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© November 21, 2008
 

Hi !

 The sun is shining, the sky is blue and ALL is right with the world!

Check this out! I subscribe to a site called Tut's Adventures at www.tut.com.  Great stuff.  The owner, Tom Dooley, is somewhat famous for a Toastmasters speech (7 minutes 35 seconds) he delivered called Thoughts Become Things , and he's also a teacher in The Secret.  Anyhow, he sends out personalized Notes from the Universe (click "Notes Sign Up" on his main page or click the banner).  They're incredible, in my opinion.  If you are a goal seeking individual, and you want some quick, short, periodic pick me ups along your journey (you can choose how often), sign up for the Notes from The Universe.  I highly recommend it, and it's FREE ! (and no junk emails will follow)

My life has been moving along at just about light speed and weird stuff has been happening here.  Like, it's mid-November in Syracuse and it's just now getting cold.  On Halloween, the kids were trick or treating with NO COATS... in Syracuse!  Amazing.  Of course, the weekend before Halloween, I celebrated the 25th anniversary of my 30th birthday with a party at my house, making history with TWO personal parties at my house in less than a year (as opposed to 1 in the previous 5!)  Renee Marquis (cute photographer friend) played semi-official photographer and there's a few photos posted on my Facebook.  Friends Gerri and Jill also snapped a few -- Jill's good at capturing one of my reputedly finer features -- duly noted in the captions.

History is made in the U.S. by electing the first African American president! That was pretty awesome on a number of levels.  I'm not very political, but I did write a short blog post regarding the event, if you'd care to read it onRamblings Lite.

One of the primary reasons for this issue of Ramblings is to give you an opportunity to laugh... at ME !  Because I'm always so upbeat and positive, people sometimes think that I don't have bad days. Not true!  But one of my favorite quotes -- and I forget who said it -- is, "It's not what happens to you in life, but what you do with it."  And in Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote, "
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." (Don't get scared about me quoting Shakespeare; it won't be a habit.)

So here's a couple of Kelvin's "perfect days".  Feel free to roll on the floor if you need to.  I did (in retrospect, at least.)

The morning after my birthday party, I had to fly to Long Island for a two-day photography seminar.  I was up until about 3:00 a.m. getting everything put away, but left one cooler to do "when I got up", because I was exhausted by then. I got up LATE -- go figure -- but my flight wasn't until noon, so I just had to be at the airport by 11:00.

I came downstairs and went to empty the cooler and... the cap on the drain was loose and had leaked ICE COLD WATER all over my foyer (did I mention I was barefoot?) I cleaned up THAT mess, then emptied the cooler into the kitchen sink, and decided to start a pot of coffee so it would be ready when I got out of the shower.

Got the coffee out, filled the pot, turned it on and went to take my shower.  Came downstairs grabbed the pot and... I'd forgotten to put the coffee in the basket, so I had hot water (sigh).  Okay... REDO!  While that was happening I went downstairs to my computer to print out my Jet Blue itinerary. Fired up the pc, printed the itinerary, folded it nicely and neatly and went upstairs to finish packing.  Record time packing... quick! (I'm a planner, can you tell?) then went downstairs, gathered everything, filled my travel mug with coffee, got in the car and headed to the airport. Got on the road, reached for the cup of coffee and... I'd left in on the counter in the kitchen.  Oh well.
 
No problem; I'm hungry.  I'll stop at McDonald's to get coffee and a Sausage McMuffin with Egg, right by the airport.  I pulled into the parking lot and the drive thru was closed!  Arrrgh!  I'm cutting it really close for my flight and I don't have time to go inside, so I forego the sandwich and coffee and beat it to the airport... hungry... no coffee.  I pull in the garage and half the up ramps are closed for repair.  It took me almost 15 minutes to find a parking spot.  I found a spot up front so I could hit the auto start from the street and have it warm when I got in it when I came home, then I beat it into the airport, rush up to the ticket counter, reach in my pocket for the itinerary and... I had left it folded nicely and neatly on my desk in the basement! (sigh)

I'm accustomed to using the little self-serve kiosks which use a credit card to find you, so absent my itinerary with the bar codes and such, I hand this tall cute red headed ticket agent my credit card so she can run it through the little machine to verify my identify.  SHE -- sense of humor -- asks me my name, looks it up, checks my DRIVERS LICENSE,
puts my credit card in her pocket, hands me my ticket and wishes me a good day.  The guy next to her says, "you need to give him back his credit card."  SHE says, "a man walks up to me first thing in the morning, gives me his credit card, I'm going to keep it."  Ha ha... Anyway she gives me back my credit card (I'd left it in a bar the weekend before because I was running a tab. Luckily friends stayed drinking after I'd left and retrieved it for me), then asks about my carry on bag, if I had any liquids more than 3 oz... CRAP.  Yup.  So, now it's not a carry on.  THEN I discovered that my flight was actually a 1:00 p.m. flight, not a 12:00 p.m. flight, so I *could* have taken longer, walked in to get that sandwich at McDonald's, etc.  Oh well...   It's a grrreat day!

