Thursday, May 18, 2006
Hey!
So, just quick-like, I finished my novel. It’s done! Finito! I’m thinking about trying to get it published, just to see if I can. I’ll probably have to edit it, I guess. But whatever, first draft is done! Gotta get that thing up on a website somewhere so people can download it if they want, for now, but if you want to read it (and perhaps provide some feedback?) just drop me an e-mail and I’ll send it all off to you. Thirteen chapters. Shabam!
-N
So, just quick-like, I finished my novel. It’s done! Finito! I’m thinking about trying to get it published, just to see if I can. I’ll probably have to edit it, I guess. But whatever, first draft is done! Gotta get that thing up on a website somewhere so people can download it if they want, for now, but if you want to read it (and perhaps provide some feedback?) just drop me an e-mail and I’ll send it all off to you. Thirteen chapters. Shabam!
-N
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
J(5) has returned from the dark, nether-reaches of the Amazonian jungle and other such parts unknown, not really that much the worse for wear. A couple scrapes and scratches, but honestly nothing much worse than she’d get from Tigger. So yay! I’m all excited, my girl’s back.
I got to feel all clever because, being as I’m all cleared for all this flight stuff, I’m actually cleared to walk around all those hidden places in the airport that normal people aren’t allowed to go. Those doors that have a keypad and mag-swipe? I can get behind them. I can check and see what’s on the other side. I could walk out and help them direct the plane into position if I wanted to. I have that sort of access…that sort of POWER. It’s a good feeling. Makes me feel like more of a man.
Anyway, my roommate actually pointed out that since I had that badge, I could go through security and meet J(5) at the terminal. It would have been, at most, a two minute extra wait until I saw J(5) again, but anyone who had been talking to me at all that past week would have been able to tell you that I was not willing to wait that extra two minutes. So I decided to go through security and meet her at the terminal. It was actually pretty neat, if for no other reason than I figured out how the whole process worked. Good to know for whenever I need to use that POWER again.
Anyway, I got to the terminal about 20 minutes before her plane got in, near midnight. She had been delayed 5 hours out of Lima, and then her updated flight from Miami to LA had been an hour late. Not to mention that in order to get to Lima, she had taken a flight the day before and had been up all night waiting for her flight the next day. So I was fully expecting a totally jetlagged girlfriend to walk off that plane. Rough day of flight.
I was standing in front of a rolled-down door in front of some airport store or another, reading a book, because I had brought one to pass the last few minutes, when I saw people start to get off the plane. My heart was quite literally pounding away inside my chest. I could feel it thumping away in there. Whumpa-whumpa-whumpa.
It was 12:09 when I saw J(5) get off the plane. Now I hadn’t told her that I would be waiting for her at the terminal, since I didn’t think that I could until that very evening. So she, immediately, zipped out past me and started to cruise out to the roadside pickup, where she expected me to be waiting. Well I chased off after her, intending to stop her and say hi, but I realized something very important. When we first saw each other, there was going to be hugging. A lot of hugging. We were just going to stand there and give some standing cuddles for probably about 5 or ten minutes. That’s just the way we are. We hug. So I couldn’t just stop her anywhere. I had to pick my moment. There was an important decision to be made here.
Well when I first caught up to her, she was just about to pass through the outgoing security checkpoint. Clearly this location wouldn’t do. We can’t just stand there under the critical, scrutinizing eye of Airport security. Knowing these geniuses, they’d probably think we were terrorists...albeit huggy ones…and have us arrested. So security wouldn’t do. Well right after the security checkpoint were stairs. And I couldn’t say hi there. Other than the problem of trying to hug while at different altitudes, there’s a good chance that hearing my voice would cause J(5) to whip around with surprise and happiness, but if she tried to do that on stairs, she could break an ankle! Terribly unsafe! See? You have to think your way through these things. Cuddling is good stuff, but if you do it wrong, someone could get hurt! Well, at the bottom of the stairs, I judged the moment to be right. I said, “looking for someone?” and J(5) whipped around. True to form, she dropped her backpack right away, zipped back to me, and just latched on. We hugged for about 5 minutes, and then went home.
Since then, only the fact that we don’t work in the same area has kept us apart. We missed each other, and we have a lot of snuggling to catch up on.
