Kaylee is an occasional sleep-talker. Last night we were in our one room apartment on two different beds, and she suddenly sat up in bed and started jabbering. What's crazy about it is that she's not using real words, and that's kind of freaky, because she SOUNDS like she's really talking, but it's like a foreign language, and you know in her mind it means something, from the inflection in her voice, but it makes no sense. Steve woke up and said "What was that?" I was already still awake, so I said "Kaylee's talking in her sleep." Right then, Kaylee says "Sorry about that" and lies back down. She has no memory of any of it. As I was writing this entry tonight, she did the same jabber-talking and random laughing thing. I really wish I knew what she was saying and where those non-words came from!
It was Easter Sunday, of course. We went to Richard & Ann's church for the earlier morning "traditional" service. There is a "contemporary" service later in the morning for the youngsters, which I think are those ages 55-65. We ARE in a retirement community you know! After the service they had a really huge Easter lunch. I don't know how many people were there--hundreds and hundreds. Three-four hundred? A lot. We had such a huge lunch, then went back to the trailer to sit and relax and talk and hang out. It was 82 degrees today, folks. Eighty-two and sunshine with a nice breeze. Heaven.
There was another service at 6 p.m., a music and drama activity. They have a really nice choir, a lot of good voices in there, and I enjoyed the music. After it ended we were going to go to the Gulf and watch the sun set over Pine Island Beach. Instead, they had technical difficulties with the sound system for over 30 minutes, so that by the time it was over it was too late to drive to the beach. So we went into town and got some more dinner, which I shouldn't have eaten considering how full I already was, and I now feel like a big lardo, but man it was good.
I think I'm going to have to go to a walk-in medical clinic while we're down here, and believe it or not, I actually want to go. My middle finger on my left hand somehow got an infection in it. I have no open wound, no bleeding cuticle, nothing obvious at all, no idea what happened, but the top digit of that finger is red, hot, swollen and misshapen, and hurts like bloody heck. I can feel my heartbeat in it sometimes, it has a stabbing pain sometimes, and I can tell, you can even see, that there's a fair amount of pus in there. (Sorry to be gross, for some of you.) I noticed today that my fingernail is turning a different color, barely, but it is, so...it's time to do something about it before the infection gets (any more) out of hand. It was there a little bit before we left for Florida but I was too blasted busy to do anything about it those last few days. I never even got my contacts picked up for heaven's sake. So the only thing I tried was sterilizing a needle and poking it into my finger in an attempt to relieve the pressure and get the gunk out. All that accomplished was making my finger hurt even worse than it did before. Apparently I didn't get the correct location, but after a few of those pokes, it was too painful to keep poking at--I couldn't hardly touch it to put a bandaid on it for awhile. Today I asked if they had an actual razor blade, but nobody did. Steve was relieved, I was not so much--an ice cube and a way to lance it would relieve a lot of discomfort for me right now. But instead, tomorrow morning I'm probably going to go to the walk in clinic near here and see if they will do anything about this thing for me.
Well, everyone else has been asleep for an hour, and tomorrow will be a busy day, so I'd better go try myself. I hope you all had a peaceful, blessed Easter. Easter is always uplifting, about Spring and rebirth, about life over death, about another beginning, and for Christians, the beginning of the story, not the end...
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Flawrida
We only ran 30 minutes late this morning, which really isn't bad considering 1) we were all up past 1 a.m., and 2) we had to get back up at 7 a.m. and weren't really ready to go by the time we went to bed. But we were in the air by 9:30, and the plan had been 9, so...not bad.
Nathan had worked really hard to get the Aerostar ready to go by last night, which was really kind of him, and we had a nest back there for Kaylee. The middle seats were out, so we laid a sleeping bag and several pillows back there. She was buckled in for takeoff and landing per the regs, and then the rest of the flight laid back there in her nest and played games and music and even napped for awhile. It was cute, and not a tough way to get to Florida by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, we were 4 hours from start up to shut down. You couldn't even drive to Indy Airport, arrive two hours early, park, go through security, get on a flight and get to Florida within 4 hours, particularly since most flights have stopovers now. Not only that, but had we taken the 340, we would have only been a bit faster if we went way up high, we'd have burned 10 GPH more to do it, and we likely would have had to stop for fuel. It would have been too close for my comfort on fuel unless we had a lot better tailwind than I saw. As it was, in the Aerostar we were getting groundspeeds of 203-208 most of the way and had an hour and a half worth of fuel left over. Nice, man.
