#pilot in dad-mode autopilot

[edutainer2022]

It's a little two-part glimpse into Dad Jeff going away into the sky. And Scotty being not happy about it. Baby Virgil features briefly too. Jeff Tracy tells himself things that tide him over more difficult times (but are not necessarily true).

SEPARATION ANXIETY

It was unbearable. The little face of the boy in his arms was wrought with boundless grief. Bright blue eyes full of tears and fear.

"Daddy, no gooooo! No gooooo!"

Tiny hands were clutching the collar of his uniform. The boy's voice was choking on sobs and Jeff felt his heart being ripped out. He was due at the base for a pick up and relocation for training before the Moon mission. He was a breath away from calling in his resignation right then and there and never leaving his son ever again. He forced himself to exhale and hoisted the child higher, bringing their forheads together. That gave Jeff a chance to blink away tears of his own:

"It's okay, Scotty. It's okay. Daddy will be back soon. I have a very important job for you, Bluejay. Look after Mommy and Virgie, when I'm gone, okay? Can you do that for me?"

The child's sobs halted for a moment it took him to nod very earnestly. Jeff leaned in to kiss the boy's forehead and then kiss away the tears from the blotchy little face as best he could. He turned to his wife with an apologetic smile.

Lucy was hovering in the doorway all this time, ready to intervene. Dad's departure for the Moon was a matter of wide-eyed wonder and endless enthusiasm till it was actually time for Jeff to leave. Then it quickly dissolved into a Greek tragedy. Her own hands were full with the baby. Little Virgie didn't yet understand what was happening, but he developed an uncanny ability to pick up his brother's moods. So to echo Scotty's desperate pleas, the baby's tears were now inconsolable.

Scotty settled to hug Dad's neck, so Jeff beaconed his wife with Virgie to step into the embrace. She leaned her head on his shoulder as he reached to kiss the baby.

"Are you really gonna be okay?"

She smiled up at him. So beautiful.

"We'll miss you like crazy, Flyboy. But we'll be alright. We're in good hands."

She lifted a hand to rub soothing circles on Scotty's back. The baby calmed down too and looked ready for a nap. Jeff gave himself extra minutes to just hold them all together. He didn't know yet he was already holding three sons in that embrace. Baby Johnny was to arrive while he was still thousands of miles away on the Moon. But in that moment he needed to capture the perfect memory of balance and fulfillment that would tide him over a long night in space. They were going to be alright.

***

It was unthinkable. The whole situation was his worst nightmare come true. The hijacked Zero-X was obviously speeding up and overheating. He ran a quick math and the fallout would quite easily cause an extinction of life on the planet. Unacceptable - his sons lived on that planet. His mother and friends. What made matters worse was giving in to Scott's big blue pleading eyes to let him come with him in One and watch the T-drive launch. Little Allie definitely learned to step up his puppy eyes game from the best. So Jeff was now stuck with the impossible variables of his son in the blast zone and One's still untested autopilot.

"Scott, I need you to take over the controls for me!"

He was halfway out of the pilot seat, leaving One on hover. Bright blue eyes, flooded with horror, shot up at him from where Scott was adjusting the harness by the cargo doors (oh, goodness, the boy was actually prepping to board Zero-X himself!)

"Dad! You can't go down alone!"

There it was. Daddy, no gooo! Jeff had to brace himself to enter full Commander mode.

"I need you to follow Zero-X flight path, align in formation. Once I board the hull, you will bank and scout the possible fallout zone perimeter in a thousand miles radius. I need you to shoo, tow or scare away anything that will be flying or floating there, understood?"

Jeff was sorely tempted to set the milage at a farther distance (as far and as fast away as possible, just fly away, Bluejay!), but he couldn't risk Scott questioning his intent in the moment. Blue eyes were still flooded with disbelief, pleading and barely concealed tears.

"Dad, please! Let me come with you! You'll need help!"

Daddy, no goooo!

"That's an order, Thunderbird!"

When he'd come to in the Zero-X wreck, in the middle of the galactic nowhere, and for endless years to come, he'd try and soothe himself with the knowledge Scott obeyed the order and got safely away from the blast. From that point on Jeff would try to convince himself he was not worried. Scotty knew what his job was. He'd look after his brothers and Grandma. They would be alright.

