Category Archives: Paul

December 22, 2015 · 22:15

Painting & Wine

There’s a new “thing” out there in the cultural zeitgeist, at least here in SoCal, where ordinary people with little or no artistic training (or talent) get together to drink wine and paint a picture. It can be done as a date night sort of thing, or a group can rent out the whole place for a couple hours for a team building type of thing.

The Long-Suffering Wife did it a while back with a group from her place of employment – she thought it was fantastic. I had my opportunity last night as we had our office Christmas party at one of these places.

The Long-Suffering Wife was correct. It was a lot of fun. It also helped that I was at a Christmas party with people I really enjoy working with in a company that I really like. And the wine was pretty good.

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Big strokes, gobs of paint. It’s a bit like follow the leader or painting by numbers. Small, simple steps, with instructors wandering around to help – everyone’s was recognizable as coming from the “master” image we were copying, but they were all quite individual.

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We’re using acrylics. It’s interesting to see how many people worry about doing it “right.” There is no “right.” You’re with friends, you’re drinking wine, chill and play with it!

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My biggest problem was technical – the most fine, narrow lines I wanted to do were like using one of those super fat markers. I’m sure I would get it with practice.

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Dabbing, however, I excelled at. (This is your surprised face…)

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I was sorely tempted from the beginning to deliberately go off the rails, using the wrong colors and/or painting something completely different than everyone else was. (Next time, for sure!)

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This is the one finished by our instructor, which is what we were trying for (in theory).

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This is mine. Not great, but not bad since it’s about thirty-six years since I last painted. That’s the advantage to going off the rails – if no one knows what it’s supposed to look like, no one can tell you how much you missed the mark.

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Finally, the walls are lined with hundreds of other pictures that you can paint in different classes, including this one. I kept asking which one was Morrissey, but the only person who got the joke was one of the instructors.

Kids these days!

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Filed under Art, Habitat For Humanity, Paul, Photography

December 18, 2015 · 23:20

CAF SoCal Wing Christmas Party

Excellent party, cold in that big drafty hangar. Good thing I had on a clever & snappy hat to go with that nice suit!

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December 16, 2015 · 23:04

In A Fog

Another side effect of the (extremely desirable and wonderful) change of the last month is that I’ve left behind and lost touch with many of the weekly benchmarks that I had gotten used to when I was looking for work. (Isn’t “looking for work” a much more denial-compliant euphemism than “unemployed?”)  As a result, there’s a recurring feeling of being a bit disoriented from time to time.

It’s ironic since that’s the exact problem I was so worried about in reverse when I stopped having a nine-to-five job.

I had the routine of a nine-to-five, Monday through Friday job, where I had daily, weekly, monthly, and annual routines at work, routines that I had developed for over twenty-five years, routines that were practically embedded in my DNA.

Then they were gone.

One of my biggest fears then was that I would end up losing touch, adrift, sitting on the couch all day watching “Oprah” and “The Price Is Right” while socking away a pint of ice cream every day and not shaving or changing clothes for days at a time. There was a black hole there that I dared not to approach.

So I imposed new routines. I set self-imposed quotas for applications and resumes. I set self-imposed standards on my daily activities to ward off those demons. I got into the CAF and got a routine there, three days a week out at the hangar. That was critical.

Most importantly, I started writing here.

The darkness was held at bay. Sometimes it could be felt drawing closer, but it was still outside, not inside.

Now I’m making the reverse transition. But instead of transitioning from the abnormal back to the normal, I’m finding that I spent long enough in the “abnormal” to make it normal. Once again I’m transitioning from the normal to the abnormal, even if the “normal” is the “new normal” and the “abnormal” is the “old normal”.

I don’t go out to the hangar three days a week. While many parts of my self-imposed regimen have now become habit and will continue, the “optional” parts have almost all been shed in the face of limited time and sleep.

Yet I haven’t yet quite gotten into the new routine. I can see it from here, but it’s not anywhere near ingrained into my psyche, let alone my DNA.

So here I am, betwixt two worlds. Headed in the right direction without a doubt, yet still having to stop and think several times a day to remember what day of the week it is. I know if I’ve got a meeting on my calendar (three of them today, with a fourth cancelled!) but that’s short term information, not part of the big picture.

So if occasionally I seem a bit dazed and confused, just remember what a long, strange trip it’s been. Some times I’m just livin’ on a prayer.

