Ponderings and Musings

Some have noticed that I haven’t written in the blog for nearly two weeks. There are a couple of reasons for this and to those of you that reached out to make sure that I was OK, have no fear, my life is better than ever.

A while back I commented that I had hoped to do more with my blog, after all, it’s been around for over 12 years and I’ve met some really nifty people as a result of having this blog. But the times have changed and since blogging was around long before the big social networks, I’ve started to wonder how “out loud” I want to live my life. I’ve been pretty open and honest in my musings on this blog thing and lately I haven’t felt the need to be that way. I think I’ve become more accustomed to the controlled atmosphere of the social networks, where I have control of who is seeing what content. With my blog in its current format, I don’t really have that luxury.

I still love to write but I’m feeling the need to write about specific topics these days. This blog has been a catch-all for everything that has gone on in my life since August 2001, and that’s all well and good, I suppose, but again, there’s that privacy issue that I’m started to be conscious of.

Another thing that kind of irked me about my blog is that I received an email from a person who wanted to start contributing to my blog because I haven’t written enough about a certain subject. Years ago I wrote a blog entry about a long-gone discount department store chain and it still ranks quite high when you search for that chain on Google. The comments to that one entry have connected many former employees together and I think that’s wonderful. That being said, I don’t want to devote a blog to discount department store chains, I just don’t have that interest and quite frankly this is my sandbox and the only other person that would ever be allowed to write in this blog is Earl and he’s going to that he would say, “not in your dreams.”

I am thinking about writing about my flight training and my journey to becoming a private pilot. My lessons are going well, yesterday I started the “next chapter”, as it is, with slow flight and turns at a point. I still can’t describe how much I love flying but when I’m in the airplane, all cares, concerns and worries melt away as soon as we lift off the runway. Learning to become a pilot requires focus, discipline and a whole bunch of work, but those elements are effortless for me because, well, I get to fly! I don’t think I want to write about my student pilot journey on this blog, so I haven’t quite figured out how I want to parse that information out yet. There are a lot of pilots that film their flights, edit them to a beautiful presentation and then share them on YouTube and/or their personal webspaces. I’m not ready for the filming part yet, I’d be too distracted, but the writing part, that’s something I think I’ll do.

I mentioned to Earl that I was really considering just shutting down this blog but he urged me to think about it for a while before doing so. So I’m going to leave it here for now and see if the mood strikes me again when the days get longer or something.

In the meanwhile, I’m here, all is well and I’m lucky because I’m a guy that’s learning how to fly.

Photo courtesy of another student that rode along and snapped a photo during my lesson yesterday.

So I haven’t blogged much lately. I haven’t even really read the small number of blogs that I still read, though there are a few I’ll get back to when I’m back on my routine. I have been enjoying vacation immensely and the experience has definitely recharged my batteries. I had to get through some “stuff” in my head. Perhaps it’s a midlife crisis of some sort. I wonder how many of those I will have before I’m an old man. Nevertheless, this vacation had given me a lot of time to think about all sorts of things and the end result is all good. Disney has that effect on me. Being in “the magic” brings a smile to my face.

It all started with a “delete” icon. Killing my original Facebook account was more cathartic than I ever imagined it would be. The “sigh of relief” I have felt from dumping that account was much bigger than I ever anticipated it would be. There is some saying that says something about wheat and chaff but I don’t remember the exact syntax at the moment. I’m focusing on the good stuff and steering away from the extraneous fluff. It’s like beer – why drink the cheap swill when you can invest a bit and savor an amazing taste of experience?

I have also been making significant adjustments to my Google+ circles and the folks I follow on Twitter. These accomplishments have furthered the feelings of renewal in many ways. Google+ has always been my “techy” social media presence, but now I’m steering it toward aviation and other interests. Many of the tech journalists I have followed over the years have turned their social networking presences to little more than a promotional / information regurgitation outlet. Twitter had been a catch all for me. I’m bringing that into focus as well. I want to read opinions. I like the intelligent debates. I like genuine points of view. That is what I seek today.

