The Northward Contrail

National Catch-up Day (sponsored by Heinz)

As I write this, millions of shoppers are swarming the stores and malls of this great land in hopes of finding great deals on gift-giving stuff.  So, Nerd Girl, you may be asking, are you taking part in it?  Nope.  You could not get me out shopping today if I were well-armed, tired of living, and directly behind Frank Buck.  Instead, I'm keeping myself home today, and I'm using the time to enjoy the peace and quiet.  Oh, and to catch up on a lot of things.  This morning, I've been experiencing the exquisite agony of balancing my checkbook and scheduling my payments for the things that come due the first of each month.  I get to see how good my skills are at subtraction.  By this point in the day, I'm pretty good at it.

There are non-numerical projects I'm trying to finish.  I'm tantalizingly close to finishing a pair of projects I promised someone far too long ago; there's only two or three more elements I have to do, but you can bet those will be the last little bits that will fight me.  (Oooh, I hope not.)  Once that's squared away, there are more little delights upstairs awaiting my attention.  I'm hoping I can clear the decks a little today.

Thanksgiving yesterday ended up being bigger than expected.  I had expected the usual nuclear-family deal, but once we were there it ended up being this side of a family reunion, with aunts and uncles and grandparents, and it ended up being a lot of fun.  Some of the relatives were people I hadn't seen in a long time, so any awkwardness was numbed out by the fact that we were happy to see each other again.  One of the relatives there was the uncle of mine who is a pilot, so hubby and I had a good time talking airplanes with him.  Everything went well, and I was sort of sad when the time came to come back home.  I don't get to see my family as much as I once did, and I'd forgotten how much comfort there can be in having family around like that.  When you grow up with it, it's easy to take for granted to the point of annoyance, but once you're far away, you miss it.

Thanksgiving

Off in a few moments to be with the family for Thanksgiving, and all that involves -- including no end of having to make small talk, no end of gorging myself on food that, strictly speaking, isn't the best for you  (and undoing the hard work of the last few months), and no end of a bunch of other things.  But isn't that what family is about, and what today is about?  I intend to enjoy it.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

The tyranny of the red light

I'm writing this from the office this morning, even though today's a day off.  Why, you ask?  Well, yesterday afternoon I knocked off early; all my tasks were complete.  So I went home, had some lunch, caught a brief snooze on the couch.  I figured I'd head into town today, anyway, because there's an errand or two I needed to run. 

Anyhow, due to some things mentioned at a meeting the other day, I thought it would be a good idea to check my work e-mail from home and see if anything new had been posted.  Bad idea.  See, we have this snazzy VOIP phone system that not only provides scary-clear phone calls to and from other locations on campus, but it also has a voice-mail system that sends recorded messages to your e-mail account as .wav files.  Sure enough, there was a phone message.

Now, you have to understand my long-standing fear and loathing of phone messages.  When I have one, I usually assume something bad has happened, or somebody needs something urgent.  It's hard to put my finger on just why that is, but I think a lot of it has to do with what happened at my previous job, where I was at constant odds with my management.  When I came in the office each morning and checked my voice-mail, I used to announce (loud enough so my co-workers could hear it), "Well, let's see who's demanding my resignation this morning."  The funny thing is, at the job I have now I have been very careful, I have great working relationships with just about everyone in the chain of command, and I'm very careful not to get myself into situations that could blow up.  So most phone messages I get here are innocuous, and seldom urgent.  Still, I have a hangover from the bad experiences almost a decade ago -- and I also have a hefty dose of craftsman's guilt.  Did I screw something up?  Probably not, but the red light or the voice-mail can tunnel directly into that weak spot in my conscience.

So, this morning, I added "stop by the office" to my list of things to get done.  I intentionally didn't check it from home, because if it was something someone needed, I couldn't help them from home; had it been something ultra-urgent, the higher-ups have my home number.  But I figured I'd stop in anyway.  So this morning I parked the car, muttering under my breath all kinds of grumbled stuff I can't remember (and probably shouldn't repeat anyway, but just think Ralphie's dad in A Christmas Story).  I come in the office.  No red light on the phone.  No message?  I check the file attachment.  The .wav file, in its entirety, is someone hanging up the phone.

