Cruising.

Why do I keep dreaming about cars? Last night I had a dream that I was driving a busted up bug down the road and having a blast. I can understand that because I love old VWs and, not so long ago, I was delivering pizzas in my busted up bug. In the week leading up to last night, every dream had a car in it. In one, I was driving a Corvette that I was considering buying. That's crazy because I've never had the slightest interest in owning a Corvette. In another dream, I was riding in the back seat of a large convertible car. My step father was driving and my twin brothers were in the other two seats. I don't remember what it was about but I do get an ominous feeling when I recall the riding in the convertible. In yet another dream, I was trapped in some sedan that wouldn't let me out until I drove it to my dad's house. Then it let me free. This is all very strange to me because I rarely remember my dreams anymore. Usually I just wake up and, as soon as I become conscious, the dream will fade from memory. The only thing I can remember, most of the time, is the overall feeling the dream gave me. So why the cars and the ability to remember all of a sudden?

Maybe it's guilt over not having worked much on my dune buggy in the last couple weeks.
It could be that my mind is having a sub-conscious mid life crisis.
I suppose it could be my mind crying out for more family interaction.
Do I need another road trip?
WTF???

I'll take '80s slang for $100 Alex.

Recently I've had people tell me that I need to speak to reflect my age. I tell them "Dude, I'm totally flowing like a thirty-three year old!" Why is it that when we reach a certain age that we have to completely grow up verbally? Every generation has their own slang and terms that define them as a member of said generation. Why do I have to give up who I am just because I reached some magic age? I grant you that I may be showing my age by using outdated slang but it doesn't make me any less intelligent regardless of what you think. Don't let some guy that used to answer how he was feeling with "groovy" or "phat" tell you you sound like a goober.

Like, hang loose dudes!

The crapper is going down the crapper.

I was thinking about my last post and now I'm starting to wonder if I have some sort of public restroom mental trauma. It seems that a bunch of crap about them gets to me. These things only apply to public bathrooms.

Some "issues" I seem to have...

-I have trouble just walking into a public restroom. I always study the sign on the door as I enter. I think this stems from being a little kid in grade school and wandering into the girls bathroom one time. I was teased mercilessly by my peers about it for the entire day. Now I have a complex about wandering into the wrong restroom. As a matter of fact, I never relax about this problem until I see the urinals after walk in. Lord help me if the signs on the doors are ambiguous. I was at a steak house one time and the doors had no letters. Just pictures. They were of bovine heads. One had horns on it the other did not. I thought to myself "Cows can have horns too. Can't they?" Just walking into a restroom can make me question reality I guess.

-I must flush a urinal or toilet before I use it.

-If I am standing at a long line of empty urinals, I get pissed when someone uses the one right next me. This is akin to standing in someone's personal space in the middle of an empty room. It's not necessary and makes me uncomfortable.

-When standing at the urinal, my eyes remain forward at all times. I pick a spot on the wall and lock on to it until I'm done. This is mostly just self preservation. I don't want my ass kicked by some homophobic prick who thinks I was checking out his package.

-I already covered my toilet seat issue.

-Giant rolls of the thinnest paper known to man kind. Try to pull some out and you only get what is trapped between your thumb and index finger.

-Stall doors that have no locks on them.

-Why must assholes wipe their boogers on the fucking wall? For crying out loud, there is paper for you to blow your nose within arms reach.

-First it was hand dryers. A paper towel, while not as environmentally friendly, is cleaner and faster. Dryers create a bottle neck to dry your hands in a busy restroom. I feel that my life is wasting away as I dry my hands. The fucking things never get your hands dry on the first cycle. Second was the sinks with the push button faucet. You jam the button down and have no control over the temperature or how long it will stay on. Most of the time I end up holding the button down with one hand while the other is under the water because the damn things don't work at all. Now they have sensors on everything. The toilets, urinals, sinks and towel dispensers all have these useless things on them. Gone are the days of the courtesy flush. Now I have to find the damn sweet spot under the sink to get the water running and after I start rubbing my hands together the damn thing shuts off. The towel machines are just as retarded. I feel like a pathetic Jedi waving my hand in front of the sensor to no avail.

