The Northward Contrail

Table for one

We all have them: friends who enjoy going out and partying, having a grand old time. They love the night life, and Friday night's the best night of the week. Any excuse is an excuse to party.

And that's fine, as long as you don't do something stupid. But it's never been me. I don't know why it is - whether it was growing up in the country and never having the chance to hang out with my peers, or if it's because I've been an introvert as long as I can remember. Even the birthday parties I went to in grade school, I never really fit in, and I'd end up having a conversation (sometimes an enjoyable one, at that) with an adult or something while my friends went off in their little cliques. Even in high school, I didn't hang out in the lunchroom with my acquaintances; I used to have lunch with my accounting teacher, with whom I'd struck up a friendship, in her classroom during her lunch hour.

For whatever reason, my ideas of an enjoyable time consist of (1) either being left alone to read or work on a project, or (2) if I have to go out, sharing a good meal in a quiet restaurant with one or two very close friends. And I think there's something worth examining in the second of those points. I have plenty of friends, but most of those relationships are more on the "acquaintance" end of the scale. They're more like "good buddy" relationships - I'm happy to see them and spend time with them. Maybe a few, I'd really like to add to my inner circle, but that will happen when it's ready to happen because you can't force it.

It's the "inner circle" that, to me, provides the most satisfaction. Those are the people with whom I never have enough time. Those are time-tested relationships, the folks with whom I can talk about most anything, and they can talk about anything with me, and we know we'll never betray each other's confidences. They're the "might as well be family" people. Three hours with them seems to pass in 15 minutes. They're the people for whom I would do anything, at any time of day or night. Being with them never wears me out; if anything, it leaves me feeling better. I'd rather have four or five of those types of friends than 50 "friends."

And that kind of "Feeling better" could never happen if I went out and partied. Not only am I hopelessly square, but I'm an introvert. I don't like small talk, and I can't stand the sort of superficial "oh, hi, nice to meet you" stuff that goes on at these kinds of things. I don't like loud music, except when it's very specific music in very specific applications. I drink sparingly, because I hate the feeling that comes with even a little too much alcohol. I don't like wearing flashy clothes. I'm not interested in the kinds of things they're interested in. And I don't feel the need to feel like I'm 20 again (hell, I acted 40 when I was 20).

Once when I was in grad school I did the club thing one night with a guy I was sort of sweet on. We went to one of the more avant-garde nightspots in town. I think we spent all of 15 minutes there before he gauged I'd had enough. It was among the most uncomfortable 15 minutes I've ever spent. I really felt like I was on another planet. We finally retreated to a slightly quieter but less-hectic nightspot, where we spent the wee hours having cheesecake and Irish coffee, and that was happier.

My friends who like to go out and party keep trying to have me join them, and when I beg off, they can't understand it. Believe me, I appreciate it, and I'm glad they want to include me. But I don't think the understand the kind of wet blanket I'd be, because that world is just not mine and it's just not fun to me. From experience, I know what's going to happen: I'm going to stay just long enough to be polite, probably spending most of that time sitting in a corner watching the scene and quietly snarking to myself, and then at my first opportunity I'll scram. (Then I'll go home, take a shower, have a good night's rest, wake up with a clear head, and reminded why I don't do those kinds of things.)

He's worth it

We've had our older cat for a decade. A student, on the cusp of graduation, gave him to us back then; he had been hanging out around her house and she'd fed him. Her cat didn't get along with the stray tabby, so she needed to find him a home; otherwise, he'd be sent to the local animal shelter. We were his last hope. I gave in, and one Thursday afternoon a scrawny gray, white and black tabby was delivered to me. From the moment I first held him, it was love. He purred all the rest of the day. We've watched him grow from that scrawny overgrown kitten into a stately overgrown adult, and we've grown as accustomed to his ways as he has to ours. Even the addition of the little golden tabby a couple years ago hasn't disrupted things.

About three years ago our former vet detected a heart murmur during the older cat's routine annual exam. We didn't think that much about it, except for the occasional times the cat would have a coughing spell. This vet, being old-fashioned, didn't suggest anything to us; I got the impression it was something we'd have to live with as the cat aged. But we changed vets a couple years back, going to a vet who specializes in cats, and she's made a big difference in the care our boys get.

About two weeks ago I took the older cat in for his routine exam and vaccination. She listened to his heart and asked if we'd ever had his heart screened. She told me what would be involved, the likely course of treatment, and so on. When I took the younger cat in the following week, I told the vet we'd decided to have the older cat examined. So last Tuesday I bundled the older cat up again, drove him to the vet, and they drew some of his blood for lab work and took an X-ray to examine his innards (which, except for a slightly enlarged heart, looked fine).

