And I'm not even talking about the emotional aspect of leaving friends you've had for thirty years.

I'm talking about the physical moving. It is just so hard. All of the sorting, and chucking, and boxing.

We needed at least another two days before the movers arrived to really be ready. We were told that the truck would arrive between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM. Every other time we have used movers, they arrived late. Not this time... A little after 7:00 AM, I saw the truck driving up the street. Jeanie and I spent the day scrambling madly to try to stay one step ahead of the movers. The good news is that by the end of the day, most of our stuff was securely stuffed into the moving van. The bad news is not everything that we would have really like to be in the truck was. Hopefully, what we didn't have boxed will get boxed by the end of today, and will all fit into the trailer we have rented tomorrow.

I've often heard that the only reason women have more than one child is that after some period of time, the mind blunts the memory of the pain of the event. I have to imagine that it must be much the same for moving, because I seem to vaguely remember last time we moved saying "never again!" I know I sure feel that way at the moment.

The invitation list was mostly friends from the company I had worked for for the first seventeen years of my career, and that Jeanie had worked for for a number of years as well.

In hindsight, Thursday night probably wasn't the best timing - we should have been at home boxing stuff, but, it was a nice break from packing. We had a nice turnout, with maybe twenty or so friends making at least an appearance.

We had the gathering at George's Garage in Durham, mostly for old-time's sake. George's is a block away from the location on 9th Street that most of us had worked in for many years. It has a nice bar area that is very well suited to an informal get-together.

It was nice seeing so many old faces. A few people drove over an hour which made us feel really special. While it was a really nice time, it did make me feel a little sad. Partly just because of my separation issues, but partly because it forced a sad fact into the harsh light. We were so close to some of these people. We worked hard and play hard with them for many, many years. Yet, after Jeanie and I left DataFlow, we drifted away from almost all of them. Sure, we'd see many of them once a year, at some event or another - a wedding, or a Christmas party. But, we had lost that special bond that we had once shared. That special closeness that you have with only a small number of people in your life. I know, back then, many of us weren't even married, yet alone parents. Our life was our work. People get busy, they focus on who they know at work, and church, and family. There's so little time - not enough to keep up with people that fall outside that small circle.

It also made me sad to think what might have been...

We were such a sharp, dedicated group of people. In hindsight, we had some truly gifted, generous, visionary people in our company. Unfortunately, in the end, the owner of the company wasn't. I can only imagine how all of our lives might have been had we all instead gone to work for a Microsoft or a SAS.

It wasn't that anything was really bad, and I never felt like I was endangering myself or anyone else, just that things weren't great. The weather was okay - not great like the last few times, but not bad. Scattered clouds around 3,000 feet, reasonably stable and mild winds at the surface. A little hot on the ground, but reasonably comfortable at altitude.

The only thing I can imagine is that I was somewhat distracted with work, and feeling guilty that I was at the airport playing rather than at home working or boxing stuff up. I am also struggling with the cost of my new hobby. While I can rationalize the cost seven ways to Sunday, I still feel sometimes feel like this hobby is an outrageous indulgence.

The last two times I flew, things felt like they were flowing smoothly. Today, it felt like I was working hard. My landings were still pretty good, but I felt like I was working a lot harder to make them so. I tried doing some Dutch Rolls, and I just couldn't get the rhythm. I practiced doing some slips, and just couldn't get a nice smooth slip. I also annoyed myself with a number of small errors.

For example, when I brought the plane back in, I noticed that the master (battery) switch was on, but the alternator was off. Whereas the Cessna has a single master that controls both the battery and the alternator, the Piper has a split switch that allows discrete control of each. I could swear that I turned both on at start-up, but I'm not sure. Not a big deal if you're only flying for an hour locally and using minimal electronics, but not so minor if you are making an extended cross country flight. Of course, even if you lose all electrical, the engine still keeps turning and your instruments keep functioning, but you lose the radios and navigation, which is a pain at minimum.

