A Slower Pace

This is a bad season for me. You see, a few weeks ago we got a yearly visitor who has no mercy, no remorse and no limits. They don’t know the power their wares have over us. Well, this weekend, we paid the price. And we will continue paying the price for a little while now. I don’t know if it’s worth it but I am helpless and powerless to resist. That price is $38.50 for 11 Girl Scout cookie boxes that are now terrorizing our fairly moderate diets. I have been pretty good. Since September when I made some important but not drastic changes to my diet, I have lost about 25 pounds. In making these changes, I was more concerned about the health of my body rather than my weight loss. The weight loss was more of a nice side benefit. What I was targeting was a greater overall health for my body.

However, cake and cookies are my weaknesses. I have done a pretty good job by moderating my intake of those weak points. However, this is my first Girl Scout cookie season and I failed. Luckily, they will be gone soon enough and I can resume my moderate diet and decent health habits.

On another note, this evening my oldest daughter was watching TV in the family room. I came down the stairs and asked her to pause the ReplayTV. She obeyed and offered me the remote, thinking that I wanted to program something for a minute and then give the remote back to her. Instead, I kissed her on the forehead and told her I loved her. She looked at me weird for a second and then giggled.

She said “I thought you were going to do something important”.

I replied, “I did. I told you I loved you”.

I love catching my kids off guard like that. They really remember those moments.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

I have been an aviation buff since before I could walk. It never did turn out as a career (I’ll keep my day job, thank you) but it is still one of my passions. So imagine the huge grin on my face as I shoved the throttles forward to release the power of the UPS DC-8’s four turbofan engines and began racing down runway 35L at the Louisville International Airport. It was exhilarating — what a rush! At 135 knots, I pulled back on the yoke and gently climbed as downtown Louisville disappeared beneath my windscreen. As I leveled off at 3000 feet I gazed out the side window as downtown slipped below me. Puffy clouds all around and a beautiful horizon before me.

Then the instructor hit the pause button and asked if I would like to try a landing from three miles out. “You betcha” I said, securely strapped to the captain’s chair by a five point harness inside one of several $13 million dollar flight simulators at the UPS main air hub in Louisville. This was the ultimate video game. So real, in fact, that the FAA considers any time a pilot spends here as actual flight time. My landing was a bit rough (my excuse was I was testing the realism of the hydraulic motion controls) but I kept it on the runway which is more than I can say about the rest of my work compadres who had joined me on the tour. It was my favorite part of the tour which is saying a lot because the whole time I spent there was extremely interesting. Even though it was from 10p to 2:30a, I was awake and alert soaking it all up.

Thank you to my UPS reps for giving me the opportunity to join you in sharing your facilities and operations. More on the tour in following posts including the most important thing I learned that evening.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net