Tag: air

A change in plans

Today, I got to experience flying in a small airplane on a hot and clear day – loads of, basically, constant turbulence; high crosswinds with crazy-high gusts that made landing quite difficult and had several planes look insane as they were landing (successfully); an unidentified malfunction of the flaps – those help you slow down when landing, as I understand it – that prevented us from landing with those gusts, multiple times; the discovery that that malfunction was related to power… as all the plane’s electrical power eventually disappeared while in the air – remember that the engine still is running, just nothing else works, including the com system; navigating with no modern electrical airplane tools; and landing at a towered airport without radioing the tower, and, instead, by telephoning someone on the ground to let the tower know we have no power, and getting the all-clear from the tower through that person.

We never actually got to stop at the fly-in event we were going in the first place to attend, but we got to where we apparently needed to be today. Talk about a nutso flight… we certainly had it today! But I am extremely proud of my man and grateful for his passion and dedication to learning and practicing what he needed to learn and practice in order to handle it all safely and efficiently today. I mean, sure, I was definitely crying… a lot…, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t handling each situation well. That just meant I was terrified, which is really nothing new for me with flying.

(I know, it’s hard to believe, given all of my experience flying all over the world, but I genuinely am nervous and at least a little stressed every time I am preparing to travel by and am traveling by airplane. Walking off that plane and onto solid ground always gives me such immense relief. Seriously.)

Anyway, I prayed a lot today. I was definitely stressed as things were happening, but God and Mary and Jesus and Jude and Joseph of Copertino all came through and kept us safe and, eventually, gave us a safe landing… and on a real runway. (I kid you not, we never said it aloud, but we were both thinking that we were likely about to be emergency landing in one of the many fields we were passing.)

Thank you, God and Jesus and Mary and Jude and Joseph (of Copertino – grazie!), for keeping us safe and bringing us home, safe. Thank you for this training for the both of us. Please, help me to find a call around my man’s flying. And, please, help him always to have safe travels and departures and arrivals, especially for work. In Jesus’s name, I pray. Thank you. Amen.

Post-a-day 2023

Talk about adventure…

This morning, as we went to a natural park for hiking, her mom’s car went nuts with notifications that the tires needed attention. These are brand new tires. We stop at a gas station. They don’t have Nitrogen (N2), which the tires have. The pressure is acceptable for the short distance we still have to go. So, we stop at a tire place after the hike, and they fill the tires the needed amounts with N2. Yay. Phew(!).

Tonight, we go in my step-sister’s car into the mountains, so I can see the mountains up close. It is great. We then go to a Tim Horton’s, because I’d never been to one, and it supposedly is amazing. No offense to anyone, as it was tasty, but I gladly will stick to Shipley Donuts for all my doughnut needs.

We head home… her boyfriend leans out the open window, as though he is tossing up his Tim Horton’s. “Que pasó, mi amor?!” Something is wrong with the tire. He jumps out at the red light. It’s almost flat, he says. We pull to the roadside once the light turns green (though not very far over! 😛 ).

The tire is truly almost at the end of flatness. Good thing we’d had the windows down to enjoy the great weather, or he wouldn’t have heard it.

He starts to change the tire. The key to unlock the special bolts is missing, though everything else is in its proper place. Perhaps, when someone broke into her car a while back, they also stole the key. Ugh! We can’t change the tire.

Her friends who live nearby show up. They have three spare sets of tools. One of them works as the key. Phew!

Her mom shows up. She’s come to pick me up, because we didn’t know how long it would take, and we had been on the way to drop me off back at the house before they went elsewhere.

There are now six of us – and three cars – standing on the side of the road in Mexico around nine PM on a Saturday. At least we’re likely to be safe with so many people and cars!

Everything gets changed okay, and I help out everything back together in the back, reflective triangles and tire and tools and all (minus the missing key, of course).

Her mom and I go home, as do her friends, and my step-sister and her boyfriend go somewhere to have the tire fixed.

A massive piece of metal is removed. Glad that got handled… goodness. Thanks for keeping us safe. What a tire-ing day today has been.

