A Noisy Introvert

I ran across This Video on one of the blogs I follow, and I thought it answered well the question of Introvert vs. Extrovert, and the difference between "introvert" and "shy". I always test kind of in the middle of the spectrum on those personality tests, and I always have trouble answering correctly because at different times I feel different ways. I can be outgoing and enjoy public activities a lot if I'm in the right mood, but if I don't get enough quiet time completely to myself, I get...well, let's just say I just need that time, and you can tell when my friendly is all run out. The first few minutes of this video when she is talking about her camp experience, I started laughing, because I related. And she talks about how everything is set up for group projects now days, from school to work, and how that's fine for extroverts, but introverts do better on their own. Annnd, that would be me. I've always detested group projects. Anyway, it's nineteen minutes long which may be too long to sit through, but I found it interesting, lightly informative and entertaining. So, here's to being an Introvert and proud of it. ;)


Last night I stayed up until I got all the billing caught up for what I had, got some more in today and got that caught up too, and I'm going to try to have this stuff done and out in a reasonable time for once. Billing paperwork is the highest form of drudgery. I was not cut out to be an accountant. ;)

It was a nice morning to take the 340 over to Muncie to be a taxi service, but by this afternoon when I was supposed to go back for a lesson in the RG, my guy canceled because it was raining. It was still VFR, actually, but it was raining, so that was the end of that.

I just saw on the news that Mayor Bloomberg wants to ban the sale of any sugary drink in excess of 16 oz. in New York City. Presweetened tea, cokes, energy drinks, any of it prohibited if it's larger than 16 oz. Because people won't just buy 2 or 3 16 oz drinks then, right? Or maybe we're only allowed to then buy one at a time, as the next version of that law. If it passes it will be the first law of its kind in the nation. And let me say one big fat loud UGH...

Teachers Let the Monkeys Out

Anybody else remember that little ditty? "School's Out, School's Out, teachers let the monkeys out!" Anyway, today was the end of Fifth grade, the beginning of 6th grade, and the hello to Summer Break. Kaylee wasn't thrilled when I still made her clean her room and feed her cats when she got home, but hey, she seems pretty content right now cuddled up on the couch reading a book instead of doing homework. ;) Man I'm glad to be done with homework for the next few months.

Today was "Track and Field Day". Kaylee's class won a Tug-o-War game, which she was really proud of because her team beat the team that had never been beaten and was bragging about having never been beaten. I said "Usually those things are won by the team with the biggest people on it." She said "We didn't have the strongest kids on our team, we were just more determined about it." Well, okay, I can go with that too. :)

She also forgot to put on sunscreen, and got herself a nice burn all over. Ugh. But we ended the day with a little "Crazy J's" hard ice cream (he spells it Krazy J but I can't stand that so I'm fixing it for him), and the mint chocolate chip scoop was a lovely end to the last day of school. Kaylee's got about two weeks here before her first week of camp, and she can't wait.

Me? My student canceled, so I did what I usually do when I don't have any flights, and tried to catch up on home stuff. Picking up what we need at the store, laundry, dishes, and since it's the end of the month again for what seems like the third week in a row, billing.

Last night Kaylee came in offering me $5 because she wanted to buy another Kindle book. She just bought one yesterday. Steve said "Didn't you just buy one yesterday?" She says "Yes, I read that one already." He spelled out how much that cost if you did one every day, but she wisely didn't argue, just looked at him and batted her eyes, so he said okay. I took her $5 though. So today I'm at the grocery store and I see that one of my favorite authors has a new book out. I had just bought some books on my iPad, but I was done with them already. So instead of picking up the hard book at the store like I used to, I scanned it into my phone, selected "buy it now", and before I was out of the isle it was waiting for me on my phone or my iPad. And I snickered. Because Steve will want to ask me "didn't you just buy books the other day?" but since my habit is now electronic, about half the price of what it used to be, and doesn't take up any more space in our house, he will try to remind himself that this is a better deal. He was at first just glad Kaylee was reading a lot and enjoying it as opposed to being buried in a TV (she watches almost no TV any more) or computer games, but now he's just wondering about dealing with TWO book worms in one family. Poor guy. :)

Kaylee was showing Richard & Ann her new fish, now that they've survived a whole week and seem to maybe be here for the duration of whatever a fish life is, and Richard told me he'd heard my name on the radio several times now. I guess the advertising for the Kokomo Air Show is hitting the air waves, and I'm being plugged as a performer. I don't really do anything very exciting there, but if the Six starts this year, I'll make the prettiest circle I can. :)

Well, I've procrastinated long enough. Kaylee's passed out on the couch, sunburnt but happy, another load of laundry is going, another load of dishes are going, so...back to billing...

Flawrida

T-minus one day until Kaylee is out of school for the summer. Today was supposed to be "track and field day", but it was canceled due to rain, so mostly they ended up goofing off. I'm not sure why we have to bother going to school the last week when they didn't do a single academic thing, but they must fill in their 180 days, so the kids go and goof off all week. Kaylee got an Honor Roll certificate and a First Place ribbon for the science fair given to her today. She's happy and excited--the first blush of summer break is really exciting no matter how old you are in school. :)

I got a text this morning that a trip to Florida was in the works, and I didn't have any students today, so I booked it out to the airport. That trip would have been a bit more interesting down at C-340 altitudes thanks to several lines of storms, but in the Cheyenne we were above most of it, just having to deviate around a few of the bigger buildups. We stopped at Conchy Joe's, a seafood place I haven't been to in probably more than 10 years, that Steve and I used to go to every time we'd go to Florida back in the days we spent Thanksgivings down there at a condo. The food is excellent, and the ambiance isn't too shabby either. We sat outside by the water and had crab leg appetizer and I had an excellent fresh grilled grouper sandwich. The problem is, there are too many things I want to eat. Alligator bites, conch fritters, steamed clams, coconut shrimp, calamari...it's just too bad they're so far away. Hopefully it won't be another 10 years before I get back there. Nathan let me fly home, and again we were mostly on top of the weather down there. It's something like 3 hours flight time each way, no need to worry about fuel stops, which is really nice. But even better, the Cheyenne has a switch where you can make it so the music isn't interrupted every time ATC talks. *Humph* ;)

Well, it was a hard day's work, you understand, something I sort of hate to point out considering Steve's day wasn't so much rainbows and roses. We've got a lot to do coming up pretty quickly here, I know that...

Long Weekend, Short Post

We spent Saturday at the airport, and it was a pretty productive day. I got out there at 8:50 a.m. and had everything pulled out and ready to go by 9. I'd thought maybe I was going to do some formation flying from 9-10, but that didn't work out, which was still all good because the T-6 had a ride to give at 10, so everything needed pulled out anyway. The guys got a lot done on airplane maintenance and repair, and the kids alternated between hanging out in the cooler hangar and going out and playing in the heat. I took the Six up just for a quickie before it got put back away, mostly because it was nice to fly it just to fly it and relax instead of...working, I guess.

We all ended the evening at Applebees, and when I got home, I don't think I was awake for another hour. I crawled in bed shortly after 10 p.m. and I slept straight through to about 9 a.m. Apparently I had some catching up to do.

Kaylee got two little fish while I was gone, which she named Marshmallow and Taffy. The first night when I got back from Florida, she showed them to me and said "When I first got them they swam really fast and now they're not and I think they're dying." Oh no we don't. I didn't want fish in the first place, and I got outvoted two to one, but I'm not getting dragged into it this time. Fortunately for her, the fish seem to be doing just fine in there after all. Actually, one nice thing about having the fish tank in her room is that the noise is very soothing, and I think it helps her sleep really well. :)

Today Kaylee got to hit her first swimming of the season, as we went over to Nathan & Tre's for a nice day of R&R. The kids played in the pool while we sat in the shade and enjoyed the breeze for awhile before moving inside to eat. Once we went in to eat, we never did head back out, but the kids ended up back in the pool until after dark. A little ice cream topped off Kaylee's fun, and she fell asleep in the car on the way home. I bet she sleeps real well tonight! Actually, I bet I do too...I'm already sleepy, and it's going to be another busy week...

Home...

Other than a couple of cells to dodge at the end, today's trip was uneventful, although it felt awfully long to me. It was hot again. I'm going to have to quit saying that now that it's going to be a daily fact of life, but man I hate sweating, and no matter where I went these last two days it was 90 degrees. When I turn on the weather in the morning and the guy says "record-breaking heat today" and I'm in FLORIDA, well, I just want to go home. Not that it was any better at home... We were about 45 minutes short on fuel to be able to make the trip from FL to IN non-stop. Well, technically we should have been able to make it non-stop, we just wouldn't have had much fuel left in the tanks when we landed. I always want an hour reserve, and I think if we had a really good tailwind we could pull it off. But that day was not today. :)

I'm tired, so I'll just say it's good to be home, and here are a few photos I took yesterday/today...