The vacation isn’t over yet. I don’t go back to work until Tuesday. So I’m going to go back to sitting back, relaxing and enjoying this flight I’m on. The view is awesome, the sky is bright and the horizon is easily seen. I’m not piloting this plane, but I will be behind the yoke soon enough.

Life is good.

Look how pretty the back yard is today.

It’s a sunny day with partly cloudy skies. But let me tell you something, it’s cold. It’s very cold. In fact, it is currently +5�F/-15�C. The wind chill is at -17�F/-27�C.

The local school district is one of two districts in Central New York that opened today. Most won’t agree with me on this, but being open makes sense: the students are bused to school, the buses are heated and the school can be heated just as easily as a home can be. I wouldn’t really make my kid wait out by the road for the bus but a good sprint down the driveway as the bus approaches can do wonders for the circulation. I was there many times as a kid and as I grow older I lose touch with the latest trends in nanny states and all that.

That all being said, I’ll admit that I didn’t go to the gym this morning but instead opted to work out in the basement. That’s the hypocrite in me, I guess. However, if I was scheduled to go into the office today I would have still gone into the office, just like the thousands of other folks in the area did today. On the other hand, I will be going out after work to head to the chiropractor. I hope nothing on my body is frozen up to the point where there won’t be any snap, crackle or pop.

The worse thing about this weather is that I am unable to fly today. It’s not good for a student pilot to fly a four-seat airplane in 25 MPH winds and single digit temperatures. I’m looking forward to the day that I’m skilled enough to fly a hearty airplane in this kind of weather, though.

Just as long as it has heat.

I admit it, when I left for work this morning I was in a crappy mood. I had looked at my schedule for the day and I had six hours of meetings on the calendar. I had to work at the office today, ending a two week run of home-office productivity. I’ve never been one to fit into the “one size fits all” mould.

Driving into work I couldn’t bear the noise that was coming from the radio. Local stations, Sirius/XM, talk, music, nothing fit my mood. Honestly, there were only two things that could have put me in a better mood in that moment: 1. snuggled under the blankets for a few extra moments before working from home or 2. flying an airplane somewhere. Neither was bound to happen anytime soon.

I settled on driving to work in silence. I didn’t even talk to myself. There was no singing to the radio, no screeching at the political commentary I might have landed on, no, instead I just listened to my thoughts and the pounding of the Jeep tires on the wet pavement.

I exited the Thruway at the least used interchange on the roadway, went through the tolls and prepared to descend the hill and make the left-turn required to follow the back roads for the remaining portion of my commute. While the Thruway was wet, after all it was 51�F at the time, the local roads were still covered with slush. I slid right through the intersection and was unable to bring the Jeep to a stop when I wanted to. The pilot training must be taking hold, because I just calmly herded the Jeep over the shoulder of the road and purposely ran through the rumble strip that is designed to keep motorists awake. The extra friction brought the Jeep to a stop.

I never panicked. I didn’t yell. There was no cursing. A couple of years ago, while driving the old Jeep to work I found myself sliding sideways headed toward a sign that proclaimed “EXIT 28”. In the middle of the skid I found time to yell “Shut Up!” at the radio and turned it off before finally getting the Jeep out of its skid. I didn’t have to yell this morning. There was no noise to distract me.

There’s a lot of chatter in our world today. Facebook notifications, Twitter updates, instant messages interrupting our training of thought, bing, bong, boo. I must be getting old because I want the noise to mean something. I don’t want frivolous things flung in my direction, if there’s going to be noise, it better have a purpose.

After bagging the idea of taking the back roads to work (after the skidding incident), I jumped back on the Thruway and stayed on the wet pavement that wasn’t slippery. It was a few extra miles out of my way but I still made it to work in plenty of time. The radio remained off. My mood softened.

Aside from the rhythmic pounding of the Jeep tires, the silence was golden.

So it has been 2014 for over 36 hours in these parts and there is much rejoicing in the land. We’ve been watching snow lightly fall since the New Year arrived. We have about a foot of snow on the back patio at the moment. We should have another foot of snow by this time tomorrow.

Suffice it to say, I’m not going to be able to fly for my next lesson this afternoon.