I will now pause for five seconds while you laugh yourself silly.  Go ahead.  I won't look.

:: Jingle Bell...stop! I had planned to save this one for a while, but something happened this week that really made me unable to hold it any longer. 

I don't know exactly when it happened that some radio stations decided to go to a 24-hour Christmas music format.  I could take it when it began Christmas Eve, or even a couple days before Dec. 25.  But, come on...a month and a half before Christmas?  And it wouldn't be so bad if it was just one station, either, but we're in an area where we can pick up stations from at least three media markets, and in each one, there's at least one station that won't give it a rest.  Making it even worse is that media consolidation has meant any station in a given market that's of a given genre will sound exactly like its counterparts in the other two media markets.

What crimped it was what I discovered a couple days ago.  There's always at least one station that offers something different, and a couple years ago I found a station that plays "classic" country music -- stuff I grew up with, like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, John Conlee, stuff like that.  When there wasn't something good on the other stations, I could count on this one.  Until a few days ago, when it, too, switched to an all-Christmas format.  Yes, country Christmas, but still, Christmas.  So there's another button on my radio pre-sets I had to change until after the holidays.  (That makes three pre-sets I've had to change.  Sadly, it now means I have four pre-sets that, on my drive to work, pick up the same mildly amusing redneck yuk-fest morning show.)

I don't want to sound like a grinch.  Honest, I'm not.  Christmas has always been a special time of year for me, and it brings back memories of the fun I had as a kid.  Getting out the Christmas tree and putting out the decorations was always a big deal in our house, and always exciting.  I remember how much I loved the "manger scene," as we called it, that depicted the nativity.  And the long felt ribbon with 25 pieces of yarn on it, a bell at the bottom, and a typewritten verse at the top.  You put it up on Dec. 1, tied pieces of peppermint candy to the strings, and each day you removed a piece of candy. 

Christmas always meant the televised staples of the season: Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Every year, it was a ritual.  So much changed, but those remained constant, and we'd watch those each year.  I still remember the first year I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas after I'd moved away from home, and something inside me felt really sad.  Something had forever changed.  Every year, I still watch it, and every year, I still feel a little sad inside, yearning for what once was.

And Christmas always meant the youth groups at the church putting on a Christmas pageant that we'd help with, the annual parade at the county seat that my father would drive a fire truck in (and my brother and I would ride along), the obligatory family dinners that were usually a lot of fun.  And then Christmas morning, which was full of out-and-out avarice and fun in the morning, followed by no end of food coming from the kitchen and a stream of relatives coming by all day.

That's why Christmas has been special to me -- well, along with the obvious reason why Christmas is special.  And that's why I'm so sad to see what it's become.  Christmas is no longer an event; it's been turned into a mass-media, mass-merchandising monster that force-feeds itself down your throat, earlier and earlier with each passing year.  It used to be that the day after Thanksgiving was when it began.  But the last few years, it's earlier still.  It's almost as if Thanksgiving doesn't exist by itself.  I turned to hubby the other day and asked, "Wow, are we still having Thanksgiving any longer?"  That's how it feels.  And it's sad.  It's like the season is now about Obligatory Cheer, as if "you will celebrate the season as we say you will, and you will like it."  Ick.

It's made me sad enough as it is, but each year the tyranny of the radio makes it worse and worse.  It makes me think that perhaps the best gift I've given myself in a while was the iPod I bought last year, and the car stereo with the auxiliary jack.  That way, I'm in control.

What could have been

As a matter of course, I spend my life trying to minimize regrets.  When an opportunity comes along, I grab it when practical, and even sometimes when it's not (though, mind you, I try to minimize risk as I do).  I know that opportunities come along that may never return, and I don't want to be in some rocking chair 50 years from now saying "Well, I could've!"  Nope, when opportunity strikes, I like to go for it.

By the same token, I try not to get upset about past circumstances.  I firmly believe that the things in my past that didn't work out happened that way for a reason.  I also am well aware that the way things played out led to the life I now have.  The life I have now is a happy one.  There's not a lot I want for.  No, I'm not rich, but I have a job I enjoy (most of the time), I have someone with whom I share my life and a mighty tiger to protect us, I have friends who care for me, and on occasion I get to do some unbelievably cool stuff.  I've been very lucky in this life of mine.  Someone upstairs has looked after me, protected me in times when I probably should have known better, and it's been like some happy magic goofus dust has landed on me.  All in all, it's been a charmed life, and I'm grateful.

