Eblo

Where the Hell Have You Been???

It's been far too long since I've written anything here. Time and attention never seem to coincide. Here are a few things in no particular order:

If trying to upgrade the firmware on a Linksys WAP11 v2.6, the firware upgrade sceen is located in the "Help" tab of the configuration of all places. That's trick #1. Trick #2 is that the upgrade won't work if upgrading with Netscape (as of 7.1). I finally got the upgrade to go through via IE.

But that's not what has me up at 4:40 a.m. I think Martini woke me up. I think my lines kept me up. Yep, my lines. I have lines. I'm in a show. Ac-TING! In an Amy Rath production of a William Shakespeare mélange including me as Puck. I've also got a few sonnets, a scene with Amy from Taming of the Shrew, and play two of the players of the play within a play in the play Hamlet (yes, that was intentional). For those of you keeping score at home, yes, this is my first acting since I was Santa Claus "On the Beach at Waikiki" in 6th grade. Yes, my goal is to not suck. It is quite intimidating working with real actors. "Real," if by no other definition than that they have been on a stage and gone through the process more recently than 18 years ago. There is some little comfort, though, in knowing right out that you are the weakest link. I'm enjoying it, don't get me wrong, it's just a strange situation to find myself in. But I've always been a fan of strange situations.

So that's been taking a decent amount of time, though perhaps not as much as it could. My impression is that you can always throw more time at learning lines, thinking of your blocking (where you're going to stand, how you're going to gesture, etc.), or even your costume. But to be honest, I think my brain can only handle so much at a time. Thank god Amy's handling most of the rest.

As for flying, I've been doing a fair bit, though never as much as I want to. I recently joined the Westosha Flying Club and got checked out in a Cessna 172. I LOVE the view out of a 172. To me, it feels much more like flying than driving, which is how I mostly feel in the Pipers. On my first liftoff, watching the ground fall away from under the left tire, I thought, "Now THIS is flying!" After the checkout, I've only rented from there one other time so far. Amy and I went on a nice 1-hour sunset cruise (yes, we were back before I had to land at Westosha in the dark - I think I'm taking an instructor up on the first time I try that, since there are only landing lights on one side of the runway and it's been many months since I did my night training). I love how much she likes to fly. I don't think it's a passion with her, a love, but she does enjoy it. So while she may eventually get bored coming along with me, right now she goes ever chance she gets, and that just tickles me silly.

Last weekend, we were Up North because a bunch of my cousins were together and around for the first time in a few years. I rented the Warrior out of Rice Lake again and offered rides, but not a lot of people were terribly interested in going. So on the first trip on Saturday, I took my dad and Mike (bro-in-law) up for a little bit. I let Dad take the controls for a little bit. I think that made his week. I'm not sure Mike was so happy about it. Dad shot a lot of video. The cool thing was that I had jacked the camera right into my intercom box, so this time we didn't have all of the engine noise on the tape. Always thinking. After going over the requisite landmarks with them, we landed at Cumberland and swapped passengers.

They got off and I picked up Amy and Aunt Jean. She had been in small planes before, so it wasn't entirely new for her. But it had been a while, and she thoroughly enjoyed it. I would have liked to stay up longer, but there were some impending plans for an outing to Hayward, so we buzzed the lake and houses again, took a wide tour of Rice Lake, and landed back at Rice Lake Regional. 1.2 more hours in the book.

When we got back to the lake by car, a few other people had decided they wanted to go for rides the next day, when I had the plane reserved again. When it came down to it, though, only Ryan's wife, Keesha, got up the guts. It was her first time in a small plane, and she had no problems with it at all. I was tired of the same old tour, so I took her and Amy out west and flew over Taylors Falls on the St. Croix river.

For fun, we landed in Amery (AHH) on the way back to Rice Lake. Keesha really seemed to enjoy the trip. I don't think she's going to start taking lessons or anything, but at the very least, maybe she'll convince Ryan to go up next time.

That same weekend, Martini got to play her little heart out. There ware 7 other labs around at various points, as well as a 3 month old Cocker Spaniel. "She swam and swam and swam and swam," (if anyone can name that reference, they get a shiny new nickel - the one with the new 'tail') and ran and played until she finally dropped like a rock right in front of the patio door in the middle of a party. There was no waking her at all for the better part of an hour. It took her until this Thursday to fully get her energy back! I also played a little bit and got to water ski for a while. Dad's boat was on the fritz still/again, so we used the jet ski. Amy was hoping to try skiing this year, but it's pretty tough behind the wave runner, so that was a no go. We also canoed a little bit, and I took the little sail boat out for a few minutes just to see if I could manage it. It was too short of a weekend and I ended up pretty sore from the skiing, but it was fun, and great to see everyone. Delaney is cute as ever. She's still a tiny little peanut, but she's got the brightest little eyes. Awwwwww.

The next trip I make up there, I hope is in an airplane. We're going to try flying up for the Rutabaga Festival (no, I'm not kidding) and Pancake Breakfast Fly-In in a few weekends. Amy's taken to calling it, "The Vegetable Festival."

Another planned flying excursion is to rent a plane while we are out in Portland in September for a friend's wedding. I already have a 172 reserved at McMinnville Airport, which is supposed to have a decent air museum attached to it and houses the Howard Hughes Spruce Goose. That should be fun. We're making a mini-vacation out of the Portland trip since Amy loved the area so much when she visited Ret out there, and I suspect I'm going to love it as well. I'm finally getting to the Pacific Northwest. Sweet.

We were also recently (well, over a month ago now) in Los Angeles from Sarah's wedding. It was a crazy trip, but it had some relaxing moments as well. Thumbs up. We saw some folk we hadn't seen in a long time and had a lot of fun. It was a nice wedding at a cool place in Malibu, with a swank after-party. I should link to pictures, but my battery is going on my laptop.

Let's see, what else. Oh yeah, MJ had Marisa!!! She and Don made one hell of a baby. I should have pictures of her somewhere, too. Marisa, not MJ.

So, I didn't get to the intended point of this post, so I'm going to change the title and save this one for later. Anyway, it was good to catch up, so when I'm old an senile, I can read about what I did on my summer vacation, 2004. I know there's plenty more I could write about, but my battery level is waning, the sun is rising, and my head is aching. Oh, and the outside lights just turned off. That's a sign. Maybe I can finally fall back asleep? Ta.

Posted by oblivion at August 7, 2004 05:34 AM | Technorati Tags: