Moving along

I've been stuck in Peachtree City, Georgia for the last week and a half. just sitting here. yeah. doing everything other than flying... wedding planning, extra sleep, more writing, studying to renew my CFI license, and working out more.
i visited a good friend in Greenville, SC over the weekend-- Robbie Heindl and his sweet wife Megan. I slept over at their place Saturday and followed them to church, then to Robbie's parents' house for lunch, then took a nice afternoon nap, then played Wii Mario Cart and ended the night with pizza.
The drive back to Peachtree City was interesting. I got lost (didn't have a map) and met a homeless guy to whom i gave granola bars, leftover pizza, beef jerky, 4 pair of socks and a single quarter. it was neat because i had brought my laundry over to Robbie's to get washed, and there i was with an opportunity to give that clean laundry away to someone who needs it more than i.
i'm gettin up tomorrow morning to fly to Groton, Connecticut (KGON) in hopes of actually putting in some aerial surveillance time. so i gotta go to bed now and get my beauty sleep.

Five-minute update

So i got this idea today.
why not take just 5 minute bites of time to spend on things that i really want to get done during the day? so often i get busy on some task and let go of my wish-list of things i want to accomplish during the day. but that very task i concentrate on is subject to lots of distractions, so many sometimes that i don't find myself even finishing it after a huge investment of time! so what about taking smaller, more focused bits of time to do more things? how much time? maybe 5 minutes. sounds good.
so i want to blog more. how much can i write in 5 minutes? enough to summarize the day and pick out an interesting thought in my head.
so i want to study KingAir procedures and systems more. over a week's time, i can study and keep a lot in my teeny brain if i only study consistently.
pushups?
writing to Charisma?
praying?

consistency is really the key.
ok, 5 minutes is up! bye!

Mumbling on matrimony

Five weeks.
Five days.

On the scale of a lifetime, that length of time is only a blink of an eye away.
It seemed to happen all in an instant - meeting, proposal, planning. The next blink of an eye will be her fingertips grasping a golden ring and slipping it onto my finger in the presence of our friends, family and our Lord.

Married.

The idea is hard to process when i'm so close up to it. It's like looking at a planet from a telescope and analyzing it and thinking I know it, then I fly up to it til it's so close and large that it fills my whole view. Then I feel overwhelmed and mesmerized in that I really didn't see it for what it is until I got so close. I'm attached to my old perspective and almost want the old perspective back because back then i could get filled with romantic feelings then leave my telescope and do something else.
Just as we can make celestial bodies something they are not because we are so far away, so can we bachelors/ettes make marriage something they are not because we just are not there yet.
One must obtain a rite of passage, and a fuel for the fire, and a last-chance-to-abort countdown and a blast-off.
I'm discovering at this moment that marriage is very much like space travel, can you tell?

As one breaks through the 'atmosphere' of bachelorhood -earth - the rules fall away and one is free to roam and explore all these new unrestrained dimensions.
Likewise, once the momentum builds up you keep going...and going. This journey cannot be retried.
Situations have to be dealt with and resolved.
The only way off the ship is death.

I think that guys and girls differ so much on their expectations of marriage. Girls know from the start that 'this lifestyle and this guy is all i ever wanted!' guys, on the other hand, we're kinda narrow-minded. we short-change ourselves by looking forward to that short space of time that may or may not happen overnight, and and wrestle with our selfish desires to keep stuff to ourselves like money, space and time. but the more virtuous side of a guy will be a reminder of the really, really great things to look forward to in marriage...

>he only has to go out and do what he does every day at work. then come home to a sweet lady who's been cleaning his house, cooking his dinner, striving to keep herself cheery all day so he can feel that his world is really alright.
>he gets to go to sleep and is entrusted this precious human body to hold onto and keep safe
>of all the dumb things a guy can do, there will be somebody to always respect him...his wife
>even when his care for life and himself fails, she will keep caring.
>she creates a home to surround him, and she makes a home for him inside her heart too.

marriage will unveil the weaknesses and weirdness of each individual, but one can find great contentment in realizing that through marriage we can sample a bit of heaven, as well as increase our longing for God and ultimately to make our eternal home with Him.

back to writing..maybe

this is the place where i've dumped the weights of my conscience, processed problems and made sense of my world. but this place i've quite let alone for awhile, and there is a big, unfillable void between that time and now. there is no use catching up. catching up on six months is hard to do.
Paul recommended a very noble practice to keep one's sanity: "forgetting what is past and reaching forward to those things which are ahead..." writing contributes to that too because, with the art of the written word, my mind relaxes and enjoys refreshment from thoughts that have just lay here for awhile. Issues need to be processed and resolved and then really forgotten and moved beyond.
In our minds we take the tangible 'matter' of life and make an 'issue' out of it in such a way that is silly and unnecessary. If only matter stayed as matter in the ways we regard it, we could move past it, like walking from one street to the next.
a blog is for rambling.
i'm wanting to go to bed soon. because i can. I'm on a project! yay! i get to take some much-needed alone time to unwind and rest and, perhaps most importantly, make some extra money and get flight time along the way. Now, if my fiancee is reading this she's probably thinking 'much needed alone time?!' , as if being alone suddenly became something i need since being with her. Well, i'm fortunate that she also understands that an introvert needs to sit alone after awhile and listen to concertos and write and not hear any other human voice. Perhaps one of marriage's greatest challenges will be adjusting to being a round the clock people-person. More specifically, a her-person. But i've become keenly aware of my occasional need for quietness, motionlessness, stillness, serenity. Simply sitting here staring at letters lining up in file across the screen is therapeutic. And by virtue of the fact that i have not done this for awhile.