Coming in to land at Bartow, FL

Weather over Florida

More weather over Florida

Traffic over Atlanta, which we flew over the top of.

Sunrise at Kokomo yesterday...

Flight Log 24 May

So, Steve and I have been married 16 years today. Before he beats me to it, it sure seems like a lot longer. ;)

You know I know that only a couple people want to read flying details, right? So you might want to skip this one. ;)

For my anniversary, I got up at 5 a.m. When I went to bed last night, the forecast was for severe clear down in Alabama where I was going. So of course when I woke up, it was reporting fog down there. When was it supposed to burn off? Right about when I was supposed to get there. Right. I came up with my Plan B Airport, which was severe clear and forecast to stay that way all day and only 40 miles away, and away we went into the sunrise.

Unfortunately, our weather never came in to the Avidyne, and we have no backup weather source (although I promise you that is about to be fixed after today). So cruising along, we couldn't tell what the trends were doing with the fog, couldn't tell if it was lifting or not, couldn't do anything until we got close enough to be able to start picking up ATIS and AWOS signals. We also fell back on the ole Call Flight Watch once. They're still out there, and it still works. Whaddya know. ;)

But one after another, even though they were "supposed" to be clearing off by then, every weather station close to where we wanted to go was "1/4 mile, fog, vertical visibility 200'" I had to pull up each place separately, find the frequency, dial it in, listen, then look up the next place, and go back and forth over the last hour of the flight trying to find a trend or a break. So I said "Looks like we'll have to go to our VFR alternate". I dial up them, just to be sure, and they too are at 1/4 mile and fog now. Without the onboard weather, it's hard to know where the line is, so I start dialing in airports at one location and moving away from our intended destination to see where it breaks. Where it breaks is too far north for these guys to get to a mandatory meeting on time, and if they miss the meeting, they lose out on a large deal and void the point of the flight. But obviously that's not on the radar in importance compared to not getting into a corner on fuel and weather. One place was up to ILS minimums, barely, but they only had a GPS approach. Won't work. One place went up to minimums, but came back down before 10 minutes passed. And then I found one--reporting 400' overcast, with an LPV GPS approach on field with 400' minimums. It was the only place within miles above 200', by the way. So, now the game. How much fuel remaining, how many shots at an approach can we take, will it stay at minimums or go below like every place around it (which is what I expected), where to go if it won't work, etc.

We had one chance at the GPS approach before needing to bug out to the north for fuel. Winds were calm so I chose the GPS approach that would give us a straight-in final, and we got right down there-the airplane called out "MINIMUMS" very loudly, we didn't see the runway but saw the ground, started to go missed, and there it was, and we were wheels down in Eufaula, Alabama. As I was fueling up the airplane, the line guy came out and asked what brought us here, and I said "You guys were the only thing open for 75 miles, you were right at minimums, and I'm very glad to see you!" He laughed and said "A guy in a Meridian just landed here ahead of you, and he had a whole lot of adrenaline going on when he got out of the plane. He was a little tense."

What is it about Alabama? Every time I come down here there is something unpleasant. The foggy approach with Chuck in the Baron down to minimums, the headwinds so ugly we had to turn around and give up, now another foggy saga. If Clarksdale (Mississippi) had been Alabama too, I may choose never to come back to this state. ;)

Next up we left to go to Atlanta, and that flight was H O T. Bumpy, hot, and of course they gave us a big arrival procedure and then only followed half of it. I'm used to that stuff by now, but it still keeps you busy. This has been a day where I actually had to work for a living. ;)

While I was on the ground in Atlanta (Fulton County), a CFI was trying to help a student get ready for a cross-country flight, but he was using an iPad for the first time, ForeFlight for the first time, and he didn't know how to do it. Finally I offered to help him, and he let me for awhile, but then he was done with me, and when he was trying to calculate ground speed and time enroute and mileage by using a plotter and E6B on an IFR chart instead of using the ForeFlight program, which automatically fills all that in for you, I irritated him when I let him know, so after that I found something else to do. Even when he called Lockheed Martin to file his flight plan even though he could have done it on the iPad. The student walked by and whispered "thanks" though. lol

The trip to Florida was long and hot, but at least the weather held out as far as the storms were concerned. We got our xm weather back, the controllers didn't mess with us too much, the passenger was comfortable sleeping back there, and we landed after dark in Bartow, FL, with a thunderstorm and lightning show off to our right and city lights dead ahead. It was very pretty.

Now that I've watched the season finale of Grey's Anatomy, I guess I'll go to bed, even if I'm not quite ready to start tomorrow. Let's see...today business started at 6 am and ended at 9:30pm, though really 10:30 pm. Yep, long day...

Relief

You will be glad to know you don't have to sit through a giant post this time. ;)

I had a nice intro-to-tailwheel flight in the Champ this morning--it was a beautiful morning for it. Another student finished all their solo cross countries. More progress!

Most of the rest of my work was the boring paperwork, billing and email variety, and getting ready for tomorrow which went from a day full of student flights to a 2-day trip to Alabama, Georgia, and an overnight stay in Florida. A girl has to earn her 100LL, you know...

The only bad thing about this 2-day trip is that it starts with me up at 5:15 tomorrow morning, and I won't be done flying for the day until 9 p.m. or so. Long day, but good timing.

Kaylee won a "Character Award" for "Hope" this week. Her teachers said that she was the 5th grader in that class who most personified hope; that she always did her best to lift up other people, too. Go Kaylee. :)

Market Day

Today was "Market Day" at Kaylee's school. Remember the services/products marketing exercise I told you about? Kaylee and her friend Bella went in as partners in "Nails Galore and More!", a business offering nail art, nail painting and temporary tattoos for the boys. They had to do their own advertising, their own marketing, come up with their own product, their own booth display, no parents input, all done at school except any videos. Then today from 9:30-11:30 a.m., parents and other classes from the school were allowed to go to the "market", which was a large room stuffed with rows and rows of booths set up by these kids. Each visiting person was given $40 in "Comet Cash", fake money, to go spend at these booths, the goal to be for the kids to sell as much as they can, and even negotiate on pricing with customers. Pretty cool, huh? I think that's an awesome project for 5th graders to do that actually has some real world benefit. The first thing that became apparent is one real world problem that most people don't think of when doing an event, which we know because of the BBQ Bash: proper change. The girls didn't ask for any $1s for giving back as change when they got initial "seed" change money, but they had one product that was only $1 in cost. So the first person who wanted it needed $4 change back, and the girls had no ones. Like I said, a good learning experience for planning something like this.

The booths were pretty good, actually. There was homemade jewelry, drinks and food, oddities like duct tape accessories (bracelets, glasses, things covered in colorful duct tape that look better than they sound), just all sorts of stuff. The kids would call out and try to sell things to you. Steve and I went around to all the booths, and I supported the booths of two of Kaylee's friends, and then a couple of kids who didn't look like they were having much success, didn't have a real good idea or good set up and nobody was stopping...you can imagine how that would feel. But Steve found the biggest winner of all. There was a booth manned by four young men who were, well, not at the top of their class, you can tell. They had no real advertising poster, their project was selling posters, and their "posters" were just 8 1/2 x 11" ruler paper with hand-drawn pen drawings on them. Steve picked out the poster that said "I want to be a pie." We don't understand why this is funny, but we laugh every time we look at it. I don't know how many "posters" these boys sold past that one, but I wish their parents would have gotten a little more involved, to the point of at least helping them come up with a way to make better posters or something. The rest of our money, we spent on our own kid's booth, of course! I got my nails done and a purple butterfly tattoo, Steve got three tattoos. Hey, what can we say? ;) Kaylee & Bella had their booth set up with a fan for drying nails, water and a sponge for the tattoos, about 20 different colors of polish, polish remover, hand sanitizer, nail art, and everything spread across the table to "entice" customers. They also put "We speak Spanish" on their sign. I'm not sure why, perhaps to draw in the Spanish-speaking demographic from Greentown. ;) Anyway, it was a good project, well done, and I'd say a lot of the kids got something out of it. And since I didn't have to do anything but take her to pick out colors of nail polish and come by to shop when the event was "on", I like it even better. ;) Here's Kaylee giving her dad his first "tat".
Market Day must have worn her out though, because Kaylee fell asleep on the couch and is still over there snoring at 6:15 p.m. Fortunately she doesn't have any homework, but boy, she's out cold! It sounds bad to say this after saying that, but I also got a call from the school nurse today that she fell backwards off the swing and hit the back of her head pretty hard. Kaylee said "I didn't cry. It hurt too much to cry." That's when you know they got a good smack--if my girl doesn't put some drama into it, it must be bad. But she's okay. The nurse checked her out and so did I, and she's fine, just tired. :)

