Ponderings and Musings

So yesterday was the big Super Bowl and Earl and I had a little celebration here at The Manor. Surprisingly, we both survived the Super Bowl food just fine because *I* was the one that did the cooking and such for our little party. Normally Earl does the cooking, but I’ve been feeling fantastic lately and I was in the mood to do something of this nature, so I did it. We both enjoyed the tasty treats.

Homemade Turkey Chili.

Earl and I were very moved when the Sandy Hook School Chorus started singing “America, The Beautiful.” Jennifer Hudson came out halfway through the song and added her personal touches to the arrangement and it seemed to blend well. We were moved to tears.

After a few commercials it was time for Alicia Keys to sing the Star-Spangled Banner. Sigh. Now I have complained about celebrity performances of our National Anthem before and I guess I’m going to do it again. I have already mentioned this on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, but I was really disappointed in Alicia’s performance. I don’t know a lot about her except that she’s won plenty of Grammy awards. I don’t seek her music out and I can’t say that anyone of her work is in my large library of music. That all being said, I vaguely knew that she tended to go breathy and jazzy with her music and that’s what she opted to do with the National Anthem.

She also decided to make it really long.

And change the tempo.

And change the phrasing.

And change the chord structure.

Here’s the thing. When singing the National Anthem at an event, I believe that it is the performer’s responsibility to bring pride to our country through the performance of our anthem by engaging the crowd and bringing the citizens to their feet, with their hats off, their hands over their heart and the opportunity for the person to sing along if they so desire. When you change the song to “make it your own”, Mr. and Mrs. Jones have no idea what to do to engage in their own patriotism so they just stand there feeling like idiots. On the bright side, Alicia made the song so long and so slow, there’s a really good chance that Mr. and Mrs. Jones might have fit in a nap to pass the time when they couldn’t sing.

To sing the National Anthem is a great honor. It is your chance to shine while you bring your fellow neighbors together in a beautiful act of patriotism. To change the song up to show what you can really do as an artist is self-indulgent and quite frankly, contrary to the purpose of singing the song in the first place. I am grateful that Alicia didn’t engage in the ridiculous yodeling sounds that others have done in the past, but as I sat there I couldn’t believe that I was losing interest in a song that usually moves me to tears. It felt awkward.

And one more little rant, in all of her demonstrations of having a good grasp of Music Theory 101, why did Ms. Keys opt to change the chord structure of “o’er the land of the free…”, to a darker, minor chord? That’s what this country is all about! Why would you change the chord to illustrate a dark, somber tone?

Perform the song the way it was meant to be performed: lively, full of life and full of heart. I really wish the NFL would enlist the vocal abilities of a talented service member who knows what it is like to be defending this country.

That would be another beautiful act of patriotism.

The weather radio has gone off several times today. Apparently we are going to receive a foot of snow. The fun is scheduled to start in about an hour and last through the night and into tomorrow morning. Yay for working from home! I highly recommend a work from home gig if that’s the sort of thing you’d like to do and you can do. I consider myself fortunate in that arena.

Coming off a wonderful long weekend like I just experienced would lead to a return-to-work funk for me, but I’m not feeling that today. I’m actually feeling pretty good. I feel focused. I feel balanced. I feel content. The uneasiness I felt earlier in the month seems to have dissipated. I guess seeing some sunshine for a few hours can make a world of difference. I feel like I can really tackle work this week and that’s not something I have felt for a while.

Perhaps finding balance in my life has helped me regroup. I shouldn’t question the why, I should just enjoy the feeling.

So I have complained about the TSA in the past. In all fairness, I have actually complained about the security measures that are enforced by the TSA, I don’t believe that I have actually called out the TSA or at least individual TSA officers themselves. For the most part, they folks that work for the TSA have been pretty nice. Tonight they proved that point even further.

On my way out of town on Friday, like every other airline passenger, I had to go through security measures at the airport before jumping that big bird into the sky. In the United States, this involves taking off your shoes and belts, anything that might be metal and there’s a whole bunch of other things that one had to do to get the green light to get onto an airplane. I have this rigmarole down to a science and for the most part it’s become pretty effortless for me. Friday was no exception. Except now I wear a FitBit One on my belt.

I took the FitBit off with my belt and left it on my belt. It went through the X-ray machine and came out the other side like it was suppose to. I gathered up my stuff and got myself back together. As I started walking towards my gate, I noticed I needed to tie my shoe. Because of my recent weight loss, I didn’t need to find a stool or bench to accomplish this, I simply kicked my leg up onto the ledge that runs about waist high along the hallway and tied my shoe. I then continued my way towards the gate.

Little did I know that my FitBit fell off my belt when I kicked my leg in the air.

When we landed at Dulles, I stopped at the bathroom and noticed that my FitBit was missing. I knew it wasn’t in the airplane, because I checked my 36-square inches of space on that plane and made sure I had everything. I must have lost it at security, even though I remembered putting it back on my belt. I was heartbroken. I’d had the FitBit for less than a month and it was already lost and I really liked it a lot, it was a good thing to have and it was a Christmas present from Jamie. I decided I would buy a new one when I got home.