I wanna be sedated.

(Okay, that was a cheap cop out of an ending, but it’s after 23:00.)

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December 14, 2015 · 22:26

Breathe

You remember how, don’t you?

I know, sometimes you forget. There’s so much to focus on and your body will take care of the breathing, right? It’s your automatic system! Autoneurotic system? Autonomic system? Close enough!

The new job is great, having a wonderful time every day so far. But there’s so much to learn and so much to do and getting up to speed and hitting the ground running and putting your shoulder to the grindstone and your nose to the wheel is easy when there’s adrenaline involved (ask for it by name!), but it does take it’s toll.

And the holidays! And the family! And dealing with the missing mother and dog! And deadlines, some of them shooting by like exploding flak over Berlin as you tear though at 500 mph in a Spitfire or Mustang. (By the way, if you want to see a real, flying Spitfire or Mustang, or even ride in the Mustang, well…you know.)  And the self-imposed need to get something creative out here every night, even with an inattentive and possibly substance abusing muse. (Although she’s doing pretty well tonight, I had none of this ten minutes ago.) And no time to exercise or run, despite how much you know you should, even though you don’t want to, and you know the more you don’t want to and the more you don’t have time means all the more that you really should do it. (Okay, I said the muse had some great ideas tonight. No one said anything about paragraph structure or grammar.)

And all of a sudden you realize that while you’re breathing, you can’t remember the last time you were BREATHING.

So all of you reading this, now or later, here or there, hither or yon, hunky or dorey – STOP.

A deep breathe in. Slowly. All the way. Stretch that diaphragm. Fill yourself up.

Hold it. Three. Two. One.

Let it out. Slowly. Get ride of it all. Empty your lungs right down to your kneecaps.

Hold it. Drei. Zwei. Eins.

Repeat as needed.

You’re welcome.

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December 11, 2015 · 21:15

Parking Lot In Sunlight

A few days ago I showed night pictures from the parking lot of the office building where I’ve just started working. I noted that it was across the freeway from the big Kaiser Permanente hospital. I also showed how the parking lot lights were like poster children for light pollution.

Today I was out there during the day, so it seemed natural to take more pictures to share.

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At night, the big, illuminated sign on the KP hospital stands out like a beacon. During the day, the eucalyptus trees dominate the scene. If you didn’t know there was a big hospital over there, you probably wouldn’t notice it from this angle.

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Trust me, it’s there.

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What will really screw up your night vision is that freakishly bright thing in the sky up there now!

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December 5, 2015 · 21:26

Back At The Hangar – This Place Looks Familiar!

After two years of being out at the CAF hangar in Camarillo (jeez, just hit the “CAF'” category on the right or put the word “hangar” into the search box, prepare to be inundated) pretty much three days a week minimum, occasionally more, occasionally much more, it was odd this week to not be going out there.

Mind you, assuming you’ve been paying attention, this is AN EXTREMELY GOOD THING because it meant I was having a wonderful time (really, I wouldn’t BS you – well, okay, we all know that’s BS too and I would, but in this case I’m not – promise – see, this is me grinning ear to ear in an extremely honest and convincing fashion!) in my first week at my new job. In addition, much of what I do as CAF SoCal Finance Officer can be done by email, phone, at at home, which is in fact what was happening in the evenings.

I know, I’m rambling. Sorry. (See, there was some of that BS I was talking about earlier!)

Rather than my usual five or six hours at the hangar on Saturday, today turned into a nine-hour-plus day. Not surprising, in part because all of my dear friends there wanted to hear all about the new job thing, but also because I had to catch up on a whole week of stuff that I couldn’t do from home.

Have I lost you yet?

Anyway, aside from my issues and work load and narcissistic, self-centered point of view, we had a nice presentation today regarding our Zero fighter . This was timed to coincide (sorta) with Monday’s anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into World War II.

I was busy during the presentation (see above comments about catching up on a week’s work) but will watch it later since our website and public relations guys were using two of my video cameras to record it. Later in the afternoon though, it was time to fly! After the obligatory little glitches, obviously. For that, I pried myself away from the computer and out onto the ramp.