Speaking of radios, on the way over to Person County, I had to switch radio frequencies, as Person's CTAF is different than Lake Ridge. The Cherokee I was flying has a flip-flop radio, which allows you to have both an active frequency and a standby frequency set. One button-press flip-flops the two frequencies. On such a setup, you tune the standby frequency, then hit the button to make it active. Somehow, in the process, I ended up changing the "other" frequency to 121.90 rather than 122.90. This wasn't an issue around Person County, but as I headed back to Lake Ridge, I pushed the button to flip-flop the frequencies, and didn't double check that I still had the correct frequency set. I made my initial approach call to Lake Ridge Traffic ten miles out, and was horrified when I heard the reply to my broadcast: "Cherokee, this is Raleigh Approach, you are on the wrong frequency!" Again, no major problem, but very embarrassing, and sloppy.

Oh well, I guess as long as you can walk away from your last landing (i.e. any landing you can walk away from is a good one) I guess the old adage holds: A bad day flying is better than a good day (whatevering). And, there's always next time...

All it took was a couple more laps around the pattern, and Paul cut me lose.

It was another absolutely beautiful flying day. We started out early - 7:30 AM - and couldn't have asked for better conditions. Clear skies, just cool enough, air smooth as a baby's bottom.

The Cherokee is an incredibly smooth platform. It's strange because I don't really like flying it as well as I like flying the Cessnas, but I fly it much better than I do the Cessnas. For a straight and level entry-level cruiser, I don't think you can beat it. I guess maybe the reason I feel more comfortable in the Cherokee is because it is more stable, and requires less rudder to coordinate turns. That's good, because as I confirmed practicing Dutch Rolls and Slips, it doesn't have nearly the rudder authority that the Cessna has. I also would have thought that the 25% higher approach speed would have made landing much harder, but the opposite seems to be the case so far. As I've mentioned, the stalls couldn't be more benign. About the only fault I can find is that it has a tendency to over-bank, so you have to be a little more vigilant when turning, especially in the pattern where you are slowed down.

I generally felt more comfortable flying solo this time than I did last time. I hope the trend continues.

Overall, I was fairly pleased with my flying. I made a total of five landings, and they were all acceptable. The main area that I will need to concentrate on is slowing down my final approach by about five knots, which will shorten my landing distance.

Since the only rental aircraft in Florida will be a Piper Archer, I guess I'll stick with the Cherokee for these last few weeks until we move. That will hopefully allow me to keep the check out time in Florida to a minimum, as well as keeping me safer flying up here, since at my current experience level, jumping back and forth between Cessnas and the Cherokee might be pushing my skills a little too hard.

"Well, I can think of one thing," the man offered. "Once, on a trip to the Black Hills out in South Dakota, I came upon a gang of high-testosterone bikers, who were threatening a young woman. I directed them to leave her alone, but they wouldn't listen. So, I approached the largest and most heavily tattooed biker and smacked him on the head, kicked his bike over, ripped out his nose ring and threw it on the ground." I yelled, "Now, back off biker boy or you'll answer to me!"

St. Peter was impressed. "When did this happen?"

"Just a couple of minutes ago."

I thought computers, and the Internet in particular, were supposed to make our lives simpler, not more complicated!

Now, while I'm not as young as I used to be... hmm, that's a stupid expression, isn't it.... I mean no one is as young as they used to be... anyway...

I'm not old enough to harken back to the horse and buggy days, but it seems like life is much more complicated that it used to be.

Take home mortgages as an example.

