Various Thoughts/Occurrences from Today

Easter is the promise of life, of love, of sacrifice, of hope, and of triumph. A Happy, Blessed Easter to you all...

For my birthday, Mom baked a batch of ooey gooey brownies and under-baked them by five minutes just for me. Kaylee got to them a little early, and took a chunk out of the middle of the pan, leaving behind a few sprinkles and a couple of Nerd candies to give her away. Bugger. ;)

I forgot, when we unloaded the plane, Mom grabbed my purse, and then she paused with purse hanging in mid-air, and said "It this a purse? Is my daughter carrying an actual, real purse? What is the world coming to?!" It was kind of a real purse-just a tan one that Ann had given Kaylee for a play purse, and Kaylee had given to me because she said I needed a new one. ;)

The flooding in Missouri is really bad. Perhaps you've seen it on the news. It's really impressive to see in person, too. You can see where the Mississippi River is halted by a levy. On the other side of that levy is an airport and a lot of towns/people. One break in that levy, and it's going under, all of it. There have been National Guard out, and today on my flight home from Missouri I got a TFR (Temporary Flight Restriction) near that area, saying I couldn't fly over due to Flood Rescue Work being undertaken in that area. It's a mess; it's the worst flooding that area has ever seen...and it's seen a lot of flooding.

For those who missed the point of my "Picture that Didn't Speak 1000 Words After All", it wasn't what I was watching on TV (which happened to be Eric Clapton at that moment for you curious folks), but rather that I was watching TV. The bulb was replaced and I had live television for the first time in 4-5 days. See, a picture does not always work, does it. ;)

Today Kaylee got to go on an Easter Egg Hunt of her own. She did pretty well, and she had a fun time doing it, too. She's already eaten two of her eggs. She likes hard-boiled eggs, which is good, since they're pretty good for a growing kid. I took a few photos of that which are up on Kaylee's Site. That's got to be one of the least-photo-taking-weekends I've ever had though. Not sure what my deal was!

Kaylee has been re-creating "Enchanted" and play acting out the parts since the movie ended. The adults were more enamored with the humor in "The Bee Movie", and the little life lessons that it included too. Kaylee liked it, but she just likes princesses better. Plus for the last 3 years she has had an impressive fear of bees anyway, so she probably regarded them with a little suspicion. For a minute I had a brief hope that a cute movie about bees would make her like them better in her gardens in the back yard. Then I remembered that I may have cried my eyes out as a kid when Charlotte died, but I still have a deep-rooted hatred of all things spider. And when I saw "Charlotte's Web" on the big screen, I did not find the computer animated spider cute or endearing at all. I found her large and creepy. Oh. That was my favorite line in "The Bee Movie". The bees were discussing dating different species, and one of them said "I know that spiders are the cool ones to date with their 8 legs and everything, but I just can't get past that face." and then he made a definite ugly spider face. YEAH, what he said! "Enchanted" also made me laugh and grossed me out. At one point, the princess did what Cinderella and Snow White could both do-she would sing, and cute little cuddly animals would come help. Little fuzzy mice, sweet birds, cute chipmunks, rabbits, etc. When the princess was dropped into New York City, she called upon her animal friends to help her clean an apartment, and she ended up with pigeons, large rats, and cockroaches. Her comment was "Oh dear. Well, it's always good to make NEW friends." Then a rat stuck his long tail down the drain of the bathtub and pulled out a HUGE hairball, which another critter pulled off to throw away, and I almost threw up right there. I had involuntary heebie geebie twitching for a good 60 seconds after seeing that. Mom's favorite part was when the cockroaches came swarming out of the bathtub drain to clean the scummy tub. That was in fact a close second for me. *Nasty*. One other amusing thing-instead of the Prince rescuing the Princess, they ended up having the Princess with a sword rescuing her Prince from a dragon. Welcome to 2008 and equal opportunity heroism, ladies and gentlemen. ;)

Well, today we flew home. I was surprised to find out that we were looking at clouds and icing. It actually ended up being just what the doctor ordered, so to speak. When I first entered the clouds, I actually had to concentrate to keep up with the plane. It had been SO long since I actually have taken a trip in the clouds for any length of time that this was much-needed practice. I flew until it clicked in, then I passed it off to Steve to get some practice in, and we swapped back and forth like that hand-flying it all the way home. Even when we weren't IN the clouds, we might as well have been from all we could see. It was funny because we could both see the other fighting it a little bit in the beginning, and then you could see it settle down and become routine. Towards the end I knew I was 'back' because I was thinking about other things too while I was flying. ;) We had tunes going the whole way home again, which were nice. I was enjoying a little classical too as I descended through the cloud layers to come in for a landing at Kokomo. It was pretty and relaxing. When we landed, I knocked off a chunk of ice from the wing and gave it to Kaylee along with the necessary directive not to Eat it. It wasn't bad at all on the icing though. I need to go shoot some approaches in actual (clouds) now, which I plan on doing one of these upcoming days when the weather cooperates with some clouds.

We made it home early afternoon, took a nap, unpacked some things, got the cats taken care of, and my Easter Supper consisted of Steak and Shake that I picked up on my way home from the airport. Kind of an Odd Easter Sunday I admit, but it worked for us. One of my favorite poems about flying has the line "reached out my hand and touched the face of God", and sometimes that is exactly how I feel, skimming on the top of a layer of clouds, looking at the deep blue above, feeling the sun on my face...

Well, I think that covers all the random thoughts I had from the last day or two. I hope you all had a peaceful, joyful Easter as well. :)

High Flight

by John G. Magee, Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunwards I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a thousand things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air,
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.