Yes fans, that's right!  I am now an official Civil Air Patrol Transport Mission Pilot.

One of the things I found interesting when I started jumpmastering and instructing skydiving was how many people dropped out of the sport once they got off of student status.

I think the reason was that while they were students, they had a series of goals that were perceived as attainable and were incremental enough that they could be achieved reasonably quickly.  But, once they reached the major milestone of getting off of student status, either they dropped out because they had been hanging in just to reach the major goal, or because the next major goal - an "A" license, was too nebulous and too big a leap.

What, you may ask, does any of this have to do with me being a CAP TMP?

I think CAP is very smart in that they offer a large number of areas in which you can achieve qualifications.  Each qualification also has incremental steps and a methodology for tracking your progress to help keep you motivated.

So, even though it will probably be another couple of years before I can qualify as a Mission Pilot or Cadet Orientation Pilot, there are still other areas that I am working on, and, I already have a few "tick marks" on my Mission Pilot SQTR, with more to come I'm sure.

After having had a private pilot's license for twenty-five years, I finally flew in Class C airspace...

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to fly the CAP airplane down to Daytona Beach to drop it off for its 100 hour inspection.

Daytona is Class C airspace.  Back when I first got my license, such a concept didn't exist.  Of course, there were airports with control towers, but the airspace classification system as we currently know it didn't exist.  I did make a couple of landings / take-offs into Charleston, which was a reasonably large airport, but for the most part, I flew out of small airports with no tower / approach / etc.

Even when I resumed flying a few years ago, I did my flying out of pilot controlled airfields.

I did finally fly into a Class D airport a few months ago (St. Augustine), but I still hadn't flown into an airport with regularly scheduled major airline traffic.

On the one hand it wasn't that big a deal, on the other, it was quite interesting.

The bulk of the trip down was very routine.  I had filed my VFR flight plan on DUAT, and shortly after take-off, I had activated it and had contacted JAX approach for VFR flight following.

For the majority of the trip, the sky was clear, visibility was good, and the ride was smooth.

We started seeing a little build-up right around our altitude (3500 feet) as we neared Daytona, but nothing we couldn't easily navigate around.  As we got closer to DAB, the clouds got closer to each other.  Not so close that we couldn't get through, but close enough to have to dodge...

Things didn't get really interesting until we got close to Daytona.  When I had checked the weather, the reported conditions around DAB were 3 miles visibility with smoke, improving to 6 by the time of our anticipated arrival.  Well, let's just say that there was more smoke than anticipated and even though I was quite close to the airport, and it's a pretty big airport, I couldn't see it.

Fortunately, I had a very experienced pilot as a co-pilot.  He flew for the Air Force for twenty-seven years and then for an airline for another fifteen.

Even though we were flying VFR, he had dialed in the frequency of the ILS approach on the NAV.

Between his coaching and the GPS, when I rolled out onto final, it turned out I was right on track, at least according to the ILS - it took me at least fifteen seconds before I could actually see the runway.

I learned a number of good lessons along the way:

1. Make use of HIWAS or TWEB enroute to check for weather.  You can tune to a nearby VOR on the NAV radio and still listen/talk to ATC. Availability is indicated by a dark circle with a light H (HIWAS) or T (TWEB) in it in the VOR information box.
2. Listen to EFAS (Flight Watch) on 122.0 enroute.
3. Don't fly right along the beach.  So does everyone else, which makes traffic avoidance more interesting.  Better to slide over a mile or so to either side...
4. When ATC informs you that there is traffic in the area, switch on your landing light.  Don't forget to turn it off after the traffic passes.
5. Turn on your landing light within ten miles of your destination - even if it is daytime.
6. Even if you are not IFR qualified, it is interesting and potentially helpful to know (and tune in) the frequencies for the ILS for the runways in use at your destination.  You can either get this information from an approach plate, or from your GPS.
7. When approach tells you to join the base leg for a runway, they mean to do it far out (~5 miles or more), not like you are flying the pattern at your local little airport.
8. Which means, take a look at the airport diagram as soon as you hear from ATIS what the active runway is, then look at the GPS to get an idea of where you are going to want to go when you get told how they want you to approach.
9. Make sure you know, before you take off, where on the airport you need to end up at.  Once you know which runway you are going to be landing on, figure out whether you need to exit the runway to the left or right (if there are taxiways on both sides) based on where you need to get to.  Once you are off the runway and switch to ground, you can figure out exactly how to get there, but if you are on the wrong side of the runway to start, it's a pain to get across.
10. While on the base leg, get configured for landing.  After turning final is not the time to realize you need to slow down, etc.  Of course, sometimes you don't have the luxury of loafing in, but at the same time, you need to get configured for whatever you need to make a stabilized approach.
11. If you really are having trouble figuring out where you are and/or where you need to go, ask ATC for vectors.

