crime and publishment

Saturday was my twenty-fourth birthday. I had a marvelous time, despite working an eleven-hour shift at the airport café during the airshow. No matter. Somehow I managed to get home, recuperate, and host a grand cocktail party which lasted until the wee hours of the morning.

Having finally subdued the hangover, I now reflect on what I've accomplished in life so far.

It looks as though I've done nearly everything I wanted to do before the age of twenty-five. I've acquired a college degree, lived in a foreign country, gotten drunk on absinthe, published some travel articles, learned how to tend bar, and (as of last Monday) earned a private pilot's certificate.

(Miss H and I are going to Disneyland sometime in October, so that will soon be off the to-do list as well.) 

Only one accomplishment remains. I still need to get published.

I don't need to publish my novel before I'm 25. I'm cool with that. But I would like to land on Planet Fiction before I'm a quarter of a century old. Just to prove to myself that I can do it, you know. Get in there while I'm still young. Make my mark. Publish a short story or three.

So I'm writing sci-fi stories like mad, and have already submitted one to Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, as you'll recall. Some of these stories are pretty long: ten thousand words or more, well into novelette range. 

Fortunately, there are still plenty of magazines out there that publish works of that length.

I'm going to pick up the pace over the next few days. I've decided I need to try harder at this, even despite working six days a week and entertaining a lady friend. There's no reason not to. I can easily set aside an hour or so every day for this. The only thing that separates me from all those sci-fi authors I admire so much (Robert A. Heinlein, L. Sprague de Camp, Isaac Asmiov, John W. Campbell, Jr., H.G. Wells, and many more) is persistence.

The way I see it, writing is a lot like acting. Most of the work is done before you become famous. You have to lay the groundwork before you attain any kind of notoriety, or even success: writing dozens, hundreds of stories and sending them to every publication and periodical you can find. It's exhausting work, costs a mint in postage, and requires diligence, patience, and determination.

You have to have the determination (and the stamina) to write those hundreds of stories and revise them until they're suitable for publication. If your schedule is busy, then you need to set aside time to write and submit, too, just like you would to exercise or play fetch with the dog. No excuses. I don't care if you have to cut your teatime short by five minutes. Make sure you're writing and submitting at least an hour a day. You can find that much time, no matter who you are or how frenetic your day is. I know a lot of writers who work nine-to-five jobs and come home exhausted every evening. When do they write? On their lunch breaks. It's getting yourself into the proper state of mind, that's all. It's not a matter of whether you can do it. It's a matter of when. 

You have to have the diligence to package your submissions the way the magazine wants you to: typically, Courier font, double spacing, numbered pages and word counts. Trust me, this is worth your time. The worst thing you can do when submitting a story is fail to format your submission correctly, especially when the submission guidelines are often readily available on the publication's web page. The guidelines are there for a reason. They make your submission more professional in appearance, as well as render it easier for an editor to read. This just might help you find out whether you're being published sooner—not to mention give you a better shot at being published, period. No editor's going to have the time or the willpower to try and decipher a single-spaced, thirty-page manuscript written in an undecipherable font in the colors of the rainbow.

Finally, you must have the patience to wait the requisite 4-8 weeks to find out whether your submission is suitable for publication. Many editors are swamped these days, thanks to an ever-growing population of wannabe writers. They're not going to look more charitably upon your work if you badger them all the time querying the status of your story. Working tirelessly on stories (every day, folks, every day: you want to keep your hand in, don't you?) and shotgunning them across the fiction universe (making sure, however, that you follow individual publications' respective submission requirements to the letter) also takes patience. Just remember, you're not going to be an overnight success. Most latter-day critics agree that Herman Melville wrote some of the best stories in the English language, and yet he was highly unappreciated in his time. Most of the stuff he wrote, which today is venerated by literati, was a flash in the pan back in the 19th century. Melville himself worked as a customs inspector most of his life, just to make ends meet. He never made enough to support himself on his writing alone. Chances are, neither will you. There's no harm in trying, though. You have to write a lot, submit a lot, and wait a lot in this game. Write, submit, and wait. Make sure you do a little of all three, every single day. Slacking is a crime punishable by death—or worse, life in obscurity. Slackers never get published (unless they write for IGN).

