Baltimore. It feels like I was just here. It was only a few weeks ago.
Dad flew up to bring me down again, the flight was very pleasant. I fell asleep. He did the whole thing wearing "Foggles", which are glasses that block your view of anything above the instrument panel and to the sides. The idea is to simulate what it's like to fly in the clouds, and he's training to get his instrument rating. It was interesting to fly IFR (Instrument Flight Rules), where control towers follow your path exactly the whole way and direct you to fly in different "skyways" to reach your destination. This is how pilots fly when they can't see, there's someone on the ground telling them exactly where to go. It made me think about doing some more pilot training one of these days. I have to get my glasses first and make sure I could pass the medical. Dad's instructor offered to teach me this summer, but unfortunately if I'm not working I'm planning on being on the road. Selling soap.
Seeing old friends is one of my favorite things about the holidays. There are only a few people who I see anymore, but they're very important people to me. Last night met up with Susan, Laurel, Chris and Erik at Jerry's. As it was at Thanksgiving with Susan, it's wonderful to hang out with people I've known for so long. They know the arc of my life, and I know theirs. We aren't only looking at this small window of the present and recent past, we know the whole history. Not just know it, but we've lived it together. It's a perspective on myself and life that I'm very lucky to have. Of course I value my new friends enormously also. The beauty of those relationships is looking forward to them becoming like the other ones. We'll never have known each other all of our lives, of course, but we can look forward to knowing each other for the rest of it to come.
We talked about our lives, caught each other up, then the conversation drifted to our relationships, the nature of love, many interesting questions. Speaking of, I started reading Conversations With God yesterday, and I think that will be very interesting. I'm going to try hard to get over my reflexive aversion to that particular word and read it for the ideas. So far I haven't found any great revelations, but I think it will be interesting to dig through an attempt to distill the great questions of life in one volume. Some of it is trite or cliché perhaps, but as often is the case with things trite or cliché, there's probably a lot of truth to be found there.
So, I'm knocking Notes From the Hyena's Belly out of the What I'm Reading Now spot, it just wasn't working for me. I hadn't read a word in weeks.
