Bits and Pieces

Kaylee had her second swim lesson today, and she's doing well. She still has trouble opening her eyes under water because she says it makes her eyes burn, and she hates getting water up her nose. Well, you know what, so do I, so I can't blame the girl for that. But she's working hard this year to "get" everything, because she knows that if she can learn to swim well, she'll be able to do more fun things in the water this summer.

This afternoon I took her to Target to get a new swim suit. She has outgrown every suit she has except for the one she's worn the last two days, and that one is still too big for her. It's fine when it's dry, but when she gets in the water, the bottom of it fills up and droops way down. That certainly won't do! So we went swim suit shopping. It's a lot more fun for an 8 year old than a 38 year old, you know. :) She picked out one two-piece (that covers everything-I said no bikinis) and a nice one-piece with a skirt, and matching flip flops since her last pair broke. She then wanted to buy a toy with her own money. So we were in the toy aisle for almost an hour while she pored over her choices and debated how badly she wanted various things vs. how much they cost and how much money she would have left over. Whew that girl can shop, and take her time doing so. I ended up practically sitting on the floor kicking my feet and whining "I wanna go home!" in a role reversal of the usual parent/child shopping experience. :)

My laptop is finally home after almost a month! Whew, I really missed that thing. Now maybe I can catch up better in the evenings with the online stuff.

Golden the cat didn't come to eat on Sunday, so Richard went looking for him with no success. We've been home for a couple of days now and there is not hide nor hair (so to speak) of Golden. Kaylee has been so busy she hasn't figured it out yet, but Golden has either found a new haunt when we were gone for just the day or two, even though we had food out, which seems unlikely after he was around all day every day for a month straight, he was taken in by somebody else, which isn't that unlikely because he was a sweet, friendly cat, or...he has made it to Kitty Heaven. We just hope he's alive and well fed somewhere.

A few more things from the air show. I mentioned that the Air Boss did the main briefing, and that he kept things quiet and people paying attention by humor and a little potential public embarrassment. At one point, he was talking about what to do if you found yourself emergency landing in the middle of the pyrotechnic "field". He said "If you end up in the pyrotechnics, and your plane is not on fire, just sit there. Don't move--the guys will be coming to get you out of the field safely. If you end up in the pyrotechnics and your airplane IS on fire, get out and run like crazy, because the guys will be sitting waaaaaaaay over there, just watching." I'd heard them say something similar at the Gathering of Mustangs and Legends briefing, and hearing it this time reminded me and made me laugh.

On the embarrassment end of it, several people got "busted" during Sunday's briefing for talking or not paying attention, and he'd make them come up to the front of the room and sit for awhile. So at one point, my flight lead handed back a folder of paperwork, and I was supposed to fill out my information on it. I did, and I went to hand it back up to him two rows up, but he'd turned around and faced front. I started to try to get his attention, and then I paused, knowing that should I be caught, I'd stop the show and be sitting up front, and that was more attention than I was looking to garner. So I set it down and shut up and waited for after the briefing to give it to him. See? Public embarrassment is an effective deterrent for the usually errant behavior of pilots. ;)

I also ran into my Designated Examiner at the air show. He was the guy who gave me my checkrides and issued me my certificates/ratings for Private, Commercial, Instrument, CFI and CFII, and who taught me aerobatics and did my spin training for CFI in a Super Decathalon initially. I hadn't seen him in a loooong time, so it was kind of nice to catch up, and it was kind of fun that it was like this.

I'd better get to work on my photos...