Remember, if you keep up the fight and don't let your writing slide, and keep up a steady stream of submissions, publishment will be yours. It may take a while, yes. The process may be tedious, yes. The flood of rejection slips will be heartbreaking, yes. But persistence is key. I heard that Sylvia Plath submitted one story to the New Yorker at least 30 times before they finally published it. If she'd quit after 29 tries, would she ever have succeeded?

Like former Vice President Dan Quayle once said, "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."

Persist and you will find what you seek. Such is true of every literary hero, no matter what side of the page they're on, no?

And when you do get published...celebrate. Do a happy dance. Eat something unhealthy. Watch a fatuous TV show. Buy 582 Slim Jims. Reward yourself for your persistence. Go ahead and relax. You earned it.

British barbecue blues

There was hardly any time to breathe, let alone detoxify, after Jeff and I returned to Newcastle from Ireland on the 17th of June, 2010.

We had a barbecue to prepare.

Being guests from the colonies, we thought we'd repay our kindly English hosts by throwing them a little bash. Jeff and I would put our heads together and bring the best of our backyard party skills to the fore. I'd grill up some ribs and hamburgers and Jeff would do his famous cornflake potatoes, with some other side-dishes thrown in.

It sounded good on paper. How it actually turned out is something else altogether.

Adam took Jeff and I down to Morrison's (the big grocery store) the evening of the 17th to get all the ingredients we'd need...including the charcoal, and even the barbecue itself. Adam's mum didn't have one, you see. Living within spitting distance of the North Sea, she doesn't have cause to grill outdoors very often. They have that stuff out in England called rain, you see. I don't know exactly what it is, but I guess it has something to do with water coming out of the sky. I have a difficult time imagining such a miraculous phenomenon, but I can see how it would make fire-starting difficult.

So we picked up the goods, lugged 'em back to Adam's mum's house in a taxi, and set about getting the preliminary preparations done. I assembled the new grill myself, which I'm rather proud of. I'm not the most mechanically able, but give me enough time (and mulligans) and I'm usually able to work it all out. I got it done just before dark (at 11:00 p.m.) and we all sat around having a few beers and admiring the thing. It was the same shape as a typical tripod grill (wheels, tray, big black pot with a round lid, etc.) but about half the size. You had to stoop to flip anything grilling on it. It was about the size of the grill on the left in the picture below, here:

Again, I wish I could show you my own pictures (this one's from Wikipedia), but I have none. I think I tried to take some photos of the grill I assembled, but by that time it was dark and the pictures came out unrecognizably blurred and obscure.

We had a marginally decent night's sleep that night. When you get the bunch of us together—A, E, Jeff, and me, not to mention E's friend M—well, we have a tendency to bounce of each other and egg each other on, and what was supposed to be "a few drinks" and "an early bedtime" turns into yet another late-night lesson in debauchery.

The day arrived, and after an eleventh-hour dash to Morrison's for some forgotten ingredients, all was in readiness. The ribs had been seasoned and rubbed, the charcoal was resting comfortably in the tiny grill, the burger patties were lovingly shaped and patted down. Jeff, with E's help, had already mixed up and baked his cornflake potatoes, the recipe for which I shall not include because it is a sacred H_______ family heirloom, and to divulge it would bring the wrath of all Canada down on my head.

Just kidding.

Anyway, Jeff's preparations were now done, and he joined the rapidly growing crowd of guests in their cans of Carlson while I flitted between the kitchen and the backyard.

Things were not going as planned. I had two five-pound bags of charcoal at my disposal. The first one burned far too hot. Seriously, the burgers were being instantly charred. That was all well and good if I'd been preparing only the burgers, but I was trying to put together a whole course of meat dishes here. I only had one extra bag of charcoal and this one was burning up too fast. I was only able to dish up about five or six burgers before the heat died completely.

British barbecue: 1
Postman: 0

Daunted by a fast burn and low heat retention (on the part of the grill itself), I was determined not to lose to the second bag. I readied the remaining burgers and ribs, lit the last load of charcoal and prepared for some heavy action.

