Making Up My Mind, Part 02

I was planning on making this a much more ordered and scholarly post in the vein of Part 1 in this series, but a post by Caleb over at Gun Nuts inspired me to take it in a different direction.

You see, fear, or at least the refusal to be ruled by it, figures into my own decision to carry. It's like this: for various reasons, I tend to work past midnight 3-4 times a week. Often this means my car is the last one in the parking lot, and while my building itself is quite secure, the parking lot is somewhat less so. Trespassers, car prowls, and break-ins are, if not entirely common, certainly an occasional occurrence and annoyance.

For these reasons, when I work late, I walk past a bunch of windows overlooking the parking lot and the path to my car, scanning carefully for anything or anyone irregular. Then I walk out the door knowing that if I missed something, or there was someone in a spot I couldn't see, then I'm pretty much screwed. I don't have the conditioning to run, or the skills to put up much of a fight. It'd be a Very Bad Night for me.

If I lived alone, that might be all right. It's one thing to run risks when you're the only one who might suffer major detriment, but it's quite another when your risks could have a dramatic effect on a wife and three little children. While my overall risks may still be fairly low, evaluated against my lack of latent defensive skills, and the possible consequences of failure, left me with two questions: How much gun can I afford, and what caliber should it be?

My security is my responsibility, and I'm going to make sure I have the tools to defend myself as best I can. The news carries too many people with sound-bytes of "I never thought this could happen in my neighborhood." I refuse to be one of them.

Coming back

My last post of any significance was about sixteen months ago. For all intents and purposes, this has been a dead blog in the mean time, but here I am, starting again.

Why bother? Mostly because I feel like I have some things to say again, some stories I want to tell, and my muse has finally come back.

Why did I stop? That’s a much more complicated answer. I suppose a bit of the blame can go to a chaotic work schedule while we pushed our latest game out the door that left me a little burnt out, and bringing our third child into the world probably didn’t help either. But the truth is, this blog had become all about my flying journey, and that had come to an abrupt halt in September when I realized that the money was gone, and the funding source I’d hoped to have wasn’t going to happen. Blame the economy, blame the housing bubble, mostly blame me for stupidly optimistic planning, but the fact remains that I made two supervised solo flights, and one unsupervised solo flight of a few touch and goes, then walked away from the airfield.

It sounds silly, but it hurt too much to come back to this blog. I felt kind of sad every time I saw a Cessna or a Piper fly overhead in the clear blue sky this summer. Flying had been my dream for years, and I did not happily choose to postpone that dream once again. Getting back to a place where I could go to the airport again, or think about this blog, took a long time. Approximately sixteen months, apparently.

But I’m back. Like I said above, I feel like my voice is coming back, and I’ve got a few things to say. Some interesting things have been happening in my life, as Mrs. FTYD and I have tried to live more financially responsibly, FTYD Junior has passed four years old and turned into a pretty interesting kid, FTYD Daughter provides weekly lessons in understanding women and why men have trouble doing so, and FTYD Boy #2 is cute. And I’ve made the decision to join the ranks of the armed Americans. That last one there, is what’s probably going to be a big topic for the next few months at least, as I spend some time explaining how I came to make the decision to be an armed family, and explore the fun of figuring out what gun to buy when you’re a total newbie.

Thanks for reading, and see you soon.

For those with wings, fly to your dreams.

Getting Older

As my younger brother noted, today, in addition to being Tax day and Buy A Gun day, is also the annual anniversary of my release from the womb.

I've been blessed with two wonderful children, a beautiful and tolerant wife, a dream job, and the ability to reach for my dreams.

My occasional complaints about a lack of cooperation from the weather for accomplishing my aviation goals pale in comparison to things like that.

Roadtripping the Caravan

For the President's Day weekend, my wife and I decided it was time to take the new Grand Caravan out for a test of its road-trip qualifications. To that end, after leaving The Boy to spend a few days of quality time with his grandma, the remaining three of us set out for the three hundred-some mile jaunt from Seattle to Canyonville, OR to visit some college friends.

Despite my general ambivalence towards all things minivan, I have to admit that the GC is a fantastic road-trip vehicle. Comfortable, never short for music thanks to the Satellite radio and MyGig systems, plenty of room for our stuff, and it actually surprised me with the gas mileage. While the around town MPGs are generally horrible, averaging about 65mph on the freeway gave us real fuel economy numbers around 25 miles per gallon. Considering the EPA estimate is 23, I'd call that pretty darn good.

Hanging out with our friends and seeing their five-month-old little girl for the first time was great, but far too soon it was time to head back. Unfortunately, we brought something unexpected back with us: another evil version of The Flu. Urgh. The Lovely and Gracious Wife was the first to succumb, feeling the symptoms on Wednesday night, and in full-blown illness by Thursday. This also left me staying home playing Mr. Mom, a role I didn't exactly manage with my usual aplomb. By Saturday night, The Boy had succumbed, and let me tell you, I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything more pathetic than my tow-headed two-year old laying on the couch whimpering because he's got a fever and his body hurts.

Oh, and then on Sunday, I started showing symptoms, leaving The Girl as the only healthy one of us all. Well, at least work hasn't been too stressful today. Much like being in the eye of a hurricane, I don't imagine that this calm spell will last much longer, but it's nice for the moment, and well timed at that.