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...