None came.

The second batch was far too cool. The inferno of the first bag never materialized. The second bag was slow to ignite and when it finally did burn, it was cool enough that I could place a finger on the bare metal of the grill lid and not be burned. The ribs and burgers just sat there, not even cooking, as pink as they'd been at the supermarket.

I was eventually forced to move the uncooked meat from the useless grill and finish it off in the kitchen oven.

Oh, the humiliation.

British barbecue: 2
Postman: 0

I did get a consolation prize. Everyone enjoyed the burgers, and even more so the ribs. Though I was slightly dilatory in serving up the goods, the assembled guests complimented my grilling prowess, and even commiserated with me.

"It's a British barbecue, mate," said N (one of Adam's friends), as if that explained everything.

Jeff's cornflake potatoes were by far the most popular thing on the menu, but we won't talk about that. I can't have it said that a Canadian served up a tastier dish at a barbecue than an American, can I?

Way to upstage me there, Jeff old pal.

Anyway, we made a jolly night of it. Once the cooking was done I was able to sit down, relax, enjoy a burger and a beer, and yell at the TV along with the rest of the guys as the English World Cup team played to a somewhat embarrassing 0-0 draw with Algeria. (The ladies sat outside with a bottle of wine, sharing some much-needed girl talk. Jeff joined them, but we won't talk about that either.)

After the game we all got drunk and partied until the wee hours of the morning.

Pretty good day overall, I guess.

football updates

I remember I said something a while back about how I was going to keep better track of football season this year, and even blog about it. I didn't do so well. Apart from a maudlin post about how my beloved San Diego has lost one of its Holy Offensive Trinity (LaDainian Tomlinson) I haven't said much.

Preseason recap: I don't pay much attention to preseason games, usually, because they're usually on when I'm doing something important, and let's face it, the preseason don't count for much anyway. It wouldn't have done me much good to watch the Chargers' preseason games anyway, because they SUCKED. Except for a slight win against Chicago at home (25-10), we lost to everyone else: Dallas (ouch), New Orleans (well, okay), and San Francisco (are you effing KIDDING me?!).

Thankfully, the pain of preseason didn't last that long, and after Norv Turner knocked a bit of sense into the Bolts, the regular season started and I began to sit up and take notice. Which leads us to...

The season so far: The first game was September 13, against the Chiefs at Kansas City. I didn't see it, because Dad is a Dolphins fan and I believe their game was on at the same time, and Dad had sovereignty over the remote control. It was an appreciably close game (14-21), but still a loss. Rivers threw for 298 passing yards, which I like to see, but surprisingly Darren Sproles didn't take the record for rushing. That went to Ryan Mathews, one of the rookies we picked up this summer, currently signed to a five year contract. Though described as "accident-prone" in college (and in fact, he's already bunged up his ankle this season) he still remains a gleam of hope in Tomlinson's wake.

Second game was September 19, at home against Jacksonville. Puh-leez. It was a 38-13 win, and I'm surprised the Jaguars got that much. I didn't catch much of this game, either; I believe Heather and I were out doing stuff (like buying six used books for $10, awesome-sauce). Rivers topped himself with 334 passing yards, but the real surprise was Nick Kaeding: all five kicks he made that day (four extra points and one 41-yard field goal) were good. Heck, I was surprised that Kaeding was even still on the flipping team. This was the same man who bungled no less than three field goal attempts in the last round of the playoffs back in February, and cost San Diego their shot at the Super Bowl. I felt certain the S.D.P.D. would find Kaeding's mutilated body hanging from the tip of Ocean Beach Pier by mid-March. I imagine Coach Turner has kidnapped Kaeding's family and is holding them at an undisclosed location, releasing one of them every time Kaeding gets it between the uprights.

The third game was another loss. Despite Rivers's stellar 455 passing yards and Gates's 109 receiving (I swear, that man is a ball magnet...he can catch anything), the final score was 27-20 at the Seattle's Qwest Field. My beloved Bolts went down swinging, though. Linebacker Brandon Siler sacked Seahawk QB Matt Hasselbeck in the end zone and scored us a safety in the third quarter; and in the fourth quarter, Rivers and Gates made a respectable nine-play, 65-yard drive to a touchdown in less than five minutes.

