School's In Session

Kaylee's school project partner never did pony up his half of the project, so it was good that she didn't wait to hear from him before going ahead and doing it herself.  She's right now working on a family tree project, and in her spare time she has a notebook next to her chair, in which she is currently writing a short story for a friend of hers.  The conversation went like this.  Steve-"What are you doing?"  Kaylee- "I'm writing a story."  "Why?" "It's for my friend Megan."  "Who's Megan?" "My friend."  "Okay, why are you writing her a story?"  "Because she's hooked on this one book series, but the next book in the series doesn't come out for awhile, and she can't stand it any more. I know how that feels, so I am writing her another story to read that will be like those stories, to hold her over until the next real one can come out."  "Okay."   She's hand-writing it in pencil, and every once in awhile she'll ask me for a good word to use when she's stuck.  The other night it was "Mom, I need a better word for 'crazy', cause that's not quite right."  So I went through a few, and when I got to "deranged", she said "THAT'S the one, that's what I meant!"   When I was her age writing stuff, I'd use a thesaurus.  There's an app for that now; I'll have to show her.  :)

Steve's been working on getting a new Amazon Prime account working on stuff.  So far he's been unable to get it to work on his Nexus, on Kaylee's Kindle, on the Xbox, or the Wii.  The Wii seems to be some problem with downloading it is having itself, not related to the Amazon thing.  What it HAS worked on just fine, no problemo, is my iPad.  So me, I can watch 'free' movies and TV all I want on my iPad, and so far everybody else is hosed.  Seems fair, right?  Heh.  Actually, I do have a LOT of movies to catch up on.  Other than just a few, I haven't really watched many movies in...years now.  I used to see every movie that came out, practically.  But I don't often want to take 2+ hours in one chunk of time to sit and watch a movie any more.  But it would have been handy the other day when I was sitting in Aurora for 8 hours straight with decent WiFi but nothing with me to work on, having not expected to be there all day.  Now I almost look forward to the next time I have to sit somewhere and wait on a passenger, because I'll have a perfectly good excuse to sit there and catch up on a movie, and get paid for it while I'm at it.  My recent rash of trips have all been drop offs and pick ups, not sits and waits, but I know that one of these days...

I'll be going to bed early again tonight, as I have to be up at 4:30 a.m. for a trip.  This one might not be so nice.  We're getting freezing rain/sleet today and tonight here in central Indiana, and the odds are pretty slim of the airport having any ramp or runway clearing done by 6 a.m. Monday.  If I can get the plane all the way out of the hangar without losing traction, the rest I should be able to handle.  It's also supposed to rain here all day tomorrow and be IFR, with strong headwinds and icing up high, and down in Mississippi they are currently calling for very low IFR, below minimums through the early morning hours.  This gives me potential fuel issues too.  At least down there they're supposed to have a high of 79 degrees tomorrow though. Whenever I can get in, I am going to do things a little differently this time.  Normally I fly 3.5 hours down, drop off D, top off the airplane, go to the bathroom, and fly 3-3.5 hours home.  This time after I drop him off and top off the airplane, I'm going to move it away from the self-serve pump (it's almost $1.00/gallon cheaper to do it myself, for about 135 gallons of gas.  I should get a bonus for saving the company that much money every flight by doing the hassle myself. ;))  and I'm going to see about stealing their courtesy car and driving five miles into town for lunch.  Eating and drinking a lot right before my flight home isn't the best plan, but you know what, this time I'm going to do it anyway, if I get the chance.  It's not right to go into new places without at least finding something enjoyable to experience from it now and then.  And I have just the thing in mind to make up for a crack of dawn awakening, ice, wind, rain, and IFR. It's a shame I won't be able to share.  ;)