Still, there are times I look back and wonder about if things had gone a little differently.  I think in particular about one Sunday about 21 years ago.  I was in my early teens, and absolutely over the moon about airplanes.  I had all these ideas about being a military pilot and then using that as a gateway to becoming an astronaut.  I wanted to fly the Space Shuttle someday.  (When you're that young, you really dream big, don't you?)  My parents were okay with my interest in airplanes, but only to a point.  They were content to let me do everything except actually fly. 

For whatever reason, they didn't like flying.  I still can't figure out why.  My father has not flown since about 1964, when the Army flew him out to Missouri after basic training.  My mother is in her early 60s and has never flown.  They both grew up in poor circumstances, so there was never occasion to fly, and aviation was never a part of their lives.  When our family went on vacation, we never went anywhere we couldn't drive.  We never flew anywhere.  I understand the economic reasons why (we weren't a rich family), but I couldn't quite get my head around the fear.  Maybe part of it was that, since my father was an assistant fire chief, we knew too well what happened on the occasions when an airplane crashed near our town.  (I have vivid memories of visiting crash sites my father would take us to after the investigators were done.)  There was also the media blitz that accompanied any high-profile aircraft accident: American 191, Air Florida 90, and Delta 191 especially come to mind in that era.

Anyhow, despite all this, my interest in aviation continued.  I knew the risks, but I also had my eye on the rewards that could be mine.  An uncle of mine knew of my interest in aviation.  Turned out, he was a pilot and knew some folks out at the county airport.  One Sunday morning at church, he told me that he and a friend were going up that afternoon in a little Cessna.  Did I want to come along?  Oh, did I!  But I had to okay it with my folks.  I went and asked my father, and he was sort of "we'll see" about it.  I knew enough by then to not get my hopes up, but part of me was really excited that maybe I'd finally get to see what flight was like.

A couple hours later, we sat down at the table for lunch.  My father looked at me and said, "Your flyin' trip's off."  It happened that when my mother found out about it, she got worried, I think to the point of tears.  So I had to call my uncle and tell him I couldn't come along.  I think I still can feel that feeling of my heart sinking when I got the news.  Dang it. As circumstances would have it, I'd have to wait 11 more years before I finally got to ride in an airplane.  When it did happen, it turned out to be wondrous and unbelievable.  But, of course, by then I'd committed to a far different career trajectory.

I don't want to disparage the life I have now, and I'm reasonably comfortable with the part aviation has in my life now.  I've flown thousands and thousands of miles since, in airplanes large and small, and been to all kinds of places and done all kinds of things.  Aviation has enhanced my life, given me new friends, and in general been very good to me.  I don't get to fly as much as I'd like (and, yes, I'm frustrated that I'm no closer to my license than I was a year ago, but that's life), but it's comforting to know that now, if I want to go flying, all I have to do is make a phone call, be in the right place at the right time, and be prepared to hand over a check an hour later.

Still, I wonder what could have happened if I'd been able to go flying that Sunday. Yeah, there's the chance something could have gone wrong and I wouldn't be here.  But what could have happened had everything gone well?  What would I be doing now?  Would I have stuck to the dreams I had then?  Would I have gone to Embry-Riddle or someplace similar rather than getting the liberal-arts education I have?  Would I have had my pilot's license long ago and now be sitting in the front of the big airplane rather than in the back?  Or would I instead be at the bottom of the seniority list after furloughs and mergers? 

I'll never know.  It wasn't the way my life was meant to play out.  Yes, I'll always wonder about the opportunities that could have been.  But I don't spend too much time on them, really.  Besides, if things had gone differently, would I have had the opportunities I did pursue?  Probably not.  And I wouldn't have the life I have now.  I wouldn't have met the people I did, who changed my life so much for the better.  So I can't get upset at all.  Imperfect as it often is, I enjoy the life I have too much.  There's too much in this moment for which I'm thankful, and too many opportunities ahead for me.  More often, I feel like things couldn't have played out much better than they did.