One more story from Saturday I'd forgotten about. As I was crawling into the front of the T-6, my IP (Instructor Pilot) was already in the back seat, and another guy was sitting in his T-6 right next to me, and we were getting ready to go on our first formation flight. Standing right behind our two planes was a random "airplane enthusiast" guy, his wife and a little boy. I just sat down to strap in, and this guy yells up to my IP, "You gonna let that girl fly that thing? You sure that's a good idea?" The IP and the guy in the plane next to me were stunned for a second, and then at the same time turned their heads and yelled "It's HER plane!" (Note from legal department, no, it's not my plane, and yes, they know that, but that wasn't the point. ;)) The guy back there said "Oh! I didn't know. Sorry. My bad. You won't hit me with the airplane now, will you?" (to me). The IP and the other pilot were just so surprised and horrified. I waved it off and told them it wasn't really all that unusual, that just two days before I'd basically been asked why I wasn't home taking care of my husband and fixing him dinner instead of going to an airplane meeting. ;) By the way, like I said before, there's nothing wrong with being home and taking care of your family. I think that is a tougher and more noble and important job than about anything else. But the people who tend to make comments like that do not tend to know that it is a tougher job than about anything else...their opinion of a person's overall capabilities becomes obvious, without any actual knowledge of their capabilities, based on nothing but their own ignorance, and that's where it can get a little eye-roll-worthy.

Kaylee's still asleep! I'd better go wake her up before she spends the night watching the clock go by hour to hour like I did Saturday night. :O

Okay.

Today was recuperate day. Thankfully I didn't have any flights. I barely made it out of bed to get Kaylee up for school and it took me all morning to get my gyros spun up halfway properly. :) I did work today on talking back and forth with pilots about the Kokomo Air Show, and have some "I'm coming"s, including for a short time during the day R+10 (the main guy for the warbird show at Oshkosh), which is fantastic! I was so glad to hear he was going to try to make it to our little shin-dig again.

So, yesterday. I'll try this again, but it'll still be long, so I'd get a drink. Or just skim it like Steve will. ;)

Saturday morning I'd woken up with a stuffed up head and a bad headache. I took a lot of pain meds throughout the morning/day to try to fend it off and kick it out, and some of those meds had caffeine in them. That didn't bother me all day long, I was fine once I kicked the headache, but when I went to go to bed that night, I couldn't sleep. At all. I was awake until past 5 a.m., as of the last time I looked at the clock anyway, and had to be back up about two hours later. I was having a good,fun, relaxing time, so it wasn't *that* kind of "can't sleep", something just kept me up and I'm guessing it was that, although it would be odd considering how long the last dose was before bed time. Anyway. Well, two hours of sleep, I'm kind of getting too old for that, particularly trying to function on a quick-thinking, quick-reacting level. I did not feel great. So I was glad that our first flight of the day was to be an observation flight in the back seats of all the Yaks, as I figured that ought to wake me up. Unfortunately it was 87 degrees out, we had to wear the flight suits, which are *really* hot and for me, slightly claustrophobic. The Yaks were closed canopy, tight cockpits, with the sun just beating in, and I was sweating and having trouble from the get-go. The pilot I rode with is very good at this, and very aggressive, and he was having some fun up there, which I would normally enjoy a great deal. Hard pulls, 90 degree bank turns, random aerobatics, a little dogfighting, whooping it up, while we were learning good stuff too, but after about 45 minutes of that, my "learning good stuff too" part was breaking down into little thoughts I was trying to smother that went something like "You know you're not going to be able to hack a lot more of this, Laura..." When we landed, I popped open the canopy and spent the next 10 minutes as we were taxiing up trying to make myself look and sound normal. Failed. My head was buzzing from sleep loss and heat, my pulse was racing, I was sweating like crazy, they were out of water, I was just trying to hang on for awhile there.

As we are sitting there resting, the next flight that was supposed to happen was a 7-airplane-formation flyover of Vern Bothwell Sr.'s 90th birthday celebration. He's a WWII veteran, P51 Instructor pilot, etc., and this was supposed to be a fun learning flight, with me cut loose w/o an instructor pilot in the back seat too. Now I'm sitting there evaluating myself, and I know doggone well that I don't belong in a 7-ship formation feeling this scuddy. I kept hoping if I held out, I'd be okay, but it's not just me up there, so I piped up and said I was going to have to stand down from the flight, and I was just going to go ahead and head for home. Instead, they rearranged the flight several times, so that in the end just myself and the other T-6 could just fly line abreast without anything too complicated, no element takeoffs, no big rejoins, no big deal. I figured fine, I could do that then break off and head for home. And then in came another airplane, and on that airplane is a NATA check pilot. Next thing I know, this formation now has been redone two more times, with a flight of eight taking off, five forming up first, then me, the check pilot and the other new guy forming up into a 3-ship, then our formation forming up with the other formation for one big formation to do passes. This...is not what I had in mind, and now I have to tell them again after they've reworked this a bunch of times that if I'm going to have to have a full-blown intense formation flight, I'm still not in very good shape for that. Ugh. What a mess. They rework it again so that all I have to do is one rejoin and then stay put, so I agree to that, and finally it's time to go.

That flight was a bit of a cluster for me, compounded by the guy who will eventually be my check pilot getting to see it be a cluster, which just embarrasses the heck out of me. (Nothing dangerous, just bad.) It was also kind of neat. The check pilot joined our formation up behind the other formation, and we passed over the field several times like that. It looked pretty cool. I know I wasn't supposed to be looking, and I didn't except once when we were en route just buzzing along. I was #3, and #2 sets the spacing, and #2 was newer than I was and he was way back there, so I had plenty of time to glance up at the whole formation for a few seconds there. There was a C-45 in the lead, four Yaks in a diamond, then a Vic 3-ship (v-shape formation) of two T-6s led by a Piper twin. Kind of wild. We flew over the airport where the veteran's 90th birthday celebration was being held, then made a pass overhead, then the formation came in to land while I was cleared out of the formation to head home. Except I got about 10 miles out, and it was 2 pm, and I hadn't eaten lunch, and food was closer back there than back here, so I came back and landed single ship, as the last of the formation was off the runway. On the radio I said "Putnam County traffic, North American 43826 is on a left downwind Runway 18, Woman's Perogative, Putnam County." Several of the guys chimed in and welcomed me back, laughed, etc. We all taxiied in together, parked in the grass all lined up in a row, and I was shutting down, I looked up and saw a very old gentleman making a bee-line for me. The birthday boy came up as I got out of the plane and said "I saw all that hair and I knew I had to come to this plane first!" He told me some stories of WASPS, and talked about his family and history some, which was really neat. He was so happy to see all of us. I'm glad I landed and got to meet him. We all went in and ate, and his family were so appreciative. They had a nice little party for him, and not too many folks get an 8-ship formation flyover for their birthday. :)

From there I did just leave off on my own and head home, swinging over a couple places to let them know I was back. I was still so hot I felt sick. I pulled out the Cheyenne, tugged in the Six, pulled back in the Cheyenne, and the poor Six was so buggy I couldn't stand to leave it that way, and I got a rag and started in on the wing, but I got 3/4ths of one wing done and I was just out of gas for good. It looks weird all clean for part of it and a big mess on the rest, and I'll have to try to get it soon here. I had the Corvette to drive home, and my muscles were so sore from my feet being bent up on the rudders that it hurt to push in the clutch. :)

I have rarely been so glad to be home. It took me hours in the air conditioning to get my core body temp down to halfway normal, and after that I was chilled the rest of the evening. When I walked into the house, Kaylee said "Why do you look all red and splotchy and...crazy?" My hair was a nest. I had Kaylee take a picture of me so I could show you how bad I looked, but it's so bad I can't stand to post it, so you'll just have to imagine it. ;)

Honestly, it was a really good and worthwhile weekend. I got to meet some new folks, we had a fun time, I got some good flying in, and am going to get together with some of them to do some more flying on our own, too. It's all progress...

