"lone-prairie-blogs" via Julie R. Neidlinger

I remember enjoying balancing equations in chemistry in high school. There's a whole post there about my social life in high school, but I think it could be summed in saying that while the rest of my class danced to Cheap Trick and White Snake at the prom, I thrilled myself with 4Al+3O2=2Al2O3. The moment of balance or canceling out is a beautiful thing.

As we were flying during the cross country trip, one of the towns I'd picked as a checkpoint was less a town and more a disturbance of rocks and asphalt.

"That's it?" I asked into the headset, checking my sectional in slight disbelief. I'm no stranger to small towns, but I just expected so much more along the interstate.

"Yes," my instructor replied. "There's probably a church and a bar and little else."

"Well, that's a nice equilibrium," I said.

You know, I'd just started to get the feel for how things are, and how things look out the window of the plane, and then we do a night flight.

Wow. Dark. Um...no reference. I thought. And also, Pretty.

I made multiple ridiculous screw-ups before we even got off the ground. I wrote down the ATIS info and didn't remember to set the altimeter until we were at...well, I don't know what we were at. That's the point. It's funny how just one little thing -- lack of bright daylight in this case -- can throw a person off.

I was mildly peeved at myself; I'd been doing fairly decent in remembering tasks off of my checklist with the other instructor just a few days ago. I'd soloed, and was feeling all "look at me! look at me!" and then my regular instructor gets in and I do whack things with setting the radios and the master switch and everything under the sun.

Of course, that was the problem: there was no sun to be under. It was dark!

The landing light, um, went out "in flight" so my first three night landings were a real treat.

"Start your flare here..." my instructor said.

Whump!

"Oh. We were that close? It didn't seem like it," I said, with the alacrity of a brick of salt.

The landings weren't too terribly bad. No bouncing around as if the runway were a trampoline. However, the night depth-perception thing was startling. Just flying a normal traffic pattern was completely odd. It was then that I appreciated the ability to have instruments for airspeed and such, since I'd gotten used to looking out the window and judging how things looked and sounded. Below me was a pit of black* with a few headlights here and there.

I did like flying at night, though. No blazing sun in the eyes. No sweating (granted, the weather has grown cooler). It just seemed, despite my nervousness at what yet another new experience a few thousand feet above the ground, a calmer place. No visual noise (can't see much but the lights, which are, um, pretty). Not as much on the radio. It reminded me of when I took my niece to the Rocky Moutains, camping and hiking, arriving at the top of a peak just up around a trail. It felt like we were alone on the edge of the earth.

If I could just quit screwing up all the little things in the beginning.

As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I swear I could hear the sounds of a Pow Wow from the United Tribes Technical College just down the road from the airport. That has nothing to do with flying at night, but it seemed an interesting cap of the evening.



* Sadly, my ever-wandering mind was reminded of Lt. Yar and her sad demise as I looked down and saw black nothing for the ground.

I try not to link to stories Drudge links to because, basically, what's the point? However, the story about the bobcats moving into the empty, foreclosed house was interesting. Until I got to this part:

Is it possible to make direct statements? Yes. Does it seem anyone is capable of it anymore? No. Should we just phrase all of our statements as questions? Um...

WHY DO PEOPLE INSIST ON DOING THIS??!!!

Just say "They aren't pussycats. They can do a lot of damage." Spare us the excess verbiage! You sound stupid! I want to beat this out of people, I really do.

Blogger acquaintance Gene and I have had a few interesting interactions via email as of late over a specific post. One concept that I am seeing consistently mentioned on his blog is that of the porcupine analogy. As I said in a comment on this post:

Certainly, helping someone may bring a negative reaction, even if you do good. Hence, the correct usage of the porcupine analogy -- helping a porcupine across a busy street and getting a barbed quill as a thank you for it -- that Gene outlines in that post.

The reason it is important to understand what correct analogy you are dealing with is because sometimes, you deserve the sting. If you don't know how to identify when that is, you're veering toward a bit of "I'm Right'ism." It becomes some sort of equation where all negative reaction from people is a reflection of them instead of you.

In that email exchange, in which I admonished Gene that some of his recent advice to me wasn't necessarily useful, beneficial, or even based in a knowledge of all facts, I may have unleashed my sharp tongue. I know I have one. He responded that he was still picking the "quill of of [his] reddened flesh."

This annoyed me. It wasn't the correct analogy, and again seemed to say, subtly, "I'm right, and giving right advice, and now I'm a bit of a martyr but I'll suffer because I know I'm right and being helpful to you" where, in my mind, the truth was much easier: You're wrong, your advice is ill-conceived and not born of all necessary facts, and I'm going to correct you on that.

Advice should never be one-way. In my mind, the barb was deserved, if indeed, it really was a barb.