On Friday, I took him to a specialty clinic, where I met a veterinary cardiologist who would be working with our cat. He did a preliminary exam, then they took him back and did an ultrasound of his heart and some additional tests. The outcome turned out to be what the cardiologist called "the best we could hope for in this situation," something we could treat with a daily dose of medicine. There will be follow-ups, but at this point nothing really dramatic will have to be done, and the prognosis is reasonably good.

Before any treatment began in earnest, the cardiologist reviewed what they were going to do, and what it would cost. While it wasn't astronomical, it wasn't exactly pocket change. It was enough that I could imagine my family recoiling just a bit. "I can't see spending that much money on a housecat that's just eventually gonna die anyway," I can imagine them saying.

But the estimate was no sooner out of the doc's mouth when I said, "Let's do it." We'll worry about the details later, I thought to myself. That's why they give you credit on those credit cards, for moments like these. The money will grow back.

And, besides, as much as I hate carrying debt, it's nowhere as terrible as the feeling I'd have if I hadn't done it, as if I'd consigned him in the name of saving a few bucks instead of treating something that could be treated. I couldn't bear bringing him home and saying, "Well, tough luck, kid. Do the best you can." No, for all the years he's given us, and all the love, he's worth it. The money will grow back, but we could never get another one like him.

That only took forever

About eight years ago I started on a 1:48 scale Hasegawa A-4E. (I believe this particular one was a Pro-Modeler boxing, in fact.) The Hasegawa Skyhawks are really neat kits. I've built three and have at least two more in the stash, because there's lots of colorful and interesting subjects for them, and these kits are a pleasure to build. They're not perfect, but they are extremely nice.

In theory, this should have been a quick project and I should have had it done years ago. But you know how it goes. In this case, it was those pesky leading-edge slats. The little rails the slats sit on are molded into the upper wing halves, and are extremely easy to break off with very little effort. One of those took missing. Then another one took missing. Replacements for those are easy enough to fabricate, but then one of the slats disappeared, and that isn't easy to replace. I could cast a replacement in resin, but that was one of those "I'll get around to it" things. The project stayed in the half-built pile, still in gray primer, for years and years.

One day I was searching my box full of spare kit parts. Guess what turned up? Into the bag of parts for the unfinished Scooter the slat went. Now to just get back to the project. That, in itself, took a couple more years. Other things called. Finally, last weekend, I'd finished an intense project. Atop a pile to the right of my workbench was the poor little A-4E. I gave it a second look, and it didn't look so bad. Why not? Next thing I knew, I'd built some new slat rails and painted the little beast, and on went decals and other stuff. Last night I put the last touches on it and snapped some quick photos.

Markings for the specific aircraft are from the old Victory Productions set. I loved that goofy snake on the tail from the moment I saw it on the sheet, and it's the reason for the whole project. (Next A-4E I build will feature another scheme from the sheet.) The national insignia came from the Pro-Modeler kit decal sheet. (Yes, I'm very much aware the red bars are out of alignment.)

And here's a classic A-4 pose. Not only an amazing airplane, but from certain angles the A-4 looked like coolness itself:

So that one's done. It's not perfect, but it's done. I'm relieved and very happy. Wonder what the next kit I'll turn into a years-long ordeal will be?

The visit

A couple weeks back I took a quick day trip to see an old friend. This old friend is a ship that's been parked in a harbor as a museum for close to four decades. Once upon a time this ship was a proud unit of our Navy: one of the most decorated combatants of the Pacific War; later modernized (twice), she kept busy during the Cold War and Vietnam. Not long before she left service, she welcomed home the first men to fly around the Moon, then joined the Atlantic Fleet and spent her last months of service prowling for Soviet subs.

Five years after she retired, she was towed a few hundred miles south to the harbor, where she's been ever since. At the time, it was a big deal; no aircraft carrier had been turned into a museum. The carrier's new home state established the museum, and for the first few years things went well.

But the years since have not been kind. Preserving any ship is a huge task, but a great big one with a huge, flat deck (especially one with a lot of wood beneath the non-skid coating) is something else altogether. There's the corrosive environment that comes with living right next to an ocean. There's bad weather, hurricanes, gales, you name it. Then there's the man-made problems: a museum that grew too large, a development project that went bust, a state with budget problems, and some ideas that flopped in execution. There's maintenance decisions made in the name of expedience and cost that turned out not to be the best. There's also some restoration work that was done with a lot of heart, but accuracy was another matter.