Since I was already ordering stuff from Newegg (the new hard drive for the backup PC) I finally decided to break down and order some upgrades for the main PC.  Nothing earth shaking, but enough to provide a reasonable - for the price - improvement in performance.

The upgrades included:

An A-DATA 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Desktop Memory Model ADBGC1A16 - Retail to replace the existing 512 MB (2 x 128MB) of PC2100 DDR memory.

An Intel Pentium 4 2.8 Northwood 2.8GHz Socket 478 Processor Model RK80532PE072512 - OEM to replace the existing 2.2 GHz Celeron processor.

and

A BFG Tech BFGR5500OC GeForce FX 5500 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card - Retail to replace the existing 32MB MX-400 NVidia card.

Total bill (after a $35 dollar rebate for the video card) came to less than $140.00.  Much cheaper than I could get a new PC for, and none of the hassle of having to reinstall all of the software that would have come with a new PC.  If I were to get motivated, I could reduce the cost of the upgrade even more by selling the old processor and video card on Ebay - although I doubt I'll get that motivated - more likely they will just gather dust along with all the other bits I have stashed in my parts bins.

Most amazing of all to me, all three upgrades installed without a hitch.  I decided to retain the existing processor heat sink, but I did take the time to scrape off the gunk from the bottom of the old heat sink and to use a liberal glop of new heat sink compound.  I did actually take the precaution of wearing a grounding wrist strap for the installation of the processor and memory.  I elected to remove both of the old DIMMs and just go with the new memory, as I didn't want to slow down overall memory access by leaving one of the old chips in.  I actually did read the directions first before installing the video card, which guided me to remove the old video driver prior to installing the new card, then canceling the Windows new hardware wizard and running the install from the supplied CD.

The machine still won't be blazing, and won't be beefy enough to run any games made in the last couple of years, but it definitely does handle my mundane daily chores with a bit more zip.

One of the hard drives on the new Vista machine is near death.  The drive is generating all sorts of errors when you try to read from it.  The drive in question is not new to the machine; I have had it for years - I estimate it has run for ~30,000 hours.  This drive, as with all of the drives other than the new system drive are just used to back up data from our main home PC.  I decided to purchase a new drive to replace the one that is almost dead.

The replacement drive I ended up with is a 400GB Samsung 3.5" HD403LJ SATA 3.0 drive from Newegg costing around $85.00.  Not to date myself, but I can remember when a 15MB (yes, Megabyte!) drive weighed over fifty pounds, was the size of a file cabinet drawer and cost thousands of dollars.

My thought was that I will use it to replace both the 180GB drive that is failing, as well as a 200GB drive which also has many hours on it.  I'll set the 200 gig drive aside to use as a replacement when one of my other 200's dies.

My first question was whether to partition the 400GB into two 200GB partitions.  I decided to leave it all as one big partition.

The format went fine, and the configuration of the drive as a shared drive seemed to work fine.  I could see the drive from the other home computer.  I could map it to a drive letter.  But when I tried to access it, I received an access denied error.

Long story short, to get it to work, I ended up having to modify the security settings on the shared drive to match one of the other drives in the system.  This required creating two new Users groups and a new Everyone group.  Quite the royal pain.  Seems like Micro$oft would have created a nice little wizard to help users with this task.  Oh well, it appears to be working now.

