Online dating is really weird. Can’t just check one or two of them and browse. You see someone’s profile and their picture and it’s either No or Nervousness.

Some weird sense of awkwardness. Reading about women that may or may not be interested in meeting. Catching up on “Likes”. Maybe it’s different if you were going around and “liking” them. Not that that ever accomplishes anything. Nothing accomplishes anything.

Crow sounds like she is still mad at you, go to the life of you you have no idea what for. And chances are deep down neither does she.

The box finally got there. You weren’t expecting a thank you, but she gave you one and then got quiet. Probably the best thing that could’ve happened. You are still going to hold true to contacting her on 1 June. Who knows.

One week in. This month still sucks. No matter how beautiful it is outside. It’s May in the holy city and still all you want to do is share it with her.

Well you better find someone else, because in the six years you chased her she never chose to try to share a holy city Spring day with you.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. She’s under no obligation to. But it does tell you what you need to know about where your head really needs to be regarding who to find a relationship with.

Let the anger go away first. For your own sake. You’ll get through this. And her situation is no longer any of your business… if it ever was.

Stop missing her. And then find another impossible task.

I miss you. This month is going to be rough. I still want to be there for you. And you can get a hold of me if you need me. But it’s still so…you know.

It’s harder for me. You have been the focus of almost all my romantic desires for six years. That’s the other reason I need time, but you already know that. I know you have a special place for me in your heart and that brings me great joy, but… insert obvious cliché…

Still…not mad…just… whatever I am at you. Frustrated. Disappointed. Sullen. Not who I am at all as a person and especially not as a friend. I wish I could communicate my perspective. I didn’t know what else to do.

Then again the perspective is a little different than I’ve put out there, mainly just the stuff you already know that I want to keep unspoken. And then there’s the arrogant side of me that I don’t like and want to keep you away from.

Trying to figure out how to use him to be honest. Like Kirk in the original series episode the enemy within. That has been a balancing game for 20 years, and as I look back on those 20 years I feel I’ve almost always gotten it wrong given where I am in life.

I need to harness part of that bastard and put him to work. But the two of you would not get along. That’s the only child / never has to worry / takes things for granted part of me you tend to rail at when you’ve had too much…

It sucks because I kind a need some of that back, lolz 😂

Suffice to say when I think about you, what I really wanted for us, etc… I feel depressed. Rejected. For a while heartbroken. That part of me was offended. And honestly as deep as those feelings went… I actually meant it when I said I could be fine if you were with someone else. Someone that treated you well. Gave you the happiness I wanted you to have.

But the fact that you chose him over and over and over… yeah, offended is the right word to use. The more he emotionally abuses you, the more you insist on staying with him. You will eventually see that in time, though.

Maybe that’s another reason it’s good we’re quiet. You don’t have to worry about me pestering you if you actually did really throw him out. You could find someone else.

Maybe this is a good opportunity to say a lot of things I actually have been holding back. Things you would not have read without getting mad and reacting to. Pressures I never wanted to put on you.

I don’t know. Maybe this is just an opportunity to get away from each other and I don’t need to think about you any minute I don’t have to. But dammit I miss you. There’s no point in farming, or Herriot, or anything that reminds me of you.

You don’t know how good it made me feel when I could look at you on video and tell you that I loved you. It felt warm. My whole body. One of the last times just saying it seeing your face started making me hard. But it is what it is. And I can’t love you that way anymore.

You know what’s really weird? In a lot of ways… it would’ve been better had I never met you. I wouldn’t have spent six years chasing rejection. Being so emotionally invested in someone else. Spending so many nights unable to sleep from worrying about you.

But even if it would’ve been better for me, there’s no part of me that isn’t glad I met you.

This month is going to suck.

Miss you. Be well, sweetie. 🌷

A lot of yard sales today. The original eBay. Would have been a good idea for you at some point had you not been hit by the mold a few months back.

As frustrating as it was, the house is a lot nicer now. Far less clutter. Less chaos. Having company over doesn’t incite a panic. It doesn’t really matter if you have that much stuff so long as you just organize it well.

Funny how so many aspects of life come down to balance. Work/sleep/live is just the beginning.

Funny how you miss some imbalances. And how fast.

GNz11. The furthest thing that can be detected by modern science. A dwarf galaxy 32 billion light years away in a universe only 13.77 billion light years old. Impossible until you actually stop and think about the expansion of the universe itself. If science is right about red shifting.

Everything spins, doesn’t it? Orbits. Gravity is but one form of attractive force. What if the physical universe itself is merely a manifestation that our senses are capable of translating to us?

We have five senses. The brain interprets the inputs of those five senses and that’s how we know what rock feels like, blue looks like, Banana pudding tastes like…

Only those five windows to the greater world of existence beyond us. We never really stop and think about things outside the realm of those senses even though we are fools if we believe those are the only five windows possible to the world outside our bodies.

They don’t even provide us evidence of oxygen. Our oh so amazing human intellect has to do that. And we take that amazing human intellect to draw conclusions on the universe and reality that insist upon fitting into ‘boxes’ of our design. We insist upon the idea that thought cannot be touched. How could we know if our senses were not fine-tuned enough to touch it?