We launched our Zero and our P-51 Mustang to fly together, since they were the dominant fighters for the Japanese and United States. Despite the fact that it was windy and getting more windy fast (15 knots, gusting to 20 maybe?), and the fact that there were all of a sudden about two dozen planes lined up to take off and a couple dozen more coming in to land, which is a very busy day at Camarillo, we got up, waited for a little bit of the air traffic to abate, and then made four passes with the two planes.

Like this:

You can hear the wind gusting about, but better yet, you can hear the roar of those big engines!

 

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December 3, 2015 · 22:51

My Issues With Horses

One thing this site has brought me is some good friends who I have never met in person. One such would be the lovely woman who writes the “Musings From A Tangled Mind” blog. (It’s wonderful, you should subscribe and read regularly.)

The other day she posted this, I went and made some smartass comment (as is my wont), she responded with a goofy answer, and we went back and forth (see the comments section on her post), I ended up saying, “I’ve got some old issues with horses…” and she ended up saying, “I can tell. LOL 😀 You should tell that story too. Cause now I’m curious.”

Ok, I can tell this story half asleep (the first full week at the new job has been wonderful, but the days are long and my sleep is short), so here’s one for you, Wendy:

I was maybe nineteen. I’m pretty sure I was out of my parents’ house by that time. We were all living in Orange County, California, they in Huntington Beach and I in Westminster, a couple of exits north on the 405 Freeway.

There came to pass a weekend trip out to Temecula. These days Temecula is a land of wineries and hot air balloons, but in the mid 1970’s it was a dusty, small town out in the middle of the desert. We went to visit some long lost relative of my father’s, possible a cousin.

My father came from the dirt farmers of southeast South Dakota, and with very few exceptions (my father being one of them) they’re still dirt farmers. Or at least they have a lot of dirt farmer blood in them. (And before anyone gets their knickers twisted over the term “dirt farmer,” I learned it from them and they wear it as a badge of honor and pride, not an insult.)

My father’s cousin had the sort of place you can still see out in the desert,but they’ve moved out a hundred miles or so as the urbanization and gentrification has taken over. Now you find places like this out in Anza, Mohave, and Agua Dulce.

Nothing paved. Dirt, dirt, and more dirt. A nice A-frame house, just fine for one person. Rough fences everywhere, made mostly of really old, weathered, skinny, broken tree trunks. Plus the odd cactus and wad of barbed wire.

I’m the oldest of eight kids (it’s not just the dirt that’s fertile in southeast South Dakota) and we were all there. It was hot as hell, we were (as usual) fighting all the way for the two hour drive out there, and there was nothing to do. I doubt he even had a television to distract us, and this is way, WAY before the days of smart phones, pocket game consoles, and DirecTv.

At some point, the cousin asks if we want to go horseback riding. Sure, a couple of us will give it a shot even though it’s slightly hotter than the surface of the sun out there. Why not? At least if we get heat stroke we’ll get to ride in a nice, air conditioned ambulance to a nice, air conditioned emergency room.

Out to the barn and there are two horses. The first is named something like “Widowmaker T-Rex” and he looks a lot like those red-eyed, fire-breathing beasts the Ring Wraiths rode in the Lord of the Rings movies. The second is an old, old, old swayback mare who had three hooves already in the glue factory.

My youngest sister, who was ten or eleven at the time, walks up to the pawing, rearing, hell demon of a beast and starts petting its nose and the demon beast says, “Ooooh, yeah, that feels good! Right there. A little more towards that ear. Yes, right there!”

She mounts up, having to my knowledge never been on a horse in her life, and ten minutes later is doing moves like she’s trying out for the Olympic dressage team.

I’m her big brother, I can’t let her show me up!

I start to mount up, have problems, but eventually get on the swayback mare. Who sees demon beast prancing around out in the yard and sees her chance. She takes off like a bat out of hell out of the barn, through the corral, and toward the road. Freedom! Sweet freedom! Let my people go! With a hearty heigh-oh silver, away!

I’m clinging to her neck for dear life. As we head off down the road and I’m considering something stupid (like jumping off head first into some cactus while she’s running at top speed) or even more stupid (like trying to regain control – after all, I am the 19-year-old male human full of testosterone, right?) I hear in the distance, fading behind me, my father’s cousin yelling, “Just let her go and don’t fall off. She’ll come back home eventually on her own!”

Eventually she did, forty-five minutes to an hour later, with me still clinging to her neck for dear life and hurting in places that I didn’t know I had places.

