Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

The past couple of days I’ve found myself daydreaming about becoming a private pilot. I think it’s the spring in the air or something, but I’ve really had the urge to get myself into a flying school and get that pilot’s license I’ve dreamed of.

Flying is in my blood, I suppose. My grandfather is a pilot (or at least he was, now he’s content on his motorcycle at nearly 90 years old). My dad is a private pilot and is in the process of building his second airplane. When I was a teenager he restored a 1940 Piper J5-A (nothing bonds a family better than getting high on airplane glue together when we’re all reassembling dad’s airplane!). He later built an Acrosport, which he flies during the nice weather.

I just have these wonderful dreams of Earl and I jumping into our brand new Cessna Skyhawk and flying off to his dad’s house in half the time. Or for a fun-filled weekend getaway. Or heck, to a pancake breakfast at a little airport in the middle of nowhere.

We used to do that when I was a kid. Dad and I would jump into the J-5A and head off to a little airport in Weedsport on a summer Sunday morning for breakfast. Grandpa would go ahead of us in his faster, home-built Jungster.

Some of my fondest memories of growing up took place at the local airport, a less than a mile strip of mowed grass in the middle of nowhere, with a gravel pit at one end and a string of utility wires at the other. There’s several hangers at one end to make it all look official. That and the “16” and “34” on their respective ends of the runway. Whenever we heard a plane fly over the house, we’d always look up to see who was flying. We’d have picnics at the airport with the rest of the pilots association. Dad would give rides. Heck, I’ve even flown a couple of times.

Earl has never flown in a private plane before. I’d love to have the honor of giving him his virgin voyage.

I see a goal forming… to become a pilot before I’m 40.

I did a mean thing today. I normally don’t try to go out and do mean things, but for some reason I just felt like I had to do something, so I chose mean.

Driving home from lunch this afternoon, I took one of our local expressways. It’s a three lane deal. The downtown exit uses two lanes, the rightmost lane exits in the right lane, the middle lane can either use the left lane of the exit or continue straight ahead on the expressway.

I started passing a Hummer while in the middle lane. It was your typical scene. The only thing bigger than the vehicle was the driver’s hair. She was yakking on her cell phone, which she was holding in her left hand and steering with her right hand. I could see her glancing to the left, looking to move to the middle lane, so she could presumably continue on the expressway. Since she was yakking on her phone, which is illegal in New York State by the way, she didn’t turn on her turn signal, she just kept trying to move to the left. Problem was, I was there. And I wasn’t moving.

Now, I know that I contributed to road rage and all that. I know that. And for what it’s worth, I think that the whole “driver can’t use a hand held cell phone” law is absolutely ridiculous, but in our society its about controlling the sheep as much as possible, not letting them make decisions on their own. But the thing was she didn’t signal to move over and the OCD in me kicked into gear. She wasn’t following the letter of the law. She wasn’t about to ding up her precious Hummer, so I wasn’t really concerned about an accident. So I herded her off the exit ramp.

I then gunned it and watched her do a U-turn back up the exit ramp to get back on the expressway. She couldn’t flip me off. She was too busy talking on her cell phone.

When did talking on the telephone become so damn important, anyways? If I hear one more blip, bleep, bloop or tinny rendition of the William Tell Overture in the middle of K-Mart, I’m going to lose my mind and flush the closest Motorola down the toilet. I mean really. Good manners? Forget it! It wasn’t a month ago that Earl and I had to listen to Miss One Tooth hold a custody battle with someone on the other end of her cell phone in the middle of Housewares at Target. “It’s YOUR turn to take the kids!”, she screamed, amongst the spittle. Why should the American public be subject to that?

“I want a large pie with pepperoni and sausage”, Mr. Yuppie demanded over his cell phone in the middle of the doctors office.

“Did you move your bowels yet?”, Mrs. Concerned asked of someone via cell phone in the middle of produce at Price Chopper.

How did we, the American People, survive without cell phones for so long? Why, we went over 200 years without cell phones and over 100 years with nothing but pay phones on a corner. What’s changed? I long for the days when our fingers would do the walking, in the privacy of our own home.

Now everyone’s fingers are walking on my last nerve. Hang up the fscking phone so I can mind my own business.

I currently have four computers sitting on my workbench, all in need of my geek abilities. All four of these machines run a variation of Microsoft Windows. I’m almost done with the first computer, which is less than six months old.