Thought manifests upon the brain. Stress has tangible effects on the body. Surely there is a physiological explanation the bows to conventional notions of why this is, but does it actually makes sense? What are thoughts in a physical, biological sense if not simple chemicals in the brain, and yet it is a well-known fact that stress has physical physical effects on us.

Why?

Does it make us breathe differently? Induce fight or flight responses in such a way to make the heart behave differently? Why is it so hard to contemplate the idea that thought is… more…

That though has more a tangible effect than we can perceive with our five windows that offer no guarantee that when I see the color red, someone else sees it as if it is blue to them and they call it “red” because that’s just what they see? How would they know the difference?

Thoughts swirl around in our heads and we can identify them – in fact we must – without those five windows. Might dark matter itself

What are dark matter and dark energy? Per science no one really knows; they are terms created to explain the mathematical realities of the universe as we know it and aspects of it that we can’t understand. We can’t see or touch dark matter or dark energy.

We can’t possibly be wrong about how gravity works or universal laws as they have been established up to this point, so we put on our little shortcuts that “we just can’t understand yet” in our model as if it has any right to be called the final model of understanding as the Ptolemaic solar system when it comes to the grand scheme of human understanding in however many millennia are species lasts.

If one listens to modern science it’s almost sad that all the horizons are being filled in by our current brilliance in understanding everything about the universe. Ironic that this goes against the very nature of the scientific method but why nitpick?

Maybe it’s just human nature. After all we have our five windows and our brilliance, both of which are simply understood, never needing to be questioned.

So there is that drive to look beyond… to understand the vastness of reality itself, which our five windows somehow will give us full view of. And even adding a sixth or seventh wouldn’t alter the fundamental equation.

Cats can’t comprehend taxes. Human beings can’t comprehend the universe. Much less the reality that is beyond it. The universe is the only part of reality that we can actually perceive with our windows.

It’s the only part the skeptics even allow themselves to contemplate being there because nothing else can be “proved” to or by our current level of evolved ape-hood.

And yet here we are… insistent that we see what we don’t. That what little we don’t know we’re eventually going to figure out.

We are truly an arrogant species. Narcissistic. Truly our greatest curse. It is said that pride is the worst of all sins, mainly because it justifies the rest. it is the centerpiece that all of our failings ultimately orbit… a black hole so deadly to us because we can’t see it and it’s so easy to pretend isn’t there.

I don’t want to look beyond. I don’t want to pretend for one second I could understand what is beyond. I love the bliss of ignorance. The kind comfort of “why not?” that becomes so easy when you have faith in something greater than yourself.

The inner peace. That everything is unfolding as it ought to, and the tiny aspects that we have power over can represent pre-determination and self-determination at the same time.

Why not?

What’s the point of looking beyond when it requires taking the eyes off the reality one actually has power over? To insist the universe is a way it’s not because that’s just what one wants to believe, as if we know what’s best from literally anyone’s flawless track record of amazing decisions in life.

What makes love different than gravity? Why our five windows of course. Because they are absolute. Authoritative. And we are never wrong – how can we be when we always just say “well we’ll figure out how it fits in at some point.”

And it will always just so happen to fit what we want to believe anyway… what a marvelous discovery.

Narcissism thy name is humanity.

When we can see a Galaxy further away than the age of the universe would allow and still demand to see beyond…

…God is real. The universe could not have been created by something without a sense of humor.

https://checkmydream.com/dream-meaning/hotel

Grocery Store dreams meaning

Some emptiness tonight. It’s alright though. Better nights are ahead. Somewhen… 🙂

Last thing you want to do is be more harm than good.

It’s up to her.

She’s a part of you and always will be. Not someone you’ll tell goodbye in this life. But you’ve had enough for the time being. She’s made it clear the Cancer was her choice, so fair enough. You can’t be as invested.

Would be so much easier if you could understand each other.

It’s not like you haven’t been here before, but He has always seems to nudge you back to her. If He wants to again, so be it.

Pray. And move forward. Low tide always seems rough. You have faith in her, though it’s on a scale she’s not used to thinking on.

As for you, keep working on yourself… things take time. Be patient. She does care about you too, and does want you to be healthier…🤔

It’s time to move forward. Match again… great…

(Part I…) 🤔

Sad truth. Ships had to have birds overhead in the 20th century. The battles of Taranto, Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea and Midway saw to it that going straight at another frigate or ship of the line and letting loose with cannon or turret fire were over.

There would be a few more ship to ship battles, but carriers were the new ships of the line, throwing manned birds at each other to do all the fighting. 

Whatever. Time goes on. Adapt, innovate, and solve problems.

If you have to have birds overhead to survive, have the best to protect you from enemy birds. Wildcats led to Hellcats and Corsairs, then to Sabres, and eventually onto Phantoms and Crusaders. Fighters that would defend the fleet rather than strike at land and sea targets.

Fighters fighting Fighters. Good. Let them do all that so ships can fight ships. Though the more powerful and expensive fighters, the more specialized and fewer there were.

Vietnam saw manly Phantoms protecting carriers against MiGs while bombers went and did their thing uselessly like almost everything in that stupid war. They were good enough. But not good enough for what was next.