There’s only one thing that could make it worse. Well, make that seven things, as in my brothers and sisters. The teasing was merciless.

Meanwhile, the swayback mare has had her fun and is now home, ready for a nap. She heads to the barn, through the corral – where my eight-and-a-half-years-younger-than-I  sister is still practicing dressage, yelling”Isn’t this cool! You should try it!”

Absolutely 100% (which equals 80% to 85% here) true, I swear.

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November 30, 2015 · 22:21

A Day For Celebrating!

It was the first day at my new job and it was fantastic! I think this is going to be a great experience for me.

And, it’s the last day of NaNoWriMo 2015 and I’ve “won”! I’ve hit 50,257 words in fifteen chapters, and I even know how the story ends (I think) in about five more chapters!

What do we use for celebrations?

FIREWORKS!!!

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November 29, 2015 · 15:24

A Time Of Changes — Again

944 days and 1,043 articles ago, I scribbled out 532 words about some changes happening in my life, how I should try to do more writing, what I was thinking of writing about, why my brand new website was called “We Love The Stars too Fondly,” and welcoming everyone to join me.

As you now know, at that point I was 104 days into what would become 1,048 days without a regular, paying job. I remember by that point realizing this particular time of changes was not going to be easy to endure or quickly resolved. I also realized there was a path paved with poor life choices leading to a quart of ice cream daily, Judge Judy, Oprah, and looking a lot like a 400-pound version of Howard Hughes. Not wanting to end up on that path, I chose to create a new path for myself, forcing myself to get into the routine of writing and publishing every day.

This website was one of the keys to staying focused, staying disciplined, staying true to staying on the alternate path, and never giving up. There were of course other keys, especially the undying support of The Long-Suffering Wife and my family. Getting involved with the Commemorative Air Force Southern California Wing as their finance officer also has been critical, as well as my involvement in NASA Socials over the last year.

Now we’re at the crossroads of another “Time Of Changes.” This one is as firmly based in good news as that previous one was in bad news, but that doesn’t mean the scope and depth of the changes won’t be as significant.

It’s not rocket science to see that a major component separating the two fates is simply how time was spent during those 1,048 days. It’s also obvious that some of those activities will have to take a back seat as the new job takes its spot near the top of my priority list.

The new job will no doubt involve a significant commitment and many hours. This is a good thing. (And by ‘good,’ I mean ‘fantastic’ and ‘spectacular.’) There will be many changes and a learning curve to deal with, but again, good thing! It’s a time of changes.

My CAF schedule will shift, but I’m confident I’ll still be able to fulfill my duties there. The new day job office is very near home and not significantly out of the way from my home-to-CAF route, so I’ll be able to get out to the hangar in the evening if it’s occasionally necessary. I will have to allocate more of my evening hours to keeping current there from home, but that’s what telecommuting is all about. There will be many fewer hours hanging out at the airport and playing with the planes, but that’s a necessary trade off I’ll live with. It’s a time of changes.

It’s likely there won’t be any NASA Socials for me for a while. Since they’re normally on weekdays and I won’t have any vacation or personal time for a while, most of the Socials will be victims of the time conflict. Again, a necessary trade off I’ll live with. There is always the possibility of a Social being held at Vandenberg or JPL for some event on the weekend (the next SpaceX launch from Vandyland, perhaps?) if I get lucky, and eventually I’ll have the option to take a day or two off if I need to go to a Social, but for now – it’s a time of changes.

Finally, while I’ll continue to try to post something here every day, I won’t be as obsessed about it if (when? yeah, it will be when) I have to miss a day here and there. But I will not be abandoning or shuttering this website in any way. It may be a time of changes, but that doesn’t mean I’ll easily walk away from something which has become such an integral part of what I do and who I am.

I expect in the short term I’ll often be more harried, busy, and occasionally within shouting distance of overwhelmed. That will be balanced by being more happy, confident, and secure.

Emotionally, I’m often not a huge fan of change, but intellectually I know it’s always inevitable and usually necessary. When I’ve faced those fears and doubts (it’s that whole “being an adult’ thing), I’ve survived all sorts of changes in the past ten years, including graduate school, flight training, and the aforementioned  1,048 days.

This is not an end, but the beginning of a new chapter.

I’m going to kick this transition’s ass!

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November 25, 2015 · 22:54

The Day After

(This is going to be a mess. My brain is all over the place.)

