A Plane nearly does not land safely, then does.

Wednesday this week, I'd had a full day of real work and worry about taxes. I had finally got home and was enjoying a sit down in the comfortable chair with a glass of ice water. Really, when it's 86 degrees in April, a glass of ice water is wonderful. Anyway, I was watching the last of the local news. It was moments before the national news was to come on.

A local news head announces with their personal version of hysteria, "Breaking news developing now! A UPS plane has notified the air traffic controllers of a possible emergency. The airport is preparing for a crash landing!"

The next fifteen minutes were spent with live action watching a 767 UPS plane approach the runway and land. This meant the CBS national news up to the first commercial break wasn't shown. Reggie said he was watching the NBC affiliate and the national news was broadcasting two sides to a political question and every time they were showing his preferred side, they broke away to the plane landing.

Since then the local stations have been running ads patting themselves on the back for showing the plane land safely. An airplane safely landing happens thousands of times. It is not news. If that plane crashed and all the online purchased packages burned, I'd want to see that.

We here in Louisville need about an hour and a half of local news a day. More than that is an extended commercial.

Another blogger I read had a post this week about all the live stand up reports on travel delays at European airports due to an Icelandic volcano's belch. She said that every small airport in Briton had a segment where a live stand up reporter said, "Same here. No one is leaving the airport!" That's as funny as the breaking news of a safe airplane landing in Louisville!

All the Tax Day drama is over here. My friend the CPA filed extensions for me. The government has my money so I'll hopefully not suffer any penalties. I have a pretty boring life regarding money matters, but somehow it becomes drama every year.

My other CPA friend from a northern state, called Friday. I don't talk to him often but every year the day after Tax Day we seem to talk. He told me his cat died. He said she was 14 and was ill. They'd been working with her trying to save her and the vet wanted them to leave her over night so the could give her another therapy. They got a call late to come get her as she was wigging out in the cat cage. So they went to get her and she was riding in his wife's lap in the car on the way home. She was talking to the kitty and it seemed content. Two blocks from the house the cat died. Now he's all broke up about it. His daughter who's away at college says they killed the cat by leaving it at the veg hospital and now she can't stand coming home this summer and has gotten a job in her college town on the east coast. I could hear tears in his voice. I told him his daughter was 22 and was looking for a way to stay away. It was normal and not to sweat it.

I said, "You know what you got to do now, don't you?" He said they were getting two new cats. I told him to get mutts. They'd always had Siamese and this was the second one to die of the same ailment. I told him all my cat owner stories and he got to laughing at me. I think they will be ok with the new cats and hopefully his daughter will come back home when she runs out of money or gets pregnant.

This week end kicks off The Kentucky Derby Festival. This is about three weeks of uncountable events leading up to the Kentucky Derby. I like thoroughbred horse racing; watching, betting and even loosing on small horse race bets. I do not care for all the festival stuff. Maybe, if it involved nudity on a grand scale or some other truly spring fertility event. But, this is Louisville Kentucky, which exists under the cinch of the Bible belt, so our nude worship of Baucus is done either behind closed doors or accidentally on a river bank and within the oval infield at Churchill Downs.

Yesterday was Thunder over Louisville. That means seven hundred thousand people went downtown and onto the bank of the Ohio River to watch a wide variety of civilian and military planes fly around all day. At about 9:30 p.m. fireworks were launched for about thirty minutes in a technological marvel of music and explosion. Then for the next four hours, all those people tried to get home.

In the past Dennis and I watched from roof tops or in the offices of friends in buildings a couple of blocks from the river. Then I began watching from my apartment high up in a building in the Highlands. Now, I don't even do that. I keep saying I'll have a watch party, but everyone I know likes to be out near the event. Maybe the watch party will work when my friends are old.

What I did was cross the river early Friday evening, head north and spend the night and some of Saturday with Lenny. He had some work to do for a friend whose dad died, so I just tagged along and read my book, kept him from getting sleep. We went out to eat for dinner and then breakfast.

Sunday in Louisville is a beautiful thing in April. The excitement of the Derby hovers in the air like a pink mist along with tree pollen and butterflies. Yes! I saw my first butterfly this morning. It was small, yellow and fascinated with a wild grapevine growing at the side of a building.