At the End of the Day

I took up the Decathlon this morning; it was a beautiful morning to fly and lots of people were out playing and learning. Our instructors are booked solid, and the planes are so busy it's hard to keep them clean and hard to schedule routine maintenance. Good problems to have, I must admit. :)

When I picked up Kaylee from school, she got in the car and said "Mrs. F and Mrs. B are mean." I said "Why is that?" She told me that they are always grumpy and never laugh or smile. (They are both teachers of various grades.) I asked about another teacher, and she said "She's nicer, except when somebody is bad, but that's okay because ALL teachers get mad when you do something wrong." I said "Did Mrs. R, Mrs. W or Mrs. B (teachers from her former school) ever get mad when the kids did something wrong?" She paused and said "Well, no, actually they didn't. But all the teachers here get mad at the kids when they're bad." I take that with a grain of salt, a rather large one in fact, but what a perception to have.

She also said "Have you noticed anything different about my skin?" I looked her over and said "No, what's different?" She said "My skin is darker than it used to be." I said "Oh, yes, that's called a 'tan'." She wanted to know if that was bad, and I said that she'd been wearing sunscreen, so no, a tan wasn't a bad thing, it just meant she had spent some extra time in the sunshine. Lucky little bugger, she gets that special sun-kissed glow I used to envy when I was a teenager. :)

After school I took her to Glenndale. Dale has an ancient roller hooked up behind an ancient tractor, and with our runway finally firm enough to fly off of, he and Chuck started rolling the runway. This smooths out the lumps and bumps that happen on a grass/dirt runway, making it a slightly more pleasant landing experience. I asked Kaylee if she wanted to roll with me, as she had done it last year and enjoyed it, and she said sure, so after a stop at Steak 'n Shake for a banana shake, we headed out. Unfortunately there wasn't enough room on the tractor seat for both of us safely, so she didn't get to end up going anyway, something she took rather better than I expected. I did take a turn however, and it was really kind of funny. You've got your iron bar clutch, and a little iron lever that you can either push forward, which turns you left, or pull backwards, which turns you right. And there's one more lever that is your throttle that you push up to go slower and down to go faster. I may have those backwards. lol There really was nothing whatsoever intuitive about driving this thing, which makes it kind of fun to try out. :) Here, Justin took a picture, so this ought to give you a better idea. You can click on it to blow it up and see better. Every time I look at the picture, the theme song for "Green Acres" goes through my mind for some reason...

I did in fact get more things done today, and funnily enough have more to do than when I started somehow. Ah, life. :) Happy Tuesday!