Long Day’s Journey to Good News and Flat Pats

I used to love to fly.  I didn’t take my first airplane ride until I joined the Army at 22 years old and I can still remember the awe and loving the feeling of ascending.  Now, I find it’s boring as hell.  My jaded opinion may result from the advanced age of my joints, overcrowded planes, or my continued frustration with the poor in flight service now rendered by most major carriers.

I spent most of the daylight hours yesterday at the airport or airborne winging my way back to New England.  The lady who arranges our flights got me an aisle seat but it was the last row and I spent the entire flight dodging gluteus muscles deposited in my face as people queued up for the rest room.  Fun stuff. 

Happy Birthday to Keene Friend!!!

It was this guy’s birthday yesterday!  I don’t see enough of him since his newly acquired profession but he’s a true friend and that is the highest praise for anyone.  Just a great dude!

I returned home through an impressive thunderstorm and talked to my wife who reported that her father came through the surgery fine.  They believe they caught the cancer before it spread.  He’s now without about 9 inches of his intestines and was very disoriented when he woke up (had to be restrained) but my wife’s biggest fears were not realized.  A tough old guy to get through this in his late eighties.  This was the best news we could have hoped for and she wanted me to thank everybody for the prayers that were sent south.

I was a little ashamed of myself during the phone conversation with my wife.  I had literally just walked into the house from an exhausting day of travel and my daughter summoned me via text to the phone because her mother was trying to reach me.  She was obviously exhausted and was babbling a little bit (lot).  She loves to talk on the telephone – I hate it, a lot. 

She felt the need to delve into excruciating detail about every aspect of her interactions with the somewhat appalling staff of the public hospital but I couldn’t get her to speed up and get to the meat of the conversation – like how was her father.  I also hadn’t eaten in over 12 hours so I was feeling a bit famished.  After twenty minutes she finally came up for air and I told her she needed to get some sleep – I was really, really hungry, and she did sound very tired.  Like I said, not proud of myself but I did listen for the entire time even if I was chopping up frozen hamburger patties at the same time.

During my down time this week in California I devoured the latest Lee Child, Jack Reacher book, Never Go Back.  These books are so well written and the action is as relentless as Mr. Reacher himself.  He finally makes it to Northern Virginia (it’s taken him three books to get there) to hook up with a female MP commander he’s only spoken to over the phone.  Some highly placed officials try to frame him and his new lady friend.  As you would expect this is a very poor decision, one does not lightly attract the wrath of Jack.  

I get the impression Child is running out of wind for Reacher.  There is only so many places he can take him and he may be fraying around the edges because the ending of this book was not up to the usual standard.  This happens with all literary characters and I’ll be intensely sad if he decides he’s had enough of Reacher because I certainly have not.

By the time I finally got off the phone with the wife and thawed and cooked the dead animal flesh the Patriots game was well into the third quarter.  They were playing the hated Jets in the driving rain I had just driven through.  The Patriots looked awful on offense, I mean really bad, historically inept.  I think they’ve spoiled us with excellence for so long that it’s jarring to see them struggle two weeks in a row.  The Patriots receivers seem to experience an allergic reaction to the leather of the football.  Luckily they were playing the Jets who always seem to finds a way to implode which they did in the 4^th quarter allowing the Pats to sneak away with a win they did not deserve.   

I Agree With Your Assessment

Finally, in the beating my own drum department, I picked up today’s newspaper to find the following headline.  That on top of my father in law’s success really cheered me up.