As an aside, I did also find a number of nice utilities that can read the S.M.A.R.T. data on the disk drives.  For the XP machine, I went with HD Tune and for the Vista machine, HDDlife.  Both were free and I like HD Tune better, but it didn't run on Vista.  HDDlife is okay, but the free version is quite crippled.  I also installed SpeedFan on the XP machine in preparation for some future upgrades.  More on that in the next few days...

I was just reminded that I neglected to mention something in my Form 5 renewal post...

Part of the Form 5 renewal includes flying "under the hood."  "The hood" generally refers to a device worn by the pilot to limit his or her view so as to prevent being able to see outside of the aircraft.  The purpose of this is to simulate flying in IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) i.e. in the clouds.  While not legal for non-instrument rated pilots, VFR pilots sometimes accidentally find themselves "in the soup" and without training, they typically lose control of the aircraft within minutes.   In the old days, this was accomplished by donning various visor type devices.  These were awkward and uncomfortable.  Some bright person came up with the idea of creating a pair of glasses which had all but a small area at the bottom frosted - thus accomplishing the goal of preventing the pilot from seeing outside, but in a much more comfortable fashion.

The only problem with this approach comes when the pilot in question's near vision isn't what it used to be, and he needs a little bit of optical assistance.

Last time, I tried wearing the foggles over my glasses.  It worked, but wasn't the best solution.

This year, I got a bright idea.  I ordered a pair of Optx 20/20 Stick On Reading Lenses For Glasses.  While you can buy them from your favorite pilot shop for $20 bucks or so, you can also get them from eBay for 1/2 that price.  I got mine from the eBay store of CC-Cards-N-Stuff for $12.99 delivered.  I had to guess a bit as to the proper strength to order, but after a little experimentation with a few pairs of retail reading glasses at the local drug store, I guessed that the +1.25 strength would be best for me, and fortunately, I was right.

While I plan to just leave my Optx stuck on to the foggles, they are pretty cool in that they just adhere with water, so you can move them from one pair of glasses to another simply by wetting them and then placing them on another pair.

For quite some time, I had noticed that the calendar didn't display "quite right."

The problem was with the shaded background on the right hand side - it wasn't even.

I finally got around to playing with the CSS template, and now have it looking "right," at least in Firefox and IE6.

It still doesn't display correctly in Safari or IE7.

I believe that the problem is related to the fact that both Safari and IE7 use a slightly larger font as the default, and the size of the shaded background is fixed.  At least in Safari, if I go to View, Make Text Smaller, the calendar displays properly.  My guess is that if I were to increase the size of the area just a bit more, I'd get closer to a solution - although it would be a brute force solution rather than an elegant solution, and then I'd be wasting space when displaying in Firefox for IE6.  Since my main browsers are Firefox and IE6, and no one else has complained, I think I'll consider this fix "good enough."

For those interested, the details of the CSS section in question are:

The main change was to adjust the width: from 120 to 180.  I also changed the right: from 5 to 1.

While I was at it, I made one other tweak. I modified the display when you hover the cursor over a date that has an entry in the calendar so that the reverse display unreverses.  This makes it more obvious than the old behavior that just changed the color of the underlying text from blue to greenish.

Here's the code:

PS. notice the sleazy way I am presenting the code snippets?  They are screen shots, rather than text.  Why?  Saves me from having to edit a bunch of characters to keep the browser from interpreting the code rather than just displaying it.

The weather over the last few days has been so beautiful.  Monday and Tuesday were especially nice - the haze seeming to have gone elsewhere for a while.  Unfortunately, I had to work, so though I wished to break my earthly bonds, grounded I stayed.

Work has really sucked this week.  Actually, it has really sucked for a while, but it really sucked this week.

Today, I could stand no more.  Even though a bit of the haze has crept back, the skies are clearer than they have been of late.  Of course, mid-day is brutally hot, but the evenings are tolerable.

So, I decided I deserved a break.  Plus, depending on my work obligations and other factors, I may get to fly the CAP plane down to Daytona for its 100 hour inspection on Sunday night.  If so, I will have at least one rider, which meant that I needed to refresh my night currency.

As an aside, I think I will try not to let my currency lapse again.  I was a few weeks out of date, which meant that either I had to do the required three takeoffs and landings by myself or with an instructor.  It seems strange to me that the FAA considers it safer for me to go up by myself, than to go up with another pilot, one who might even be night current.  But, such are the rules, so, next time, I'll try to get back up at night prior to the ninety days so I can go up with someone in the right seat.