Life's little ups and downs

It's going to be another long day.  Not the teaching part, for we're (thankfully) coming up on our Thanksgiving break and things are kind of in a parking orbit in my classes.  Nope, this afternoon there's another meeting, and it promises to be a long one.  They always are this time of year.  And, given that the last two weeks have been eaten up with long meetings, why should today be any different? 

I'm looking forward to the days off at the end of the week.  Like Frank Grimes after the silo explosion, I can learn how to walk and to feel pain again. 

:: Today's AV link  This weekend we observed the 45th anniversary of a certain dark day in American history.  Perhaps the finest book I've ever read about those events was written by the late William Manchester.  Here's a link to an interview conducted long ago by Don Swaim in which Manchester talks about his book Goodbye Darkness, his chronicle of his service as a Marine during World War II. 

Sentimental hygiene

Our weather has seemed oddly familiar of late.  This morning, as I was driving out, I looked up at the gray sky, and it all came together: it feels like the Mat-Su borough in May, when I'm able to get up there.  The illusion was mostly completed when the wind picked up once I got to work.  All that's missing are the mountains out behind everything.

There's another thing about my trips to Alaska that's neat, and it usually comes my first night.  It's roughly 12 hours from here to there, from check-in at the local airport to arrival at the gate in Anchorage.  (I ran a stopwatch once, and came up with about seven and a half hours time actually in transit, starting the watch when the cabin door closes and stopping it when it reopens.)  By that time, I'm pretty zonked.  I really don't sleep well on airplanes; I can't get comfortable reclining, and besides that I love to look out the window.  But once I hit town, I'm pretty tired.  I'm several time zones off, and just as it's bedtime at home things are getting started in the evening there.  So, my first night in Alaska, I usually get some of the best sleep I ever get.  Part of it comes from being really tired.  But part of it comes from the weather, too.  There's enough of a chill that, under the right blankets, you get really snug and cozy, and it feels great.  The next morning, I wake up feeling like a million bucks.

Maybe the weather has something to do with why I slept so well last night.  I didn't get much sleep (thanks to hungry mighty tiger deciding to wake mommy up at 4 a.m.), but what I got was pretty darn good. The fact I was operating yesterday on very little sleep, battling that weird spacey/sick sleep-deprived feeling much of the day, probably didn't hurt either.

:: Working on my Liz Lemon merit badge  This week the students in one of my classes have been working on their own live-to-tape television show as part of a project.  I've done a good many filmed projects, but this is my first experience being part of something that goes live-to-tape (which basically means it's performed in sequence, as if it were going out live, but is recorded for later broadcast; the good thing about live-to-tape is that you can stop tape and redo something if you need).  Although it's taped, and there's the safety net of a redo if you need it, it might as well be live television.  The students are filling all the technical positions and providing the talent, but everything else is up to me: making sure they have everything they need, setting up the technical aspects, providing the overall guidance and direction, providing the questions (it's a game show), and ducking behind the set working the game board on an old computer we have.  I'm pretty much the show runner.

We did the first show Wednesday.  A few things went wrong, some of them hilariously so.  But, man, it was fun.  We're doing the second and final show today.  I'm hoping it goes more smoothly now that we've actually done one, but even if it's a disaster, we can still have fun with it.

More network time-killers

As if yesterday's discovery wasn't enough, I became aware yesterday of yet another wonderful bandwidth waster.  Seems the Life magazine photo archives are being posted on the Interwebs, thanks to the help of Google.  Here's the link.  Only about a fifth of the Life collection is now available, but they're working on it, and what is there is really amazing; a good bit of it includes alternate takes and other photos that haven't seen the light of day until now.  Here's a few ideas of what you can find, based on things I've posted about before: a close-up of a certain P-51 on its big day, a Ralph Morse take on a gorgeous aircraft, a glimpse of Dave Garroway on the very first morning of Today, Gemini awaiting the Wasp, and the big and little at Convair.   Anyhow, if you can think of it, chances are there's a photo related to it.  The search engine takes some getting used to, but it's well worth it.

:: Anyone who's ever had to deal with customers will appreciate this older, but still funny, piece and its sequel.  Oy.

