our wares and took home some stuff and we had some folks just stop by after seeing the sign we had out on the front lawn. We didn’t have any prices on the items for sale, we just asked that folks donate what they thought was a fair price. It would seem that folks were quite generous.

We still have quite a bit of stuff out in the garage so I think we are going to have another garage sale next weekend. If you’re in Central New York and interested in stopping by, feel free to drop me a line so I can give you the coordinates of our location.

I have always been intrigued by kissing. There are so many variations on the pleasure of kissing; a kiss can be a quick peck, it can be a way of saying hello or goodbye, it can be a long, passionate affair that says “I love you”. Even the thought of a kiss brings a smile to my face.

Since I learned in my early teens how awesome kissing can be, I have always wished that social norms allowed us the luxury of kissing one another with no strings attached. I once read a story about Elizabeth Montgomery enjoying herself at a party, walking into the another room and giving Dean Martin a most passionate kiss, and then walking away and going back to celebrating with the other party guests. The story goes that there was nothing improper; it was just an impulse, a moment, and it was savored between Lizzie and Dean. To the best of my knowledge, it didn’t go any further than that. But I find it so cool that they were able to have that moment together. I wonder how many people in the world feel free enough to do that sort of thing.

I’m sure if people kissed more freely there would be less hostility in the world.

I have met several people in my life that I’ve just wanted to walk up to them and say, “I’d like to kiss you”, and then go ahead and do it once they have given their consent. This shouldn’t be interpreted as a dissatisfaction with my love life. When I was younger, I was at a party where a guy did just that. He liked redheads, I still had red hair at the time, and he wanted to kiss me. So we kissed. He said that was nice, I agreed with him and he went back to his friends. We didn’t take the next passionate step, we didn’t even exchanged names; we just kissed, we enjoyed the moment together and I look back on the experience with a smile. I hope he does the same.

My husband is a terrific kisser. Even though we’ve been together for over 18 years, I find myself smiling as I think about kissing him as I type this blog entry. There’s no staleness or shelf date concerns with our kissing habits. Our kisses are fueled by the always growing passion of our relationship. I wouldn’t be jealous if someone walked up to him and wanted to kiss him. We’re solid like that. Jealousy comes from lack of confidence or other similar ingredient within ourselves. Jealousy is a projection. I hope that he would enjoy a random kiss and much as I would.

A few months ago, this video made its rounds on the Internet. It documented 20 strangers kissing for the first time. The chemistry between some is electric. I love the vibe of this video. The innocence. The smiles. The shyness. The intensity. It’s all so very awesome to me.

So this week I am taking the first of my three required tests to become a licensed Private Pilot in the United States. Admittedly, I should have probably taken this test a few weeks ago, but I didn’t feel pumped and ready for this particular phase of my flight training. So I postponed taking the test until this week. You see, this week’s test is the written test, and this makes me a little nervous. I don’t feel like I test well, especially with a written test. It’s kind of like when I’m sitting in the doctor’s office and he’s checking my blood pressure. My blood pressure can be 110/80 at home and then I get in the doctor’s office and bells and whistles start to blow, people get nervous and I get antsy. I have high blood pressure because when they take my blood pressure in a doctor’s office, it’s high. It’s never high elsewhere. I can check it here and there and I’m a healthy guy, but get in a doctor’s office and zoom, there it goes.

I just don’t feel like I test well.

I can fly the airplane, I can land the airplane, I can even land the airplane when the instructor pulls the power (gliding is fun!), but because I like to analyze the hell out of everything, I obsess over the multiple choice answers and occasionally confuse myself. When I was a youngster I had the habit of whipping through a test as quickly as possible because I figured if I didn’t know the answer at warp speed, I wasn’t going to know the answer at idle, so why waste the time idling. Later in life I recognized this approach as being unwieldy at best, so I tried to keep it at bay.

I guess what’s making me a little nervous is the fact that I don’t feel like facts stick well in my brain anymore. I can tell you, right to your face, that two different actresses portrayed the older daughter in the sitcom “Hello, Larry” (Donna Wilkes and Krista Erikkson, and yes, I know that’s frightening that I didn’t even look that up) but I have to chant repeatedly “craft class man cat” to remember that an airplane is an Aircraft Classification but an Airmen Category designation. Getting old sucks.

Luckily, there is some excellent exam prep software out there and I have been going crazy with practice tests since Friday (and I had been doing them here and there before then). Yesterday alone I spent eight solid hours just going through the databank of questions that should appear somewhere on the 60 question test and honestly, I think I’m going to do fine but I’m still nervous about it.

I figure the worst thing that can happen is that people will make fun of me and I’ll have to take the test again after some remedial training (the wings go on either side of the airplane), so that’s not particularly awful, but since I’m finally doing something I’ve wanted to do all my life, I want to make sure that I do it right.

I’m at work in the middle of the week for the first time in many, many months. I usually make the trek on a Monday, every couple of weeks or whenever the mood strikes me. I know that I’m a lucky man in that I have this sort of flexibility in my employment opportunity. I’m not complaining in any way.