Anyway, so, off I went this evening for a nice flight up to Brunswick Georgia.

Flying at night, with the moon about half full, and the skies clear, is absolutely beautiful.

Other than doing circuits around the pattern for night currency, it has been a long time - like over twenty years - since I had actually flown somewhere at night.

I remembered how pretty it is, but honestly, I had forgotten how hard it is!

Everything seems harder.  It is harder to keep the wings level as - especially when flying along the coast line - there isn't really a horizon to sight along the wings with.  Landing is much harder.  I don't know exactly why - the runway is lighted and has all sorts of lighting cues along with specialized vertical guidance lighting (PAPI or VASI depending on the runway).  It is probably mostly a mental thing, but still... Taxiing around the airport - even one you are very familiar with, let alone one you've only been to one before - is on the verge of unnerving.  And navigating?  All I have to say is: thank God for GPS!

The local newspaper published a photograph I took, so that makes me a published photographer, right?

There was a change of command in our CAP squadron and I got volunteered to press the shutter a few times on the outgoing commander's digital camera.  One of the pictures was submitted to the local paper, and got published in the "Community Scrapbook" section.

Guess I should go update my resume...

It's interesting to me how my memory works...

There was this TV show I remembered from my childhood.  I had what I thought was a fairly clear memory of the show as I had always liked this particular story.  I thought it was an episodic anthology series like "The Twilight Zone" or "The Outer Limits."  I remembered that the story had something to do with a man and his dog and going to heaven.  I remembered that the man was sitting on a bench in a foggy area with his dog laying at his feet, and another man came by and told him that he would lead him to heaven, but the dog was obviously distrustful of this other man, and when the first man agreed to go, but insisted that he be able to take his dog, the second man indicated that dogs weren't allowed in heaven, so the first man said in effect, if I can't take my dog, I'd rather not be there.  The man sitting on the bench in my recollection was an older, run of the mill, city type person - the type you might expect to see in a large office in the 1950's or 1960's.  Finally the other man left and then a short time later, yet another man came by and said he was there to lead the man to heaven.  The first man said that someone else had already offered to lead him to heaven, but that he wasn't going since he couldn't take his dog.  The other man says "of course you can take your dog," so they walk off.  Before they all go off screen, the other man pauses for a moment, and a look of realization appears on his face and he indicates that the first other man was the devil taking one last shot to lure the man into hell.

Well, as far as I can tell, I watched that show last night.  It was an episode from the old "The Twilight Zone" named "The Hunt."

The interesting thing to me was that I correctly remembered the major point of the story - that the man's loyalty to his dog (and the implication that a dog can sometimes have a better sense about people and things than a person might) saved him from being misled into hell - but I was totally mistaken on the setting and characterization of the main character -  an old country/mountain type person who had been out coon hunting with his dog.

Since I was young when I saw it, I guess I got the moral, but placed it in a context that was more familiar to a kid who had lived in the city his whole life and who's family worked in office environments.

After doing some internet seaching to see if there were multiple tellings of the same story using different presentations (as far as I could tell, there were not) I learned that the story was written by Earl Hamner, better known for creating, writing, producing and narrating "The Waltons."

A good summary of the key portion of the story can be found in this article from the University of Cincinnatti Magazine.

Three other sites that portray the story in slightly differing variants (although none correctly attributed) can be found here: 1, 2, 3.

I guess I am sentimental.  I enjoyed going back to my childhood memory, even if it was distorted, and I definitely enjoyed reliving the moral and the happy ending.

I had always had trouble keeping the definitions of cloud coverage (clear/few, scattered, broken, overcast) straight in my mind until I stumbled upon this wonderful little resource.

The site, http://www.planemath.com is a wonderful site for those who have an interest in aviation, whether they are young, or young at heart.

A recent post reminded me about one of my best friends from college.

He was a really nice person.  He ended up devoting his life to prosecuting the scum of the earth - his particular focus: child molesters.

He was a good friend, and as best I could see, a good husband and father.

