And boy are my arms tired...

Ok, I love planes, I love flying, and mostly I love the sense of humor it takes to be a pilot...

Thus I post this email I received from a rare breed... and old pilot... my dad.

Pilot Philosophy

The difference between a duck and a co-pilot?
The duck can fly.

A check ride ought to be like a skirt.
Short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover everything.

Speed is life.
Altitude is life insurance.

It only takes two things to fly:
Airspeed, and money.

The three most dangerous things in aviation:
1. A Doctor or Dentist in a Cessna.
2. Two captains in a DC-9.

Aircraft Identification:
If it's ugly, it's British.
If it's weird, it's French.
If it's ugly and weird, it's Russian.

Without ammunition, the USAF would be just another very expensive flying club.


The similarity between air traffic controllers and pilots?
If a pilot screws up, the pilot dies.
If ATC screws up, the pilot dies.

The difference between flight attendants and jet engines is that the engines usually quit whining when they get to the gate.

New FAA motto:
'We're not happy, till you're not happy.'

If something hasn't broken on your helicopter--it's about to.

I give that landing a 9 . . on the Richter scale.

Basic Flying Rules:
1. Try to stay in the middle of the air.
2. Do not go near the edges of it.
3. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly in the edges.

Unknown landing signal officer (LSO) to carrier pilot after his 6th unsuccessful landing attempt:

"You've got to land here son. This is where the food is."

The three best things in life are a good landing, a good orgasm, and a good bowel movement.
A night carrier landing is one of the few opportunities to experience all three at the same time.

Clarity

I don't think I'll ever get too old or too jaded to not marvel at those sudden moments of clarity I'm given.

For me they end up like the end of a movie where there's music playing and the camera just pulls back and reveals an overhead view...

Not all of them are earth shattering, but I think if you can just take what they show you and keep it tightly locked in your head, it's sure to do something good for you down the road.

Now if I could just play blues piano I'd be on my way...




To a blues bar more than likely. I mean... it is Saturday night...

Ah Venice

So.......
Tomorrow is my first day off in over two weeks and I plan to sleep and drink away a considerable amount of it. I'm feeling a bit fatigued. Not from work, or from training. Mostly from this world around me. I think it's the noise. There are so many people yammering at once about nothing at all... on TV, on the radio, even on the Internet (yeah, I know, pot and kettle, but you can't technically hear me typing so this doesn't count as yammering) I just need some blessed silence.

So I'm retreating more and more from the 'new' in all things media, and as such I'm finding many authors and subjects I seemed to have missed in my 23+ years of schooling. Today's find was Tennyson. Excellent stuff so far.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm taking a road less traveled in my desire to connect more with the past than the future with regards to music, art, and literature or if the men and women who were dubbed 'classicists' at the turn of the last century were simply feeling the same as me about the new age of cars, jazz, and machinery. It's not that I mind technology (he types on his Pentium Zillion+2 computer while listening to digital music on his ipod). Not so. It pays my salary, makes my food, heats my house, entertains me and wakes me up in the morning.

I think I have more of a problem with people's reactions to these things. More to the point, I have issues with being constantly bombarded with voices and 'communication' at every turn. I am of the opinion (especially during election season) as is Whitney and many other people I know that the 24 hour news cycle is destroying this country. The need to fill ever hour with some sort of information has caused all telecommunications hell to break loose. Now reporters feel the compulsion to report EVERYTHING to their audiences, no matter how awful, vapid, useless or trivial it may be. "The people have a right to know"... Indeed. The people, more often than not, would be better served with taking care of their own lives than worrying about others. Remember when you were young and you played that game "telephone" where ten people sit in a circle and one person whispers a statement into his neighbor's ear, then it's passed around the circle from person to person until it gets back to the person and you see how mangled the original statement has become? It's like that with satellites.

And let's face it, warnings against gossip (which is exactly what the majority of the "news" we get is, glorified, re-fried, dolled-up gossip) aren't exactly a new invention. The Bible even warns against it many times.