Also, last week, one of my projects reached it’s culmination with a series of three (not four, as previously reported) flight tests, during which we did various awesome things. In summary, all three flights went *amazingly* well, everyone involved, from the customer to our management, was absolutely thrilled, and I got to stay home Thursday and Friday. I didn’t, however, get to drop into Vegas. Guess I’ll just have to visit later. Next up, we must get all our ducks in a row, and then figure out what the next step is. That’ll take a while, but we have some time to get ourselves ready.
More important than that, though, I got a flight suit.
As part of getting cleared for all this flying stuff, Raytheon bought me three things: a flight suit, a flight jacket, and steel-toed shoes. None of it cheap! I got the shoes a couple of days before we flew, and they look like high-tops, more or less. Let me tell you though, if you anger this here TKD master while I’m wearing my steel-toed boots, you are going to have some mighty impressive toe-guard shaped bruises to report to your HMO.
The flight suit is crazy-awesome-cool, though. It’s all nomex, and has more pockets then a herd of kangaroos. J(5), being a woman who appreciates a man in uniform, thinks it’s one of the neatest things I own, and I tend to agree. The flight jacket gets in in…uh…6 to 8 weeks, I think. They were back-ordered. I got some project patches to go with the suit, though, so that’s all quite impressive.
You might be wondering why I haven’t taken any pictures of all of this yet. Well…my camera got stolen. It’s an interesting story, though, so I might as well tell it. I had been loaning my camera to J(5) for her trip, and, of course, right at the end of the trip it got stolen out of her backpack while on an overnight bus. Stranger still, though, the thief only took the camera, an MP3 player, and one J(5)’s traveling companion’s cell phones. He left behind cash and passports, making everyone kind of lift their eyebrows in consideration that this guy must have been really considerate, or perhaps just really strange.
I got to feel all good, though, because just before the camera got purloined, J(5) and I had been conversing by e-mail. She said she’d be sure to take careful care of the camera for me, and I responded that I didn’t care a thing about the bloody camera, I just wanted her to come home safe to me. It turned out to be sound advice, considering. J(5) didn’t get hurt, she managed to get home with a minimum of pain and suffering, and she remembered our conversation and it helped keep her spirits up and the problem in its proper perspective. South America can have all of my cameras, as far as I'm concerned, I'm just glad my girl came away from it unharmed. I’ll replace the camera soon enough, (J(5) insists that she must buy me a new one, and if I refuse, she’ll probably gut me), and it’s a pretty good chance for me to upgrade. So no harm, no foul, really. I’m just glad my girl is safe.
And I fear for the thief, because I still have the data transfer cable. He can take all the pictures he wants, he just can’t do anything with them.
-N
I got to feel all clever because, being as I’m all cleared for all this flight stuff, I’m actually cleared to walk around all those hidden places in the airport that normal people aren’t allowed to go. Those doors that have a keypad and mag-swipe? I can get behind them. I can check and see what’s on the other side. I could walk out and help them direct the plane into position if I wanted to. I have that sort of access…that sort of POWER. It’s a good feeling. Makes me feel like more of a man.
Anyway, my roommate actually pointed out that since I had that badge, I could go through security and meet J(5) at the terminal. It would have been, at most, a two minute extra wait until I saw J(5) again, but anyone who had been talking to me at all that past week would have been able to tell you that I was not willing to wait that extra two minutes. So I decided to go through security and meet her at the terminal. It was actually pretty neat, if for no other reason than I figured out how the whole process worked. Good to know for whenever I need to use that POWER again.
Anyway, I got to the terminal about 20 minutes before her plane got in, near midnight. She had been delayed 5 hours out of Lima, and then her updated flight from Miami to LA had been an hour late. Not to mention that in order to get to Lima, she had taken a flight the day before and had been up all night waiting for her flight the next day. So I was fully expecting a totally jetlagged girlfriend to walk off that plane. Rough day of flight.
I was standing in front of a rolled-down door in front of some airport store or another, reading a book, because I had brought one to pass the last few minutes, when I saw people start to get off the plane. My heart was quite literally pounding away inside my chest. I could feel it thumping away in there. Whumpa-whumpa-whumpa.