Now off to security we go.  Shoes off, watch / rings/ off.  Through the check station, retrieve my stuff on the other side, get dressed, head to the gate.  Decided to look at my watch to see how much time I had left and... no watch.  I'd left my watch, ring and the 14kt Italian Gold bracelet that I bought in St Thomas in 1999... sitting at the conveyor belt in that little specimen bowl they use.  RUSHED back to see some guy trying feverishly to  convince the cute woman in front of him that she's left that $1000 worth of stuff on the belt, but luckily she declined and I stepped up to the plate... in time to retrieve it.  He looked at me, smiled and said, "you owe me."  Amen.

NOW... I'm whole again and I go sit to wait for boarding.  I'm supposed to text my ride in Long Island to let him know if my flight is on time, which I would have gladly done, if the battery hadn't just died on my cell phone.  Guess where the adapter was?  Yep... in the "no longer carry-on" suitcase!  No contact.

Luckily, I had sent HIM the right itinerary earlier in the week, so he knew what time the flight was supposed to land, but flying into JFK where would he be?  Hmmmm . Got off the plane... collected my suitcase... opened it to find the carefully packed phone charger, went and stood by a door to use a power plug to charge the phone enough to send a text message to my friend, to discover that he was waiting outside, 30 feet from the door I was standing at.  Whew! All's well, that ends well.

So we head out, and he wants to treat me to lunch -- me being the visiting state president and all -- and he takes me to two of his favorite restaurants, which are both closed.  So we ended up having a tasty Ranch Chicken Wrap at Wendy's, and the rest of the trip went pretty smoothly... until time to come home on Tuesday!
 

The saga resumes.  In texting a friend back in Syracuse about weather conditions (it was supposed to get ugly) I discover that my alleged 11:00 p.m. flight back to Syracuse, is really a 10:35p.m. flight (remember the itinerary on my desk?)  Using info I "remembered", my hosts had arranged for a car to pick me up at the seminar location and take me to the airport at 9:30 -- when I thought the flight was 11:00.  NOW... they called to move it up, and the company said no problem.  Unfortunately, the (provisional) driver GOT LOST on his way to the venue and got there at 9:50, for my now 10:35 departure from JFK !!!  He apologized and said, "I'm sorry... Don't worry; I'll get you there in 10 minutes."  Yeah... right.  But as luck would have it, we were a lot closer than I'd imagined and he actually did it in 15 minutes, and I walked confidently into the Jet Blue terminal at 10:10 p.m. and boldly asked, "Can I still make the 10:35 flight?" to wit the gentleman responded, "you might make it, but your bag just missed it by 1 minute."  Dang.

So I get checked in and I start to do that OJ Simpson to the gate thing (it wasn't that far) when the ticket agent called out to me, "Sir... the flight is delayed until 11:05 so your bag will make it." We both smiled and...ahhh ...  a now leisurely stroll through security.  I kept my jewelry this time, and the flight left pretty close to the revised departure time.  Back in Syracuse an hour late, at about 1:00 a.m. Wednesday morning.  Collected my suit case from baggage claim, strolled out to the garage, FOUND my car (yay!)... hit the remote to unlock the doors and.... my car battery was dead.  I'd left a map light on from Sunday.

Don't you feel better now?!  WHEW!

Luckily, AAA came very quickly, and was I home within the next 45 minutes, headed for my bed and my 5:45 a.m. wake up call for the day job.

But I have to ask you, given this list of "tragedies" (all true, by the way) what would your attitude have been by the time it was over?  Would you have been laughing hysterically at yourself, or would you have been upset and out of control and making yourself and others around you miserable?  In the final analysis, every inconvenience and annoyance I suffered on this trip... I caused myself ! 
  It was all MY fault!  If I had spent just 30 minutes of focused attention to detail... none of that would have happened to me.

People do this to themselves all the time, and then blame... who ? (or is that whom?).  80% of our problems, we cause ourselves.  Luckily for me, all's well that ends well, and
everything turned out fine.  But it could just have easily gone very badly, and there would have been no one to blame but myself.

So... hopefully you're taking time and taking responsibility for what's happening in your life, and if for some reason you abdicated that job for a while, take it back... and get back in control.

I know this was long, but hopefully you enjoyed it!  As usual....

Future

Have an awesome day!  See you next time.
 
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