Say What?

I had this past week off from work and that's always a dangerous thing at this point in my career. Our ever-changing plans are for me to work another 9 to 18 months but throughout the week I routinely found myself imagining what it would be like to not have to go back. I daydreamed of texting Tracee and asking her to please prepare my paperwork to process me out. More than once I made a list in my head of both pros and cons for retiring now but the results were always the same. I'm determined to stay put and keep feathering our nest. We're not quite there yet but we're close. I would love to see Tammy be able to call it quits before I do. She's never been more frustrated with her job and I really don't like to see her stressed the way she's been. Toby had a rough start to the week. He was hesitating coming down the stairs in the morning as if in pain. He'd haltingly take one step at a time rather than the usual blur his little legs make when he's...

I was clicking through channels one day last week when I landed on my all-time favorite movie: Breaking Away. It didn't matter that I have it on DVD, I couldn't pull myself away from it. I remember watching it in a theater by myself in San Diego when it came out in 1979. I loved it and the connection I felt with the lead character, Dave Stoller. I brought along a couple friends from my ship the next night to see it again. It's a coming of age movie about 4 friends from Bloomington, Indiana and a growing competition (born out of their own insecurities) between them and some of the college kids in town. I guarantee you that you won't be disappointed if you take the time to watch it. As of a couple weeks ago, Rachel has a set of wheels to get around on. Her dad gave her his 2001 Toyota Camry with about 110,000 miles on it. This should be all she needs to get her through the next few years until she's more able to afford something newer. She's done well the last...

Tammy noticed our freezer in the basement had stopped working and most of its contents had melted and spilled out onto the floor. At about the same time she was telling me of the mess she'd just finished cleaning, I was reaching for a frozen pizza from the upstairs freezer and noticed that it too was struggling to keep the food frozen. Both units had power to them but something was seriously wrong. I had a tech out from Tony's Appliance in Burnsville the next day and he diagnosed the problem as a failed compressor in both the downstairs freezer and our upstairs refrigerator/freezer. I kind of figured as much. Neither one would be worth fixing. We'd had a strong storm come through two days earlier and the tech said it's quite likely that the storm could've caused a power surge that took out both units. We're just thankful it didn't happen while we were away on vacation. We'll have some new appliances delivered this week and while we wait, we're than...

There's an interesting read in Kathryn's Report about Mike Blume's crash a few weeks ago. I'll let my ATC friends make of it what you will. A photographer for the Chaska Herald sent me a photo he took of me recently while I was on a ride, stymied by the flooded Minnesota River in Jordan. I offered to pay him for it but he was kind enough to simply send me the file for my personal use. It's now serving as wallpaper on my 4-year-old Macbook Pro (photo to the left). Allie has become more skittish than ever about the sound of fireworks; so much so that it's very difficult to get her to go outside at all once late afternoon to evening rolls around. I have to tell her in my most excited voice that we're going out to see the rabbits and squirrels or she won't follow my lead. Evening walks with her are out of the question for now. Toby and Charlie don't seem to mind the noise. I hate to see our little guys getting older. Toby has recently become hesit...

There was a wake for Mike Blume on Tuesday afternoon in Burnsville. It was nice to see so many people turn out. Lots of retired controllers, some I hadn't seen in years were there. Just before 5:30, they had us all gather in the parking lot to observe a Missing Man formation flyover in tribute to Mike. It was very moving. We would all do well to be remembered so fondly. Rachel posted on Facebook a few days ago: "Someone on the lightrail exclaimed today, ""you're the scooter girl!"" Made my day." Tammy texted her to ask her what she was referring to and she replied: "I'm a 22 year old riding a razor scooter around the sidewalks of mpls. That's what it means!" I love how she's out there doing her thing and leaving impressions on people along the way. Tammy has been spending time down in the shop working on some fused glass projects. She had an idea for a small wall vase that could hold a few flowers and came up with the des...

We lost one of our former controllers/supervisors last Tuesday afternoon. Mike Blume retired eight years ago and the last I'd heard, he was flying corporate jets.  He had been a pilot for years. I never worked directly with or for Mike but I'd only ever heard good things about him. The photo to the right is the actual plane Mike was piloting when he died. Photo courtesy of John Meneely. I do have one 'Mike' story to recount from about 15 years ago. I was working a low altitude sector in Iowa and one of the planes in my sector was a single-engine aircraft that had come up from Omaha, Nebraska and was attempting to land at Mason City, Iowa. The low ceiling and poor visibility that had settled in the previous night and was forecast to lift hadn't improved at all. The pilot was qualified to make an instrument approach but if I remember correctly, she didn't have the approach plates (diagram of the approach) for Mason City. Controllers in the sector can relay the...

Wow, halfway through June already! The weeks seem to come and go so quickly now without any hesitation at all. I remember as a kid my older brother Bryan explaining why that is. He said that each year is less of a percentage of your life when compared or contrasted against all of your previous years and because of that, each subsequent year seems shorter than the previous year. It makes sense. As a 5-year-old, a year would seem like such a long time at 20% of your life but at age 56 (where I'm at for another couple months), one year equals only 1.8% of my life. There is no slowing this train down! We made it to Foci on Wednesday night but only to pick up our work from the previous week. The studio has been very busy lately and slot times can be hard to find if you don't plan well enough ahead of time. This coming week isn't looking so good either. I was pleased with the one and only piece of mine that made it into the annealer last week—another candle votive. I keep thi...