It currently has 126 spyware/adware files and 21 virii infecting it.

I’ve created a little web page with the tools I use to clean up computers. Feel free to use them as well.

Today I learned that Debralee Scott passed away on April 5 from natural causes. She was 52 years old.

You may remember Debralee from a handful of television shows in the 70s… she was Hotsie Totsie, the female Sweathog on “Welcome Back, Kotter”. She played Donna Pescow’s sister on “Angie”. She was on “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”. And she was a semi-present fixture on that old game show “Match Game.” Believe it or not, she was also on an episode of “Isis”!

I always thought Debralee Scott rocked. She had that 70s appeal and the 70s hair. She worked what she had and always had a street-smarts vibe.

May you enjoy your return Home. Blessed Be.

During lunch today I decided to head home and play around with the music studio a little bit. I’m still getting to know my way around the equipment and over the next week or so I’m going to have a lot of reading to do, familiarizing myself with Garage Band and the various settings on my vocal processing equipment. It’s all very fun and exciting and a challenge that I’m eager to tackle.

So today I thought I’d break up the day and sing a little bit during my lunch break. I popped in an instrumental version of “Could It Be Magic” by Barry Manilow. I cranked up the mic, passed the vocals to my headphones, turned up the speakers and for the first time in a very long time, I sang in full voice, completely uninhibited. And in doing so, I broke a sweat while singing.

It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve been able to expend so much energy singing that I was able to get all hot and bothered doing so. The last time I sang on a mic was in 2000 when I sang the National Anthem for the local minor league hockey team. While I did sing full voice and with lots of conviction, I didn’t really break a sweat doing so. Not that I’m a calm, cool and collected performer. Quite the contrary. I get lots of butterflies in my stomach when I’m performing in front of others. But I usually have a very small touch of “timid” on the performance that keeps me from singing really hard.

Being in the comfort of our home and our studio, I was able to sing like I haven’t sung since my days at SUNY Fredonia.

So while I may being a bit more stinky at work this afternoon, at least I was able to break out of my shell and share a little music. Now if I could just get this stuff into the Mac Mini so I could share it! 🙂

Earl and I are winding down the weekend. He’s catching up with online buddies and I just finished mixing some dance tracks in my new music studio.

“That’s What Love Can Do”, Boy Krazy.

That’s right, the studio is up and functional. I took Thursday afternoon off to meet the guys from Lowe’s when they delivered the cabinets and countertop. When I got home, everything was sitting on the front porch without a delivery truck in sight. I guess they didn’t want their tip. It was a little disconcerting, because they said they would be here Thursday afternoon, and here it was 12:10. According to their mildly agitated note they were at the house around 10:00 a.m. I guess they didn’t teach the delivery department how to tell time. ‘Tis a pity, as Earl and I are famous big tippers.

Oh well. Thursday night we headed to Connecticut for the weekend, which I’ve mentioned before. We weren’t big winners Friday night at Foxwoods Casino but we did manage to make it out of there while breaking even, so we didn’t have any tears in our beer.

“Happy”, Legacy of Sound.

Saturday morning we decided to take a little road trip on our way home. If you’re looking at a map, we live about three hours northwest of Hartford, Conn. So of course we headed northeast and drove through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont on the way home. We made a quick stop at Chick-Fil-A in Nashua, New Hampshire for lunch and then enjoyed the drive across the more scenic parts of New Hampshire and Vermont. We took a little hike at the Quechee Gorge and took a moment to breathe in some fresh air and just listen to the sounds of the evergreen forests. I find the evergreen forests so enchanting. The whispering of the wind through the pines, the blanket of needles on the ground. Very relaxing.

We then continued the trek home across Vermont, stopping for a bite to eat at one of our new haunts, the Circle Diner in Latham.

One of the reasons we took this little ride was to celebrate the 9th anniversary of our first date, where Earl and I took a ride up through Vermont just getting to know each other. It was great to relive the past and look ahead to the future.

“You Keep Me Hanging On (Dance Remix)”, Reba McEntire.

Today has been a productive today, putting together the sound studio and such. Tom has this urge to sit on the turntables and doesn’t really appreciate the scolding I’ve given him. I have a feeling that I’m going to find cat fur on them when I get home from work tomorrow, but we shall see. He likes the felt slip mats.