Post-a-day 2023

Guess wha-at…!

We

Have

Gas Again!!!!!

So, now we can have hot water and cook and bake and have heat in the house and run the dishwasher and wash and dry clothes and just hand wash greasy dishes period(!). Oh, goodness… the difference it makes. We are incredibly grateful this is finally handled.

Turns out that we likely didn’t need to dig the ditch ourselves at all, but I think it was still good in that it gave my man a somewhat cathartic thing to do, as well as a thing to do while we waited for all the rest of the pieces of big company nonsense to sort themselves out.

See? The contracted company brought their own machinery to handle the rest of it all. AND they put all of the dirt neatly back on top of the ditch after they replaced all the piping. No extra work for my man or us. Woohoo!

The big energy company, when we did what we were supposed to do, then told us that we would have to wait until Tuesday for them to come and do the simple re-installation of the gas meter and to turn on the gas… a very different message from what they had told us two days beforehand, when they’d said same-day installation would be no problem whatsoever. They now wanted us to spend over five days in our home in freezing temperatures, and then they would come do a twenty-minute stop-in.

No way, Jose.

Fortunately, after much intending on my part and multiple phone calls on the part of my man, Centerpoint showed up, and a very nice man named Lee hooked up everything easily and quickly, and turned on the gas and cleared up our gas lines in the house (because air is in the line at first, after installation). And now we have heat!

We actually both reveled in taking hot showers before going to the Christmas gathering we had this evening at my brothers’ dad’s house. That shower, though not the actual best I’ve had, was, within the context, the best shower ever. Uh…

I just thank you, God. Thank you. Keep us safe, please, that we pursue and fulfill your will, being our best selves. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2022

Everyday nudity

I’m getting to have way more time than I’d like, sitting around in just my underwear this week. And it is quite likely to continue for the next month or two.

You see, I live in a converted attic space. So, it is a lovely little studio kind of space, but the awesome-looking vaulted ceilings are actually the roof. And this is Houston. And it is June. So, it is hot.

Because there is only a single window unit on each of the three floors, it gets terribly hot up here during the day, and it takes a couple to a few hours after sunset for it to be at a tolerable temperature, and another one or few to be at a sleep-able temperature. And so, after I take a cold shower, I sit in my underwear by the fan for a while, and eventually lie down on the bed, usually without sheets on me, aiming to keep myself as cool as possible in a not-yet-cool room.

It has been two hours now, and I finally was able to turn off the fan, but can’t put on my shirt yet.

And I might turn the fan back on a while longer…

Ugh…, but, at least, it is practice being with my mostly naked body, and being comfortable in it just hanging out, not feeling any kind of sexual tie to the nudity. It is just everyday nudity.

Post-a-day 2021

Maybe it’s just for me

I don’t know what it is, but there is something about riding my bike on the highway through the cold, winter evening weather that makes me want to arrive home to my husband, have a little romp fest with him, and then snuggle up to a movie and hot cocoa by the fire together.

And, I mean, it isn’t exactly a sexual thing – riding my bike through the cold isn’t an erotic experience or anything.

It is kind of like how a cold winter day just kind of makes you want to snuggle close to a warm mug of hot chocolate or apple cider… only, when riding my bike on these days, I just want to have the little romp fest first, and then snuggle up under blankets with the warm mug.

Just as the hot chocolate just sounds like the perfect next step to the day, so does this little grouping of events sound for me.

Granted, this is Houston, Texas, so we won’t often have fires going anyway, and, besides that, I don’t exactly have a husband at the moment (or anything like one), so my scenario isn’t exactly plausible…, however, the cold weather and wind just somehow make it seem like the perfect way to continue on in the day.

Perhaps, somewhere down the road, that will be the way I end each chilly day of winter.

For now, though, I just smile at the slight irony of the situation and utter oddness about its existence in the first place, and then I feel the chill start to sink into my skin under my ski suit, and suddenly feel slightly sick, my stomach ebbing toward forcing out whatever might be at that moment within its uncomfortable, tightening confines…

Anyway, so that was my afternoon, eh?

How was yours? 😛

Post-a-day 2020