I'm Baaaack!!

I've been neglecting you, my dear blog.  Well, that has to change.  I'm reminded, however, about a friend of mine.  I guess former friend since I haven't heard from him in a very long time and my calls, emails, and letters have gone unanswered. 

When I first moved here, I went to some kind of hangar party to meet some of the aviation community.  I met another pilot that I became friends with before I knew he was a big-time, well-known, local radio personality.  We had an on-again, off-again relationship for many years.  (I guess we're in the off-again stage.)  It came as a big shock to me and bigger shock to him when his contract was not renewed one year.  He became the program director at an oldies station until that station changed format and he was again out of a job.  He eventually ended up in talk radio.  I remember the time I talked to him not long after that gig started and he revealed that "to be in talk radio, it turns out you have to have something to talk about." 

I have a blog; it turns out I have to have something to blog about.

Judging by my grade school teachers' reports to my parents, talking was never my problem.  Having something to talk about, that is.  It was a problem because I did so much of it in class. 

Talking, blogging.  Shouldn't be a problem.  So here I go.  (I still can't figure out how to add a picture, though.)

It's a new year; it's a traditional time to make a resolutions.  I don’t want to make it a resolution, but it's a new year, a new start, and a good time to start doing new things.

Speaking of new year, new start, and start doing things right, this is what happened last year right about this time:

I'd been working part time at the airport administrative office for about a year.  My primary duty is mind-numbling boring, so I welcome any change of scenery.  One such change is amassing the monthly operations report, which includes information on aircraft movements and aviation fuel bought and sold at the airport.  The services on the airport that vend fuel report (to me) how many gallons they bought during the month and how many gallons they sold to the public.  Last January, the report for December from one company indicated zero gallons of regular (non-jet) fuel sold.  That seemed highly unlikely to me, so I emailed the office manager of the operator to question it.  His answer was that there was fuel in the tank left from November, so they didn't buy any during December.  Okay.  I emailed him again.  Same result.  We emailed back and forth a couple times (it IS the 21st century method of communication after all) before I finally picked up the phone.  We had the same conversation until he finally said, "I was told the numbers are always the same."  In a flash, I glanced at the "fuel purchased" column (which is not a number I deal with) and flipped through the previous few months' reports.  Sure enough, the number in the "fuel purchased" column was always the same as the number in the "fuel sold" column.  Now, I realize that the coincidence of selling EXACTLY the same amount of fuel that was purchased might happen one month in a decade, don't you think anyone in about third grade would know that it doesn't make sense for these amounts to be the same?  I explained the difference between "buying" a supply and "selling" gallons at a time to customers and why it's unlikely to be the same every month.  He got really defensive, pointing out that he was told to do it that way four years ago when he started the job and he's "always done it that way."  Squelching a heavy sigh, I said, "Well, it's a new year, new management [there], a new administrative assistant [me], so let's just draw the line and start right now with doing it the right way."   A new year is a good time to make everything fresh and new.  I guess the new management felt the same way because there was a new office manager sending me the numbers the following month!

This new year, someone put a picture on Facebook (I have no idea where it originated) of a Mason jar filled with scraps of paper and the caption of, "This January, why not start the year with an empty jar and fill it with notes about good things that happen.  Then, on New Years Eve, empty it and see what awesome stuff happened that year."  And this new year, we're going to do this at our house.  I don't know about the guys, but I've already put THREE things in the jar!  J  I think this is very cool.  Plus, it'll give us something good to do while we're waiting for midnight so we can take our sip of champagne before heading to bed at 12:01. 

Oh, and according to Firestone, it's also time for new struts and new anti-sway bar and timing belt in my little orange car, new shocks in the truck, and new brakes in the HHR.  At least our new house has a garage where Gary can do the work

Happy NEW year to us.