Yet, he ended up divorced twice and estranged from one of his children.

Last time I talked to him, he was about to lose his job, about to lose his apartment, alone, and barely coherent.

Why is it that so many bad people seem to have it so good, and so many good people have it so bad?

I just can't help myself...

It had always bugged me that when I am leafing through the monthly archives,  I had to scroll back to the top of the page to get to the navigator to be able to go to the next month.

Notice the operative word had in the sentence above.

One quick change to the "Date-Based Archive" template - which involved simply copying the navigation code at the top of the page and pasting it in at the bottom - and now I don't have to scroll back to the top to navigate.

When the Linux server was revived, one of the things that I didn't get working was the UPS signaling.  I kept getting a message that the getty was respawning too rapidly and I couldn't figure out how to fix it, so I just disabled the entry in /etc/inittab.

I decided to play with it a bit today, and I partially fixed it - at least it's back to functioning the way it used to, which wasn't quite right, but close enough.  The not quite right part is that if I call powstatd as part of the boot process (i.e. from /etc/rc.d/rc3.d) as soon as I log in, the sytem shuts down as if the UPS were sending a low battery signal.  However, if I run powstatd manually after logging in, it runs fine.  My guess is that this is a bug in powstatd, but I don't have the interest to install the latest version right now, and it really doesn't matter, since once the system shuts down if the battery goes low, I have to manually power it back on, so I just restart the UPS daemon after I do so.

As to the specifics of the problem, the initial symptom was that the console would generate the following message:

INIT: Id "S0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

This appeared to be a problem with how the serial port was configured, so I tried a whole bunch of different settings for S0 in /etc/inittab with no luck.  I searched through /etc/gettydefs and tried calling different stanzas in /etc/inittab with no luck.

I thought maybe there was a problem with the physical port not reporting its UART correctly, so I tried running the setserial command with various parameters with no luck.

Somehow, it finally occurred to me to see if maybe the problem was that even though there is only one serial port on the back of the system, that it was configured as Com1 rather than Com0, and maybe I should change the line in /etc/inittab from:

S0:2345:respawn:/sbin/uugetty ttyS0 F38400

to

S1:2345:respawn:/sbin/uugetty ttyS1 F38400

That fixed the respawning message, but still didn't get the powstatd running correctly.

I did some more digging, and discovered that I also had to modify /etc/powstatd.conf from:

# Watch /dev/ttyS0
watch ttyS0

to

# Watch /dev/ttyS1
watch ttyS1

I still haven't fixed the locale error message when httpd starts, nor have I fixed Xwindows, but I am happy now that the UPS signaling is working again.

Almost a week to the day that I started my annual CAP Form5 renewal, I finally finished...

The good news is that I "passed," and the good news is that my back is doing well enough that I felt comfortable about piloting an airplane.  I must admit, I was a little tentative about how comfortable I would be, so I made a point of getting into the airplane this morning and doing a "dry run" just to make sure that I could do all the movements and reach all the things I need to reach without problems.  Only after I satisfied myself that I'd be okay, did I commit to taking the check flight this afternoon.  I did make a point of being careful doing certain things like opening the hangar doors, and for other things, I solicited help - whether by asking for help pulling the aircraft out of the hanger (something I would normally do by myself) or by using a ladder to check the fuel tanks (rather than just climbing up on the strut).

The check pilot who did my Form5 is a really nice guy, and a really good check pilot.  He had me to perform the required maneuvers and ensured that they were done to the appropriate standards, but he also spent some time giving me some tips to make me a better pilot.

I try to make every flight a learning experience, and it is even better when you have a skilled pilot/instructor to enhance that learning experience.

In terms of the specifics today, we did soft field take offs and landings, short field take offs and landings, a power off landing, a slip to landing (high approach) with abort and go-around, slow flight, power off and on stalls, steep turns, S turns across a road and some hood work including recovery from unusual attitudes.

It was nice getting up in the air - especially since it was my first day out of the house since last Sunday.

This makes the 1006th entry for Blogdom...

I flew right past 1000 while posting all of those pent up entries.

Whoda thunk?

Once upon a time the title would have been Mom, Momma and Me, but such is life...

