Building Slowly

This morning dawned as another beautiful November day, where we once again had blue skies and temps in the 70s by the end of the day. We're probably going to pay for this with a long, hard, ugly winter, but for now I am enjoying it.

The first item of the day was to fly with a student out of Sheridan, and send them off on another solo flight. I'd left some things I needed (like my brain apparently) back at home, so I ran all the way home to pick them up, only to find out Steve had taken some of them to the office with him. He's doing better today, but still sick, stuffed up, sneezy, etc. He met us for lunch, then shortly afterwards went home and crashed for the rest of the day. Poor guy.

After lunch I filled my car up with gas and realized I just topped off my tank for $30. And then I realized I was grateful for that little fact. And then I thought that was kind of pathetic since I remember it in the teens to twenties. And then I thought about the $70 fill-ups I'd been having lately, and I just went back to grateful.

I ran to my local voting center and plugged in my vote. I didn't have any wait/line at all; I just walked in, got my paper, went to my booth, and was out of there in less than 10 minutes, as vote number 863 into the machine I believe. :)

(Flying paragraph to skip if this is Greek/boring to you. ;)) After lunch my original plans included several things I needed to get done, but I called and checked the winds and found they were 230 at 8 gusting to 12 knots. Well, that was almost perfect for what I wanted to do next in the T-6. I'd have winds right down one runway, and a direct 90 degree crosswind from both the left and right on the other runway, at an easy but still reasonable wind speed, with a small but still there gust factor. So I went out to Kokomo, pulled out the T-6, hopped in, fired up, listened to the weather and now it was saying 10 gusting to 17 knots. I did a takeoff and landing on 23 to get warmed up into the wind, then took off on 14, came around and landed, felt great, taxied on down to the end and took off on 32, came around and landed, and thought "that was too easy, that wasn't 17 knots". Checked the winds again and they were back down to 12 knots. Fine. Took off on 14 again, came around and landed...winds were now down to 10 knots. I actually flared too late and hopped that last one for my first little bounce up front, but if that's the worst landing I ever have, I'll take it. ;) It was all good, I enjoyed it. I'd like to get another day a little higher on the wind scale next.

I had to leave from there to get Kaylee. She got in the car and said "Who did you vote for, Mommy?" I told her, and she said "My teacher won't tell us who she voted for. Why not?" I explained that it was a private thing, and that lots of people don't like to discuss it. She didn't understand that, so I said that sometimes people can argue and fight and have bad feelings about it when they discuss politics if they don't agree with each other. She said her class had so many people who would vote for McCain and so many who would vote for Obama, and then said "And we don't fight and argue over it. How come adults act like two-year-olds on it and us second graders act just fine?" Good question. ;)

Kaylee had ballet today, and I picked up some good home made (by someone else) soup to take home to Steve then went out to Outback myself with Jim and Nathan. What can I say? ;)

Well, as I type this there is nothing on television but election results, of course. I am so grateful to see the end of political ads and commercials, and I just pray for whichever man (and men & women) ends up with the job(s) of running this country. They'll need it...