Short-n-Sweet

I have had better days and have felt better, too. Long story that once I wrote out sounds all whiny, and whining is gross. So I'll just say I've had better days and go from there. There were some cool things about today too that maybe I'll write about later. But for now I'm home, glad to be here, and Wiped Out...

Formation Nation

Of all the dumb luck, I woke up in the hotel at 5:30 a.m. with a blasted headache. I had some headache stuff with me, and I ended up taking ALL of it, finally kicking it around 2 pm. Not great timing, there, brain. The good news is, I kicked it after the first flight. The bad news is, I'm out of headache stuff so I'd better not have another one this weekend.

Anyway.

The day started off with one delay after another, and we didn't get our first flight started until about 1 pm. But once we got going, we got going. That first formation flight lasted for an hour and a half solid, which is a long time to be working that hard. I was #4 in a 4-ship, so I got to play crack the whip. ;) It was 86 degrees and sunny, in a flight suit, with the canopy closed so you could hear, and even with the hot air vent closed, the "cool" air vent was blowing air so hot on my ankle that it actually burnt it, leaving a red patch on my ankle 3" in diameter. It was hot up there. It was *really* hot. Four-ships were new for me, and echelon turns, and rejoins as #4 were new and different and a little uncomfortable, which surprises me, but there you go. I'm not used to hurtling towards another airplane with that much energy at the same altitude as they are then diving down at the last second and pulling up on the other side. I want to be stepped down and make sure I have a clear path, have wingtip and nose/tail clearance too, which seems logical to me, but apparently is not correct. :) I'll tell you what, I don't trust people well enough to be letting them hurtle at me at the same altitude I am and *hope* they duck under when they're supposed to and don't miss. I was the one doing the hurtling towards today, and that just doesn't feel right. I want to be down, under, not level. I'll have to get over that. The RPA also does a 30 degree line instead of the NATA 45 degree line, so my points to focus on were different too. A lot of new things, but that's good. The most interesting flight was the second one of the day though. It lasted about 1.2, which is also a long time, but it felt more like 2 hours. There was someone in the Lead who is training to be a Lead, but this was their first time. We rejoined with another formation, he has 3 new students with him, and he's cranking around in a last minute, abrupt, instantaneous steep bank, and blew out his #2 and #3 wingmen. I was #4, in diamond, and I stayed with him, but everybody else was toast. He'd do abrupt, steep banks in his slick airplane (I don't even know what it was), and we T-6s would be power at idle, dropping down, gear horn blaring trying not to blow past him. He'd start a turn at 60 degrees, slow to 45, go down to 30 degrees, roll out, start the turn up again, and me out there in #4, following a brand new guy in #3, I was getting killed. I started flying more off of Lead than #3 and I was better, but still getting whipped around. That was a workout. I hope the rest of it seems easy after that. ;) At one point Lead was going up and down like a toilet seat, meaning 2 and 3 were even bigger oscillations, which meant I at #4 was seeing huge changes and I just tried to average them out and not get too close in. Found out later Lead had put his airplane on autopilot, which apparently didn't do a very good job, (or that was a euphemism and he doesn't actually have an autopilot, I don't know which is true), and had turned completely around in his seat and started taking pictures with his camera. Um....not cool. So that flight, that was interesting. The flight disintegrated at one point, everybody but me blown out, Lead didn't know I was still right on his tail, it was a mess. But he got it sorted out, we formed back up, and we actually got another good 30 minutes in where everybody settled in. The debrief on that one took so long we didn't get to fly again before the sun set. ;)

We stayed out at the hangar until past 1 a.m. talking, going over parachute safety, how to properly preflight a chute, all sorts of the safety gear stuff, talking flying. It's now 2 a.m. and I have to get back up early to be out there and hopefully get a couple more flights in, but I was too wired up to go right to sleep, so here I am. They asked me if I was having fun. The sad thing is, I was. I'm hot, I'm sweaty, I'm tired, my legs hurt, I was all over the place a couple of times, you get to talk about everything you do wrong all day, and yes...I am having fun.

That Was Fun

Whew, what a day! It started with a student on a checkride. Checkrides still make me nervous, because THEY are nervous, and it's easy for something to go wrong, and everyone has worked so hard, and you just want it to go well and be accomplished. The checkride started at 8 a.m., and they weren't done until 1 p.m. That's a long time to wait and find out how someone did. But the student passed, and said "I know you're not a hugger, and neither am I, but I gotta hug you anyway." Seeing the smile on the face of someone who has just become an official Pilot is pretty worthwhile. :) I next had someone sent off on a solo long cross-country. After they took off, the winds picked up past what I would have sent them in, even though the forecast wasn't calling for it and it had been fine all day. So I waited. I got a text at three different locations ("Made it to xxx"), and finally he was back home, and I could quit half-worrying about students. :)

Steve and I went up for a little bit to do rejoins. I used to do them okay, just not consistently, but nothing that bad. Then I got messed up with too much information, and I couldn't hardly get a good one in, and I couldn't remember how I used to do it back when I'd do it on my own and manage to be fine most of the time. My last couple weren't bad, just took too long. We'll see how it goes tomorrow here and if we fixed my broken rejoins. ;)

After Steve and I flew, I took the T-6 down to Terre Haute for a formation clinic this weekend. It was a beautiful flight over, smooth, warm and sunny. As I was on a six-mile final, I heard another airplane ask if they could talk to me, and tower said sure. They were on their way to Rick's Boat House Restaurant at Eagle Creek in the C-45 (Twin Beech) and a T-6, and asked if I wanted to hop in the back of the C-45. You bet. I landed, crawled into the C-45, and we headed to Eagle Creek, with the C-45 flying formation practice off of the other T-6. For the flight home, Jordan asked if I wanted to fly it left seat. Well, twist my arm, let's see how this goes. I just flew a Twin Beech from the air once with Nathan, hadn't dealt with it on the ground, so I was wondering how that would be. Annnnd, thank you T-6, because I swear the twin engines made the C-45 easier to deal with than the T-6. If you're used to using differential power to steer on the ground, and used to the tailwheel on the Six, the C-45 ain't so bad. It has better visibility, too. I had a hard time not smiling like a tool when I rolled on a very nice wheel landing. They are both more work to taxi than to fly. But flying home at sunset with the sun going down and shining on the polished aluminum of the C-45 and the T-6 flying off of us was a pretty nice way to end a busy day...

Thursday

Well, it's midnight, and I just sat down for good from the day, after an 11:30 pm run out to the airport to put some paperwork in a plane for an 8 a.m. checkride tomorrow morning. I'm tired, but I don't want to go to bed, because tomorrow's going to be even busier, and I want a little time to unwind here.

I ran around so much today I had to stop late at night here and get gas in my car, too, and much of my running around was for nothing. I go out to Glenndale to get a PTS for someone, and we don't have it. I go to Best Buy to pick up my camera case, and I don't have the credit card so can't pick it up. I go out to Kokomo several times today because I keep having to do this, then that, then paperwork. It's kind of irritating to waste all that time and gas, but some days just go like that. :)

Tonight we had an EAA Chapter meeting, with a guest speaker. He's a 30,000 hour 80-some-year-old former airline pilot who flew all sorts of interesting birds in his career, and he talked for almost an hour and a half and didn't even get into the airline flying part of his talk before we had to cut him off so we could have ice cream and get the old folks home before it got any later. ;) He did well though, it was good to have him there. One funny thing...I was sitting at Steve's desk, having just arrived, and I pulled out an Arby's sandwich for my dinner before the meeting starts. This gent said "Shouldn't you be home fixing a sandwich for your husband?" I burst out laughing, as did a couple other people in the room--I assumed it was a joke, but he didn't laugh. Somebody said something about times having changed, and he said "I guess they have." Now, the thing is, I think he still wins, because I can't tell if he was kidding or not, because he never did laugh. ;) There's nothing wrong with fixing a sandwich for your husband, by the way, although mine can probably make his own sandwich better than what I'd make for him. It's just a funny thing to say, like "you don't belong here, you should be home taking care of your man!" I told him my husband was off at Olive Garden having a better dinner than I was having. :) He then brought up how he was over at a fly-in event nearby when the T-6 came in, and he said "and there was all this hair flying around under the helmet, and then the back canopy opened, and there was a girl back there, too! There were a bunch of guys standing around with their mouths open over there." I told him that was part of the fun, sometimes.