I don’t mind the snow but I do mind all the hysteria that surrounds it. I complain about this often and sometimes loudly, but I don’t remember the general population being so terrified of snowstorms back in the day. It was rare for school to be closed, we usually ended up with an early dismissal, and it was unheard of for a school to close the night before, but that’s common place now.

This morning I listened to the local radio station on my drive to the gym and the newscaster was telling everyone to stay off the roads today due to the snowstorm. She then said four inches of snow were expected. She encouraged listeners to call 911 if they felt they were in danger.

Now, I’m all for calling 911 if you’re in danger, but unless you’re a complete tool, I don’t see how one can get stranded in four inches of snow. Four feet of snow, I can see, but four inches of snow? Drive through it. If one uses common sense and prepares by having a hat and gloves and boots and a blanket and a bottle or two of water in their vehicle, and they don’t drive into what is obviously a dangerous area, chances are pretty good that you’re going to be able to make your commute just fine.

In fifth grade I remember being stuck at school until nearly 5:00 p.m. due to a snowstorm blowing through. (I remember being excited about the fact that I was see the classroom clocks at “5:00” since I had never seen that before and I have always been a huge geek). One by one the buses would come back from the preceding high school run, the principal would announce the bus number over the intercom and a few more students would be able to leave. Since we lived away from town and our bus went to the outer reaches of the district, bus 53 was one of the last buses to get called. We survived the ordeal just fine and we got home just as Dad was getting back from his day at the store. There were no hysterics. Mom was a little worried but she wasn’t a sobbing mess or anything. Common sense. That’s all that’s needed in these situations.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of that anymore.

I glance out the window and see large snowflakes quietly and peacefully falling from the sky. There’s no wind blowing them around, no ice or sleet mixed in to spoil the fun, just beautiful snowflakes settling in for the winter. I find this to be absolutely beautiful. The camera on my iPhone 5 doesn’t do the moment justice, the closest I can come to capturing the beauty is to use my “real” camera. Luckily, it is close at hand.

Scenes like these, with the delicate beauty and soft calmness I rarely find elsewhere, remind me as to why I love living in Central New York. Sure, I dream of living in other places and I will probably live in another place someday, but only if I can find moments similar to this. Central New York will always be home.

This moment, this calmness, is a beautiful way to start a beautiful New Year.

17 years ago this evening there were two men standing on the end of a pier at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia. In the cold, dark December night, these two men were accompanied by a young couple, and it was at this time that the two men held hands, said some vows and exchanged wedding rings. The two witnesses watched with a smile, the moment was private, quiet and perfect. There were hugs, there were tears, there was beauty.

Even though it was in 2011 when New York State said we could be married, in reality, 17 years ago today I married my best friend. Many said it wouldn’t last, saying that we could never settle down. Others couldn’t figure out the union of a geeky farm boy from Upstate New York and a business leader originally from lower Bucks County. But the two that watched the small ceremony that night knew what we knew all along: some things are built to last. We had the honor of being there when the young couple built their reality. Life is wonderful that way.

Earl and I were recently talking about life and relationships and the like and both of us agreed on one thing: divorce has never crossed our mind. We might get angry in the moment, we might want to kill each other, I yell and he yells back, but divorce has never been an option for us. The “bad” (and it’s not really that bad when you think about it) is fleeting, and the good is forever and definitely outweighs everything else.

Right before the first time I told him that I loved him he said, “you better mean it if you’re going to say it”. When I got down on one knee at the top of Rocky Mountain in the Adirondacks and proposed to him he said, “you better mean it forever if you’re going to ask it.” And when I told him that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, I told him that it was forever. That has never changed. And the last 17 years have whizzed by in a flash. I still fall in love every day.

So, as I sit at the kitchen table typing this blog entry during my lunch hour, and I gaze at my husband, framed in a beautiful backdrop of a snowy landscape, courtesy of the patio door, I know that while this very moment is fleeting and will be superseded by another moment, I know that this journey is forever. I have been truly and utterly in love for over 17 years and I have no intention on stopping now.

A repost of a blog entry I wrote a while back.

