The Birthday

Well, I thought this was pretty funny. Friday the 10th was my birthday. I had to get up at 4 a.m., which is NOT what I enjoy doing, for a flight to Mobile, Alabama. I took a friend with me, and a guy who needed to get down there. The weather was rather nasty here, cold, raining, cloudy and very windy. I took off and it was IFR, and finally we broke out of the clouds and had a relaxing rest of the flight to Mobile. Until I looked up their weather and noticed it going downhill fast. Which it was NOT forecast to do. Sure enough, when we arrived, it was calling for 200 foot ceilings and .8 of a mile visibility. That's RIGHT at minimums, slightly below in fact. So I shoot an ILS approach, and the minimum altitude I can go down is 225 feet. I happen to know my altimeter reads 50 feet high, so I go down to 200 feet. Nothing. It's time to add power and get out of there, so I go to add power, and right then spotted the strobe on the runway at the same time Chuck starts saying "Lights! Lights!" I've got it in sight so I pull the power back, come in and land. Not the most relaxing end to the flight, but it's nice to stay current. I'm just glad we didn't have to go somewhere else!

While we were there, once we'd landed, Chuck & I went to visit the U.S.S. Alabama and a submarine there on the ocean. It was actually pretty cool! We ate breakfast at a neat place with aviation and war photos all over every wall, toured these battleship/submarines, and then picked up our guy and flew back to Indiana. It was IFR back out of Mobile again, but not as bad as before, and it was IFR into hometown again too, but also not as bad as when we left. Finally we landed safely, after one very long, 14-hour day!

When I got home, I had a few hours to clean the house, before my Mom & Ernie came over for my birthday. They made it in around 9:30, I went to bed around 12:30 and I crashed HARD. Then I slept until 11:00 a.m.!

The next day was Saturday, and K and my mom were going to make me a C-A-K-E. They'd always spell it so I wouldn't know what they were doing. Well, they did it from Scratch, all of it including the frosting. Except the lard (Crisco) my mom used was just starting to go bad. Which she/we didn't know until the cake was done baking and it smelled kind of funny. And tasted kind of funny. Now she didn't want to have to tell K that the C-A-K-E they had spent SO much time working on from scratch was "bad", but neither could anybody eat it the way it was. So, Mommy went to the local Kroger store and asked for two plain white round cakes, no frosting, no nothing. And do you believe they had it?? I brought it home, and while Mom distracted K in the other room, I tossed out the homemade cakes (which looked DELICIOUS by the way!) and replaced them with these Kroger cakes. K never noticed the difference, they fit in the pans just perfectly. They decorated this cake with the homemade frosting, sprinkles, and put a princess crown and several candles on top, and they were done. Mission accomplished! K thought she did a full home-made cake (and she DID, really!), nobody died of food poisoning, everyone enjoyed the cake a great deal, and everybody lived happily ever after. :)

It was a good birthday!