Anyway, Mother (my mother) isn't doing very well.  She had been released from the hospital, but within a couple of days, the ALF had decided she needed to go back.  Same problems - not eating or drinking and apparently not taking her medications.  She was released from the hospital again yesterday and is now back at the ALF, but in a different section than she had been in previously - one which provides a higher level of care.  I don't really know anything about this new area, but Jeanie is on her way over to get as much of the story as she can.

Jeanie really is a saint.

It appears as if Mother has just given up on life.  I can't say that I blame her.  She has alienated everyone who has ever cared about her and has long suffered with various ailments.  Nonetheless, it is sad.

Momma (Jeanie's Mom) is at home and doing somewhat better.  She is still in quite a bit of pain and still finding that the nights are particularly difficult.

Jeanie is torn between feeling like she needs to be here taking care of me, running to Jax Beach to see what's up with Mother, and wanting to go to her parents to help with her Mom and take some of the burden off of her father.

I keep trying to encourage Jeanie to just go to her parents, but...

Jeanie really is hard headed.

Fortunately, Jeanie's parents do have support from their church and from at least one local relative, and they do have a visiting nurse and physical therapist who come by during the day.  Unfortunately, at night, it's just Dad.

And me?  I am doing better, but not great. I am no longer cringing in pain - in fact I haven't even taken any pain medication or muscle relaxers today.  But, I am still uncomfortable, and avoid certain movements lest I find myself back doing that cringing thing.  And I can relate to Momma Melvin - the nights are definitely the worst.  I have not slept well since Saturday.  I just can't seem to stay comfortable at night.  Laying on either side or my stomach quickly becomes extremely uncomfortable, but staying on my back is maddening.  I've tried placing a pillow under my knees in the bed, heat, laying on the couch on my back with an extra cushion under my legs, tying a rolled up towel around my waist, ...  No matter what, I just can't stay comfortable for more than an hour or two.  And it doesn't seem to matter what combination or quantity of medications I take right before I go to bed.

During the day, I can stay reasonably comfortable sitting in my old green recliner with a large memory foam pillow and a small memory foam back wedge behind me.  Jeanie suggested I try sleeping in the recliner tonight; it might be worth trying...

So, I changed my mind...

I posted one old post (Dead Sleep) as a recent entry, then decided it made more sense to keep the chronological integrity of the entries, so I posted them using their original creation dates.

So, on the one hand, scrolling back through the archives will (mostly) correctly reflect the order that the entries were created in.  On the other hand, the fact that Blogdom was off-line for six months will not be quite as readily apparent.

I just installed Beta 2 of WLW...

My last "read" was Dead Sleep by Greg Iles, performed by Susie Breck...

I had gotten about 1/2 way through and stopped listening because I had stopped exercising - I think due to my surgery.

I finally got back on the exercise wagon, and decided to start listening again from the beginning.

I liked the fact that this book hooked me quickly.  So many books take so long to get really interesting.

The performance by Susie Breck was quite good.  Generally, I prefer a male reader - I guess it is more "natural" to me to hear a male voice in my head - but I didn't have any issues with her performance.  Her use of accents was good enough to help differentiate the characters, and she struck a good balance between dull narration are over-the-top acting.

The story kept me interested - even the second time through.

My only complaint was, as with so many novels, the author seemed to poop out right at the end.  He tied all of the lose ends, and offered some good twists, but I really would have preferred that he had taken another chapter or two to round out some of the secondary story elements.

Oh well, all in all, I'd definately listen to another book written by Iles and/or read by Breck.

It has been a while since my back "went out," so I guess I should be grateful that things were good for so long...

Nonetheless, an aching back is a real pain.

In the past, it seems like I have had some warning that "an attack" was immanent.  Not this time.

There I was Sunday morning, all ready to do my annual Form 5 renewal.  I had even walked over to the FBO and drank a few sips of coffee and chatted for a bit.  Everything seemed fine.  I got in the truck to grab my flight bags which were sitting in the front passenger seat and when I turned to get out of the truck...ping!

It was like a string in my back had been plucked. 

I tried to stretch and loosen up but I knew in my heart that I was headed down hill fast.