[aliceinanderson]

“Hi, my name is Alice Anderson. Today I will be singing Me and The Sky from Come From Away, then performing The Coat-Hanger Sculpture monologue from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, finishing with a self-choreographed tap routine to Peter Allen’s ‘Everything Old Is New Again’. I would like to be considered for the roles of Marty, Teen Angel or Doody.”

Alice knew what she was good at. She knew her strengths and weaknesses better than most and her and her dad worked fucking hard to make sure the strengths outshone any of those flaws. ‘Don’t go for the leads, Ally,’ her dad had said when she told him about the upcoming Grease auditions, ‘they’re bland, they’re over-done. Go for the supporting roles with the show-stopping songs. Broadway may be dead, but high school theatre is thriving.’  So Alice had worked her ass off perfecting her song choice and spent hours in her room in her tap shoes, coming with a number that showed off her skills. 

She knew it would be hard competition, but Alice trusted her gut. The constant flood of nerves were a good thing, that was what she had convinced herself for the past eighteen years.

She walked into the auditorium following her name being called, head high and her dance bag slung over her shoulder. She could still feel how weak her legs were though, the anxiety of situation slowly setting in. There was always a level of uncertainty when Alice performed at school. It seemed like everyone she knew at this school had an amazing voice on them and while she never really felt threatened, she couldn’t help but feel like not being a member of the New Directions was a detriment. 

Taking a deep breath, Alice made her way up onto the stage, show smile plastered on her face the way she had been taught too, and placed her bag down next to the piano on the side of the stage. She loved performing, she truly did. But, God, she still over-thought everything when she did it. 

“Hi, my name is Alice Anderson. Today I will be singing Me and The Sky from Come From Away, then performing The Coat-Hanger Sculpture monologue from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, finishing with a self-choreographed tap routine to Peter Allen’s ‘Everything Old Is New Again’. I would like to be considered for the role of Marty, Teen Angel or Doody.”

With a polite nod and a smile to the pianist, immediately switching into performance mode the second the song began.

“My parents must have thought they had a crazy kid 'Cause I was one of those kids who always knew what I wanted”

Alice slowly made her way down-stage. She hadn’t settled on any particular blocking or choreography for the song, she wanted it to be focused on her voice and her story-telling ability. It was what she was best at.

“They took me down to the airport to see all the planes departing Watching them fly something inside of me was starting I was eight when I told them that I'd be a pilot.”

She went through the song just as she had rehearsed, finishing off the grim ending to the song with her eyes squeezed closed, hands pressed to her chest. Once the music stopped, the feeling came back. The weird tingle in her legs that went up her body. Nerves. With a shallow breath, Alice went straight into her monologue, not giving herself time to ruminate on anything. The more she performed on autopilot, the better. She knew this monologue like the back of her hand, having played Sally Brown in her sixth grade production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown and it becoming permanently ingrained in her mind.

Ending with ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease!’, Alice bowed and then made her way over to her dance bag, quickly switching her sneakers for her tap shoes and handed the pianist her phone with her chosen song ready to play and went into the wings until she heard the upbeat entrance of the song begin.

Tap was Alice’s dancing strong suit and while she couldn’t see Dan or Holly adding any tap breaks to the classic songs from Grease, her dad had encouraged her to play her best cards. Leave them wow-ed. A face and a name to remember.

Finishing the dance with a kick and a pose, Alice stayed frozen for a few seconds, just like she had been taught too. That was what performing was to her, it was a set list of things she had to do. And that wasn’t a bad thing per say. She loved rehearsing with the Troubletones and going to dance class and sitting in on her dad’s acting classes, but doing it as a career like so many of her friends did? It just didn’t sit right with her.

“Alice?”

At the sound of her name, Alice jolted back into a casual stance, realizing she had been standing, frozen, for a little too long. Grease was probably going to be the last show she ever did. God, she didn’t want to let her dad down...

With a ‘thank you for your time’ and a small bow, Alice grabbed her bag and left the stage, the light tapping of her shoes echoing in the auditorium. 

[always-fall-for-fanfic]

Living on the Streets (Sam Alexander, Pt. 1)

Okay, so I have decided to do an ‘orgin’ story take on Sam Alexander aka Nova, though it is just a fun story and most of it is not actually true. But I hope you enjoy. 

His two names could both be that of a first, Sam Alexander. It was the best he could do after someone had put him on the spot, he didn’t know his true last name, if he even had one. When he was a baby he was taken from his home of Sencil, a Titan wiping out the rest of the population of his planet.

