Day 1063

One of my assignments today was writing about a contest where the prize was a flight on one of those planes that lets you experience weightlessness for a few minutes while the aircraft follows a parabolic flight path that temporarily negates the effects of gravity. This seemed like a cool and somewhat original contest prize. I almost thought of entering the contest myself until I started remembering my own flying experiences.

Years ago, I was one of the lead writers on the Cessna account. The aircraft manufacturer thought it would be nice if their creative team were pilots, so the agency told us they would pay for flight training. I sailed through ground school with flying colors. It was only when I stepped into the cockpit of the little Cessna 152 training aircraft that I realized there might be a problem. I had severe motion sickness. Every time I banked the little plane into a turn, I threw up all over the instrument panel. I literally could only fly the plane in a straight line. I thought of trying some strong anti-nausea medications but my instructor said it wasn't wise to fly an airplane on drugs. I finally gave up my quest to fly when I overheard one of the flight instructors tell another instructor "You take him up today. I cleaned up the plane last time."

Since that time, I have preferred flights of fancy. Over the years, I've tended to spend my idle time watching science fiction TV series. I've progressed from Babylon 5, to Farscape, Lexx, and finally Dr. Who. Somewhere along the line, I completely forgot about Firefly. I happened to catch a few episodes on a tenth anniversary retrospective of the short lived series this weekend. Pretty darn good show. While I was running errands this afternoon, I popped over to Fry's and got a DVD containing the entire 14 episode series. If November is as dead as it usually is, I'll have something to watch now on the dull days.

Actually last November I was extremely busy, so you never know what is going to happen. I'm always ready and willing to work. I'm just not that interested in marketing myself. Instead of making cold calls, I'd really prefer that people would become fascinated with the blog and decide to hire me on that basis. What the hell, it happened once. Maybe it will happen again.

It's getting dark on our evening walks again. This is the time of year that I start to worry we'll come face-to-face with a pack of coyotes in the park. I don't think Dot and Dash have learned their coyote etiquette yet. Coyote etiquette dictates that you steer well clear of the critters and by all means don't start barking at them.

Jada is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day