I suffered through the oral part of the review, but when it was time to fly, I had to tell the reviewer that I just wasn't up to it.  I was so disappointed.  It is so hard to get all of the elements - plane available and working, my schedule, the reviewer's schedule, the weather - all aligned.  But, sometimes, such is life.

I'm not really surprised that my back acted up.  The last few weeks have been very stressful.

We had a major deliverable due at work that should have taken a month to finish, but for which we were given one week.

Towards the end of the week above, we received a call from the ALF (Assisted Living Facility) where my mother resides asking us to come take her to the hospital because she had stopped eating, drinking and taking her medication and was refusing to allow an ambulance to take her to the hospital.  It was very interesting to be sitting in an emergency department room on  a Saturday afternoon/evening trying to deal with my mother while simultaneously making escalation calls because of challenges at work and a looming client deliverable deadline.

The following week, Jeanie's mom had back surgery, so Jeanie went to her folks house to help out.  That turned out to be a good decision as her mom's recovery did not go smoothly.

As I was driving to the airport a few days later at ~6:00 am, Jeanie called to let me know that her mom was having complications and had to be taken to the local emergency room.  The local ER doctor was an absolute ass, and Jeanie and her dad ended up having to have her Mom transported back to Macon to be seen by her surgeon.  We talked about whether I needed to cancel my business trip, but Jeanie encouraged me to go, so I did.

I did have a nice afternoon - other than worrying about Momma Melvin.  I went for a visit to my old high school, The Storm King School.  I got to walk around the campus and revel in old memories.  I even got to walk through the dorm I lived in junior and senior years and see my old rooms.  I also got to meet and chat with a number of folks at the school including the new head of school, development director and chairman of the board of trustees.

The business trip was for a leadership seminar which was interesting.

Because I wasn't sure exactly when the seminar would end, I had scheduled a late (~7 pm getting me home around midnight) flight home.  It turned out that the seminar ended a bit early, so I was able to change to an earlier (~4 pm) flight.  Unfortunately, the earlier flight ended up having a weight and balance issue and Delta was begging for volunteers.  Since Jeanie was still away, I decided to be a nice guy and volunteer to give up my place - even though it meant not being able to fly home until ~10 am the following morning.  Delta did give me a $400 travel voucher along with a hotel voucher and a dinner voucher.

The hotel - a Wyndham Garden Inn near the Laguardia airport - was the worst hotel I have had the displeasure of staying at in a long time.  It isn't near any restaurants or stores, the service at the hotel restaurant was abysmal and the air conditioner in the room was so loud that it kept awakening me all night.  The dinner voucher was for $7 - which doesn't go very far in the New York area!

Then, to top it all off, my ~10 am flight ended up being canceled and I didn't end up getting home until ~6:30 pm, and that's only because I thought to call the Delta medallion desk and pitch a fit and get booked on another flight after my morning flight had gotten delayed for the second time.

I guess it really isn't surprising that my back would "pop" with all the other stress, then sitting in the horrid chairs in the waiting area in the airport for eight hours, and then sitting in the miserable seat of a regional jet for three hours, and then having the stress of having my Form 5.

I am definitely not suffering as much today (Wednesday) as I was on Sunday.  I am grateful that we happened to have the necessary medications - anti-inflammatory, muscle relaxant and pain reliever on-hand.  I used a cold pack for the first few days to stop the muscle spasms, and have used heat for the last day to get the muscles to loosen up.

Jeanie's Mom is doing better.  Compared to what she has been through, my back pain is insignificant.  Or to look at it another way, given how bad my back has hurt, I can't imagine how much she has suffered.  But, hopefully she will continue to feel better, and will get to go home at the end of the week. 

Speaking of crappy weeks, Jeanie sure has had her share of them lately between helping me deal with my mom, then going to her parents and getting very little sleep because her mom was having so much trouble, then having to rush her mom to the emergency room, then having to drive to Macon, then having to drive her parents to the rehabilitation center in Savannah, then having to drive home on Sunday and deal with me.

The good news is that my deal has been in a slow period, so I can afford to be down.  The sad part is that the deal is in a slow period, and the weather has been beautiful, so I could have been having some fun.

Hopefully, things will trend up from here all around for everyone...