My Own Personal New Year

No, you never see it coming
Always wind up wondering where it went
Only time will tell if it was time well spent
It's another revelation
Celebrating what I should have done
With these souvenirs of my trip around the sun


I'm just hanging on while this old world keeps spinning
And it's good to know it's out of my control
If there's one thing that I've learned from all this living
Is that it wouldn't change a thing if I let go


....trip around the sun - Jimmy Buffet

My number one birthday tradition is to get to the water - no matter where I am.  This morning I was at home and got to sit by the water that's right in my own back yard.

We all celebrate our birthdays differently I suppose.  I use mine to combine a couple of 'holidays' into one day.  New Years and Thanksgiving.   


The actual holiday/time of year that is "New Year" seems on the surface to be quite arbitrary (and I"m sure theres some good reason for exactly why it's when it is - but I don't feel like doing a google search to find out), but for me the new year resets on my birthday.  It's a personal 'new year' for sure where you can take stock of what you've done for the last 365 and plan on what you'll do for the next.  Reflection is a big part of my personal new year.


Then there's Thanksgiving.  No doubt that on the official holiday that is Thanksgiving - I do a mental checklist of all the things that I'm thankful for, but not as much as I do on my birthday.


I'm a very fortunate fellow.  I'm aware of where I am in life and how it is juxtaposed to many others who haven't the same fortune as I.   


I've decided - for myself - to list some of the many things of which I'm thankful for:


I'm very thankful to have been lucky enough to find incredible love in my life.  It's impossible to explain the importance of that.  


At the top of that list would be my wife who loves me like a dog.  I mean that - it's an unconditional love - the same a dog has for their human.  I just don't know how someone can be so accepting of who I am and what I do.  Some people know me as a successful person, but I fail a lot!  I fail much more than I succeed with some pretty hair brained ideas - some which get nowhere and some which only get somewhere but end up nowhere.   My wife accepts every part of who I am and I could not possibly be happier about where I've ended up on that front.


I have a long, long list of others who I love very much as well.  People who are so important to me - even though with some - I rarely get to see them.  Connections I've had for many years, but they live in other places than where I do.  


An interesting thing about this subject is that because of the lifestyle I've chosen, I have so many friends that are scattered all over the country and in other countries, but I have almost none where I currently live.  It's an strange situation and one we hope to remedy within the next 18 months by moving back to the Outer Banks of NC where our core group of community friends are.


My 20 years of traveling and living all over the U.S. in support of my hang gliding jobs and businesses gave me dear dear friends who I rarely get to see anymore, but do make a connection with every now and then because of the invention of Facebook.  What a two-edged sword Facebook is.  It can be a privacy invading time sink AND it can be the wonderful way to re-find your old friends and reconnect.   It's a tool I suppose and like any tool - you can build beautiful things with it, or you can smash your thumb.  I'm trying my best to not smash my thumb - but I'm certainly building beautiful things.   I am very very thankful for my friends.


I am thankful for the opportunities that have been (and continue to be) placed in front of me.   I don't think I deserve them - however I will gladly act upon them when appropriate.  There are people out there who see more in me than I ever will.  If they can believe in me then I certainly can believe in me an I thank them greatly for opportunities.  My current job is an example of that.  I'm in it because of an opportunity placed in front of me by 2 friends.   I love the job and I thank them.


So as I spend my day being thankful, it's likely I'm thinking about you the reader.  Not many people read this blog and so if you're here - you're likely to be a friend or family member.  Thanks for everything you've done for me - even if it was a smile of appreciation.  It matters.  I learn as much as I can from each of you.

A Work Week at the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte

I've gotten some feedback about resuming the blog and it seems at least a couple of people are reading it, so I think I'll try to continue it's revival.

This week, I've been working in Charlotte NC for the Coca-Cola 600 which is the longest slog of a race in NASCAR.   I've worked it many times in the past and it seems it will never end while it's going on.  I've not quite figured out who really wants to endure a 600 mile race - other than the broadcaster (the people who pay my salary) - so that they can run more commercials (and keep me employed).

Like usual, I flew in on Tuesday and checked into the Hilton in the UNC-C area.

Outside the Charlotte Airport is this statue of Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
Charlotte is known at the Queen City.

This was the view on Friday morning from my hotel room window.
The Charlotte Motor Speedway is on the horizon just to the left of the sun.

