Time

I've been surprised how easy it has been for me to write this blog. Once I get started on a topic, the ideas and words just kind of flow and I'm done before I know it. This blog entry, about the passage of time, has been different as I don't know quite where to start. It would be easy, you would think, when writing about time, that you would start at the beginning. But which beginning? I suppose I'll go back to my beginning.

Right from my beginning, I've been fascinated by maps and weather. I still pour over maps, especially road maps, and could probably talk you to, or at least get you near any location in the U.S. by listing the routes you would need to arrive. As for weather, I had all kinds of weather books and pamphlets growing up. I was particularly fascinated by a weather almanac insert that was included in a Sunday issue of the NY Daily News around 1970. It had New York City weather stories, pictures and statistics for over a hundred years. For one Christmas, I got an anemometer and wind vane which my dad and I installed on the roof. I was clearly desperate for information and weather forecasts in those days, were hard to come by. The newspaper has stale information, collected the day before and published overnight. There was no weather radio, no Weather Channel, and weather was a few minutes at the end of the evening news. There was one way to talk to a live weather expert and to get the latest forecast: RAymond 9-1597. The number of the Weather Bureau at the airport. I got to be friends with the (usually) friendly men that answered the phone.

Move forward in time to 1986. After graduating from SUNY Oswego with a bachelors degree in Meteorology I'm selling appliances at Kmart in Binghamton. A year earlier I had applied for a Meteorologist Intern position at Kennedy airport in NYC and was not selected. The phone rang at Kmart and my understandably excited father told me that I had gotten a call from the servicing personnel office and had been offered the same job, but at LaGuardia airport. So began my weather career.

A couple years later, the LaGuardia office was closed and I was given the opportunity to go to the office in Binghamton, which allowed me to work with some of the same men I had spoken to on the phone all those years ago. Time passes...

National Weather Service Binghamton

It's 2016 and I've been at this for 30 years. I'm now the old man who answers the phone. Incredibly, the number has not changed, we just don't use the RAymond and it's 729-1597, and we answer it 24 hours a day. The phone though, doesn't ring all that much. The weather nerds of today have the internet, Facebook, and Twitter along with 24 hour coverage on The Weather Channel (now owned by IBM - more irony).

The future of the National Weather Service is murky. Another push is on in Congress to privatize much of what we do, and modeling is getting to the point that forecasts are being pushed from computer to the public untouched by human hands. My future is more clear. As of today I am eligible for full retirement and could leave my job at any time. I plan to hang around for a bit longer as I still love my job and the people I work with, but I'm thinking my time here is probably short.

Oh yeah,  the house. A couple quick updates. I have finished painting the vestibule and installed a new light fixture that Cindy and I picked out. I need to install the molding and will finally be done. The grass I planted in front of the porch is coming in pretty nicely with favorable weather and generous watering. Cindy has announced that the next room project should be the den. The room has no wallpaper so I'm happy to comply.