Next in line are the Arizona Cardinals, at home on October 3. I'm going to be working, unfortunately, but maybe I can convince Mack to let me turn the game on. Then I can watch it over my right shoulder as I scrub the pots and pans. (Mack usually keeps the TV on Fox anyway.) I don't know much about Arizona, players, stats, what have you, so I'm drawing a blank as far as pregame predictions are concerned. But I have a feeling it's going to be a good one. These are two decent teams, we're on home turf, and I don't hate the guts of the opposing team for a change (in fact, I have something of a soft spot for Arizona now, due to certain laws they've passed regarding illegal immigration).

Still, I'm no traitor. You know who I'll be supporting. The Cardinals are going to get thunderstruck.

introducing Postman, the pilot

I ain't a baby bird anymore, people.

I've passed my test.

I'm a pilot.

I'm really not coming off as all that excited, but I assure you, I am.

In fact, in between every one of these sentences (all of which begin with an "I") I'm leaping out of my chair, smashing into the ceiling, and slamming back down into my chair again.

I'm still this pumped, even the day after.

Okay, I'll stop starting sentences with "I." I can't think of any more anyways.

It happened like this:

I woke up at about 8:00 on Monday, the day of my long-awaited checkride. This would be just like a driver's test, only I'd be, you know, flying. Plus there was an oral quiz. I was feeling pretty sanguine, considering. I don't get test anxiety, but the "I-have-to-pass-this-thing-or-my-life-will-be-ruined-and-I'll-be-out-on-$500-and-I'll-be-living-in-my-parents'-house-in-this-godawful-desert-until-I'm-80-years-old" anxiety was nipping at my heels. I crammed for an hour or so (after a brain-building egg sandwich), got my pilot bag, my headset, my logbook, my flight computer, my plotter, my textbooks, my Federal Aviation Regulations guide, and my oral exam preparation booklet, as well as the usual wallet, cell phone, keys and handkerchief, and went off to meet my destiny.

I got to the airport about 10:30. My exam was at noon. My coworker and current instructor, JM-1, met me in the planning room. (This is the room with the big desk and the computer and the charts on the walls where pilots plan their flights.)

J and I immediately discovered four things:

(A) I'd forgotten the certificate of completion for my written test, taken months earlier; (B) I needed $400 cash to pay the examiner's fee, and I didn't have it on me; (C) my Federal Aviation Regulations guide was three years out of date; and (D) I needed to have weight and balance computed for the airplane we'd be flying, a cross-country flight planned, and my total logbook hours added up and written out.

Scrambling around trying to do/fetch/prepare all this pretty much put a bung in our cram session. But in the end, we got it sorted out. I called Mom and she kindly read me the exam ID number off my form (and promised to bring the form to me in person that afternoon); I ran down to the bank and made a withdrawal; I borrowed a Federal Aviation Regulations guide and Aeronautical Information Manual (FAR/AIM) from Louise over at the flight school; and J and I filled out the weight and balance chart and planned a cross-country flight from Apple Valley to Pasa Robles. 

Whew.

It was just as well that, due to a prior commitment in Temecula, the examiner didn't land until about 1:00. That was A-OK by me. Gave me time to ask J some pertinent things, like how much flaps to use during a short-field takeoff, and what exactly a mountain wave was (and believe me, they're nasty).

Then the examiner (G) arrived, and after he took a look at my IACRA (the official form you need to fill out to become a pilot) and I coincidentally discovered that my driver's license expired in five days, we sat down in the conference room and had us a little oral examination.

I didn't do too badly. I was a bit nervous and shaky, and stumbled a bit on some answers, but I owned up to not knowing the ones I didn't know, and looked 'em up in the legends and glossaries. G wasn't confrontational or derogatory. He was an excellent examiner. He wasn't too hard and he wasn't too easy. He was fair: he didn't sit me under bright lights and grill me until I was brown and well-seasoned. He asked me questions, asked for clarification when needed, and nodded when I got an answer right, moving on to the next.

