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I’m on the plane at our cruising altitude. The few days I spent at our Herndon office were nothing but positive. My new VP is a fantastic guy that got where he is by “getting it”. He understands the business, the people, and he’s bold and smart enough o get the job done. Other than the potential of more travel, there hasn’t been any downside to my new position in the company. I finished up at the office just after lunch and headed for Dulles early because there simply wasn’t anything left to do. I sat around drinking Bloody Mary after Bloody Mary, thinking about the last few days. I miss being home and my little critters and am looking forward to the weekend of rest, relaxation, and not thinking about work. My plane boarded on time, but much like my outbound flight, sat on the taxiway for a long time waiting to take off. Thunderstorms… again. I am pretty good about keeping perspective in my life and dealing with my current situation. Lonely, alone, and damaged with potential to offer but with neither the will nor ability to be emotionally healthy enough to share my time with anyone. There was a woman on the plane that may be one of the top three or four most beautiful female human beings I have ever witnessed exist in my soon-to-be 36 years on Earth. She was so captivating that, on some level, it was almost painful to gaze upon her. I watched this Discovery channel special on the gentle and docile-by-nature elephants and how they live long family oriented lives focused on community and peace. Until, of course, it’s time to make babies… then all bets are off and shit gets thrown down. Looking at her, I could sense a primal instinct to do battle. Not laser painted air-strikes and sniper rifles… I’m talking about blood drenched hand to hand combat where the winner procreates to survive the species. Animalistic instincts, pheromones, whatever it is, it’s not good and it’s been a long time since this teenage hormonal shit has happened to me. What makes this situation even more frustrating is knowledge of unreachability. She is incredibly intelligent, speaks 6 languages fluently, works as a hired gun financial consulting analyst that flies all over the world to audit and consult for high profile companies. She is Finnish. Blond haired and blue eyed like my dearest love EL and happens to have the most perfect complexion and body. She lives out of a penthouse suite in a D.C. upscale hotel and flies somewhere to vacation every weekend (every weekend since January). high roller and more than likely high maintenance. I remember walking through JFK in the early 1990’s and having another moment like this with a brunette in the terminal. I never was able to speak with her like this, but I remember every second in those moments as if the entire thing happened in slow motion and was recorded to archive for future reference. I haven’t thought about that in 15 years, but it may as well have happened yesterday. I wonder if this will be the same 15 years from now. I probably won’t even post this, but I needed to write it down. I had to get away from her. Suddenly I can relate to those stories of guys that do such ridiculous shit for women out of pure physical attraction. It is, in my opinion, perfectly normal and almost requisite to do ridiculous shit for the woman you love because she is your mate and that’s what relationships are about… each other.  Women like this should be shipped to a isolated island far, far away and just live together. They are far too dangerous to be running loose in the wild. People could get hurt. There are things like blood pressure and arterial health to consider. Men are far to fragile. I wish I could photograph her as documentary proof of what I’m describing here, but I couldn’t capture a photograph to do her justice. I may move to Finland tomorrow. The meal on the plane was quite unusual. A small box was wrapped up with a bag of M&M’s, cheese spread, pressed meat, trail mix, and crackers inside. It was like a hodge-podge Lunchables thrown together from shit they found rattling around in a drawer somewhere at the airport. I think that with the delay, I should land in Houston around 9:00 pee emm. I still have to get my truck out of the garage and drive home, but I’m so exhausted I just want to crawl in the back of the truck and take a nap. Knowing me, I’ll get home and be wide awake from excitement of seeing my furballs again. My sister, who has been mismanaging her life recently, has been avoiding talking to me from months and months presumably due to her not wanting to hear me say she is being foolish, but I don’t know the real reason. I called one of my banks today and had some money wired into her account. I don’t know why I did it. I do… because I love her. It is against better judgement given her statistical record of decision making success. I disapprove of her decisions and how she got herself into a pickle, but I guess I just hate to see her suffer. I really don’t dig the have’s and have-not’s selfishness, so I guess it was one of those she-needs-it-more-than-me situations. I am low maintenance anyway, so I won’t miss the cash and I love making other people happy. I always have. I’m a giver. I don’t mean monetarily necessarily, but of myself. I like to do things for people that brings joy to their life or somehow helps them… it is good for the soul and makes me feel so much better than if I just did stuff for myself. For example, one of my friends had a really tough week this week, so I anonymously sent flowers from her dog. I don’t care if the true sender ever is discovered, I just wanted to brighten her day. If I ever win the lotto, all y’all that know me better look out. You’re going to get some schtuff. Other than the occasional camera spree, I don’t like spending money on myself much, but I love to gift the people in my life. It just makes me all excited. I am extremely thankful that I can do it. I am flying to Los Angeles to see my brother on his birthday and attend DCI with my dear friend , Jason. It should be a great time despite my distaste for L.A. I haven’t decided if I’m going to take a camera rig with me or not yet, but if I do, I’ll probably just take a single lens and sneaker-zoom as needed. I rarely take city candids or documentary style urban frames, but I may go with that as a goal. It will be awkward for me, but it’ll be good practice. I’ve never been one of those guys that just runs around town snapping paparazzi shots of strangers in the name of artistic expression. One of the senior engineers in D.C. this weekend saw my landscape shots and ordered a big ‘ole print for his house. That’s kinda cool. Finnish lady is fucking distracting. I need to take a nap. I can’t wait for the next generation iPhones to hit the street so I can pick one up. I want them to have removable batteries and then it’s on like Donkey Kong. My iPod shifted through Hooverphonic, Morcheeba, Good Charlotte, Toadies (of course), Robert Earl Keen, Rob Zombie, Portishead, SRV, and Chevelle. I can’t settle on anything right now. I’m restless. I’ve played every hole of minigolf on my iPod. The plane seat is incredibly uncomfortable and the dude ext to me is bumping the seat all the time with his shaved arms and legs that are a little spooky. I’ve been there before… when I was 26 or 27-ish I was incredibly ripped… like Abercrombie model cut. It sucked. I worked out 5 days a week in the gym and ran 6 days a week. I regulated my six meals a day in every respect… calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates, etc. Everything was measured, prepared, and timed. I took natural supplements and vitamins for maximum efficiency. It was a lifestyle that was exhausting. All of this just to look like a Greek statue… no love handles to squeeze. I suppose that’s ok if some agency is paying you to undergo such torture, but when you aren’t getting compensated, in retrospect, it is just masochism. Where was I going with that? Oh yeah, shaving. I shaved my body back then. It sounds weird when you think of it in a Powder/albino creepy guy living in the basement tense, but when you think of it in the fitness model sense, it isn’t all that uncommon. Anyhoo, the guy next to me is not in the shape he should be to shave everything really… it just looks odd. Of course, I did know a guy in the Navy that shaved his legs every day because he couldn’t stand the way the hair felt in his pants. Psychological. I also knew a big ‘ole fat guy in the Navy that always snuck King Size Snickers in his toilet paper roll tubes when he went to drop a deuce in case he got hungry while taking a shit. People are strange, eh?  Ok, the fasten seatbelt sign just went off and my legs are cramping up. Barring unforeseen plane crash, I’ll see you on the ground.