On a lark, I stopped by the TSA team leader’s station after landing at our home airport tonight. I asked the supervisor if anyone had found a FitBit on Friday night around 6:00 p.m. She looked at me in a very odd fashion. I felt like I was outside of normal operating procedure. But then she smiled.

“Is it like a pedometer?”, she asked.

“Yes, it is. Real small. Like a flash drive.”

“I saw that the other night and we tagged it for lost and found. You know, no one ever picks their stuff up from lost and found. Yeah, we have it.”

She called the Operations Center over on the secret side of the airport and confirmed it was there. She had the officer at “Command” look for it and then verify that it was mine by trying to get the name to display. They couldn’t get my name to pop up on the screen but the timestamp on the lost and found tag was approximately the time that my flight left, so she gave me directions to get to the secret side of the airport. She was really friendly about the whole thing.

I made my way over to the secret side of the airport, following her directions to the letter. Having to go to the third floor of “command”, I came off the elevator where I was greeted by a TSA agent.

“I saw you coming on the cameras. Here’s that pedometer. Sign here please.”

Sure enough, it was my FitBit. I fired it up to make sure it worked and told him, “You walked 21 steps to get to me.” If he could tell me I was watched on cameras, I could tell him how many steps it took to find me. He smiled, we shook hands and I thanked him several times.

All in all, what I thought would be a bureaucratic mess at best turned out to be dang near effortless. I have to say that the TSA officers at Syracuse Hancock Airport were just as nice as nice could be, while still maintaining a dignified sense of professionalism. It made me realize that I might be too quick to judge others from a scant bit of evidence. I learned something tonight.

I also learned now to kick my heel up onto a shelf when I don’t need to.

Good job to the TSA.

So I’m sitting in the parking lot near Dunkin’ Donuts during my lunch hour. I’m looking across the lot at the various cars parked in a reasonable order and I can’t help but notice that the color selection of the majority vehicles is, for lack of a better word, muted. There are no oranges or lime greens or yellows like you’d find in the days gone by. Everything is a subtle color, if the color falls outside of a monochromatic selection at all.

I wonder why this is.

People often buy the vehicle that expresses their personality. This isn’t always the case, but people will most likely buy the color vehicle that they are attracted to, and judging by this completely unscientific survey I’m doing here, people are feeling rather subtle these days. They don’t want to stray far from a gray area. There are very few who make the bold choice.

I find this intriguing.

I just popped a Vitamin D capsule from my husband’s stash. For some reason I have not been taking Vitamin D this winter. This is something that I usually do because it does help with the winter blahs I feel from time to time. I like to think of Vitamin D as a little capsule of sunshine. It helps boost my spirits a bit. Or, at least I think that it’s helping me boost my spirits a bit.

Even though I don’t like being out in the sun, I still really enjoy sunshine. Lots and lots of sunshine. I like to sit in the shade and look out over a sunlit landscape and just feel the warm breezes on my face. That doesn’t happen a lot in January in Central New York. We get a steady diet of gray skies and snow covered landscapes. While it can be quite pretty, it’s kind of monochromatic and that contributes to a ‘blah’ feeling.

I have a couple of natural LED lightbulbs in my office that are suppose to help me feel all cheery by simulating sunlight. I definitely prefer the LED lightbulbs over fluorescent lights, and the light is kind of cheery, but it’s not warm and cheery. This zaps my energy levels a little bit. Perhaps the warmth and the energy levels will come in the Vitamin D tablet I just pilfered from my husband’s stash of vitamins.

Now I remember why we sneak off to Virginia Beach around the last week of February. We might have to do that again this year.

In the meantime I’ll look at the LED lamp and hope there’s warmth in the Vitamin D.

I must be doing something wrong. There must be something that I’m missing in this grand scheme called life. I look around. I see people in real life having dinner with friends, enjoying drinks, spending hours at the gym. They laugh, they have fun. And they have all the time in the world to do so.

I read blog posts. I see tweets. Same deal. People out having fun, having a grand time with all the time in the world. They seem relaxed. At ease. Ready to par-tay. Woo woo!

I must have signed up for a shortened timeline or something. I feel like my life is frenetic. Packed to the seams with events and activities. And we’re not even that sociable. Sleep, eat, work, eat, gym, repeat. It doesn’t feel treadmill-like, it just feels like I don’t have enough time.

I’m organized. That’s all working and has made things better, but after dinner, working out at the gym and then trying to fold a load of laundry, it’s time for bed. Time to rinse and repeat.

Maybe this is part of some two-decade long mid-life crisis. There’s so many things, both big and little that I still want to do. So many little projects that I want to escape into. So many people I want to meet, so many places I want to see. But who has the time? Something is consuming all of my time.

And I don’t have the time to figure out what it is.