Say What?

I got up this morning with plans to get the oil changed in our cars. I did that. I didn't plan on having to sink a bunch of money into one of them. I'm doing that. Justin, at the oil change place, showed me where my truck was losing coolant from a connection near the throttle assembly. There was a bunch of corrosion near the spot and you could see where it had been leaking down the side of the engine. I'd noticed lately when idling that I wasn't getting any warm air. That was due to a low coolant level. Anyway, he assured me he could get the $152 part and have it good as new this afternoon. I told him to go ahead and fix it and left my cellphone number with him. I headed over to Wendy's for lunch then walked about a mile and half home in the face of stiff wind and waited for Justin to call. It wasn't a good-news-bad-news call I received. It was bad news and more bad news. When he removed the part from where the antifreeze was leaking, an intake to the thrott...

Hopefully, this post won't appear for many years. I'm writing it on 2-29-2008 but intend to save it as a draft and not publish it until my days with the FAA are done. My intention all along was to keep working until the spring of 2013. We shall see. If you're reading this prior to then it means that my days with the FAA have come to a premature end. I can't speak in real-time on my blog about what I'm going through as it would be the end of my career. I don't think I'm overreacting. As an air traffic controller, I'm required to maintain a class 2 medical certificate. I get a yearly physical from a Flight Surgeon who determines my status. The past few years I've had a waiver for the occasional Cluster headache bouts I suffer from. The headaches attack me on average every 15 months or so and typically last four weeks before they're gone. They come in clusters, hence the name. They're nasty. I recently read a description online which stated ...

I've spent the past few days in search of a car for Rachel. She turned 16 back in August but Tammy and I felt we'd rather have her wait until this spring before allowing her to get her license. She's not a natural when it comes to driving and we wanted to give her more time practicing with us before cutting her loose. She's nearly there. I did some searching online looking through the database of local cars trying to get a feel for how much we could expect to spend. I was mostly looking at Toyotas and Hondas, in the beginning, figuring they would hold up much better than most of the others. I was a bit disappointed with the selection. I headed over to Apple Valley Ford a couple of nights ago and worked with one of the salesmen going through their inventory. They had a 2001 Ford Taurus with 82K miles, very clean which I liked a lot. I took it for a drive and was impressed with how solid and true the handling was. New brakes, new battery, and new tires were a bonus. W...

As a family, we do some volunteer work at our church on Tuesday evenings. Tammy and Rachel paint nails and I tattoo little arms and hands while parents visit the Clothes Closet in search of some needed items. It's a great program where needy families can come for dinner, haircuts and other services all brought together in one place at no cost to them. We've been involved for a little over two years and have seen demand continue to grow. I have no way of knowing but I'd guess that many of the people we work with on Tuesday nights are illegal immigrants. They're hard-working people trying to make a better life for themselves and looking for whatever advantage they can get in a world where they're too often looked down on and considered by many to be an inconvenience upon the system when they're not providing some needed service. They're humble if nothing else and I've grown to admire them. We live in a complex world. A part of me understands the need...

I hadn't intended to write all this about my life when I began this 'Brave New World' topic a few nights ago. It just sort of happened. This is part 4 of what began with me reminiscing about changes in my life that occurred nine years ago. Here's the initial post if you haven't read it. From there you'll find the others in the order they were written. I'm sure that there were some concerns from members of our families who may have felt we were moving too quickly by getting married after only knowing each other such a short time. I'd likely have had the same concerns if I were in their shoes. Tammy and I felt early on that God was in the middle of our relationship and that it was He who brought us together. I don't know how I can explain it any simpler. It was nice that Rachel knew Kelsey and Cole (her cousins-to-be) from riding the bus to school. There were several things Tammy and I had in common which were encouraging to our relationship and ...

This is the 3rd part in a series of posts about a turning point in my life that took place nine years ago. If you've already read parts 1 and 2, press on with this post. Otherwise, you'll want to read these in sequence. Part 1 and Part 2 . Tammy and I were on the phone daily with each other after our date. Whereas she had a cellphone, my hesitancy to embrace newer technology left me with a simple little pager. I would need to do something about that. We made plans for me to come up and visit her one night during the next week so I could meet her daughter, Rachel. I had shared with Tammy a bit about my previous marriage and that I'd been a stepfather to my former wife's two sons. What I didn't share with her was that my role in their lives was a bit of a thankless one and not the shoes I was looking forward to filling again any time soon. It wasn't for a lack of trying to be close to David and Joe because we all did what we could. There were other dynamics t...

This is part two of a post where I'm reminiscing about my life changes from nine years ago. Read part one here. My disappointing date with Christie didn't deter me at all from putting myself out there again. As I said, this was just practice. It was early March 1999 and I came across an ad on Digital Cities from a 41-year-old Christian woman on the north end of the cities. She described a bit about herself and the sort of things she liked to do. I spent some time putting together a letter in response to her ad. Looking back you would think I would have had a letter to spam out to any ads that caught my attention but I didn't work that way. I wanted something less impersonal. Along with the letter I sent a couple of photos as well. A few nights later I was online when I got an instant message from her. We chatted for a bit and were having a fun conversation when (as it often happened) I got booted offline. That's the one lasting impression I have of AOL from all thos...

