Happy 99th Birthday, Betty White! You are truly America’s Grandma. You are a legend and we love you.
Shared: Wake Up Call For Republicans
It is sad to me that we even need this video, but the message is powerful.
Avgry.
There is a term used among the General Aviation Twitter community that it used to describe a pilot who hasn’t been able to fly in a while. That term is “avgry”. It’s a combination of “aviation” and “angry”.
I am definitely feeling “avgry”.
I’ve been struggling with a glum mood for the past several weeks. There’s a lot happening in the country, what with domestic terrorist attacks egged on by Trump and the like, but aside from that, I’ve just been feeling blue. I came to the realization that while this is by no means the longest I have gone without flying an airplane, not being able to fly combined with other pandemic restrictions is making me stir crazy.
Today my husband and I drove to Waukegan National Airport just so we I could stand in the hangar and say hello to the airplanes.
We then took a moment to stand on the ramp and take a selfie. The weather has been awful for the past three weekends, so there wasn’t much going on.
I’m hoping to fly next weekend as the long range forecast looks promising. I’m going to go up with an instructor and try some new (to me) maneuvers that are typically done by commercial pilots. I have goals set for my aviation career; I can’t let weather keep me from reaching them.
I like having a term to describe being “angry about not being able to engage in aviation”, but I don’t like feeling “avgry”.
Friday Night Dance Party.
This was a big, but fairly niche, club track when I was DJing back in the day. I originally heard the song on “Open House Party” hosted by John Garabedian, and since I knew him from my radio connections, I called him up and he told me about the song. I was happy to start playing it right away.
From 1995, here’s “Movin’ Up” by Dreamworld.
2021.
I am really looking forward to these signs in the neighborhood being replaced for the 2021 season. With everything going on with the pandemic in 2020, the relevant versions were never installed and looking at the 2019 season signs was just a reminder that life was way out of balance.
Let’s hope they put the 2021 signs up and soon! Though honestly, they usually go up in March.
Speed.
We have a Windows 10 gaming computer in the house. We’ve had it for about a year and over the past several months I’ve been accumulating the necessary equipment to build a decent Flight Simulator. Today I upgraded the hard drive from an traditional style “spinny” (it’s an industry term) hard drive to an SSD, or Solid State Drive. SSDs are several magnitudes faster than the older drives in performance. Our Windows 10 computer now boots up in less than 20 seconds, before it used to take over five minutes to get settled down.
I just played around with X-Plane 11 under the new setup and it’s like playing on a completely different computer. Of course, I’m still getting used to flying a virtual airplane, as I still need to get more control panels and the like so I don’t have to remember to hit “b” repeatedly to try to release the brakes, but I’m getting there. Since I have X-Plane to simulate local meteorological conditions when I fly, I’m always flying at night.
I’ll have to give it a go in the daylight this weekend, since the weather is projected to be too cloudy for actual flying this weekend.
I’ll take what I can get. And with the new hard drive, I’ll take what I can get faster.
Bon Bon Voyage.
My first cousin once removed, Devin, and her girlfriend Jade are building their first home together. Their new home is a renovated school bus. They’ve traveled the world together, now they’re traveling the country together.
I think this is awesome.
Feel free to follow their adventures at their blog BonBonVoyage.
Distraction.
I was never a fan of “Glee”, but I have always been impressed by this performance. Here’s “River Deep, Mountain High”. I feel like we all need the distraction today.
TeeVee.
When did we decide as a society to start putting television *everywhere*. I mean, I grew up with a television in the family room and the living room. The family room television was always on. Grandma and Grandpa City had a small black and white in the kitchen to supplement the color set in the living room. The black and white television was used for the news during the supper hour. Farmers Sam and Irma had a television in their kitchen mounted in a special cabinet above the refrigerator. Grandma and Grandpa Country had a Zenith in the living room and a smaller Zenith in the bedroom. Both had antennas with a rotor on it. Face it northwest to pull in Canada.
But when did we decide that we needed a television in every convenience store, on every fuel pump, in cash register displays, and in every inch of an airport terminal?
My husband and I stopped at a convenience store for varying needs during a ride over the weekend. I was instantly thrown into a foul mood because the television was blaring weird conspiracy theories about the recent Domestic Terrorist attacks on the Capitol Building. I looked around and no one was watching but wow, was that television loud. I then filled the tank in our Jeep Cherokee as the gas pump screamed entertainment news from a service called Cheddar. The fact that we now have 7-inch full color display screens on a gas pump to scream television at someone with access to highly flammable liquid just seems weird to me.
I think this moved happened right after 9/11. Before then, one of our favorite haunts was a decent restaurant with good food. After 9/11 it still was a decent restaurant with good food, but televisions were installed all over the place and they were tuned to CNN. Ever since then I’ve noticed diners now have TVs installed in the corners of the dining rooms, supermarkets have televisions talking at your while you’re at the checkouts, and the aforementioned gas pumps no longer let you put a tiger in your tank in peace.
It’s annoying.
A while back I included in a Yelp review of a Chicagoland diner the fact that their televisions were tuned to Fox News and I found it annoying. When Sean Hannity is interrupting my dinerlicious French Onion Soup, we have a problem. I wouldn’t even put up with Rachel Maddow interrupting a culinary experience. It’s completely unnecessary.
Televisions all over the place may have made sense in the days after 9/11 but before the proliferation of smartphones. They were probably put up there to keep people informed in the event of something happening after but in the spirit of 9/11. But with everyone having a smartphone in their pocket, we are instantly notified of way too much information today. Tweets, EAS notifications, Facebook, and all the news service apps that blast out “breaking news” every 10 minutes notify everyone all the time. If something big happens again, and believe me, there’s a shoe waiting to drop on that, we’ll all know about it when everyone’s phone starts reacting at once and we all notice the commotion. The thing is, we’ll get that information but the avenue we have chosen, instead of the news channel that’s being force fed to us through installed televisions in every nook and cranny of our existence.
What’s next? News updates over the new electronic road signs popping up on our expressways? Wow I hope not.
Maintaining Perspective.
So this weekend’s ride across the prairie took us on rural “Chicago Road” from southeast of Dixon, Illinois all the way back to the western suburbs of the Windy City. At times the road was clear, at other times we were driving along hard packed snow with hints of brown sand to keep things from getting too slippery.
Even though we’ve done it a lot during the pandemic, I do enjoy these rides across the farmland and Illinois prairie. Living in the big city is exciting but as a guy that grew up in a pretty rural area of Upstate New York, I can sometimes be overwhelmed by the amount of “input” I get from urban life.
We drove through several small towns during our journey, and two of them stood out to me. It was too dark to take photos (I need to upgrade my iPhone to something with “night vision” or whatever it’s called), but Lee Center, Illinois looked like it was at one time a charming small town. It’s reminiscent of the hamlet near the house my dad built. Like that hamlet, Lee Center looks a little forgotten. This makes me sad.
We also passed through Paw Paw. There was a little more activity: a small supermarket, a convenience store, and a couple of store fronts. There was a few more signs of life but it too felt like it was a little forgotten. Maybe folks there want it that way. I don’t know.
I do know I find the farm pictured above quite charming. The simplicity of the landscape gives me peace.