It was over far sooner than I would've believed. G told me to get my stuff together and go preflight our airplane; he'd be out in a minute. So I (with shaking hands) gathered up the requisite materials and walked out into the warm sun. N42126 was sitting there, its red-and-black stripes still grinning at me amiably from across the apron. There wasn't a thing wrong with it that I could detect. We had full fuel, seven quarts of oil, inflated tires, an un-scuffed propeller, and all the requisite nuts and bolts. It was time [gulp] to fly.

I won't tell you too much about the examination, mainly because (a) it's sort of fused itself into a single chunk of sensation in my memory, in which the component parts are virtually indistinguishable from one another; and (b) I'd like to make it warm for you if you ever decide to become a pilot.

Oh, all right, I'll tell you a little.

We did some touch-and-goes first: soft-field landings and takeoffs, as well as slips. I did pretty well. The slip was kind of a curve ball. I wasn't expecting to be tested on it, but I improvised, and despite making a rather high approach, made the runway.

[A slip, just so you know, is the maneuver you pull when you're landing in a crosswind. It involves putting in full left or right rudder (depending on the direction the wind's coming from) and applying full opposite aileron. You're cross-controlling, in other words. This tilts the ship at a crazy angle, and will freak your passengers out something righteous, but as long as you keep the nose down, your rate of descent will be fantastic and you'll stay right on the runway heading. Slips basically turn the entire airplane into a giant air-brake. They're the easiest way to lose a lot of altitude on approach and stay aligned with the runway in the process.]

Then we flew out east over the dry lakebed and did our maneuvers: turns, stalls, emergency procedures, the lot.

The only questionable thing I could tell I did was that, on a go-around (where you abort a landing, fire up the plane, climb, and go around for another try), I was putting the flaps up before I shoved in full throttle. That's a no-no. You want full power right away, before you do anything to change the aerodynamic characteristics of the airplane. Otherwise you could fall right out of the sky.

Hey, the instructor only said I was going to kill myself twice. Twice, okay? That ain't nothin'.

We returned, did another go-around at Apple Valley Airport (this time I did it properly) and then landed. It was a short-field landing (remember those?). I had to land on a precise spot on the runway (between the thousand-foot markers, big white stripes painted on the runway surface) and stop as soon as possible.

I missed. I landed just a hair beyond them.

My heart shriveled. My brain melted. My bones turned to rubber. My eyes, nose, ears, and chin threatened to sag and fall right off my face.

I was doomed. There was no way I'd pass now.

"Taxi off the runway at the terminal," G instructed.

My flaccid soul seemed to droop even lower. The checkride was done. There was no chance for redemption. It was all over.

We crept down the runway, the engine running at 1,000 revolutions per minute.

I was feeling mighty glum. I figured that the throttle-and-flap mix-up and the almost short-field landing, combined with a few other tiny imperfections I'd noticed in my performance, had doomed me to failure. With a heavy heart (still running at 150 beats per minute) I taxied off the runway, back to the terminal, parked and shut down. G was already on the phone with his next client, and couldn't tell me the bad news. I got out of the plane and set about securing it. G climbed out, met J (with whom he was very good friends) and the two of them walked over to G's airplane and stood there talking. From afar I thought I heard G say "He did okay..."

My heart leaped, and then crashed to earth again. "Okay" wasn't necessarily "passing." Armoring myself against the worst again, I finished tying down N42126 and sloped into the terminal building to pay Louise for the rental.

I was kicking myself. Five hundred dollars, shot. Three years of training, and I'd choked like a dog. Oh, I could take the test again, but I shouldn't have to. I knew this stuff. I'd passed the written exam with flying colors, and the oral as well. Two out of three. And I'd failed the practical just because I couldn't get my act together and remember which levers I was supposed to push, dammit. I clenched my teeth. Mom, Dad, Dawg, Spud, Mr. Mooney, JMs One and Two, all my friends...and especially Grandpa and Grandma, because Grandma had worked for the longest time at the little airport up in Grass Valley, and knew the names of a lot of the small airplanes I'd been flying, and was especially supportive of me in my quest to become a certified pilot. I'd let 'em all down. That was just swell. The humongous cocktail party I was planning for the weekend seemed pointless now. What was there to celebrate?