Sam was taken when he was a baby, the Titan as far as he knew, had just given him that name. Normally when the Titan took “Children” they were older but this baby, the one from Sencil was different, he had a fire in his eyes. He had an aroma that couldn’t be placed, his heart was reaching out to the Titan. He couldn’t resist so he took the baby from his home, slaughtering the rest of his people. Though he did only have him for a short while, close to what the Titan made his birthday, the day he took him, 14 Ianuarius.

The boy had to have been at least 16 months old so when 14 Ianuarius came back around, the Titan proclaimed he was two. He only guess though with the age, based on the boys walking and comprehensive skills. By the time though the Titan had first given him a knife, the little boy was stabbing everything he could. Sam didn’t consider the Titan as his father as he did not force to be called ‘dad’ or ‘father’ or any other form of the term.

He trained him as he did his other children which were all adopted as well. The older ones he sent on quests to do his bidding, the younger ones, he kept to train. Like Sam, the young boy though, wasn’t with the Titan much longer after his third birthday, one of the Titans daughters was actually really sweet to the little boy. She saw a lot of herself in him, sure she was a lot different but the two of them were much alike. The Titan killed their entire planet but themselves and he took them to do his dirty work.

Sam was exceedingly astounding in his training and he could be a secret assassin he was so quick and stealthy and no one would expect a three year old little boy. The Titan started preparing his first quest.

His first quest was to get a helmet, but not just any helmut, a Nova Corps Black Ops Helmut. Though Sam doesn’t remember but if he did, he would’ve known his father worked for the Nova Corps and that the helmut he would be stealing would be the one that was his dads.

“Really, you’re going to let me go into the.. Space?” Sam asked, amazed up at The Titan, who nodded curtly.

“Don’t let me down Sam, I trust you.” The Titan raised his head as he seemed to give him authority yet he still was looking down upon Sam. Sam took a deep, steady breath, crossing his arms behind his back and standing up straighter.

“I’m ready sir, I won’t let you down.” He piped up and The Titan turned his gaze to a different one of his daughters, shaking his head lightly at her, with great disappointment because she had let him down. Before he turned his gaze back too Sam.

“I don’t think you will, now go, Sam, take what you need.” The Titan gave him a small wave of his hand and the three year old little boy walked casually out of the room but once he got around the wall, he jumped and began running to the hanger. He was so excited he finally got to get out of the Titans home and by himself. This was a real mission. The little boy bounded into the spaceship and spoke to the autopilot since he was going alone and couldn’t reach certain switches.

“Hexi, can you please take me to ‘Nova Corps’?” He asked, sweetly, the autopilot which Sam had named himself, obeyed and shut the spaceship door. Starting up the engine and waiting for the hanger to open it’s roof to fly out of. Sam sat in the pilots seat, staring out of the window, watching all of the planets bypass him in such a manner they didn’t look like they were anything than blobs. But Sam didn’t care, he loved it, everything was so pretty and different and scary but he knew if the Titan believed in him, he could do it. He knew he could, he couldn’t go back empty handed, he just couldn’t.

He had the most feelings for the Titan as a fatherly figure and mainly because he knew nothing else, any creature or anything to be that for him. Since he was taken so young from his home, he had nobody, he knew nothing other than the Titan. So he looked up to him as any normal child would to their parents.

Sam had to deal with it though, he didn’t exactly hate the Titan though like the rest of his children do. At least they “hate it with him” they hate their lives because he slaughtered their people. But Sam saw past that, yes some of the ways he sees stuff is weird and almost unjust. But he has a purpose, something that no one else will act upon. At least that's how he sees it and he has the right idea, for some of them but he just doesn’t act the correct way. Sam understood what it was like to be misunderstood though, all the rest of his ‘kids’ didn’t understand how powerful and smart Sam really was. He could do everything they could and plus and he was only three. In a way, that was better than the others cause he was able to outsmart the bad guys but he was small and could hide easier from them and fit in smaller places. Which should make his missions a quick in and out, though this one, his first one wasn’t that way.

He didn’t exactly have more after that though, not for the Titan at least. Which is kind of a long story, it started when he arrived on the planet Heoien (He-Oh-E-en) where Nova Corps was located. He got off the ship and turned it to camouflage mode to blend in. He looked around to make sure no one was around and then he slowly began walking, grabbing a random hat from a man that was sleeping at the front door as well as his badge, which got him through the front gate but he wasn’t granted access anywhere else so Sam through the badge to the ground, not ever bothering to read the name.