Wow, I'm like an angry old woman. I started this post talking about my day off and it became a soapbox rant about the evils of mass-communication.

Do I have a sense of irony or what?

Meat

So today was interesting. Actually it was a bit normal for this meeting; me running around like my head's on fire, setup here, breakdown there. But then 4:35 came and it got REALLY interesting.

So in case you don't sit glued to C-Span or CNN you probably don't know that both candidates were here at the Smelldorf tonight for a charity fund raiser of some sort. We were filming in the main ballroom where this event was being held and we were told a few days before that we'd need to clear out quickly. So the time comes and by then I'd estimate that about 50 or 60 Secret Service guys were milling around looking official and menacing. Mostly menacing. We then proceeded to strike the entire room, down to the last cord and chair in about 23 minutes. I've never seen so many people moving so quickly to clear a room in my life.

After that it was apparent that Elvis was in the building because you couldn't access half the floors and the rest were just swarming with blue-blood New Yorkers in tux and tails, all going in a different direction. As it was nearing dinner time and I had no desire to hang out and play the turd in the wealthy punch bowl, I rounded up some co-workers and headed out to find a real honest to goodness New York eatery.

I ended up finding a little corner of heaven. On a suggestion we went here, where I ate this:

It's roughly the weight of a small baby and brought tears to my eyes... in a good way. Follow up with some sauteed spinach, garlic mashed potatoes and finish with a glass of Taylor Fladgate 20 year old tawny port and you have the makings of a nice food coma.

Traveling for work can suck.

But sometimes it's got it's perks.

If you'll excuse me I'm going to go and dream of doing the appropriate amount of sit ups.

Bright lights big...

So here's me, back in my favorite unfavorite city. But take the bad with the good I say...

Good: Free food and drink for a week.

Bad: Filming schedule is hell

Good: 40th floor room at the Waldorf

Bad: Surrounded by people... lots and lots of people.

Good: HBO... ergo... True Blood episodes.

Bad: Probably won't be able to find a TV in this entire city that will carry the UGA game.

Oop, just heard my favorite line: "What the fuck is it with white people and jello?"

So Whit turned me on to the new site (see the link to your right) for tracking books you read. I'm a bit of a reader, so instead of bitching about this God forsaken election, and how much I despise all that it seems to bring out of the people in this country, I'll bring in some literary topicality.

What I'm currently reading:

Brisingr - The third book of the "Inheritance Cycle" (Previously named the "Inheritance Trilogy" but the author couldn't finish the story in three books so there will be four) It's your standard fantasy, aka it takes almost every race, creature, and plot item from some part of Tolkien's famous trilogy, but it's well written and good brain fodder. If you've seen the movie (of the first book; Eragon) then you've seen how poorly Hollywood can write a movie out of a decent novel.

1776 - David McCullough's account of the revolutionary war, the ins and outs of how this country was born, and the people who played pivotal rolls in the formation of America. I like it so far, there are some interesting anecdotes about some historical figures you know, and information on several most of us probably don't know. I've had this book for almost two years and just recently picked it up... not sure if it was because I had nothing else to read or if I was just trying to make myself feel better about this country, and hope that the constitution can stand up to whatever is to come. This one is a great read even if you only like history, as it tells interesting stories about places and people along with the information about 'le revolucion'...

As I Lay Dying - This is one I'm struggling with. It's Faulkner, so it's convoluted and choppy, and written in a southern patwa that, being from the deep south, I have no idea where he got it. I came close to reading this one in High School but my better judgement overcame me. Perhaps I should start listening to it again...

Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy - This one sounded really fun when I read the back cover. Got about 100 pages in and I can't actually put my finger on what's bothering me, but I think it's that she (the author and subject of the book) is too... chirpy. Don't get me wrong, she's highly intelligent and has done some really cool stuff, it's just that I can't get into the 'I'm reading a spy novel' mode when she's so... perky. I might try it again when I've cleaned a few shelves of other stuff, but I have a long list of 'want to reads' so it may never happen...

