It was a strange weekend, in that I was true to my new ideal of getting up early to be ‘proactive’ or ‘a go-getter’ or whatever smarmy adjectival phrase you want to assign to the idea that weekends shouldn’t all be spent sleeping and partying.

I was up by 7:25 and to a (non-compulsory) training class on Saturday morning. That was a good start, but I needed to make the streak last both days.

Today I was up by 7:10, ran errands in Evanston, was home by 9:30, stopped by a coworker’s house and went to the bar to watch Arsenal lose, all by 10:15 a.m. [Side note: Chelsea won on a horrible, sloppy goal that ricocheted off Drogba's knee - a £24 million striker can't kick the ball? - and just 'happened' to bounce in the right direction. Dammit.] However, when I was returning home yesterday, I caught a glimpse of the Thunderbirds, the Air Force’s pattern flying squad.

My obsession with the Thunderbirds goes back, way back, back when I wanted to be a pilot, back to the days of the Dayton Air Show, when my dad snapped a picture of the four jets streaking over us in formation. While the picture didn’t turn out, I’ve had this romanticized notion of what the image would look like - which, incidentally, is remarkably similar to the cover of nearly every air show program in existence - and I’ve wanted to get that shot ever since.

So I see these F-16s streaking across the Chicago skyline from the window of my train and feel like a kid in a candy store. And this kid in a candy store is also hopped up on blow and is about to see his first R-rated movie in a few hours, so you could say I’m pretty excited. ‘Tomorrow,’ I think. ‘Tomorrow, I’ll grab the camera and head down to the air show.’

Sunday day dawns, bright, clear and cool. I start reading ‘The Hours’ on the train to Evanston and, as I get to just that transcendent point where the words coming through my headphones fade to the level where I no longer hear Iggy Pop telling me he’s ‘the world’s forgotten boy / the one who searches and destroys,’ (oddly appropriate lyrics for a novel based on Virginia Woolf) and the words cease to be printed on the page but somehow tangible, I have a revelation about [insert personal revelation here, self-discovery nonsense, you get the picture].

The day’s starting strong.

But just before Drogba’s piss-poor, yet heart-rending, goal, I hear the Thunderbirds are not flying today, since apparently something fell off one of the jets during yesterday’s performance. I’ve been waiting for a year to see this effing show and now the team’s not performing? Arsenal lost? Today’s horoscope said change was in the air - that must be it.

Suffice to say I did still make it to the air show and, with the extra time I found on my hands that should have been taken up with the Thunderbirds, we took in a Sunday matinee. Maybe things would turn out after all.

Tomorrow: Can I keep my early-morning streak going? If you find me unemployed next week, you’ll know the answer.

Upside to the day: I did get some kickass air show photos, though. Look to the photo gallery in the upcoming weeks. With a 300mm zoom, I could see the facial expressions of parachuters.