I'm a little worried about myself though. The 180 needed flown for an hour for maintenance. Steve had me do it, and I took an iPod and a drink and off I went to mess around for an hour. Except it didn't do anything for me. I was bored and restless. I went over Tipton, over Russiaville, over Indian Hills, Glenndale, the city. I had to leave the power and mixture at a specific setting, so I couldn't do some things, but even so, I haven't been able to just fly by myself for no reason in awhile now, and that should have been relaxing, but it wasn't. *sigh* Hopefully that's a temporary glitch. In formation, you do 60 degree bank turns in the "break", for rejoins and for coming in to land. The T-6 doesn't have an attitude indicator in it, so I've just been doing a "T-Lar" on it. You know, "That Looks About Right". So this afternoon I took the 180, and cranked it over into a T-Lar for a 60 degree bank, looked inside, and it was dead on the 60 degree mark. I did that about 10 times to the left and right, sometimes rolling right from one side to the other, then I did it with 45 and 30 degrees, because hey, I had nothing better to do for an hour, right? Always good to check your T-Lar now and then. :)

Well, like I said, tomorrow's really busy, and I guess I've procrastinated on starting tomorrow long enough...

May Day

You'd think today was a Monday, the way it started off. A checkride wasn't able to go off as planned for a dumb, bureaucratic reason. Our fuel was shut off at the airport, meaning nobody could get gas/go fly, because someone in the office up there cannot add two numbers together 10 times and get the same answer twice, and goofed up our bill, basically. Another checkride was scheduled and we found something missing that needed taken care of asap, etc. This was all done and fixed before 9 a.m. :)

My flight for .7 this morning was fine, and my flight for this afternoon was canceled. So instead of sending someone off on a long cross-country, I ran a couple quick errands then went out to Indian Hills to help work on the Citabria wing for a couple of hours. My job was fabric-cutter-around-screw-heads-holding-ribs-in-place girl. I had a little round cutter tool that I'd place on the fabric, twist until I broke through the fabric and tape, then use a knife to peel it up off the screw so the screws could be taken out. Yes, I had two cutting tools on an airplane wing, no I did not cut myself or something I wasn't supposed to (that I know of). I guess my secret is out--when it comes to maintenance, I can take things apart better than I can fix them. ;)

Kaylee and her friend Bella made a "tv commercial" for the service they are providing for "Market Day" at their school coming up. It took them several hours, doing dozens and dozens of out-takes and clips, wearing different clothes, trying a few different ideas and locations. They called their service "Nails and More Galore", and they are providing nail polish, nail art (jewels, stencils), etc. So they did this video clip, then Justin did some editing for them, adding music, splicing in a couple clips to fill in the time, adding the name of the service, as a subcontractor for $1. :) Anyway, their commercial "aired" for the first time in her school today, and Kaylee said Bella told her that Kaylee's face was red as a beet while the commercial played, but that the kids thought it was great, and the consensus was that theirs was one of the best commercials that aired. Whew, I'm so glad it went well. :)

Today is Devon's 14th birthday. Thank you to Richard and Ann for the sweet email they sent with a memory of each of them with Devon. Steve and I enjoyed reading about the special memories, and appreciate that you each obviously took the time to sit down and spend some time thinking of and remembering him and your time with him. It made us both smile today.

In an odd coincidence, Steve got a phone call today from a doctor/CFI who is interested in flying as a part-time CFI with us. Steve somehow recognized his name, and when he returned his call, he said "Were you by chance an ER doctor at St. Joe hospital about 13 years ago?" The doc said "Yes". Steve said "Do you by any chance happen to remember a 1-year-old boy with Spinal Muscular Atrophy that came through your ER back then?" Amazingly enough, the doctor DID remember, because it was the first time he'd seen/dealt with SMA. He remembered Devon, he remembered us. From one ER visit 13 years ago when Devon needed to be intubated (put on a ventilator) and sent down to Riley Hospital. And he called us on Devon's birthday. Kind of wild, huh?

Tuesday

Darn this getting older stuff! I finally sleep really hard last night, so hard that when my alarm goes off this morning I can't hardly come out of it. I hate that heavy "I'm two gears down from where I should be right now" feeling. Alright, let's go fly! ;) Don't worry, a little water, a little Diet Coke, and a little fresh air clears out the cobwebs.

It was actually a gorgeous morning. My hour of flight time this morning was as smooth as silk, great visibility, cooler temps, and every maneuver done well. It was one of those flights that as a student you want to see every time, and as an instructor you hope they don't get used to because nobody nails everything like that all the time. ;)

Man, I can't think of anything interesting to impart and I've been sitting here too long staring at a blinking cursor. So, goodnight!

End

The last seven days have not been high points in life, starting with the death of the turtles; but Kaylee's doing fine now, at least. If you have to start dealing with death, I'd say learning the coping skills for grief off of four turtles is better than off of something bigger, like her kitties, or worse. After this, it's all kind of the same, just on a bigger scale. Sounds irreverent, but tis true. Devon's birthday is Wednesday, and he'd be fourteen years old. I can't tell you how weird that feels, although my 11-year-old daughter already acts older than 14 some days. :) But it's kind of funny how some of the anniversary days like that sneak up on you, and you wonder what else is 'off', and then it occurs to you what it is. The body or subconscious knows before the conscious mind does, I guess.

I didn't sleep well last night, and had a lesson in the Champ at 8:30 this morning. I texted them and asked if we could push back to 9:30, because I didn't really want to feel that yucky while teaching landings, but they didn't get back to me, so I got up, got ready, had a shower and some caffeine and went out to Glenndale. An hour later I asked if we were still on, and they'd forgotten about the lesson altogether. That's a bad thing in one regard--it was a calm, clear day, perfect for takeoff and landing practice. But I didn't mind so much in another regard. I wouldn't want anyone to feel bad, but...I didn't mind not flying this morning. I was ready, and good by then, but I still didn't mind. After lunch I went around the pattern with a guy in the 172 getting ready to go on his first solo cross-country, just to make sure he was on his game. No problem, so I gave him my standard spiel and sent him off. Part of my standard spiel has changed over the years, and now includes the words "Text me when you land there and when you land back at OKK. I am your mother and your flight plan. Text your mother and let her know you arrived safely." First solos almost never make me nervous, but solo cross-countries can make me a tad nervous with some folks because there are so many factors in play for a fledgling. :)

When I got back, I laid down on the couch, just in time for Kaylee to get home from school and come cuddle with me. We promptly both fell asleep, but she had thrown her arm and leg over me and was snoring right in my face, which woke me up and made it so I couldn't sleep any more. But it was awfully cute. As Steve said, there probably isn't a whole lot of time left where she'll want to do something like that.

Okay, I need some sleep. The rest of the week is quite busy as well; the weather looks almost perfect and the schedule is full, all the way through to possibly me flying to Terre Haute this weekend for a formation thing. Maybe...

Mama Mia

Last year for Mother's Day I took out my motorcycle for a spin, ended up at the airport, took the T-6 up for a spin, rode the motorcycle around for awhile longer, then ended up home for some family stuff. This year, the weather was gorgeous, but I just didn't feel like doing anything. Actually, I don't feel like doing anything for awhile, like maybe a week straight, but it's not vacation time yet, and I've got something all day, every day, through next Monday; so I'll just take this day, then patiently wait for my week, I guess. ;)

Steve grilled out burgers and dogs and had his mom & dad over for lunch. Kaylee made me a lovely card and gave me a box of nice memories, then later came out with a hot scented bubble foot bath for me to relax in while I read my book. I spent a good amount of time today just sitting and reading, and that's always a good way for me to spend time now and then.

The one time I got out today, I had a very specific and pleasing mission. I ended up going to Best Buy to pick up my new Nikon Coolpix camera. Red, of course! ;) Kaylee's camera unfortunately died and wasn't repairable. So, I gave her my little Canon. But I use my little Canon a bunch, keep it in my purse for those sunrise/sunset/clouds/storm/airplane/family/trip snapshots that I post a lot of. So I got a Mother's Day present of a new point and shoot. Ten X Optical zoom, more megapixels than I actually need, has lots of options and hopefully good quality pictures. The battery is charged, the date/language/time is set, and now all I need is an excuse to use it. :)

Poker Run

It was a truly beautiful weather day for our annual Poker Run. Steve got out there early, as always, and I took Kaylee and stopped at Sam's Club and Meijer for the food. She disappeared all day with the rest of the kids and played, taking a break for awhile to do a four-leg-run with Justin in the RG. She had asked me to take her on the Poker Run, and when I told her I wasn't going, she pouted and said "But I wanted to fly today!" So Justin took her around. They didn't win, but she got to fly and she said she had fun. :) We ended up having 30 pilots participate, a few more than last year, lots of good food, and AE made some homemade ice cream which went nicely with Michelle's homemade chocolate brownie. My job was money collector and card/hand cataloger for most of the day. Then I got to go on a leg too. Nathan pulled out the Aerostar and flew us over to Marion, and let me fly us home. What a responsive twin--it makes the 340 feel like a truck. It has the voice-activated panel and voice-activated flight planning. So you hit a button, tell it to go direct, or enter a new flight plan, or delete waypoints, or mute passengers, or whatever you want, by voice only. Way cool, man. :)

I wore out quickly this week, and today's no exception; for once I was ready to go home before about anybody else. But it was a good event, people had a good time, and the Run itself was pretty successful. Always a good way to spend a Saturday.