Am I just crazy or does it seem like "The Man" is taking control of my sanitary life? Did I leave something out? Comment below.

A note to all my fellow men out there,

Stop pissing on the toilet seat. Take two friggin seconds to lift the damn thing up. If you're scared to touch the seat, go somewhere and find a urinal. Man I hate it when I have to go #2 and there are yellow droplets all over the place. I know you don't piss on your own seat so stop pissing on the public seats.

Please wash your friggin hands when you're done. I heard or read somewhere that 30% of men don't wash their hands after they use the bathroom. I think, from personal observation, the true number is closer to 45%. There should be an alarm over the men's room door that flashes in red neon every time a guy doesn't wash. Every time I shake another guys hand I wonder which side of the hygiene fence he sits. I guarantee a larger percentage of women wash their hands and they don't even touch themselves. Guys be warned. If I see you not washing your hands, I will go out of my way to let who ever you're with know that you didn't.

The road home.

The country road has slight bends and small rolling hills. The terrain varies from open fields to dense forested patches. Homes of every variety and shape flank each side. There are old wooden homes that look like they have soaked up the smell of home cooked meals for a hundred years. Small brick ranches on large plots are common. There are also huge plantation style homes with two story pillars and white horse fences that seem to stretch for miles. Signs of new development are apparent as, every mile or so, you pass a newly sprouted sub division. The cookie cutter homes in these communities seem stacked on top of each other and crowded when compared the rest of the homes that line the two lane blacktop. The way dips and rises again one last time before the concrete gives way to gravel. At the base of the hill is small white church in a stand of trees off to the left. Shortly after crossing onto the unimproved surface there is a bridge that spans a low marshy area. Looking to your right as you cross the bridge there is an old tree trunk visible through the pines with a large nest perched atop. The tree seems to have given its barkless skeleton the will to hold on for its occupant. Continuing up the gravel surface, the terrain rises again and the marsh gives way to more trees and homes are nestled between them in harmony. Sometimes the only hint there are homes at all are the mail boxes marking the driveways. The air smells damp and fresh as the trees pump out their life giving oxygen. The temperature seem to have dropped a few degrees from the shade supplied by nature.

The driveway has a small dogleg that won't allow for a direct view of the property. My home is barely visible from the right of way thanks to the multitude of trees that stand guard. My sentinels are of every variety. There are tall pines, dogwoods, hickories, tulip maples, and white oaks among their ranks. The floor of the wooded property is untouched. I let it grow wild because I think it's beautiful. The gravel driveway has a slight downward slope and grass grows from the center where my tires never touch. Once in full view, my home appears to be a cape cod. My abode is tall enough to accommodate two full stories but it is, in fact, a ranch. There are three dormers protruding from the roof in the front that add astetic appeal to the place. As the roof slopes down it covers the eight foot wide front porch that runs the length of the front of my home. An attached two car garage is on the right. The marginally kempt yard takes up a very small portion of the three acre property and makes my home more at peace with the nature surrounding it. A rock path leads from the driveway to the front steps. I made this path with a variety of natural stones that came from my property. The taupe siding and black shutters are pleasing to my eye and lend themselves to the natural harmony of my personal sanctuary. The building is constructed on an uneven parcel of land. As you move around to the rear of the home, the topography drops more sharply. From the rear, the house looks even bigger than it does from the front because of the sloping nature of the plot. Another covered porch in the rear mirrors the one in the front. The only difference is this porch sits seven feet off the ground unlike the front which is low to the earth. A bay window surveys the land on the garage side. Under the bay window is the door leading to the basement which is level with the terrain on this side of the house. Turning to face the back of my land all you can see is nature. The yard is small here as well. It simplifies maintenance and compliments the natural beauty of the Georgia woods. Beyond the grass, the trees take over again and nature is queen. The land in the rear is segmented by the natural brook that runs through the trees. Hundreds of years of erosion have created a peninsula in my back woods. After a hard rain, you can hear the water gurgling along as it continues on it's path to the north.