The hat was kind of big but it did the job, covering his eyes. Although it fell in his eyes and blocked his ‘up’ visual, he knew he would have to get rid of it sooner or later. He turned the corner and he saw a man laying there on the ground and at first he panicked and he quickly ran back behind the wall. He had to calm his breathing before slowly going down the hallway, careful as if the guy wasn’t dead, though it looked like he was and when Sam got close enough, he confirmed that he was dead.

He almost just walked away but then something pinned to the mans shirt caught his eyes. He leaned down, trying not to touch the man more than he needed to, not knowing how long he was dead. He struggled to unclip the badge from his shirt, almost falling back when he finally pushed at the right amount and it came off easier than he expected.

He grumbled to himself and stood up, peering into the man's mixed face one last time. He had a very long thin face, drained of life. His eyes lay shut, but he died with his eyes open, someone just didn’t have the heart to let the dead man's eyes, that they just killed. His leg lay limp and bent. Their murder had broken their leg first, so they most likely were either really strong or tiny or perhaps both, like him.

He gripped the card in his hand and read the name ‘Alexander, Jesse’ though of course it never occured to the little boy the last name went first so he spoke softly.

“Rest in peace, Alexander.” If he would’ve been a good friend Sam may have given him a kiss on his forehead but he felt weird doing that, so he didn’t. He held tight onto the badge as he slowly walked forward.

The face of the dead man stayed in his head though, he tried to imagine him as a person, his home life. He could see a small little boy and then a little girl a couple eight or so years later. He had a life but whoever it was, clearly didn’t think about that. He probably had a wife and his little boy would want to be just like him- Sam sighed and tried to shake away the thoughts. He wish he could’ve had a father to be like when he got older. But the Titan destroyed his home before he had the chance to even remember his dad.

Sam stopped short as he passed a mirror, catching his gaze. He looked at his soft chocolate milky skin tone, he was lighter, not quite black nor white. He had blazing green eyes and through them he could see into his pain, into his soul. Everything was buried there, it was in ashes. He had soft tufts of black hair from his head and a defined jaw. He was wearing a tighter fit black suit, that hugged his skin, he watched his chest struggle to form normal puffs of air. He didn’t know why but he gently reached out to touch himself in the mirror but didn’t quite make it.

“Hey!” A voice shouted from behind him and Sam yanked his arm away from the mirror. He turned around, ripping the dagger from his pocket, holding it close to his chest but so the blade was pulling through the voice.

“Hey- woah, kid, I’m a good guy.” The man put up his hands but Sam knew better, this man was weird and he wore a navy blue suit that was brass buttoned. His hair was slick back and he held something tucked under his arm, looking like a stack of papers.

“Was that man back there your father?” The guy asked, pointing back behind him to the man laying on the ground. Sam knew the man was putting on an act, he wouldn’t have been so nice to a kid that was trespassing and had a knife. Normally people would have just laughed in his face. He would have “seized” him, at least attempted to and brought him too whoever their boss was. No one would be intimidated by a three year old little boy with a knife, they would’ve they would have hurt themselves more than them.

Sam glanced around the man, he could still just make out the point of the man's shoe over the boxes he had passed previously, which he hadn’t noticed.

“No- I don’t know him.” Though Sam paused briefly, he felt a weird connection to the man, it was true but he didn’t know him.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“My n-name?” Sam didn’t know why he questioned it, though he did.

“Yes, what do they ca-ah!” The man stopped talking abruptly as a gun was fired, leaving a loud ring in Sam's ear, his body went stiff and he seemed to beg to the little boy. Though he could do nothing. He gagged, a small drip of blood slipped off of his lip as he fell with a hard thump on the ground.

Sam hadn’t known the man for more than thirty seconds but he wanted to cry and he didn’t know why, maybe it was the loud ring in his ears he couldn’t get away from.

He could see a small.. Thing, it wasn’t a man, very clearly, he had a snout that was peaking out of a hood. He had a large gun in his left.. Paw? He was probably about the same size at Sam at this point but compared to a normal guy, probably only to the calf. Sam glared at the animal, knowing he meant no good.

“I will kill you kid, get out of my way.” He growled, moving his gun to point up, as he tilted his head up a littlemore, letting Sam see the creatures beady eyes.

“No.” Sam stood his ground like the Titan taught him, stand strong no matter to who their opponent was.