And that's it right now. I plan to read "Wicked" and "The Time Traveler's Wife", both of which I already own, and "The Children of Hurin" the final book (half) written by J.R.R. himself, but that's what the next month or so will hold. I am looking forward to Dean Koontz finally publishing the third and final "Frankenstein" novel. It's been on hold for two years because his publisher was afraid the people of New Orleans couldn't take a book that had destruction of the town in it so soon after Katrina. Boo hoo. Just publish the book already.

I'm tired... happy trails people...

Running Joke...

So I'm at the two year mark for my half-Ironman and I'm a bit off balance in my training. Swimming is actually progressing well enough, thought I feel compelled to vent about this weekend's pool time adventure.

Saturday morning, up at 8:30 and at the pool by 10 or so. Went to the John's Creek LA Fitness since it was near Kohl's and I needed shoes. I did go there for my first two years of race training and for some reason I don't remember the pool being so small, but I digress.

I'm in the second stage of my warm up, the underwater fin swim when I find that the wall of my lane has become bumpy and soft. Did you guess? It wasn't a wall at all! No! It was a very rude Korean woman who decided to avail herself of my lane without asking. I bumped right into her legs and then stood up, very much at a loss for words and said "Oh, hi". It was meant to contain all of the shock and incredulity I was feeling at her swimming pool faux pas, instead she just stared at it me with a blank look as if it were a cordial greeting.

Wait... it gets better. So I take off my fins and begin swimming in earnest when she produces a pool noodle and begins frog paddling down the MIDDLE OF THE LANE!!!!

I'm sorry, I know I sound like an octogenarian grousing about the store being out of prunes but seriously, there is such a thing as lane etiquette when using a lap pool. So, being the gentle, kindly soul I am I just swam like normal. That's right, when I crossed her path I just plowed right through her. I didn't stop to say "Oh, excuse me madame" I simply swam on my side of my usurped lane as any polite swimmer would and when our limbs crossed she got the raw end of the deal.

Guess how many times it took for her to get the picture. You're wrong, it actually took three.

Now, I could actually mention that to our right there was a man doing laps and his daughter was goofing off doing handstands and flopping into my lane repeatedly, or that on our left two people, a man and woman, were standing in one end of the lane, flirting and talking real-estate theory instead of using the LAP POOL to swim LAPS. But I won't, I'll just say that I'm going to stick to my home pool up on Windward and leave it at that.

Since I'm effectively dry-docked for two weeks I'll have to actually address my running and riding problems, which are simply that I'm not training hard enough at either. Today's little jaunt on the silver comet showed that.

Oh well, who knows, maybe in two years I'll look back on this and say "That was the week I changed my regiment and became a CHAMPION!!!!

Geez, that even hurt to type. Being a realist at heart, I'm really hoping I can just cross the finish line after 70.3 miles. I guess that makes me mediocre.

That's ok, the only really sucky thing about mediocre is that it's crowded.

To shava da face...

Love Sweeney Todd. Great film, great soundtrack. Can't go wrong with dark humor, blood, and good music.

Does anyone else notice how hardcore left or right wingers (those to suckle at the teet of McCain or Obama) are resembling scientologists more and more as the election gets closer?

Seriously, I'm walking around listening to people spouting slogans, repeating quotes and in some cases verbatim talking points from debates or commercials... it's a bit unnerving.

It's all become a game of fear, which side can scare the people of this country more. Fear is what it's about, founded or not, the side that manages to convince more people that electing the opposing side will bring the world to a swift and sudden end will take the prize.

I'm proud to say that my personally imposed media blackout has been wildly successful and I've only suffered mild irritation and only a few urges to to tear people's arms off and beat them with them.


"It's man devouring man my dear, then who are we to deny it in here?"

I love it when art imitates life imitating art. Especially bad art.