A co-worker remarked that he was surprised to see me at work and I told him that the only reason I came to work today was because I was a little behind on the office lottery pool payments. He giggled at my joke. I guess the joke is in actuality I came to work only because I’m behind on the office lottery pool payments. I tend to work harder and longer from home than I do at the office. All that being said, the commute was enjoyable this morning as I was able to wave at some Amish men for the first time in a long while. One of them even waved back.

The seagulls have vacated my favorite parking area, probably due to the construction going on. Progress is marching along on the new Taco Bell they’re building where the old Burger King used to stand. The workers on the structure are all gathered underneath the shade tree that I usually park near. I’m not bitter about this as there is a nice late-summer breeze blowing through the Jeep at the moment and this is helping my mood stay sunny.

I was awoken this morning in the middle of a very sexy dream. Perhaps this is why my mood is sunny. I wasn’t hot nor bothered when I woke up, but I know that I woke up with a smile and because I have a knack for this sort of thing, I am able to recall the details of the dream in a most vivid manner. This increases the intensity of the smile on my face.

I have decided that I need to start carrying my real DSLR camera around with me again. The camera on my iPhone 5 is adequate, but there’s still something great about pointing a camera at something, doing some photography magic with dials and lenses and such and snapping a photo. A commentator online recently remarked that when he’s at Fenway Park, he notices that most of the fans are taking selfies instead of photos of the ball game, the park or any of their surroundings. Quite frankly, I don’t think the world needs that many duck lipped photos. I have never made duck lips in a photo and I don’t intend on continuing to do so. Instead, I shall just mock those that choose to make the ridiculous face.

Perhaps I’ll take a photo of them with my DSLR.

It’s only the 8th of September but Autumn knows when it needs to be in these parts and Mother Nature is starting to show her colors. The greens of the fields are starting to be replaced golds and purples. The air is starting to get a little crisper and the nights have more of a chill.

This is my favorite time of the year and I’m doing my best to enjoy every moment of it.

Many people start their workday with copious amounts of coffee or other caffeinated beverages. Others go through a regimented routine involving gyms, sweat and bouts with traffic snarl ups. Some are bleary-eyed, unable to put together cohesive sentence for the first 60 or so minutes of the day. And then there’s us that need a gentle yet distinct schedule to get ourselves together for the day.

I fall into that latter category.

When I get situated at my desk for the day, with a big glass of water in one hand and my iPhone in the other, the first thing I do is put on my headphones and listen to a specific music playlist. The contents of the playlist change once in a great while, but I never shuffle the songs or listen to them out of order in anyway once I have decided on the flow of this important playlist.

Right now, my morning playlist consists of the following tracks:

“I’ll Be Around”, The Spinners
“Could It Be I’m Falling In Love”, The Spinners
“Heartbreaker”, Dionne Warwick
“Lotta Love”, Nicolette Larson
“(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher”, Rita Coolidge
“Shout To The Top”, The Style Council
“Breakout”, Swing Out Sister
“It’s A Miracle”, Barry Manilow
“It’s My Life”, Talk Talk
“Time (Clock of the Heart)”, Culture Club
“New Day For You”, Basia
“Crystal Blue Persuasion”, Tommy James and the Shondells
“Yes”, Merry Clayton
“Romantic”, Karyn White
“Save Me”, Lisa Fischer
“I Want You”, Shana

I have to admit that typing that list out just now made me realize that I have really eclectic tastes when it comes to the selection of these tracks. The inclusion of a song on this list is usually because of the musicality of the song. For example, I’m not particularly a fan of Dionne Warick’s but I do love the production that Barry Gibb used on “Heartbreaker”. Many of these tracks take my head to a specific happy place that helps motivate me for the day.

Sometimes it takes just a little thing like this to make the day exceed its potential.

I have been working all night. It’s not like the nightmare of my old on-call days; this was a scheduled server maintenance that had to be done. Corporate growth and all that. The “maintenance window”, as we call it in the biz, is until 7 a.m. Right now the folks that are migrating data are at 70% complete. If it’s not done by 6:30 a.m., all will be aborted and I get to schedule another all-nighter.

I live such an exhilarating life.

I am looking forward to going to sleep in a couple of hours. I took a 90 minute nap yesterday evening. I had planned on four hours with the hopes that it would be enough to get me through the night but my body only wants to sleep when it wants to sleep and that’s all there is to it. Luckily, I’m doing pretty good right now.

I started writing some code while waiting for the server to do its thing but when I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I had just written 30 minutes prior to any given moment, I decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to write code for an application that is considered “mission critical”. I decided to just get organized and do “busy work” until I got the “all clear” signal from the team that gives those sorts of signals.

I seemed to use more quotation marks than normal in that last paragraph.

So I am sitting here with bated breath waiting for that quoted “all clear” signal so I can finish doing my portion of this server migration.

I’m really looking forward to sleeping in a little bit. I hope to have pleasant dreams. Actually, I hope to be dreaming about flying, because there is no way that I would past the “F” (fatigue) in the IMSAFE self assessment I do for piloting an airplane.

I know my limits.