How does anyone actually not go crazy in the process of trying to decide with whom to secure a home mortgage? Even when we bought our first home, which wasn't thatlong ago, the process was fairly simple. You either grabbed the real estate section out of the Sunday paper, or thumbed through the yellow pages to find the names and phone numbers of the modest number of mortgage companies, made a few phone calls to inquire about rates for the small number of different loan types - I believe the choices were 15 or 30 years - kinda like "would you like fries with that (Y/N)" - asked what the fees were, and then made a choice. Now, there are literally hundreds of companies with whom you can do business - location is no longer a limiting factor. There are dozens of loan types - multiple flavors of ARMs, fixed, ballon, all with multiple rate options depending on how many points you want to pay, how much you want to put down, whether you want to pay the fees or roll them in, and on, and on, and on... And as if that wasn't enough complexity, the mortgage companies play games with their rates - you can't just compare one's rates to another's, because some of the companies bury various fees into the loan and compensate for that by charging a higher interest rate.

Moving seems to highlight or compound these new complexities of life. You find the similar complexity of multivariate equations involving the selection of a moving company, and insurance. Even selecting which telephone company and technology/plan is no longer simple. In fact, trying to figure out what method, and associated provider, you want to access this thing that was supposed to make our lives so simple (and solve world hunger, end homelessness, bring peace to the world, etc). - the Internet - is wrought with complexity! Do you go with dial-up, or DSL, or cable modem, which provider, what speed, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, yeah, I know, but choice is a good thing you say. Choice fosters competition. Choice is a good thing. Just look at "free choice." Oh, don't even get me started about that!

I think that choice is like most everything else - it is good in moderation. Problems arise when just about anything is taken to extremes. Absolutely no choice is probably not a good thing in most situations, but neither I think, is too much choice. Options are nice - up to a point. Flexibility is good, until there is so much that you lose structural integrity. You get the picture...

So, anyway, somehow we are wading through all of these choices / decisions. On the one hand, the probability that we have not made the absolute best choice - out of every possible option and variation - troubles me. On the other hand, without accepting that "good enough" is good enough, I think we would find ourselves in analysis paralysis.

Oh well, onward and upward - um, technically, both in terms of altitude and what is generally considered up and down relative to north and south, I guess it would be more accurate to say onward and downward.

I am really too tired to write much, but I wanted to mark the occasion.

I could provide an update about the move to Florida. Not that there's much to report. We have all but one of the squawks "their" home inspector found fixed already. We being used in the "royal" sense, since Robby actually effected two of the repairs, and the HVAC contractor resolved another by replacing a defective therostat. I did resolve one issue myself - I found the GFI box for the outside outlets (it was in the garage) and reset it. Our loan application is in process. Jeanie is finalizing selection of a mover ($ouch$). Our Realtor in Florida is helping drive the various inspections and repairs needed there.

I could whine about Jeanie's PC finally having given up the ghost, and my reluctance to purchase a new motherboard and processor to fix it, but the need to so that I can access the two large hard drives that served as overflow storage for my machine - unless I decided to purchase two external drive enclosures instead. I could also whine about the difficulty in deciding which laptop to purchase for Jeanie since that would really be a better solution for her computing desires.

I could pine about not having been able to go flying on Sunday, even though it was really pretty.

I could go on about how wonderful Jeanie is and how much I appreciate all that she is doing to make the house sale/purchase/move happen.

Or I could go to sleep...

As with Patterson's first book which I listened to, the out of sequence (for me) "2nd Chance," I really enjoyed the book. I liked the characters and the plot had a good pace. There was a nice balance of detail in the descriptions - enough to provide atmosphere, but not so much as to slow things down.

I once again found it interesting that this book used a combination of first and third person perspective. It was also interesting in that the audio used two readers - one female, and one male. The lead character is a female, and her parts are all first person, and of course these are all read by the female. The rest of the narrative is read by the female reader as well - except for the part of the murderer who is male.

I also liked the fact that the plot involved an active killer - as opposed to a story in which the murder has already occurred and the focus is on solving the "who done it." I guess I'm more of an action/suspense person than a murder/puzzle person.

This book seemed to have more twists than "2nd Chance," and the last one was an absolute doozie!

Definitely a good listen.

If you want to read reviews, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble have good editorial and customer reviews.