Catch-up quote:

"Never grow a wishbone where your backbone ought to be."
~Clementine Paddleford

Bleh

I've felt like somebody beat me up with a rubber hose most of today. Dull headache, stomach ache, felt like I didn't get enough sleep even though I supposedly did, tired, and grumpy. Thanks to that, my patience level wasn't as high as it needs to be as a CFI. Fortunately, both the people I flew with today survived, while mentioning how tough I was on them. Don't worry, by the time I go on my next flight with other people, a trip on Monday, I should be my usual patient, rested self. ;) I think part of it was a sinus headache--Kaylee's been stuffy, runny and allergy-ridden, and I have some of that going on too.

Something that doesn't get on my nerves other than when I'm already in a bad mood is that I got up, had one flight for 1.4 this morning, took a break and went to lunch, flew after lunch for 1.2, didn't get home until almost 5 p.m., and "worked" for a whole 2.6 hours billable. How to get rich quick, huh? It takes over 40 minutes to drive to the airport and back each time. You have the preflight waiting and briefing, the post flight fueling and briefing, the chit chat, the putting away of things, yadda yadda. We could wear stripes and black slacks and white shirts and shuffle people in and out like a waiting room, but that's not what type of school we are.

Today it was really bumpy up in the air--as in, *really* bumpy. One of the people I was flying with was also *really* jerky. Hard, fast, uncoordinated movements with the rudder and elevator both, so for over and hour I was tossed around until I actually almost felt sick. Of course I didn't feel good to start with, but I was closing my eyes getting tossed around thinking "don't think about greasy fried chicken from lunch." Not great. I was trying to send them off onto a solo cross country, but I unfortunately couldn't keep my feet crossed coming down final, meaning I wasn't trusting that I wouldn't need to make a sudden move to save the landing, meaning no solo. After about six landings I heard myself trying to talk myself into letting them go ahead and go, until I realized that I was trying to talk myself into it. Go with your gut. If I have to talk myself into something, it usually ain't good. ;) Once I realized I was trying to force it, it was a no-brainer. So I had to take a beautiful sunny light-wind (down low anyway) day and say no to a solo, to someone who felt like they had it under control when I know they don't yet. Some days I feel like I'm getting too old for this. Even though I'm not. ;)

Tonight we had a nice camp fire in the back yard with some friends. It was a beautiful evening, and a nice way to spend it; a good end to a long day and a longer week. Tomorrow starts early with an airport event--our annual Poker Run...

Back on the Horse

As nice weather as we're having, I shouldn't be so tired by so early in the afternoon. And yet here I am, wondering just how bad a nap would be for my 'getting to bed at a reasonable hour' thing. Last night I was in bed around 11, which is downright early for me. Maybe I can catch up on some sleep tonight.

This morning a black spider came racing across the floor towards me. I yelled at it (I can do that because I was home alone and I already know I'm crazy) but it didn't stop it. I looked around and finally threw a ceramic coaster at it, but that just staggered it. So I finally got a piece of paper and stomped on it, then put the coaster on top of it just in case. It's still sitting there in the middle of the floor, waiting for a big strong man to come pick it up. Because I'm not doing it. I only got close enough to kill it because letting it disappear would have been infinitely worse.

I flew for 1.4 this morning working on checkride-standard-takeoffs and landings and unusual attitudes in the 172. Then after lunch I went up with L in the Champ for just over an hour. While we were up flying, Ty was up in the Cub with one of my former students too, and we buzzed around each other for awhile. After we landed, Ty said he saw us above him and that we looked nice up there, which is exactly what I thought watching the little yellow Cub maneuvering below us. :)

When I picked Kaylee up from the bus, the first stop had to be Dairy Queen. They have a new "Confetti Cake" blizzard that I had to try, and in fact it is cake and ice cream and frosting all in one cup. It doesn't beat "Chocolate Xtreme", but it's pretty good. We also had to go fingernail polish shopping. Kaylee's school project is to sell fingernail art. So we got polishes, stencils, stickers, remover, all sorts of colors and such. I found $.99 bottles of color and she got some of each color she thought kids would think is 'cool'. We now have so much nail polish around the house that should she want to open her own nail salon, she probably could.

I think I'll go try out the bed, just for a minute...

Amendment to the spider story. I wake up from a nap, Steve is home, and I point to the paper and coaster covering the dead spider, and say "There's a dead spider under there for you to take care of." So he lifts the paper, and I can see there is no spider there. He looks around, looks at me, and now I'm thinking that this thing is wounded, angry, and loose. I'm looking around, getting freaked out, and then he can't stand it any more, and starts laughing and strutting around. He'd cleaned up the spider already and left the stuff down there just to mess with me. He succeeded. He's quite pleased with himself...

Hump Day

Did a little checkride prep flight this morning, for 1.1, unusual attitudes, hood work, crosswind takeoffs and landings, and so forth. My after-lunch flight was canceled, which was okay as I then was able to take the time and do some things that needed caught up on. A tax form, folding, stuffing, licking, stamping and mailing out a bunch of airport billing that is now 8 days past due, a store run for necessities that had been lacking for two days that nobody had even complained about yet, some correspondence, yadda yadda.

When I picked Kaylee up from school, her friend that she's doing a project with needed to come over here so they could work on their project together. They have a marketing project. They had to come up with a product, come up with advertising (they are doing a TV spot, which they are recording now and will actually play on their TVs at school during lunch hour), have to pay for manufacturing, advertising, set up a sales booth, the whole ball of wax. It's actually a pretty cool project. Best of all, the rules clearly state that parents are not allowed to help. They don't want to turn this into whose Business-Running-Daddy can do a better project for their kid than another. Woooorks for me. ;)

On the way home from school, I told Kaylee I had a video she had to watch. I told her "It's adorable." She turned to her friend and said "Wow, if my mom says it's adorable, it must be adorable, because she doesn't say that kind of thing." I said "You're going to go 'aaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!'" I got the girls home and showed them this video, and sure enough...Kaylee said "Now THAT is ADORABLE." Just try to watch this (not much happens the first 22 seconds--be patient) and not say "Awwwww". I dare you. :)

http://www.wimp.com/stopnightmare

Just A Tuesday

Once the clouds and low visibility burned off, it was a nice day, and spent mostly flying. This morning was a little single engine action in the Cheyenne, including a single engine ILS. They really should have been able to make and sell more of those airplanes. The Cheyenne really does kick butt performance-wise in so many ways. It's a great airplane and it's a shame it didn't "take off" and become as popular as it should have been.

After lunch I took the Citabria with a student down to Sheridan to practice takeoffs and landings for about two hours. Didn't get home until about 4:30, and I was already worn out. We needed to get the Poker Run boxes done tonight, which means printing off 48 copies of the decorative paper, taping them to all four sides of the twelve boxes, taping flags and such on them, stuffing 440 cards into 440 envelopes, and dividing them up amongst 11 of the boxes. I had to reprint the 48 copies after Steve pointed out I was missing two of our airports. So I ripped off what we'd already taped up, fixed the form, and reprinted it. I was using Post Office boxes, which I picked up the other day, only to find out that I'd grabbed the wrong size, and these were not going to work. So I hopped back in my car and drove to the post office, returned the wrong size, and found there was only one of the right size left, and I needed 9 more. Searched around and found some more stuffed in the wrong spot. Thankyouverymuch. I walked out, got in the Jeep, and got about a mile down the road when I realized I didn't have my phone. I'd set it down in the Post Office. I turn around, get back to the post office, and my phone is gone, and the post office is closed. I'm standing there staring at the floor, for once out of ideas and energy at the same time, trying to figure out how I'm going to explain losing my phone today too, and a woman comes out of the locked door in the back. I rather helplessly said "Nobody turned in a phone in the last five minutes, did they?" thinking it was a moot point as I'd seen two young teen guys walking in as I was walking out before, and that was it. She said "A red phone? I just grabbed that and put it in the back." Oh, thank the Lord. I drove back home again, put together all the boxes, child-labored Kaylee into helping me until 10 pm when it was time for her to go to bed, then Steve and I finished stuffing the cards, licking the envelopes, dividing it all up, and then he's moved on to billing while I'm sitting here drinking something with a chocolate kick. I was supposed to leave at about 6 a.m. on a flight to North Carolina in IFR weather with rain and various thunderstorms in somebody else's airplane, but that was canceled tonight. That works for me, this time. I'm...beat.