Feel the heat as the bandwidth burns up

One of the benefits of having to live in my office the last few days is that it's given me a lot of time to play around with the fast Internet connection in my office.  Yesterday, I stumbled across this little gem.  Now, I'm very much familiar with archive.org, and the Prelinger Archive that lives there.  But I had no idea there's now a classic television archive there now.  I burned up so much bandwidth yesterday downloading stuff I'd never seen before: a non-Van Doren episode of Twenty One, some examples of live television drama, an early episode of What's My Line? (still, for my money, one of the classiest popular television shows ever and still a pleasure to watch to this day), even an episode of Arthur Godfrey Time. 

For me, though, the real treat was rediscovering the famous "stuck refrigerator door" Westinghouse commercial from an episode of Studio One.  I'd seen it only once or twice before, on one of the very early "TV Bloopers" shows back in 1982 or 1983, and I don't believe I'd seen it since, but it always stuck in my memory.  Contrary to popular belief, that wasn't Betty Furness; it was June Graham pinch-hitting for her.  When disaster unfolds around me (as it frequently does), I'd love to handle it with the same grace and quick thinking she displayed that night.

Moments you wish you could frame

I had to stick around last night, really late for me, to attend something my students were doing.  At first, I wasn't happy about sticking around so late, especially since that's been a pattern of late and I'm getting cranky about it.  Before the evening was over, though, I was glad I stayed around.  Some of my students have been working with a local youth charity as a public relations project, and last night they capped it off with a couple hours of fun activities for the youngsters.  I was so proud of my students, and so proud of how they were helping these kids have a really good time -- shooting hoops and playing flag football in the gym, giving them a lot of attention and making a lot of fun for them.  Some of the kids have had rough lives, and to see their faces light up like that -- well, you had to see it. 

After a little while we gathered around a bonfire for songs and s'mores.  It was a perfect night for that kind of thing: the sky was clear and the stars were out, and it was just cold enough to make the fire really feel good.  You couldn't have cast a better night for this, nor could you have found a group of better students to throw this kind of thing for these kids. 

There are times I feel a sort of despair when I work with some of my students.  I often see them when they're needy, or have to talk to them when they haven't followed through on something, or otherwise have to deal with moments when they don't quite act mature.  Sometimes this kind of thing happens so much, I wonder if it's worth it.  But times like last night, when they show what they're able to do, remind me that it is.

:: And if that wasn't enough, when I walked over to the post office yesterday, there was a package waiting on me...but not one of the three I thought it would be.  Nope, this was from someone else, a completely unexpected surprise from an old friend.  And it, too, made my day.  (I know you're reading in, and though I'll write you with further thanks when I have a moment, I still wanted to say "thank you," "holy cow!" and "I love it!")

That gettin'-fed-up time of year

After a hectic week, the weekend was great.  Didn't enjoy being up long before dawn on a Saturday to take the truck in for service, but what followed after the truck was through being serviced was pretty great (breakfast, bookstores, unexpected discount finds).  Then the rest of Saturday was pretty good, having nothing to do around the house but unwind, which we've both had too little time for lately.  Sunday was great, too: the first really good night of sleep I've had in a while, a homemade breakfast, homemade lentil soup for lunch (wow, it's wonderful to have a husband who's great in the kitchen).  Everything was great. 

Which, of course, makes today's descent back into the meat grinder that much more diabolical for us both.  For my part, today's another in a seemingly endless string of days in which I have to stay well past the end of work because my presence has been requested at some function or another.  Tomorrow brings another one of the meetings that has made my life especially fun of late.  There may well be another on Thursday, too.  Because it seems everybody is demanding a piece of me these days, I've pretty much suspended having a personal life for now; since I'm not home to exercise, and since lunch and dinner are whatever I can grab or pack in my bag, my diet is steadily going out the window and exercise is becoming a struggle when I am able to do it.  I'm starting to feel the hard work of the last few months being undone, and it's adding to my misery. 

I really am starting to think it may be worth my while to buy a cot and move into my office until the first part of December.  Maybe I could come home for a couple hours on the weekends, see hubby and the cat, do my laundry, and then go back to the office.