Because of the All-Star Race which took place last week here at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, most of our equipment was already in place, we just had to make some minor adjustments to our field equipment and hook up to the newly arriving ESPN production trucks - since they didn't have to be onsite last week - the All Star Race being a Fox product.

So we put in a bit of work on Wednesday and I headed to Winston-Salem for the evening to have dinner with my mom and dad (and Jan who had flown in for 2 days to visit her dad in Rural Hall).

Thursday had us working a long day of practices and Qualifying, but Friday was a 'dark day' on the track, so we ended up having the majority of the day off.

To keep from being bored, I located a place to rent a motor boat on Lake Norman and a few of us went out for an afternoon of cruising the lake.  It was a really fun time and we've decided to try to make it an annual outing.

Rusty, Jason and Myself onboard during our boating on Lake Norman.  Joe took the photo

So now, I'm sitting at my work station waiting for the race to start.  We'll get back to the hotel probably around 2 am and I'll fly home tomorrow morning for 2 weeks off.  

Jan and I plan to take SERENITY out for a few days during my time home, then it's off to Michigan and Sonoma for 2 weeks in a row of NASCAR fun.

Registering Camera 3 on Sunday morning

Waiting on the race start from my point-of-view.

Haint it purdy?

Well, it's been a year and a half since I updated my blog.  I guess that's what Facebook will do to you.  Although I really enjoy the bilateral-ness of fb, I miss the 'diary feel' of a blog.   I may make a half-hearted attempt to blog more.  With that in mind, here we go...

Haint Blue Ceiling.

Living in coastal Florida has some awesome advantages.  The weather being incredible for the majority of the year is one of them.  It also has some drawbacks.  For one - Florida is full of bugs.  Although we've had much less concern with mosquitos and the like than we did back home on the Outer Banks of NC, there is an ongoing battle with ants, spiders, wasps, etc.   One of the areas where they show up a lot is on the ceilings of the porches.  Dirt daubers and spiders find refuge up in the corners and since we have very high ceilings in our house AND on the porches - it's not fun getting those buggers down.  Since it's no fun - it gets put off longer than I'd prefer.

Our front porch with it's newly painted ceiling and new light fixture.
Click for larger version

This week, it was time to clean 'em out again PLUS the porch ceiling could use a coat a paint and so I decided to paint the ceiling 'haint blue'.

Jan and I lived in Key West for a few winters and we visit several times a year and it is there that we learned about haint blue porch ceilings.

There's 2 separate and unrelated reasons to paint your porch ceilings this range of blue (haint blue isn't just one single color).

The first (and the reason I used it) is to fool bugs into thinking that it's the sky and thus they are at risk of being spotted by a bird at anytime - thus becoming dinner.   There's some question as to whether this actually works and some say that it used to work - but only because the paint had lime in it (which it no longer does).

The other reason for painting the porch ceiling this color of blue is to ward off evil spirits.  Haint is a variation of the word 'haunt'.  This tradition is one from the old south and is said to have traveled here from Africa with slaves who would paint around their windows and doors to keep evil spirits out of their houses.  Somewhere along the way, painting the porch ceiling this color of blue became part of the spirit-repelling system as well.   I'm not big into the who spirit thing - but Jan is, so she's happy about the color.

So, I went to Home Depot to get some of this blue paint.  No one there had ever heard of such a thing.  Off to Lowes - same result.    I stopped at Ace Hardware on the way to my boat - same result.

After thinking about it, I knew just what to do.  I contacted Strunk Ace Hardware in Key West - a place I'd been in many times - and asked to be transferred to the paint department.   A nice fellow answered the phone and I told him I was in the Daytona area and no one knew anything about the color of paint used on porch ceilings to ward off bugs and evil spirits.  He instantly asked if I had a pencil (I did) and proceeded to tell me it was Benjamin Moore 729  "Jack Frost".   I stopped back by the local Ace Hardware with this info and within 20 minutes I was walking out the door with my newly mixed gallon of 'haint' paint.

After painting the ceiling, I decided we needed a new light fixture, so after seeing the pitiful selection at the local lighting store and both big boxes, I ordered one on Amazon.com - using Amazon Prime to get it here fast and cheap.

I figure in a few months I'll know if it's a wives tale about the bugs.  Not sure how I'm gonna know 'bout the spirits.

Finally a new post

I realized that I haven't updated the blog in quite a while, and worse - the way I left it was with a photo of my travertine project on the front porch - halfway finished.

Here's a photo of the finished job (finished back in the early spring).

Below is a photo of the porch before I started the project.