Today's post is to keep up the habit. I realize that it has been a couple of weeks since I've posted and I want to stay in practice of keeping myself in the ink. I arrived home today to the news that my wife had started a blog and I figured I had to at least get on and link her into this blog so that you, the reader, can have the complete Lopez experience. Here is her link: http://lopezfour.blogspot.com. I will caution you to only believe the good things she says about me. I doubt that I will EVER give her any negative thing to say about me. (HAHA).
This past week I began a new equipment transition at work and feel that I may gotten in over my head. I don't say that to mean that I can't handle the information that the instructors are providing or that I can't correlate this to practical use. I say that to mean that after over 15 years of flying one way with limited yet regular upgrades in technology to help doing so, I am having to completely relearn how to manage a cockpit. It is truly putting the "old dog / new tricks" theory into practice. Hopefully with enough studying on my part and a lack of studying by my classmates I won't look to much like an analog man lost in the Nintendo world. On the left, are 2 photos. The top one is the new cockpit I will be flying (I got that one off the internet for those of you saying something about security clearances), and the bottom one is the E6-B computer that every cub aviator in the world still learns on. I still use the E6-B today. Or I should say that until today, I used the E6-B. The advances in aviation automation technology is rendering items like the E6-B, plotters, and possibly even maps things you will only see in a museum. Personally, I'm waiting for the software drop that makes the pilot irrelevant for everything except inputting the flight information. Eventually it will be 2 pilots, 3 laptops, and 1 monkey with a big stick.
"The only constant in Life is Change". I don't know what brainiac said this, but truer words were never spoken. I've been posting on MSN Spaces for the past couple of years (http://hooker-parking.spaces.live.com), and haven't done anything on it in the past 9 months. I've been so inactive my friend Beth (bethjacquot.blogspot.com) dropped me from her links. I'm hoping that this change will be the catalyst that I've been looking for to get back to writing.
Let me introduce myself. My name is Phillip. I'm in the military and am doing the job that I've waited my whole life to do. I'm a pilot. I'm married to a wonderful woman named Janet who has given me a beautiful son named Gabe and we have a baby girl on the way. We are both from South Louisiana (for anyone asking what the difference is between S. LA and N. LA...just trust me) but live in Central Texas for now. I'm not what you would call a tall person. Cooking is my passion and try to use that as my creative outlet. I would like to go to a culinary academy when I retire from the military and see what new adventures that would bring. I would classify myself neither as an optimist nor pessimist, but realist definitely fits. I see the glass neither as half empty nor full, I'm just glad there is water in it. My writing is more of an outlet to let me rant on what's on my mind.
Excitement is not my middle name, so if these postings seem boring....oh well. I try to entertain myself with this stuff and enjoy it when others read and comment, but in the end I do it for me. The rules I try to follow when writing are these: 1) Stay true to the spirit of the experiment, 2) Don't write anything that I'll feel the need to apologize for, and 3) Keep it PG-13 (my mom reads every once in a while).
Speaking of change....
This past year has come with changes-o'-plenty. Janet has taken an extended leave of absence from work due to our impending family addition. Gabe has started school. I have been staying busy keeping up with the changes at work. I'll be upgrading aircraft shortly to the CH-47F and am anticipating that it will be quite a challenge. I've changed cars recently, selling my Honda to take over Janet's Ford. (12 years with a Honda Civic DX hatchback was enough). But the biggest change that I've had was getting used to the idea of having a baby girl on the way.
That's right, I said baby girl. The moment we found out I felt agony and ecstasy in the same instant. I suddenly felt the need to look up the fathers of all the girls I dated and beg their forgiveness. Soon I will have a tiny creature with the ability to wrap me around her little finger, turn me into complete babbling idiot, and melt/break my heart with the bat of an eyelash. What am I supposed to do? I look at the influences that little girls are surrounded by these days and wonder how I'll have a fighting chance. The Brittany's, Jessica's, Paris's, and High School Musical Chick-of-the-Week make it acceptable to be a bat shit crazy slut and the paparazzi parasites that feed on them don't care who gets hurt in pursuit of "The Truth". The worst that I remember growing up was Madonna rolling around on stage at the MTV awards and publishing a book showing her hoo-hoo. Not that I think that art should be censored in any means, but common sense should be used when marketing millionaire heiresses and multi-pierced pop stars to 8 year old girls as role models.
I realize that I'm the same guy that was only mildly annoyed a few years ago by the amount of attention given to little girls whose only accomplishments in life were looking good in tight clothing and badly lip-syncing to corporate approved pop songs or going to parties and bars while underage and getting their picture taken, but now I'm going to be the father of a daughter and I'm truly horrified. A few of the statements that I've been practicing are: "You don't think you can actually come out of your bedroom looking like that, do you?", "(Insert teen celeb name here)'s parents aren't raising you!","OH MY GOD!!!!!", "Underwear is NOT an optional garment!", "I don't care if I'm embarrassing you, you'll thank me later.", "No you may not get your (insert anything other that ears here) pierced.", "What happened to my baby girl?!".
These things are only partially said in jest. Parents must be the main influence on their children's lives no matter if it's boys or girls. I just believe that with girls there will be special challenges. I look forward to meeting and probably failing miserably at each one. Just remember...to all future suitors that I'll be cleaning my guns in front of dressed in full battle gear and camoflage paint, LA swamps are great places to hide a body.