It’s tough losing someone, tougher for a close family member. It’s statistically likely for most of us that we’ll lose a parent before we lose a spouse, child, or sibling. In my limited experience, it’s different when you lose someone after a long illness and steady decline, as opposed to a sudden and unexpected death.

We also really are conditioned to not say “death,” but “passing” or any one of a hundred other euphemisms. Even when aware of it and trying to avoid it, it’s hard.

We lost my father in 2002. It was sudden, a bolt out of the blue. He had made it through some significant, life-threatening health problems for a few years before that, and in many ways those were more stressful to me. Seeing him in ICU after extensive surgery was hard.

Getting the call from my mom, telling me that Dad had died, that was one of those life moments that you remember forever. It goes into the same class as where you were when Kennedy was shot, when Apollo 11 landed, when Challenger exploded, when the planes hit the towers on 9/11. But those moments are shared globally, where a family death is intensely personal. (I also remember other good things just as vividly, such as the births of each of my children, getting the call that I had been accepted at Annapolis, my first solo flight, passing my private pilot check ride… You get the picture.)

With my dad’s death, as well as that of my first wife, the news was sudden. In both cases, to a certain extent I went on “cruise control” for a few days. I focused on being a help to others, particularly my kids and mother. I think that’s more of an “adult thing” than a “guy thing,” but I could be wrong. I guess it depends on the individual.

With my mother, she had also had a couple of serious health issues, but we were somewhat isolated by distance with her in Vermont and us in California. When her stroke happened in July it was apparent within a week or two that her life had changed permanently. This was not going to be something she would “recover” from, but rather something she would have to adjust and compensate to as best as she could. When that adjustment started to problematic, I went back to Vermont for two weeks to see her and to be there for her 80th birthday.

Since then, her decline had been gradual, but steady. Psychologically for us, it became the new normal, with an ending that seemed unavoidable. The only question was one of timing. In my head, I dealt with much of the shock and mourning back in July and August, but that was tempered by the opportunity to see her then.

And it gave me a chance to say good bye. I don’t know if I expected to ever see her again when I left, although I had been thinking of going out between Christmas and New Year’s if she made it that far. Last week it became pretty obvious that she wouldn’t, and on Monday we got word that the priests had been there to give her Last Rites.

My brothers and sister back in Vermont have had to deal with her illness and decline on a whole different level, as well as my sister here in California who has been handling the legal, financial, and medical paperwork. I’ve been helping where possible, but still one step removed.

The funeral’s been set for December 5th, and while I want to be there and feel that I should be there (guilt, oldest child, Guilt, Catholic school, GUILT!), the reality is that it’s not going to happen. At the time I came home in mid-August there was another hot job prospect I was talking to, and we knew then that if I got that job and then Mom passed away while I was just starting the new job, I wouldn’t be able to take four or five days off to go back to Vermont. The exact timing’s changed, but the logic and the situation haven’t. It has nothing to do with my new employers – unless someone there is reading this website, they don’t even know about Mom’s death yet.

It has to do with me and what I need to do to go forward. It’s not that I don’t want to go, it’s not that I’m afraid to go, it’s not that I’m being forbidden to go, it’s not that I’m in denial, or anything else like that. It’s that going would be for someone else’s benefit, and I don’t know who that might be. It’s not for mom, or dad. My brothers and sisters know my position and they agree that I shouldn’t come if I’m not comfortable taking the time off, essentially missing my first week of work at a new job. I’ve got another brother who’s in a similar position, and we all had the same discussions and came to the same conclusions three months ago.

Going back to the funeral wouldn’t be for me, either. I said my goodbyes in August, and I’ll remember my mother as she was in all of those pictures, movies, videos, and how we saw her this summer. She knew we were there and was aware of what we were telling her and why we were there. I don’t have to go to the funeral at all costs in order to have closure. I’ll do my remembering and mourning from here.

Even though it’s been thirteen years since my father died, I still often will think of something that I want to ask him or tell him about. Then I catch myself and remember that it’s not going to happen. The same sometimes happens with a memory related to my first wife, or other close friends that have left us. (Another euphemism!)

Already in the past two days I’ve had the same thing happen with Mom, and it will continue to happen. But that’s okay, it’s supposed to. The world has changed yet again and we’ll cope, adjust, remember, mourn, and move ahead.

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