Soviet “Backfire” bombers armed with “Kitchen” missiles (love NATO code names) Had long flight range and even then once fired, the missiles could hit a carrier 300 miles away.

The spectre of a dozen or so Backfires showering carrier groups with those missiles could spell doom for those Carriers. Sure, they had picket lines of cruisers and destroyers with big SM2-ER Standard missiles with an 80 mile range sailing far ahead of the carrier, but no, our ships would be screwed. Phantoms weren’t fast enough and the short range missiles could never hit a bomber that far away that fast.

The best was needed. Industry want to work. They had to be big, with a huge radar in the nose. Needed amazing supersonic afterburners to soar at Backfire bombers. Range. Range. Range. The standard Sparrow missiles didn’t have it. So they designed a new missile. The Phoenix was huge. The new bird could carry six of them. It was the only reason plane that could carry any.

The Tomcat was a beast. Too big to even operate off the oldest Midway Class Carriers in service.

Vastly improved avionics. Variable wing design, wide to take off and have maneuverability if they had to go air to air against other fighters, and they’d move into a swept back for blazing speed to close distance with bombers.

From the ground up across the board, an amazing aircraft had to be designed, not just to shoot down the “archers before they could fire their arrows” but still have air superiority over more maneuverable fighters.

Basically they just need to the best of absolutely everything. They were.

Air Force pilots called them “turkeys” because of how they looked parked. But they were F-14 Tomcats. Yeah, they were in the movie Top Gun. Good movie but the Tomcat was far more than just a movie star.

With its speed, range, afterburners and those monstrous Phoenix missiles, good luck being a Soviet bomber anywhere near a carrier. Early warning aircraft finds you and whispers to a Tomcat on routine patrol and you could be locked onto before crossing the coastline.

Leave it to Air Force guys flying F-15 Eagles to take to a rivalry with Navy F-14 Tomcat pilots. Which one would win? The airmen always bragged the Eagles won in dogfighting and air superiority.

LOL what the Eagle was designed to do. Talk about missing the point. Sure, go up against the Tomcat. What? What do you mean you want to start inside 40 miles? 😂

No, son. You’re getting blown out of the sky from 110 miles away before you even get close. But even at your game you’re going to get a run for your money.

Competition between the services is nothing new;  but it always struck a bit hollow in this rivalry because the missions of the planes were so different.

The movie didn’t help. Made it look like the Tomcat was a pure air superiority fighter; not a fleet defender.

Easily the most magnificent fighter America’s ever made. Oh sure there’s the new ones, stealth planes with more expensive smaller radars, etc. but nothing like the Tomcat that will hit you 500 miles away and full afterburn.

The magnificence of that plane makes the tragedy of its demise even greater. After the Cold War ends, The Navy doesn’t have as much to worry about from long range bombers The Russians can’t afford to operate, And after 9/11 everything became focused on land attack and no one had anything that could hold a candle to the multi-role Hornets that backed the Tomcat up.

So they got rid of them. The capability of hitting targets out that far. Too expensive. And they were too stupid to at least keep just a few of them around to maintain the capability.

Not unlike getting rid of all of the anti-ship weapons on our naval vessels – a stupid mistake. Sure we didn’t have any credible naval threat for 20 years, but now Russia and China are actually building threats to our fleets and we sure could use some anti-ship missiles and some freaking Tomcats on patrol when our multibillion dollar carriers get within a potential enemy’s ballistic missile range.

Leahy- and Belknap- class cruisers carried the SM2-ER to hit air targets 80 mi away and they ditched them for the Ticonderoga class that had missiles only half the range, but more advanced Aegis defense systems. Same issue.

More “advanced”, but with not nearly the range. Good job guys. Don’t give them both barrels at the same time and hedge your bets In case your new-fangled toys don’t do the trick.

Next-generation stealth fighters? Sure. Spend 20 years designing a plane that can’t be seen… until they spend 5 years making a better radar.

Tomcat could independently track and hit a different target with every missile.  worried about missing? Lol fire twice. That way you don’t have to worry and put your trust in letting Kitchens get close.

The only other country to operate Tomcats Ironically was Iran; The legacy of an arms deal done before the Shah was overthrown. So the Navy destroyed every last retired Tomcat just to keep spare parts out of the enemy’s hands.

It’s not like they were going to lose any in battle against the Iraqi Air Force in the 80s. There are legends of Iranian Tomcat pilots that American Air Force guys try to shush.

The Tomcat was one of a kind, built for a very specific mission, though dynamic enough to adapt to any aerial threat. Towards the end they even made ground attack modifications, but that was a waste of its talent.

There’s just something about facing unique threats. Unique circumstances. Times where an unconventional solution is needed to save the day.



Innovation. Creativity. Hard work. Adaptation. Solution.

Unique challenges require unique solutions. 

There are just lessons in everything, aren’t there? 🤔

And damn they were beautiful…

It sucks not to just be able to man the cannons and do straight up battle with your opponent. But being a Knight of the Sky… that was a pretty good consolation prize…

RIP, Tomcats. Y’all are truly missed.