Mom & Ernie celebrated an anniversary on the 6th, and today is my Mom's birthday. She's not 60 yet! :) Happy Birthday, Mom. Love you!

Full Circle

Yesterday, Suspicious the turtle was very active. Over the last two days he really came back, swimming a lot, eating, running on the rock, etc. About an hour after Kaylee went to bed, I went in to check on her and the turtle. The lights were off, and I looked in and saw the turtle floating on the water. I gasped and pulled him out, Kaylee woke up and said "Don't worry, Mommy, he was really active right before I went to bed just a bit ago. He's okay, he's just sleeping hard." He wasn't, but I didn't tell her that yet. Instead I waited until she fell back asleep, then took the turtle out to the kitchen and in the middle of the night was trying to resuscitate a turtle as best I could with everything I'd read on how to do it. No luck. I put him back in the tank on the rock, heat lamp on to try to wake him up just in case, and attempted this morning to keep her too busy to mess with him, because I didn't want her school day, Monday, to start out this way. Didn't work. She came in and said "Mommy, I think Suspicious is gone." At that point I told her the truth. However, I will say that she handled it better than I did. I'm in a dark kitchen at 2 a.m., working on and sad over a stupid turtle the size of a silver dollar, and upset that if he was going to die, the time to have done it would have been when we all expected it when he was all weak and sluggish, not make us think it was going to be okay then drop dead anyway. That's just mean. Kaylee said "I don't want any more turtles." Me neither. Now she wants to get a fish. Not me. We have two cats; that ought to be plenty for one kid. But the other two people in the family are out voting me, and we'll be getting some fish of some kind. I'm not going to take care of those things this time though....hey, maybe that's what they'll need to survive around here. ;)

I didn't get a lot of sleep last night, thanks to that, so I was pretty groggy this morning, trying to sleep a little more after my lesson cancelled thanks to a thunderstorm. Still don't feel very good, and I'm not sure if I'm coming down with something (Kaylee's throat hurts and she's not acting quite right either), or if it's a simple lack of sleep thing. I buried the turtle this afternoon and took out the tank and all the stuff and put it on the deck.

After school today, I took Kaylee out for ice cream at Scoops. They have one called "Bearclaw" which is dark chocolate, caramel, and chocolate-covered cashews. Yummmmy. Kaylee had "Almond Joy", and we sat on a bench and ate ice cream and made up jokes and fake talked in Spanish and had a really nice time. We were on our way home, and she said "Stop! I want to climb that hill!" Okay. I stopped the car, she jumped out, ran all the way up to the top of the sledding hill, stood at the top like "Top of the World, Ma!", then ran down the hill and all the way back to the car. I don't know why. Sometimes "Because I felt like it" is good enough.

Tonight I had a school board meeting, which went well. The school is doing great, it is growing so much that space is an issue, which is an excellent problem to have, the teachers are great, and the whole thing is just running so much more smoothly this year than previous years. It's great to see it all coming together so well. On a humorous note, we are interviewing for a new elementary teacher, and one of the candidates that the administrator interviewed was my 2nd grade teacher, 32 years ago, in Wisconsin. She gave me TONS of punishment sentences to write, almost every day, for talking too much in class. Thirty-two years later she's here at 'my' school in Indiana looking for a teacher's position. Should I warn them that she's an evil teacher who likes to hand out sentences to sweet, innocent, um, friendly little girls like I was? ;)

A Different Kind of Photo Shoot

Well, this was a busy and interesting day. We're all pretty tired, and sunburned as well.

There was a photo shoot out at Kokomo Airport this afternoon. It was for Warbird Rescue, a group trying to save various warbirds and restore them. They're doing a calendar, and asked to use Nathan's airplanes. Steve and I drove out in the Corvette, the long way, just to enjoy the view. The photo shoot lasted about 4 hours total, and four girls dressed in 40's/50's garb posed with the Mustang, then the T-6, then the two put together. After that, a PT-26 and a Stearman joined in the fun, having stopped at Kokomo on a whim. We got all four planes lined up in "formation" on the ramp, and there was a girl per plane. Meanwhile Mike had something going on too, flying the Pitts, Greg was out practicing a routine down low in the Super Decathlon, another Pitts was out there, trainers were out flying, airplanes were all over the place today. A little later the Stearman and the PT-26 took off and flew over the airport in formation. I haven't seen the airport that busy on a Sunday in ages. The photos were completely tasteful, of course, and I think they'll turn out pretty well even if the lighting was kind of harsh that time of day. I've been playing with some that I took and putting them in sepia tone, which looks good for the period, but in sepia you can't see the bright red lipstick and the 40's bright makeup. I look forward to seeing how the calendar itself turns out. :)

It was really warm out there today though. I don't know how girls can put on all that makeup and not have it puddle off their faces in a big smear. I'd have been a Tammy Fae multi-colored mess within about 10 minutes, with wild gnarled or flat hair thanks to the wind, too, but somehow other women always seem to manage to stay looking put together even in the heat. It's kind of irritating. Anyway, after the photos were all taken, after moving around airplanes, standing all afternoon, out in the sun, etc., Chuck tugged the Mustang off the ramp and back to the hangar, and I took a kid with me and just fired up the T-6 to taxi it back and give him a little ground ride. By the time I shut down, the wind had whipped my hair back into knots. What made me laugh is that the photographer said he thought it looked neat, my hair whipping around, but he said the girls in the car with him wondered how on earth I'd get the knots out of my hair after all that. He called it the difference between guys and girls. I told them they were right, it messes up my hair pretty good. :) The other thing that got to me was when he asked who wanted to go where, the girls are like "I like the shiny one. Well, I like the not-shiny one." The shiny and not shiny one. *sigh* ;) Anyway, after the girls found out I flew in the Six, they said they wanted to take a picture with me, too. We were just inside the hangar sitting on the tug with the airplane in the background. Four 19-year-old girls dressed up with full bright makeup and pretty dresses, and sweaty, gnarly-haired, grubby me. There's a pretty picture. ;) It was good though, they seem to be very nice girls. Today was a bit more than any of us expected, but it made for a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon. We end the evening with a turtle who has perked up and gotten a little more active, a kid who has completely finished her laundry, cleaning her room and bathroom, and a thunderstorm that is about to roll through with its lightning show. Tis good.

"Knowing when to walk away is wisdom.
Being able to is courage.
Doing so with your head held high is dignity."
~Unknown

Saga

I think I officially hate turtles. Suspicious got real sluggish, stopped swimming, stopped moving, wasn't dead yet, but close enough. We'd learned the water temp should be between 75-85 degrees, and we thought maybe it was too cold at night when we turned off the heat lamp. So I went to the pet store today to buy a temp probe and a water heater. Just in case. And some tank cleaning stuff. Cause maybe the filter and the water purifying stuff wasn't good enough. Get home, stick the probe in, and the water is at a respectable 80 degrees, at least during the day. So what is WRONG with these little guys and why do they keep getting sick?? Suspicious, who would race off underneath the rock if you even stuck your head in the room, would now not hardly move when you picked him up. I put him in the water, and he'd just float for awhile, unmoving, like deadwood, before finally half-heartedly making it back to the rock, crawling up there and looking dead, for hours in the same exact position. So tonight I cleaned out the whole tank, scrubbed the rocks and the sides and put in fresh treated water along with some of the old water, for balance, put him back in the tank, and whaddya know, he did slowly wander off into the water again on his own, swim slowly for a few minutes, then get out. He looked more alive than he has in two days. Now I'm just hoping I don't find him floating tomorrow morning after getting a system shock of new water. Today Kaylee asked me if he was going to die too. I told her it wasn't looking good. In a related note, of all the bad, hard, and big things going on in the world today, I prayed for a little kid's last pet turtle. If sparrows matter, shouldn't turtles? C'mon, you dumb little thing. Whose idea was it to let her get a turtle in the first place?? ;)

The rest of today, that part not spent staring at a turtle looking for any sign of life, was spent billing and cleaning. Kaylee got her room back in order, we got the front room back in order, and things are looking pretty good around here. Quick, we should have company! ;) (Wait, I didn't dust.) I finished off my part of the end of month billing, until Steve goes through it, anyway. I will actually get these out...nope, it'll still be the 7th, probably. I guess that's not that impressive. I have an excuse though, with the formation weekend and then a work week full of trips that lasted all day each. It's not a good excuse, but I'll take it.