It was 1990 and I was living in Jamestown, New York. I had just returned to Jamestown in September, having lived in greater Boston with a really cool tech-job for what was at the time the second largest computer company in the world. I had made some unfortunate choices thinking I would find something better with the move. There was also a strong element of me trying to hold on to some good feelings from my past with that move to Jamestown and while I don’t regret any choices I have made, I certainly wouldn’t dub that era a “shining moment” of my life.

I was working in the layaway department of the long-gone Hills Department Store. The folks found that I was really good at that sort of thing and were planning on adding me to the sound and video department of the store after the holidays. I was often called up front to run a register and always ended up on register 16, the express lane. It was on the end of the network loop so it ran the slowest. My speed and efficiency as a cashier apparently helped in this situation. I wore an off-purple vest.

It was Christmas Eve. I had no one special in my life. My parents lived 275 miles away. I was scheduled to work until the store closed at 1800. I wore a Santa hat for the occasion. Along with the little beard, the get up either made me look like a young Kris Kringle or a big elf. It was snowing like hell and the express lane was populated with men buying last minute gifts for their loved ones. Their faces indicated stress. I wanted to see my family.

The plan was to leave right after work and make the trek to my folks in time for church. We closed the store and I jumped on Route 60 with hopes of hitting the Thruway. Everyone was driving slowly and and foolishly and then a deer decided he was angry because he didn’t have “rein” before that which describes his species so he ran across Route 60 to get that beat Hyundai. I slammed on the brakes and slid to the right, barely missing a sign declaring I was at a Parking Area. I spun my tires and backed up and into the Parking Area and composed my thoughts.

I look skyward and speaking to whomever I thought was god at the time, I said “I just want to go home for Christmas. Once I do that, it’ll all be better.”

With that I continued my trek up to the Thruway and headed home in crazy snow for most of the trip. What should have taken four and a half hours extended to nearly six; I made to my folks just in time to go to the Methodist church in town for the candlelight Christmas Eve service. I remember thinking a loud “thank you” in my head for making it home safely.

That is when I truly felt the Christmas spirit and that carols and the lights and the candles and being with my family made me feel like it was all good. I can’t tell you what I got that year for a gift, save for a videotape of Madonna’s “Justify My Love” because I always remember dirty things, but shortly after that holiday I left Hills when I was hired full-time as a house manager for the local ARC. With that I found my path again and was able to make the move to where we live today.

It was in 1990 that I found my path and found myself back where I belonged. And it was the Christmas spirit that put me there.

A couple of bloggers that I follow have announced that they are focusing more on their blogs again and less on their social networking via Facebook, etc. I find this interesting because I have been thinking the same thing, though I haven’t done a lot about it yet. The trend over the last several years has been to abandon your blog and blurt out nuggets of content in 140 characters or less. I’m happy to see that some are going against that grain.

Back in August I tried to blog via Google+, where I would write my blog entry on Google+ (and have it shared all over Google) and then it would be pushed to my blog here, which in turn would push it to Facebook and Twitter. It didn’t really work that well and when push came to shove, I wasn’t pleased with the set up. While I enjoy the interaction I have with others on Google+ (for the most part), I didn’t like the fact that the photos I posted or that my words weren’t actually living on *my* webspace, they were living on Google’s. And when it comes to Google I’m more Sybil-like than usual: I love the “freemium” services that Google provides and then I hate the fact that they’re ad-supported and being used for data mining purposes, so I go all hot and cold and I decided that it would just be best to use my webspace and then push my words out to other places. At least this way I still own the content.

There are times that I worry that this blog is a waste of bandwidth for all involved but then I rationalize its existence by saying that if you don’t want to visit, you don’t have to, so I just keep on doing what I’m doing. Some days I think about writing a blog under a pseudonym, where I’ll change the names to protect the innocent and everything, so I feel completely free to say what I’m thinking and feeling, but then I get lazy and just write it here. I don’t really censor my words on my blog; I think it’s safe to say that if you were to meet me in person you’d find that I’m like I represent myself to be here.

Maybe this blog thing will catch on big someday.