I apply this in reverse to myself, at times, and to anyone. We need to learn to know when the stings are deserved or undeserved. Receipt of a sting is not proof of being a martyr. As I said in an another, related email to Gene:

I don't think Gene is a jerk. But I don't think I'm a porcupine, either.

Things "sting" for all kinds of reasons. Salt on wounds. Bees. Porcupines. Rattlesnakes. Poison sumac. Figure out why it stings and whether you deserve it or not.

Q. Do humans have a love affair with the irrational?


A. The assumption is that I can speak for humans, since I must be one. Or, that I know anything about love affairs.

I do know irrational.

My first thought path from this question took me down the over-wrought over-though way of deciding that the rational was too hard and difficult for the human mind to grasp since we are irrational beings, so we therefore deemed the rational to be the irrational, making the irrational the rational. And in that way, made ourselves out to be rational.

I'm not sure this is incorrect. Sometimes, the "rational" thinking of today makes very little sense. Which actually makes sense, since the rational tends to disparage the senses as a way of determining its validity. In that way, the rational does not make sense nor can it be determined by sense.

From where it comes, I don't know. The human mind, I guess, which is as fallible as anything.

So, after all that, I decided to answer just for myself and boldly say that yes, I am in love with the irrational. It makes sense.

While chatting online with my friend Corrine, we got to talking about the ease of using low-cost domain names and pointing them to free, ease-of-use blogs. I sent her a link to one I'd done for a friend, and commented that so many local politicians were still hiring out to have fairly bloated, unattractive sites made from the ground up.

"...they are still paying small fish to design big, ugly bloated sites," I typed.

Corrine commented that Small Fish would be a funny business name, so I check on the domain SmallFish.com. It was taken. I figured it would be -- it was too good a name.

There's some irony here.

"It's been mothballed," I typed. "Evidently, it was too small a fish."

Small Fish Software, Inc. has been kaput since 2003. Or, at least the site has been.

Business names are tricky. They are either the perfect name, or they unconsciously spell out the future.For example, naming your deep-sea diving business "Going Under" may or may not be the best idea. Hard to say.

My friend Erika told me I should get new running shoes. She was at the house this past weekend shortly after I'd been running. I think she could tell by looking at my shoes that they needed to be replaced.

She asked me how long I had them.

"Um..." I knew I was in trouble. I've know you're supposed to get new shoes at some certain number of miles run or time (kind of like changing the oil in the car) and I'd had these shoes for three years. "It's been a while, but I'm not a real runner," I said.

That was my excuse. For some reason, to me, "real" runners are marathoners. Since I only do a mile or two every day or so, it just doesn't compare.

Erika had a pointed expression on her face and I just felt guilty. I knew she was right. My left foot is notoriously flat and it's been giving me grief for months. My ankle and knee are starting to hurt, and I catch myself walking around on the outside edge of my left foot after running. I know my shoes are shot and that running as much as I have been lately in worn-out shoes has been causing the pain in my left ankle/foot.

Today I went to the store and worked with the sales clerk and found a pair of shoes. Erika had suggested Asics, and since she's a "real runner" and worked in a store and had training on what to look for in a shoe, I figured she knew what she was talking about. The sales clerk took one look at my left foot as I removed my street shoes and said, right away "Ooh. That's flat. You'll want these; more support."

I hated to do it, in a way, because shoes are so expensive. It's one reason I wear the same pair for three or more years.

I put those babies on and was amazed. For once my left ankle wasn't sliding inward, and was as upright as the right. The shoes are a lot different than what I'm used to (heavier, higher ankle). I walked around and my left leg felt completely different. Straighter, or something.

I'm going to try them out on a short run in just a few hours. I want to get used to them by the 20th, when the 5K commences here in Bismarck. It rained today and is a little sloppy out, but no reason to not get out and put the shoes to work.

When my friend Girl Friday writes, I just sit back and enjoy. More than once I've linked to her posts.

The latest post contains a quip that really sums up a concept I've grown fairly disgusted with. I call it "poli-bleed." It's where everything becomes a platform for political bickering. In this case, a site about fashion, in which a commenter takes a political swipe for no apparent reason. Girl Friday responds exactly right:


I have seen on various sites, ranging from hair style how-tos (yes, I would like to know how to do things with my hair) to cooking tips, comments left by people that have nothing to do with the topic and are merely ill-thought low-wit cheap-shot political barbs.

Are we so rabid about our political beliefs that the directions on how to create a chignon or where to buy business attire inspire venemous comments on Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin? Is everything political?

Step back and away and from the little pit of rage that is your personal politics and find a way to enjoy and adapt to life as it is, people. It seems as if some folks are so quivering with political anger that they can barely order a sandwich at a restaurant without some kind of misplaced diatribe. An open comments section on any website is simply too much to resist. It must be filled with garbage.

As Girl Friday said in her witty post: I am so bored already.