That's a lot of words to say that basically I stayed home and was boringly productive again. But I'm glad to have gotten done what we did. I always feel better when things are in order. Tonight, I believe I shall even read a book. Yeah.

Meandering

Kaylee has been dressing up lately for school. Today she wore a white sundress with colored polka dots on it, a little white dress sweater to cover it, a red hair ribbon in her low ponytail, and sandals. She really looks tall and graceful when she dresses up. It kind of freaks me out. :) But she looks lovely, and I'm glad to see her slowly moving into trying out different things with clothes to see what SHE likes, instead of just wearing the same tired shirt and pants all the time. This year she seems to have really started growing up at a more accelerated rate. At least she still cuddles with me for now. :) This morning after she got ready for school, she crawled in bed with me, put her arms around me and promptly fell back asleep with her head on me. She's almost as tall as I am. I'll miss her when she quits snuggling...

I wrote this and deleted it about three times on two different days, but I figure the few people who know this is here won't take this too weirdly. ;) It got under my skin when people wouldn't take me seriously as a pilot because I didn't really look like a "pilot" should look. But something that has been making me cringe lately on the other end of the spectrum is some people who don't know me all that well, some just from the internet, who are a little over the top on the praise end of things. There seems to have been quite a few of them lately, and there is just so much I still don't know or have. Fortunately the people I hang around with the most would never let me believe too seriously the people who think I'm better than I actually am anyway. That's one reason real friends are important. They'll always remind you of That Landing, or That Mess-up, or the fact that they can kick your rear on this, that and the other. ;)

This was one of those days where you are productive most of it, and it's quite thoroughly boring and mundane. I started in on billing, which takes hours of time and leaves nothing interesting to say. I ran errands and answered correspondance and caught up on some house chores, and *yawn*. And now it's Friday. Kaylee has no homework, Steve's off at an air show meeting, I'm procrastinating on doing more billing, and we are having ourselves one exciting Friday evening here. ;)

Short n Sweet

At least the sun was already up when I got to the airport this morning, although 7:20 is still kind of early as far as I'm concerned. It was an uneventful, quiet flight both ways. No bad weather, no maintenance glitches, and no passengers having to go home in boxer shorts. I was at an FBO that had a restaurant, and wifi, and a courtesy car. It makes for a much less interesting story, but a much more pleasant day. ;)

Suspicious the Turtle is still alive. Kaylee's homework has been reasonable and grades all A's. We're all healthy. Today I almost paid for another hour of the T-6 flying from this last weekend. The house is pretty clean. Kaylee is doing a load of laundry now.

Life is good.

In a New York Minute

Boy 5:30 came early this morning. I did not want to get up, and I wasn't alone. When Dustin showed up, he didn't speak more than 10 words the entire flight to New York, and I kept seeing his head dropping over there in the left seat. Fortunately I'm awake while flying, so I kept an eye on him. ;)

It was a nice sunrise--as I was driving past the end of Runway 5 on my way to the airport, the runway lights were lit up and the sky was pink behind it, and I smiled. This is still what makes me smile, even that early. I love sunrises-I just wish they came a little later in the day!

Half an hour into the flight when we got to our cruising altitude, the JPI was showing a hot EGT on one cylinder, and when we went to lean it out, well, the ole girl didn't much care for that idea at all, and like any cranky airplane, barked at us to tell us so. I ended up having to run it pretty rich all the way to New York, which worked out fine because we had plenty of gas, thankfully. Even coming in to land, that one cylinder then became pegged, which does not make me warm and fuzzy.

Since we arrived before 9 a.m. and there is no courtesy car, no wifi, no tv, no computer, no human being, no restaurant, nothing but a chair, a table and some snacks on a table, I had time to kill. I tried to take a nap, but a guy came in. Then Steve suggested I see if there was a mechanic on field, which I originally pooh-pooed considering the desolation here. But I had nothing better to do, so I went walking around, and found an old building with a faded sign that said something about maintenance, and the name "Don McCann", which made me smile (he's an old Kokomo CFI who passed away several years ago, who was a real character.) When I walked in there was a gent in a chair who was very surprised to see me, and was more surprised to hear me say "The #5 cylinder on the left engine is running 1600 on the EGT, up to 400 hotter than any of the others at times, but the CHTs are fine. Trying to lean it out just makes it backfire and stumble. Wonder if it's a plugged fuel injector nozzle, and wonder if you could check that out, and the two spark plugs as well." You never know who you'll run into at small airports. Apparently he used to build engines for some big factory, and was quite familiar with 340 engines too, and was more than happy to do that. Sure enough, that fixed the problem, and it was done while the guys were at a meeting and I'm just on the ground anyway. They don't take credit cards, just cash or check, so he just gave me a bill to take home so I could send him a check. I love small town airports.

Another guy wandered in, asked where I was coming from and who I was waiting on, and when I said I flew in and was waiting on my passengers, he said "Hey, were you in here a couple weeks ago?" I said yes, and he said that a friend of his had stopped out here and talked to some girl in a pressurized twin and he was telling folks about it and about how much I knew about Foreflight. Apparently I'm odd enough to be memorable to people who hadn't even met me. ;) Cracked me up.

In the meantime, I was very tired and hungry and bored. There's a rental car agreement and a set of "keys" sitting on it, so I go up and look at it. Some guy named Gilbert, and it's a Mercedes 350E. Hmm. I poke my head out the back door, and sure enough, there sits a pretty little black Mercedes. Four hours later, I wonder how long it would take me to get into town in a Mercedes to get some food. I look up this airport on FlightAware, and there are no IFR flights coming in yet, and anyone who would rent a car for $500 would surely not arrive here VFR in a 172 or something. His contract said "unlimited mileage". So how bad will it be if I take his car, I wonder? An hour later I decided to find out. I left my name and phone number on his paperwork just in case he came in, and I took the Mercedes for a drive. That's a zippy little thing with an excellent sound system, once you figure out how to use it. Heck, it took me a second to figure out how to shift into gear. ;) Seneca Falls, NY is a very nice little town, actually. I didn't dare stay long enough to sit down in a restaurant, which is a bummer, but I found a little local way place that I could get stuff to go, including homemade cheesecake blackberry custard (and OH man was that good), re-topped off the tank, and I beat feet back home, put the keys back, and enjoyed the fruits of my ill-gotten gains.

When the guys got back, they were filthy dirty. Whatever they had been working on covered them in something I will assume was dirt, even though their business is often poop. ;) They tried to clean up some, but one guy was really uncomfortable. So as we were loading up, he hesitated, and finally said "Would it bother you if I rode home in my boxers? I don't want to sit in these pants and put them on the seat." So, for a first, I had a passenger ride home in his undies and a t-shirt. You never do know what a day will bring. lol

I landed back home at 8:30 or so, then had to wait for the after-hours fuel truck, and the avionics were due so Justin came out and did that for me, and I had to stop for some food, and by the time I got home it was 10:something p.m. Kind of a long day, and tomorrow starts bright and early too. Steve said I was bringing home the bacon, and I said "What, you mean after I ate it all last weekend in the T-6s?" ;)

Hope

Suspicious the Turtle, the last turtle standing, seems to be doing okay best I can tell. He's not swimming around as much, but neither am I in there watching him that often, either. I hope that little bugger will stay alive for Kaylee for awhile. We have an entire cemetery zone of turtles in our back yard now. Ugh.

Tonight we had a nice birthday dinner for both Richard and Ann. Steaks on the grill, beans, rolls, salad, and a flower-shaped cupcake cake where each person could have their own w/o having a whole big cake left over that none of us should eat. :) It was a nice dinner and we're glad they could come over and spend some time.

I signed up for a formation clinic being held nearby in two weekends. We'll see if it's a waste of gas to get down and back, again; if I get any flying in, or not. I got my Private, Instrument, Commercial, CFI, CFII and aerobatics course all done in about two years. I did my multi and MEI a couple years later in one swoop. Taking several years to get just one little card done is lame, man. ;) Anyway, hopefully I can get some four-ship stuff in, as that's what's left...a girl can hope. :)

It'll be an early bedtime around here--I get to watch the sun rise from 19,000'...