Having a recording studio like this has been a dream of mine for a long, long time. I’m so excited that’s it’s all coming together. I have one more piece of gadgetry to install so that I can record from my mixing board into my Mac Mini and then I’m good to go. Tonight I messed around with Garage Band a bit and played some ditties on my MIDI keyboard. Very cool! I’ll have to share some creations here once I get confident with what I’m doing.

Earl and I enjoyed a nice supper at California Pizza Kitchen at WestFarms Mall outside of Hartford, Connecticut tonight. We were having a discussion about something that has escaped me, but the conversation involved me saying to Earl “Witches Honor” and doing the Bewitched witches honor sign.

This made the woman behind Earl, facing me, giggle. Apparently she watches Bewitched too.

Earl and I have just returned from business meetings with two of his vendors for work. It’s been a wonderful day here in lovely Connecticut. This is the first time in nine years that I’ve ever accompanied him on business meetings so I got to witness him in action first hand.

I’ve found yet another reason that I am in love.

One of the many, many things I find attractive about Earl is that he has a certain charisma. He knows how to handle himself and he does it well. He’s in command of a situation (even with a nutjob such as myself) and has a certain quality to his character that engages others around him. I was quite excited to see that this trait translates well to the business arena.

I have been in many conferences and meetings in my life. I’ve worked for a huge 120,000+ employees company. While there, I attended many staff meetings, development meetings, programming meetings and strategy meetings. I’ve seen a lot of men and women in action.

Earl tops them all.

He knows his business and he knows it well. He has a way of remaining strictly professional yet reaching a personal level that brings a sense of comfort to those in attendance. It’s something I’d like to emulate in my professional life. I profess that I probably can’t come close as it only comes with experience.

But it’s a goal to strive for.

Earl and I have safely arrived in Hartford, Conn. after driving and driving and driving in rain. A trip to the east is not complete without a stop at the Windmill Diner in dubious Amsterdam, N.Y. I didn’t give in to the cheeseburger, but I did have a bison burger that was quite fabulous. Their little advertisements point to a web site, but I went to look and there is a sex site there. I guess it’s kinky sex if there’s windmills involved.

So now we’re settling in for the night here at the Sheraton in East Hartford. I’m looking forward to the day tomorrow. Earl says that this activity is going to convince me that I need to retire and start traveling with him. How could we support my spending habits if I was retired? Oh well, at least it’s something to dream about.

Maybe we’ll win the lottery tomorrow night. Now that would be fabulous!

I have declared this week officially a “crazy week”. You may think that I’m referring to the fact that I’ve been very busy. No, that’s not it. I’ve completely lost my mind and am desperately looking around trying to find it again.

I’ve been somewhat of a mess at work. For some reason I haven’t been as motivated as usual and that kind of disappoints me. I can just imagine what it does for my supervisor! Always the perfectionist, I say that if you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all. I’m not going to waste the energy to half-ass a project when I could sit back and relax and chat about American Idol. Thank goodness I work for a company that has a nice internet connection.

Then there’s the whole eternal diet thing. I declared this past Sunday that I was going to abstain from meat and try to eat healthier (AGAIN!) this week while my body shifted into spring mode. What did I know? I’ve pretty much lived on the no meat policy but I’ve eaten anything that’s not nailed down. Please let me know if I belch up a TiVo remote. I’m desperately craving a cheeseburger from someplace, anyplace, anywhere. Except Burger King, because that new plastic Burger King guy that looks into windows on the television commercial is just damn creepy and I don’t want to be molested at a Burger King. I really want a greasy, diner derived cheeseburger. In a pinch, I’ll settle for Mc Donalds. Hell, in a pinch, I’ll settle for a shoe with Cheeze Whiz.

I thought this week would just fly, fly, fly right by because I’m off this afternoon and all day tomorrow. I guess the lack of motivation at work made time slow down or something, because the clock was having none of it.

Tonight we are headed to New Haven, Conn. Earl has business meetings tomorrow and I get to officially live the dream of Guy Friday. I’m looking forward to bouncing on the bosses knee and seeing him in action (take it as you will). Tomorrow night we’re going to give Foxwoods Casino or Mohican Sun a spin and come home with a ton of money.

That’s if I don’t lose my marbles completely.