I finished paying and packing up my things. Louise and Donna, the owners of the flight school, were both there, and anxiously awaiting to hear how I'd done. I told them (with a face like thunder) that I didn't know yet, but didn't have a very good feeling. As Louise was handing my debit card back to me, J came in. I looked up and met his eyes.

And he winked.

I didn't know what to make of it. I knew he was on very good terms with the examiner, and that he'd gone to talk to G right after G got out of the plane. Presumably J had asked how I'd done. Did this mean that I...could it possibly mean that I had...

...passed?

I shoved the thought aside. I couldn't do this to myself. I couldn't get my hopes up and have them crash to the ground once more. I couldn't have passed, I just couldn't have. The first go-around was less than ideal. The carburetor heat lever and I weren't the best of friends. That slip had really thrown me off my game. There was no way I'd passed.

I remembered that I'd left the certificate of completion for my written exam (which Mom had faithfully delivered at 2:30, since she was in town anyway) in the airplane, so I slouched back outside to get it. G was on the phone again. I got the form, put the sunshade up in the windscreen, put the gust lock and pitot tube cover on, and went back inside.

As soon as I walked in the door, J handed me my T-shirt, a wide grin on his face.

There's a tradition at the Apple Valley flight school which holds that, when you do your first solo, you take off the shirt you're wearing, sign it with your name, the date, the name of your instructor, and the runway you were using, and then hang it up on the classroom wall. I'd done this. That shirt had been hanging up there for months. All the while, as I patiently hacked away at the requirements for a private pilot's license.

There's another tradition at the flight school which holds that when you pass your checkride—

"—you get your T-shirt back," Donna was saying.

I looked down. The T-shirt was in J's hands. He was holding it out to me.

What the—

I'd passed.

It was true.

I'd done it.

I'd passed.

I couldn't believe it. They were giving me my T-shirt. There it was, worn white cotton, with my name and a crude drawing of a Cessna 172 on it, drawn in black marker.

I'd passed the test. I was a pilot.

"You mean I PASSED it?" I asked, incredulously.

"Yes, you passed!" Donna said, laughing.

"Why?" asked G, sitting at the computer and printing out some forms for me to sign. "Did you feel you were unsafe or unqualified?"

"W-well..." I fumbled. My mind was like a fortress of building blocks which some two-year-old had just knocked the supports out from under. Everything was tumbling and collapsing in on itself. Shock waves were coming out of my ears, no doubt. I remembered that J had told me what FAA examiners look for during a private pilot's checkride:

"Remember, he won't be looking for precision, he'll be looking for safety. If you're a safe pilot..."

"No," I answered. "I just didn't like that last soft-field landing, is all. Or short-field, or whatever it was."

(As I mentioned before, my mind was busy collapsing.)

"Hey," G said, his eyes still on his computer screen. "You're a safe pilot. Tell me, when was the last time you had a perfect day?"

"We all have landings we don't like," added J—a pilot with thousands of hours under his belt. "I had one the other day..."

Only now did it start to sink in. G was printing out my provisional pilot's license (a paper copy I'd use until I got my license card in the mail). J was holding out his hand to congratulate me.

I'd passed the test. I WAS A PILOT.

"Congratulations," J said, smiling.

I took his hand, and shook it.

Somehow I mustered the coherency to shake the hands of Louise and Donna as well.

G had me sign my provisional license, and told me, "That's a license to learn. You've only just begun. Don't get rusty, keep flying."

"Well...thank you," I stammered, not knowing what else to say. I was almost afraid to say anything else. Irrational fears welled up in my heart. One wrong word and G would snatch the license away and rip it to shreds.

Then G walked out of the door and was gone.

"How do you feel?" Donna asked me.

By way of reply, I collapsed full-length upon the carpet.

Louise and Donna burst out laughing. G and J (who were standing over by the restaurant entrance, talking), called over and asked if I was okay.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said, getting back up. "Just got a little light-headed."

"Could I have some water?" I asked Donna.

Burdened considerably by the textbooks and materials I'd brought (as well as the extra pieces of paper and the T-shirt I had suddenly received), I awkwardly gathered up my stuff and prepared to leave.