It was 12:09 when I saw J(5) get off the plane. Now I hadn’t told her that I would be waiting for her at the terminal, since I didn’t think that I could until that very evening. So she, immediately, zipped out past me and started to cruise out to the roadside pickup, where she expected me to be waiting. Well I chased off after her, intending to stop her and say hi, but I realized something very important. When we first saw each other, there was going to be hugging. A lot of hugging. We were just going to stand there and give some standing cuddles for probably about 5 or ten minutes. That’s just the way we are. We hug. So I couldn’t just stop her anywhere. I had to pick my moment. There was an important decision to be made here.
Well when I first caught up to her, she was just about to pass through the outgoing security checkpoint. Clearly this location wouldn’t do. We can’t just stand there under the critical, scrutinizing eye of Airport security. Knowing these geniuses, they’d probably think we were terrorists...albeit huggy ones…and have us arrested. So security wouldn’t do. Well right after the security checkpoint were stairs. And I couldn’t say hi there. Other than the problem of trying to hug while at different altitudes, there’s a good chance that hearing my voice would cause J(5) to whip around with surprise and happiness, but if she tried to do that on stairs, she could break an ankle! Terribly unsafe! See? You have to think your way through these things. Cuddling is good stuff, but if you do it wrong, someone could get hurt! Well, at the bottom of the stairs, I judged the moment to be right. I said, “looking for someone?” and J(5) whipped around. True to form, she dropped her backpack right away, zipped back to me, and just latched on. We hugged for about 5 minutes, and then went home.
Since then, only the fact that we don’t work in the same area has kept us apart. We missed each other, and we have a lot of snuggling to catch up on.
Also, last week, one of my projects reached it’s culmination with a series of three (not four, as previously reported) flight tests, during which we did various awesome things. In summary, all three flights went *amazingly* well, everyone involved, from the customer to our management, was absolutely thrilled, and I got to stay home Thursday and Friday. I didn’t, however, get to drop into Vegas. Guess I’ll just have to visit later. Next up, we must get all our ducks in a row, and then figure out what the next step is. That’ll take a while, but we have some time to get ourselves ready.
More important than that, though, I got a flight suit.
As part of getting cleared for all this flying stuff, Raytheon bought me three things: a flight suit, a flight jacket, and steel-toed shoes. None of it cheap! I got the shoes a couple of days before we flew, and they look like high-tops, more or less. Let me tell you though, if you anger this here TKD master while I’m wearing my steel-toed boots, you are going to have some mighty impressive toe-guard shaped bruises to report to your HMO.
The flight suit is crazy-awesome-cool, though. It’s all nomex, and has more pockets then a herd of kangaroos. J(5), being a woman who appreciates a man in uniform, thinks it’s one of the neatest things I own, and I tend to agree. The flight jacket gets in in…uh…6 to 8 weeks, I think. They were back-ordered. I got some project patches to go with the suit, though, so that’s all quite impressive.
You might be wondering why I haven’t taken any pictures of all of this yet. Well…my camera got stolen. It’s an interesting story, though, so I might as well tell it. I had been loaning my camera to J(5) for her trip, and, of course, right at the end of the trip it got stolen out of her backpack while on an overnight bus. Stranger still, though, the thief only took the camera, an MP3 player, and one J(5)’s traveling companion’s cell phones. He left behind cash and passports, making everyone kind of lift their eyebrows in consideration that this guy must have been really considerate, or perhaps just really strange.
I got to feel all good, though, because just before the camera got purloined, J(5) and I had been conversing by e-mail. She said she’d be sure to take careful care of the camera for me, and I responded that I didn’t care a thing about the bloody camera, I just wanted her to come home safe to me. It turned out to be sound advice, considering. J(5) didn’t get hurt, she managed to get home with a minimum of pain and suffering, and she remembered our conversation and it helped keep her spirits up and the problem in its proper perspective. South America can have all of my cameras, as far as I'm concerned, I'm just glad my girl came away from it unharmed. I’ll replace the camera soon enough, (J(5) insists that she must buy me a new one, and if I refuse, she’ll probably gut me), and it’s a pretty good chance for me to upgrade. So no harm, no foul, really. I’m just glad my girl is safe.
And I fear for the thief, because I still have the data transfer cable. He can take all the pictures he wants, he just can’t do anything with them.
-N