The diversity of wildlife I see from my back porch is amazing. I regularly see deer as they pick their way through my property to get a drink. Several times I've had to stop in the driveway to let them pass. It's so quiet in the woods that squirrels sound like elephants tromping through the brush as they forage. One morning I saw a pair of foxes walking across my back yard and wondered about the safety of my cats. At least once per week I see a hawk following the brook as it searches for prey and imagine it lives in the dead tree down the road. Fireflies are abundant in the evening. I can hear owls at night and a possum passes through regularly on her midnight quest for tasty morsels. In the morning the sound of birds is almost deafening.

I live on three acres of natural bliss. Sometimes I feel guilty that my home is invading this little slice of heaven.

Plenty of time to sleep when your dead.

...Or when the lack of sleep kills you.

I have a love/hate relationship with my work schedule. I work a four day week with rotating shifts. I basically work 3 1/2 days on and 3 1/2 off. During my days off, I love my schedule but once I return to work, my life is over until I get done with my fourth shift. My schedule looks something like this.

Thurs 2pm-12am...10 hours off...- 30 min drive time each way = 9...- showers and food = 8 for sleep
Fri 10am-8pm...9 hours off...- 30 min drive time each way = 8...- showers and food = 7 for sleep
Sat 5am-3pm...8 hours off...- 30 min drive time each way = 7...- showers and food = 6 for sleep
Sat/Sun 10pm-8am

The result is that I put a 40 hour work week into 64 hours. My total time available for sleep during this 64 hour week is 18 hours. Under the ideal conditions listed above I do pretty well coping with it. On days like today, however, I have a rough time of it. Unless I'm dead tired I have trouble getting to sleep. It seems that I can run around all day like a zombie and think of nothing but, as soon as my head hits the pillow, my brain decides it's time to go into over drive. IT SUCKS! My brain just wanders all over the place and I can't turn it off. As of right now I have had a whopping ten hours of sleep since Thursday morning and I still have seven hours to go on this last shift.

Thank goodness for a loud stereo and a fast car or I would end up in a ditch on the way home.

If you can't stand the heat...

It's sunny and almost 90 degrees here in Georgia today. Most people think it's too hot. Even though my ancestors are from Finland, I live for this kind of weather. I guess growing up in Nevada, California, and Florida just beat the ancestry out of me.

My favorite weather has always been the eighty degree nights in the desert. I always thought it was so cool to feel a warm breeze from terrestrial radiation after the sun was long down.

What's your favorite weather? Hit the comment button and let me know.

Its all about the responsibility.

If you have the time, I would like you to go to http://www.atcmonitor.com/ somewhere between five and eight PM eastern time on any given day and listen to these professionals guide these planes in. There is even a radar image you can click to see what the controller is looking at.
The controllers union is currently fighting in Washington to get the FAA to return to the bargaining table for contract negotiations. The FAA wants to cut wages and unilaterally impose a contract on the controllers by refusing to bargain. The FAA is looking for 1.9 billion in cuts and the union has agreed to 1.4. The general argument is that controllers get paid more money than other government workers. The powers that be think that they should be paid along the lines of other public servants. One senator has compared ATC to the salaries of police and firemen and even those in public office.

People get paid for their responsibility. A controllers job is one of the most stressful in existence. I went to http://www.atcmonitor.com/ earlier for a snapshot. The controller was working eight planes. This was an extremely light workload for the controllers that work that arrival. Lets say that there was fifty people on each airplane which is a laughable number since your small jet airliners will hold a hundred people pretty easy. But lets just say there was only fifty people on each of those eight planes. During that snapshot the controller, during a slow period mind you, was responsible for four hundred lives. In that one instant he had more lives in his hands than a police officer, fireman, and even a doctor will have in their entire careers combined. Now do you really want to tell him that he should take a pay cut, work longer hours, and have staffing reduced? I sure as hell don't.

Atlanta Air Route Control Center averages around 9000 operations per day. When I multiply that by our fifty passenger number I'm thinking we need to give those folks a raise.

The only show I don't miss.

Penn & Teller, Bullshit! is the best show on TV. If you don't have Showtime, go to the video store and rent a season on DVD.