In fairness, some of the problems come from the fact this museum was the first of its kind. Nobody really knew back then preserving an aircraft carrier was going to bring these kinds of long-term problems. We didn't know what we do now about the challenges of ship preservation, and we didn't have the tools then we do now. (You can really get an idea of what the Navy, and of what the preservation community, has learned if you go here and spend a few hours reading. Getting a decommissioned ship for donation has become very difficult, and rightly so after a few embarrassments.)

And I'll also say this much: The museum's current management knows the job ahead is immense, and is working on a long-term strategy. There are encouraging signs. But the museum needs resources to make it all happen, and I'm not sure those resources will be forthcoming unless a philanthropist with a few hundred million bucks to spare shows up.

I was happy to see my old friend again, but I ached for her. It's been 32 years since I first went aboard, and on every visit since (and I've lost count of how many times I've been aboard), she's seemed just a little more unhappy. I've seen her go from being a proud warship to a sideshow attraction, a political backdrop, a movie set, a venue for sporting events...taking on all kinds of jobs just to ensure her very survival. As rational as those decisions may be, you still see just a little more of her dignity fade every time something like that happens. A ship that dodged bombs and torpedoes and kamikaze attacks, a ship where men fought and died, a ship that launched pilots on missions (some of whom never returned)...a ship that played her own important role in history. A great ship that's now a sideshow, a ship that needs a lot of help, and a ship that must also dodge the calls from a vocal minority who see her as a taxpayer burden that should be towed out to sea and sunk (not realizing that getting the ship in suitable condition to scuttle would cost only slightly less than making the needed repairs).

It's all this that struck me as I passed through compartments on board that have been consecrated to the memory of her fallen sisters. It's sad that Enterprise and Essex and Ticonderoga and Hancock and so many others with distinguished service records fell to the blows of pneumatic hammers and cutting torches, their remains loaded into rail cars. And yet as I looked at what has happened to the ship that housed those commemorations, I found myself saying to a picture of one of those long-gone ships, "At least you were spared this." (The quote from "Crossing the Line" about the long-gone Enterprise, near the bottom of this page, really hit home about that time.)

I hope my friend will survive. In spite of everything that's happened to her, she still means a lot to me. But every time I see her, I ache a little more, and a little part of me wishes I could pick her up with my hands and bring her home with me.

Limitations

In a moment between tasks the other day I was goofing around with a colleague. Only half in jest, I said something about how scary it is when you look around a room and realize you're the smartest person there.

I make a lot of fun of myself; despite having accomplished some things in my life, I never have shook the feeling that I'm just a small-town girl who caught some good breaks along the way. I've often felt I'm more lucky than good, and in spite of the praise people have heaped on my abilities I see myself as no better than average at best. While some people see my ready self-deprecation as self-loathing, to me it serves a vital purpose: it helps me to stay grounded, to remember that everything I have could be taken from me in a moment, and to not get a big head about life.

It's a defense against arrogance. Several times in my life I've been shown where my knowledge has been incomplete, and I've had to come to grips with what I didn't know. Sometimes it's come with humiliation. It would be foolish of me not to have taken something instructive from those experiences. Maybe it means that I often keep my own counsel when I should speak up, but I'm too busy thinking about the things I still need to learn before I make up my mind. When I speak up, I want to be reasonably sure I'm operating from strength, lest I make an ass of myself.

I'm a firm believer that it's not what you know that matters, or even the things you know that you know. It's knowing what you don't know that makes the difference. It's knowing the limits of your knowledge and abilities, and then knowing where to go for what you need to remedy that, and knowing who to trust and vetting those sources too. I've seen people I admired trip themselves up when it was obvious they were outside their realm, and people with incredible gifts in one area completely humiliate themselves in another.

It's not that they were bad people; they weren't. Instead, as often happens, they were just not cognizant of their blind spots. I'm guilty of having done that, too; I'm sure I've done it more than once on this site. When I've been called out on it, or even when I've looked back on the times I've shot my mouth off, it's stung.

It's my fear of doing it again - as I no doubt will, sooner than I'd like - that keeps me my own most persistent skeptic.

On the rebound

One morning a couple weeks ago I woke up and tried to get ready for the day. But in the space of about two hours or so, I was run over by one of those things that comes on in a big hurry, ravages just about every system in your body, makes you tired all over, and leaves you on the couch depleted and not caring about anything at all, because it takes too much effort even to care. I wanted to do exactly three things: stay on the couch and not move at all, watch the clock (because hubby had the same thing a few days before, and from his experience I knew when the major symptom thresholds would probably be), and sleep. At least when I was out, I wasn't in agony.