“Fine then.” The animal growled and held up his gun, pointing it straight at Sam who just taunted him with a sly smirk. But the animal wasn’t heartless and after staring at the tiny kid he lowered his weapon. “Move on kid, I don’t actually want to hurt you.”

“My names Sam and I am not leaving.” And he simply turned around and started walking down the hallway. He heard a faint scratch probably of the animals claws on the ground as he glided up next to him.

Sam glanced down, seeing brown ears, noticing the hood was down, he saw a stripe across his nose and his tail swishing behind him, also white stripe with his main color brown.

“You’re a raccoon?” Sam asked, the raccoon looked at Sam, his nose wrinkled.

“A what?” He asked, clearly he had never heard that word before, Sam shrugged it off and looked forward, really hoping he wouldn’t get stabbed from the raccoon. The raccoon rolled his eyes and mumbled.

“I’m Rocket.” Though it was too quiet for Sam to understand, so he looked at him and asked him he didn’t catch that and the Raccoon shoved his hands in his pockets and grumbled at Sam, spitting at him.

“I am Rocket!”

“Like… a spaceship or your name?” Sam actually was confused, his mind still partly being a three year old boy and he had an imagination.

“My name, dumb ass.” Rocket huffed and together they walked down the hallway, though neither knew why they never separated. Until they walked into the room and the shiny bronze of a helmut blinded them.

When they both reached for it, they knew that there would be trouble. They were both there to steal the same thing. The newly found friends would have to fight for it.

[austinpanda]

Dad Letter 032821

28 March, 2021

Dear Dad--

Happy Sunday to you! It’s been an uneventful week, because the casino people still have me in hurry-up-and-wait mode. They were doing the background check and the pee test. Both tests should have come back with boringly predictable results; I have no criminal background, and I have no crimes in my whizz, either. They gave me a packet of information about the pee test, including lists of what they test for. They seem to test for alcohol, which is weird, but I guess the test is to determine if you have a lot of it inside you at that moment. Because if you can’t sober up for an 8:00 a.m. pee test, I suppose it indicates a potentially interesting personal life…?

So I’ve been spending my time cleaning all the things that don’t normally get cleaned, in case it’s a long time before I can clean them again. For example, I scrubbed the bathtub, cleaned the light bulbs in the bathroom, and waxed my car, Beige Lightning. I probably wouldn’t worry about keeping a 13 year old Hyundai waxed and shiny, except I own some Turtle Wax, and what the hell? I can watch the rain water bead up on the hood while I’m quarantining. I don’t wax the whole thing, just the upward-facing surfaces, like the hood and roof and trunk lid. Waxing the doors feels too fastidious for me. My thinking is that if you wax the parts where the rain will bead up, people will just assume you waxed the doors, too. Now I just need it to rain, so I can watch all the beads forming and feel like a proud motorist.

If it seems like I’m already straining to come up with a topic of conversation, I must admit, I thought I’d be working by now, so I didn’t plan much over the past week. I’m still unvaccinated, but the process seems to be accelerating tremendously, and it’s beginning to look like I’ll get my shot within maybe a week or two? With Zach getting his shot no more than a month after that. Downside of marrying someone of an earlier generation: I qualify as “old enough to get a vaccine,” while Zach does not. We can’t exactly start partying with our friends until we both get the shot, but it sounds like it’s going to be a glorious day when everyone we know has been vaccinated. I miss restaurants, and buffets, and movie theaters! Life returning to normal, kinda.

Oh, I made pad thai! I get the impression that there was a period in the past when making pad thai was more popular, like the fondue sets of the 1970s. I’ve always liked pad thai, no matter which restaurant made it, but I never attempted to cook it myself, because it’s a complicated dish. It has a lot of ingredients, including a few that I’d never buy otherwise, like bean sprouts (stupidly perishable), and fish sauce. Fish sauce is the most disgusting-smelling thing I’ve ever had in my kitchen, or my nose, for that matter. I was not looking forward to spending money to get an ingredient that I’d otherwise consider about as edible as enriched plutonium. But, I appealed to my inner Vulcan, and logic told me: Fish sauce, while repellant in every way, is present in every pad thai recipe I’ve found. It suggests that fish sauce has always been included in the pad thai, so maybe I should just trust the recipe and buy the stupid nasty sauce. My deduction was correct! You add fish sauce, but you also add rice vinegar, soy sauce, and brown sugar, things that ameliorate the smell of the fish sauce, and make it just another delicious ingredient.