Louise held out a hand.

"Can I have my FAR/AIM back now?"

J caught me just outside the airport doors.

"Congratulations, young master," he said, in the manner of Master Po from Kung Fu.

We talked for a few minutes. He reiterated what G had said about my pilot's certificate being a "license to learn." But he also said something else.

"Remember," he said, "the biggest critic of your flying is going to be you. Don't be too hard on yourself. Be proud of what you did. Keep flying, don't get rusty, and learn."

My cell phone started leaping and buzzing as soon as I got to my car. Text messages came winging in from interested friends, wanting to know if I'd passed. I texted my folks and told them I made it, and not even five minutes later my grandparents were calling to congratulate me. JM-2, my other coworker, also rang. Mr. Mooney phoned in when I was on my way home, and the text messages just kept coming.

I was, as you may imagine, over the moon. The work of three years had come to successful completion. All the long hours (and short dollars) I'd spent, all the sweating and bouncing and thundering in airplanes, scrimping and saving for lessons, thinking and hoping and dreaming and studying...all of it had paid off.

I'd passed the test.

I WAS A PILOT.

Dad brought home champagne and steaks for dinner that night, and we had a fine little celebration. I don't think I've slept that well in a long time, either.

I'm all uphill from here, people. Instrument rating, commercial license, seaplane and multi-engine and high-performance ratings will follow. (I've already got enough time to get a complex endorsement, J says...yippee!) I am now eagerly awaiting the arrival of that little green card in the mail (in 60-90 days) and have already begun to think and hope and dream about what lies ahead of me. Or rather, what lies above me, in the limitless, sun-washed sky.

Only now it isn't so far away anymore.

cocktail review no. 40 - Tequila Sunrise

Jeez, I haven't done a cocktail review since before I left for England! It's about time I got this column back up and running.

I'll make it easy on you folks who are just joining us, and some of you who might have been away for a while. This isn't some über-complex tropical drink with fifteen ingredients; an apéritif with a name longer than your arm; or any obscure cordial. This is just a nice, simple, easy, and aesthetic cocktail.

And a damn good Eagles tune, too.

• 1½ ounces tequila
• 4 ounces orange juice
• 2 teaspoons grenadine

In a mixing glass half-filled with ice cubes, add the tequila and orange juice. Drop the grenadine into the center of the drink.

In essence, you're taking advantage of a very simple property of liquids: density. Because grenadine is more dense than orange juice, it settles down and lays on the bottom of the glass, forming a thin red layer below the yellowish-orange of the orange juice. The result, if you're not a total klutz, exactly resembles the hues of a typical Southwest sunrise.

Pretty neat, huh?

The libation itself is a timeless classic. The orange juice perfectly offsets the tang of tequila, without obscuring it completely; while the grenadine adds subtle berry overtones and a sweeter finish. It's a spicy-sweet kick, especially on a hot summer's day (though maybe not at sunrise).

Unlike most of the other cocktails I've posted up here, I've heard vague rumors of the tequila sunrise's origin. Apparently there was this bartender somewhere in Arizona who stayed up drinking with his customers all night. The bar owner came in at dawn and demanded to know what in hell the bartender thought he was doing. The bartender, though thoroughly drunk, snatched up some ingredients, poured them, and told his boss he was busy working on a new drink. The owner tried it and was so impressed that the bartender kept his job, and the drink became a legend.

Variants include the Tequila Sunset (where blackberry brandy is substituted for the grenadine, lending purplish evening tones to the beverage); and the Tequila Moonrise, one sweet mother of a cocktail (containing a whopping seven ounces of alcohol) with tequila, light rum, dark rum, lime juice, lemon juice, sugar, and ale. I used to serve those up as the starting round at my cocktail parties in South Korea. That got us in the mood right quick.

news from the side

You probably already know that I like the Marx Brothers. My favorite is definitely Groucho, or "Julius" as he was sometimes known. Clever man. Always up for a good laugh, and if there wasn't one handy, he'd supply it. My favorite Marx flick is 1933's Duck Soup, where Groucho plays Rufus T. Firefly, the dictator of a small European country, Freedonia. (Don't that beat all?) For various uncomplicated reasons, Freedonia is drawn into a war with a neighboring country, thanks to the double-dealing ambassador, Trentino, who has secretly been trying to subvert Firefly's power.