As terrible as this stuff was, I'll at least give it credit for doing its thing and being gone. The next morning I felt a little better (though not enough to go back to work), and by that night I was reasonably mobile and my appetite was returning with a vengeance. A good night's sleep later and I woke up feeling nothing had ever been wrong. (And I was hungry as hell, which I remedied in style later that day.) I spent that afternoon scrubbing and disinfecting every square inch of the house, intent on killing every germ I could.

That was a couple weeks ago, and physically I've been fine since. My body has, at least. The mind, on the other hand, was really taken aback by how quickly this struck. Unlike the colds and other things I usually get, there was no real warning this was about to knock me over. I'm someone who takes good hygiene to ridiculous levels, and I've therefore avoided most of these kinds of bugs, but sometimes no matter how careful you are, it's just not your day.

The logical part of my brain tells me it isn't worth worrying about; you've just had it and you're unlikely to get the same thing again anytime soon, and if you take all the precautions you can, then you've done your part. And even if you did catch it again, you know what to expect and what to do, right? But the emotional part of my brain is still trying to catch up with that, and honesty compels me to admit I've had to stifle a panic attack or two.

I know as time passes, the more distance I put between this illness and me, I'll be fine. My confidence is coming back with each day, and soon I'll be back to my usual self. But as unprepared as I was for the illness itself, the way it left me a little rattled has surprised me more than anything. But I'll soon rebound, I know.

Commit this to memory and mind

A few weeks back we had to return to Florida, to say good-bye to a loved one. It was at the end of my Spring Break, and I had to be back at work on Monday. The plan was to drive down with hubby, then fly back Sunday afternoon. He'd stay down there a few more days to take care of some business, then drive home when all that was done.

We got down there safely, spent Saturday doing family stuff with my brother-in-law and his wife and son. The memorial service came and went, and despite some hiccups in its commission, the service was an emotional experience. After the service, we went out for dinner as a family. In spite of some hiccups there (and that day must have had an epidemic of the hiccups), it was fun to be together, and to decompress as a family after something so emotionally heavy.

Sunday came, and it was time for me to leave. I hadn't flown out of Fort Lauderdale in more than a decade, and a lot of memories came back from way back then. We got there about a couple hours before my flight was to leave, and that gave us plenty of time to stand around outside, watch airplanes, and spend time together. We don't get to that much, and when we're together, it reminds me how much I enjoy being with them. In particular, I never have enough time with my sister-in-law. We play very well together; we get the same references, and have the same sick sense of humor. There's a lot of affection that runs both ways, and saying "see you later" to her is especially difficult.

It was hard to bid them all farewell. It wasn't helped by the fact that the airport's piped-in background music isn't exactly appropriate, or very happy (really, a synth-jazz version of "It Must Have Been Love?" You may as well have this song being piped in). I'm surprised I was able to hold it together as well as I did, for my heart was heavy. As much as I don't like South Florida, as happy as I was to be fleeing Fort Lauderdale, it's still a place I know, a place I once had roots, and in spite of my best efforts it's still a place that provokes emotions. Especially the emotions that come when you bid adieu to people you love.

I'm not the kind of person who really buys souvenirs. Besides, the souvenirs I have of my time in Florida are deeply personal: little things from the place I worked, or a matchbook from our favorite pizza joint, stuff like that. But when I stopped in the airport newsstand for a bottle of soda (all the better to drown my feelings, of course), I also bought a souvenir magnet. It's tacky, it's cheap, but at the moment that little magnet answered the little call from within my heart not to forget that I once lived there, and it'll always be with me.

Soon enough, our big Boeing twinjet eased up to the gate. Not long after, we were winging our way to Atlanta. As we climbed out over the Atlantic and turned back northwest, I looked out my window at this place I once called home, its familiar scenes and landmarks thousands of feet below. They seemed out of yesterday, and out of another lifetime. Soon they faded behind us. My wistful reverie slowly receded as the anonymous expanse of central Florida crept beneath us. Home lay a few hundred miles ahead. There was work to do tomorrow. It was time to look forward.

Another one done

The M23's finished. The only modifications to the Tamiya kit involved adding the photoetch set, and using some aftermarket decals to fill in what the Tamiya sheet doesn't give you. All in all, a fun build, and I should do more of these more often. I really need to get out the Lotus 79 someday soon.