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 my Christmas gifts from Santa was a new camera. I did not expect this gift at all, which made the surprise that much more special.
The new camera is a Canon G15 point-and-shoot type affair. Apparently Earl watched me fumble with Canon DSLR enough at places like Walt Disney World and the like to decide that I needed something that was a little more point-and-shoot friendly. My iPhone 6 has a great camera built into it, but I’m not a huge fan of taking photos with my iPhone, even though that’s what’s encouraged these days.
I decided to try the new Canon out for a night shot tonight. The moon was hiding behind some clouds and I thought it made for a somewhat interesting photograph. Here’s what I captured from our driveway about 30 minutes prior to the composition of this blog entry.
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.
Going to the movies is a consistent source of frustration for me. Because I can be somewhat judgmental at times, I believe that adults should conduct themselves in a certain socially acceptable manner whilst taking part in a cinematic experience. As expected, no less than four people continued to use their phones throughout the entire showing of “Into The Woods” this evening, including a pair of women that I dubbed “Aqua Net and The Frizz” who were sitting directly in front of me. The Frizz had her text size cranked up to the largest setting possible on an iPhone 5s. The words “Hello there” took up two lines in iMessage. The woman to her right, a young woman with a strapping young man accompanying her, exchanged messages with a man named Justin. They were having a conversation regarding the New Year’s Eve party they apparently both attended. The young woman doesn’t remember much.
Our local cinema, which shall remain nameless because I don’t want to give them advertising, but they are chain with just one location in New York State, has been around for about 15 years. They no longer use the preview screen in the lobby area because the workers find it too loud. Tonight the popcorn machine was broken, which resulted in reduced popcorn output.
One will note that it takes three people having a good time to make one batch of popcorn per 30 minute cycle.
The only reason I still bear the cinematic experience in general is because I enjoy a nice bag of movie theatre popcorn, but we weren’t about to wait 30 minutes for a bag of popcorn so I settled for M&Ms. It wasn’t the same.
The movie was enjoyable. That was the bright spot of the evening.
I’ve noticed a large number of folks on Twitter and Facebook mentioning the removal of their Christmas decorations today. I think I’m a little surprised by this because today is, after all, New Year’s Day. With the positioning of the holiday on a Thursday this year, I thought that folks would leave their decorations up until this coming weekend but apparently I was wrong. People want their decorations down and apparently move on with their lives.
I’m not a fan of taking down Christmas decorations. Honestly, I’m not really a fan of putting them up either, but once they’re up, seeing the decorations put me in a jovial mood. Twinkling lights and tinsel and the like make me smile. Holiday joy and all that.
I’m not ready for a cold winter without twinkling lights and decorations of merriment. We’ll be taking down the decorations this weekend, but in the meanwhile I’ll continue to enjoy the festive beauty.
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.
So this morning I headed to the airport for the weekly class, which I call our “safety briefing”. Once a week, every Saturday morning, the members of our local flying club get together for coffee and donuts and an hour long presentation on various ways to better ourselves as pilots. The vibe is wonderful and similar to the events I remember from growing up around airplanes and flying clubs when I was a kid.
Right before the end of class, my (former) instructor told me that the student scheduled to fly right after the briefing had canceled and he told me I could take the airplane out earlier if I wanted to, since no one would be using the airplane. I had originally scheduled the airplane from 2:30 to 4:30 pm for Earl and me to enjoy a flight this afternoon.
After chatting with a few other pilots, we all decided that it would be fun to take three airplanes to a field about 50 miles away for lunch. We decided to go to Fulton County Airport (NY0) near the city of Johnstown. The airport in question is about three miles from where I work. I had never flown into the airport but I had been by the field many times.
I called Earl and asked if he wanted to fly with me per this new plan. It took some convincing; he was still in sweats and hadn’t showered for the day. I told him none of this mattered, because we would get to fly! He finally caved to my hints and met me at the airport 20 minutes later, just as I was finishing up the pre-flight of the club Cherokee 140.
Since this was a spontaneous flight of sorts, I didn’t get the chance to do hours of preparation like I had during my training. I knew where I was going and I knew that I was fully capable of the flight, but it was a weird yet exciting feeling to be doing this. We needed to fuel up the airplane; the others left ahead of us by about 15 minutes. Fueled up and ready to go, Earl and I made the flight. It was a little hazy and I was a little nervous about all these new elements that I hadn’t experienced before, but overall the flight to Fulton County was quite enjoyable. Earl asked me many more questions today. He’s really intrigued by this General Aviation thing and he seemed to be having a great time. Fulton County doesn’t have a control tower, it’s “pilot controlled” in that we watch for airplanes that might not have a radio and we announce our intentions all along the way to landing. I made my radio calls and before we knew it, I made an excellent landing on runway 28. Our fellow pilots were waiting for us and let us know that the restaurant was closed. Ack, no food after all.
Earl and I took a selfie, something that we’ll probably do at many airports over the coming years. Earl then took a photo of the group of us.
While we were there shooting the breeze, another pilot based at the airport went up and practiced some touch and goes and then various stunts. If you look closely, you can see his yellow airplane in the gorgeous sky.
Afterwards, we all departed, one right after another and flew to our home airport. Earl and I were in the Cherokee 140 while the other two airplanes were Cherokee 180s, so they had a few more horses to play with, but we brought up the rear and was able to watch one of the other airplanes land just as we were arriving at the airport. Another excellent landing and it was time to put the airplane away.
Days like today are the reason I became a Private Pilot. The adventures have just begun.
I took Earl for his first flight with me as Pilot-In-Command. We decided that it would be a short flight and that we would highlight just a few things in the immediate area. We flew over the house, flew over Earl’s work and I showed Earl a couple of landmarks around the house. It was a great way to get him acquainted with flying in a single-engine airplane and with his husband as the Pilot-In-Command.
Earl had a wonderful time and took quite a few pictures. The flight was smoother than he thought it would be and he was impressed by my landing skills. He wishes airline pilots could land their airliners as smoothly as I landed the Cherokee 140.
We took this selfie at 3000-feet. He’s not sitting in the backseat, but rather just with the seat all the way back so he had plenty of leg room.
There’s no snow on the ground, the winds are howling at over 30 MPH, but there’s warmth and happiness in our home this Christmas morning.
Have a wonderful Christmas and a joyous day, no matter what you are celebrating today!
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!