Firefly's having none of it, though.

Then it's war! Firefly commands the troops in the field, keeping a Thompson submachine gun in a violin case by his side. A soldier comes in and hands him a message from the front.

"I'm sick of getting messages from the front," gripes Firefly. "Why can't I ever get a message from the side?"

Fine, fine. Go ahead and groan. Jeez, nobody appreciates intelligent humor anymore. Nowadays it's all bathroom humor and sex jokes and flatulence.

Soapboxes aside, I have some news for you.

I want to apologize for tapering off from my current spate of blogging fervor. Several things have come up. Firstly, I finally have a second job. The proprietor of the small café down at Apple Valley Airport, Mack, keeps asking me if I want to wash dishes for him, only half-jokingly. Since none of the bars in the area are hiring, I finally decided to take him up on it. I've read Bill Gates's 11 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School. Number Four is as follows:

Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger-flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren't embarrassed about making minimum wage, either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.

That's telling 'em, Bill. For what it's worth, I agree with him. Work is work. I need the money, I'm able-bodied and capable, and it's not embarrassing or degrading. (Heck, more embarrassing yet would be sitting around my parents' house all day blogging about how broke I am.)

So I've taken the job and am working towards my goals with added zeal (and increased income, hallelujah!). I've survived the first weekend, so I think I'll be fine. It was tough, make no mistake. Mack runs a catering service on the side, and in addition to the café's dishes, I had all the catering trays and pots and pans and bowls to do. Saturday was ten hours and Sunday was eleven. Thank goodness for rubber gloves or the skin would've been sloughing off my dishpan hands.

So that took up Saturday and Sunday. The other thing that's been going on is...girls, dude.

I've gotten myself one.

Sorry ladies, the Postman is now taken. He's been reserved. Snatched up. Diverted by a wonderful lady. I'll call her Miss H. She's an old high-school friend. We had quite an amiable relationship in class, went our separate ways during college, and met up again one night back in August. What with one thing and another, we decided to go steady. So here we are, having a ball. We're an old-fashioned couple: we go to movies at the drive-in theater, sit out on hilltops and stargaze, or go prowling through used bookstores. We're both taking enormous pleasure in each other's company. I'm feeling much more sanguine about life in general since Miss H and I took up together, let me tell you. It's as though this void in the center of my chest has suddenly been filled up. Something's back in my life that's been gone for too long, and it's the grandest thing. She's a classy lady and a real kick to be around, cute as a button, easygoing all get-out, and shares a lot of my interests. What more could a guy ask for?

And last...did I tell you I sent a story off to Fantasy & Science Fiction? Well, I most certainly did. It's a 3,500-word humor/science fiction piece concerning two Earth astronauts who are trying to communicate with an alien life form—and failing miserably. Science believes that we may discover sentient crystalline life on exoplanets with odd geological makeups. So my question was, how would we communicate with them? How do you talk to a crystal? My two astronauts are trying some unusual methods: interpretive dance and impressionist art, for starters. If this story gets published, you'll see the results.

That's about the news. I've been trying to finish and finalize two of the other stories I've been working on, both much longer (in the novelette range, 10,000+ words). One of them needs to be rewritten; I've decided that this first draft is rather puerile and doesn't explore the themes fully enough. The second isn't finished, but I've got a handle on where it's going.

This just in: I had jury duty today, but I called up the automated hotline just a minute ago and it said it was canceled! So now I've got the rest of the day off, thank goodness. Looks like a busy week ahead, though. The chase program is finally starting up again on Thursday and there'll be another load of dishes to do on the weekend...but Miss H and I have a nice trip to the bookstore planned for later this afternoon. Maybe I'll pick up yet another forgotten sci-fi classic like The Escape Orbit. (Which, by the way, is turning into such an excellent work...the plot has gotten more convoluted than I ever would've imagined. Full review coming later.)

How's things been with you?