When I had completed making the pad thai on Wednesday, I’d have to say it was a partial success. I had included too much pasta, and the flavor was a bit bland. But it was okay. The thing is, when I was packaging up the leftovers, I grabbed a big handful of the noodles and threw them away. Apparently, this made the leftovers exactly perfect, and Zach and I ate the leftovers with more zeal and yummy noises than we had the first time around. Now I want to make the dish again, because I know how much pasta (rice noodles, aka rice sticks) to use, and I can get all the ratios correct from the start. Kind of exciting, because I always viewed the dish as too lovely and complicated to make myself. Now I don’t need a restaurant to make me pad thai, because I found a recipe that allows me to do it at home.

I saw a good documentary about a plane crash lately! This one was a plane full of French people, which disappeared over the open ocean a few years back. Some wreckage came to the surface and was gathered up. Then they started doing searches underwater to find the plane, which took a long time. Eventually they found it, and found the two black boxes. Because I’m a plane crash nerd, I know that the black boxes are actually bright orange, to make them easier to find amid plane wreckage, and they’re not even boxes. And there’s two of them: the flight data recorder, which keeps track of plane and flight data, and the CVR, the Cockpit Voice Recorder, where they can listen to what everyone was saying in the cockpit.

After years, when they finally found the plane under water and got the two black boxes, they figured out what had happened. This, really, is the part of the generic plane crash story that grabs my attention and makes me want to learn more: when they piece together all the evidence and come up with a detailed timeline that shows everything that happened, and everything that went wrong. What happened this time? Well, a little probe thingy that sticks out of the fuselage and measures something (maybe airspeed?) got coated in ice and started giving shitty data. The plane recognized this and took itself off of autopilot. The flight crew, not knowing what was going on, and in possession of shitty airspeed information, put the plane in a nose-up attitude, but didn’t give it enough power. We all know what happens when you run out of power while going uphill in an airplane, right? Stall! The plane stalled, which kind of doomed their dumb asses.

Because it was at night, and because the pilot and the rest of the flight crew didn’t figure it out in time, the plane stalled. This means it stops moving forward like a plane, and just starts dropping like a rock. But as it drops it still maintains the same nose-up attitude, and because of that, and the fact that you’re obviously still moving, it can be hard to detect that you’re in a stall. This is where I need to learn more about this accident if I don’t want that part to bug me, because they stalled the plane, and then they just flew along happily, dropping like a rock, until they hit the ocean. Did no one notice that the altimeter was showing the plane falling to the earth with invigorating speed? Was there no audible alarm saying, “Stall! Stall! Do something, dumbasses! You're in a stall!” The good news about flying happily into the ocean, however, is that it’s unlikely that everyone died in a terrorized panic. Plane’s still pointed forward, still moving through the air, no worries. Beats getting sucked out of a hole in the plane and falling to your death, am I right?

I have recently rewatched a made-for-TV movie that used to scare the bejesus out of me as a kid: The Ghost of Flight 401. Remember that? This plane crashes into the Everglades. (Why did it crash? They focused so much of their attention trying to diagnose what was actually just a light bulb problem with their landing gear indicator light, that they experienced a brief period of, “Oops, no one’s flying the airplane,” and they crashed.) In the made-for-TV-movie, one of the flight crew was Ernest Borgnine. And after the crash, they recycled some parts from the crashed plane and installed them in planes still in service. Then dead Ernest Borgnine comes back and starts scaring the shit out of everyone in the planes that got the flight 401 plane parts! All based on a TRUE STORY.

It was the ghost of Ernest Borgnine that used to scare the hell of me. And the movie was spooky as fuck, and it came out in 1978 when I was nine years old, and for a made-for-TV-movie, it was really well done! If you recall, because I know we watched this when it aired originally, the movie ends when some of the people affected (including an Asian flight attendant woman, who’s stood out in my memory ever since) get together and have a seance to encourage dead Ernest Borgnine, and anyone else listening, to move on, and stop haunting our airline passengers, pretty please. You know, you can watch this whole thing on YouTube for free, whenever you want? I find it less terrifying now that I’m 52 years old, but it’s still refreshingly creepy.

Okay, time to wrap this up. Perhaps by this time next week I’ll have started my casino job! Either that, or at least heard back from them to bring in my gaming license application and get my ID photo taken. Hope the spring has sprung! All my love to you both!