I've got a few guilty pleasures in my life with my bike no doubt topping that list. All work and no play makes me no fun to be around. Actually, my bike plays second fiddle to my computer this time of year—another guilty pleasure. I remember twenty years ago when I first began hearing about the benefits of home computers and how they were going to revolutionize our lives and free up all sorts of time. Yeah, right. I can't think of a larger time-sink. Not that I'd want to live without mine because I wouldn't. There's just too much information available from whatever cozy, wireless spot you happen to find yourself in the comfort of your home to dismiss or ignore this technology. I love it and I don't want to be without it! I didn't use to feel that way. I used to say that I was going to be the last guy in Lakeville to get online. That was ten years ago. I didn't know a browser from a jpg and I wasn't interested in learning the difference. My older...

This video begins a little slowly but stay with it and you'll be smiling real soon. I want some of that where I work—a bit of free spirit, put your hands in the air and wave 'em like you just don't care attitude.

Keith's ladyfriend, Tracee, lost her job two days ago. She'd been managing The Afternoon stores in the metro area for the past 15 years. She came into work and they gave her 10 minutes to clean out her desk. No notice and I'm guessing no thank you either. It's a family thing where somebody from within will take over Tracee's job. I'm sad for her because she really loved her job; you could tell whenever she'd mention the store and how it's doing. It was a part of her and they took it away. Keith is quite certain that the person who will attempt to do what Tracee's been doing won't be nearly as successful. Tracee has also been trying to sell her home for the past year but is caught up in the dismal real estate market. I've got a "for sale" flyer of her home up on the bulletin board at work. Keith called yesterday to ask me if I could slash the price on it by 40k. They're quite determined to get it sold now that Tracee has no i...

Today was Tammy's first day at her new job with United Health Group. She was a bit anxious to get this day behind her but now that it's over, her anxiousness has turned to excitement. She had a good day. I'm happy for her. She's paid her dues for many years as an RN out on the floor and it will be nice to see her get into something less physically demanding. They started out orientation by having each person write on a white-board 3 things about themselves. One of those things had to be a lie. The group would then question the claims made by the person making them and try to decide which was the lie. Sort of like the TV show from the '60s, To Tell the Truth . Tammy's 3 things about herself? I am a stained glass artist. I like to perform as a clown in my spare time and do face painting. I have been on a TV show. For those of you who know Tammy , you know she's never been a clown. They all guessed that she'd never been on a TV show. She said it...

This song has some significance in more than one way to the following post. We were sitting around the control room at work last week when somebody mentioned that I was the oldest guy in our area. Me? I may be the most senior guy but I don't think I'm the oldest. :) I had to think for a moment—yeah, they're right. I may mentally feel like I'm still 27 years old in terms of my approach to life but my body would beg to differ. I think I first noticed the negative aspects of aging when I was 42 and my vision began to suffer. Where I was once able to easily focus on reading a newspaper I now had to have glasses if I wanted to make something out of the blurry letters. The period from not needing glasses to needing them was a window of just a few months. I was surprised at how quickly it happened. Whereas most guys I work with seem to fight the transition to wearing glasses, I didn't mind at all. Not if it meant seeing clearly again. There have been other less notic...

I took Rachel out for an hour of behind-the-wheel time tonight. We drove into Bloomington past my old high school where we noticed a steady stream of traffic headed to the schools for caucus night. She mentioned that she could get extra credit for one of her classes if she attended so we headed home, picked up Tammy and headed off to Lakeville North...Republican territory. We were a few minutes late getting there and the parking lot was in overflow mode so we grabbed a spot along the yellow curb with a bunch of others. We got inside and found a crowd of people straining to see a small map taped to a wall with the different precinct numbers for the city. You needed to have your precinct number to know which room to go to. We finally shuffled our way close enough to make out that we're in precinct 4 and headed off to room 308. When we got there it was standing-room-only. We opened the door and managed to barely squeeze our way inside. There was a guy in his mid twenties up front ...

The cycling world lost one of the biggest names you've never heard of last night. Sheldon Brown died of a massive heart attack. Sheldon had quite a presence on the web with a huge base of knowledge which he took the time to document and categorize for others to access and learn from. He will be missed by many. I'm not much of a football fan but I did manage to watch the last 90 seconds of the Super Bowl...good stuff. Rachel taped the game for the halftime show which Tammy and I watched when I got home from work last night. Yawn. Anyway, we fast-forwarded through the football action to watch some of the commercials. Like I said, I'm not much of a football fan. I went through my blog tonight looking for dead links. I found a few; mostly video links I've since converted to my YouTube account where I store them at no cost and save myself the storage capacity on my website . I'm currently using 1.2gb of a total 1.5gb available on my site. My blog is getting rather l...

I put some new skins and tubes on my red Serotta and headed out for a much needed outdoor ride this afternoon. I don't mind hammering away on my rollers but there's something wrong about staying indoors when it's so beautiful out and the roads are dry. Nothing fast about today's ride but I could tell my heart, lungs, and quads were feeling it. It's so nice to be back on the road again. It always feels like I'm cheating winter a few hours at a time when I can knock out some miles when a few years earlier I wouldn't have considered it. The last hour my toes were getting a bit numb. That's the one thing that keeps me from staying out longer in these temps. I think I'll invest in a pair of Lake shoes next year. From what I hear there's not a better winter riding shoe. I brought it in with a little over 50 miles . I'll be breaking ranks with the Republican party this coming election. No, I won't be voting for any Democrat candidates eit...