Nathan had mounted the mini iPad on the yoke of the Aerostar, and it also has the Aero 560, the Garmin 530W and the Garmin 430. I had my iPad with me, and Steve had his Google Nexus too. So we set them all up in the cockpit for awhile there. We just weren't sure which way to go, so we kept breaking out the next device in order to be the tie-breaker. I got a picture of that...
One thing was a little different about today. We all felt the altitude. I picked 9,000' even though 11,000' would have been better for winds because of, well, a few reasons, and it was good, because like I said, by the end of the flight we all felt the altitude. I felt...dull. Had a low grade headache, stumbled on a couple of radio calls. Steve had the low grade headache too, and Kaylee was drowsy and slept even though she never sleeps in an airplane. Part of it was also dehydration, I'm sure. We were on a four hour non-stop flight, so we didn't drink more than a few mouthfulls of water before we left. I brought water with me, and just take a swallow a couple times during the flight. Nobody had a restroom emergency, though. ;) It wasn't as bad as it sounds, just a low grade dull headache, just...noticeable enough that we commented on it. But when we landed, had lunch, had a bunch of tea to rehydrate, and came back and rested for a bit, we finally bounced back.
Kaylee had a problem with her ears on descent though, and that wasn't good. We were coming down at a normal descent rate, and suddenly she started crying and holding her head, she couldn't clear her ears, and it got so bad, her face twisted up in pain and almost screaming, that Steve leveled off right when I got on the radio and told center that we needed to stop our descent and go back up about 500' for an ear clearing problem. They didn't blink about it, which was nice, just told me to do what I needed to do and to let them know when I could go back down to 3000'. We got up the 500', and Kaylee's ears were manageable again. I told them I'd come down but only at about 200 fpm if that was okay with them. They said no problem, we came down extra slow, her ears finally popped, and she was able to get down okay. Poor kid, she got her dad's ears.
It was a busy last five minutes. I was talking to tower, and we had a bit of a crosswind and I was talking to Steve about the landing, and glancing over my shoulder monitoring Kaylee on her ears, and I about forgot to get the magic words ("Cleared to Land"). We pull up to the FBO, and the guy gives us this difficult park job, which would be tricky even if you had nosewheel steering. Neither Steve nor I are smooth operators on the ground on that airplane yet, although I gotta say, I've got him beat and haven't been jerked around that much in an airplane on the ground in my life. It was awesome. :D But it was really ironic that the line guy expected these turns right and left and swing around and...yeah, right. lol He mostly got it done though by the end there, and Richard and Ann were waiting for us, and we had Arrived in Florida. Where it's warm, and sunny. Ahhhhh
We ate at a seafood place called Charlie's, which was great, and I sent pictures of our food to Ty so he could pass it on to his significant other so that she'd get jealous and "make" him go back down to Florida and let them get some good food too. He's got a plan-he just needs it to be her idea. See how that works?? ;)
Richard & Ann's trailer looks wonderful-they've been remodeling it and working on it a lot. It has a lovely sunroom, you can sit out and look at the woods with the air conditioning on and just relax, surrounded by windows. I told her I could stay out there, read a book, sip an iced tea, listen to some music, and feel like I was enjoying nature in all its finest.
We are staying in a lovely apartment on the grounds of the retirement community. Everyone took such care to make sure it was clean and comfortable and ready, and it's a great place to be able to stay for a few days. There was a handwritten note on our door that said "Welcome to the neighborhood!"
I had an SMA Support purchase that somebody told me they needed done asap--on Good Friday afternoon right when I'm going to be gone for the next week. I was gone all day anyway, it was too late then, so I told them I'd call in the credit card the next day. So I call it in today when I get a chance--and it's not working. It won't go through. I don't know why, the account is just fine, they got all the numbers right. So now I get to wait until Monday and then call my bank and hopefully figure out what the deal is and then call the guy back and make the purchase. Urgh. That's embarrassing, along with not being very relaxing on vacation. The bank has done something to another one of my accounts too. I'm not very happy with them at the moment.
It's only 11 pm, but it feels to me more like 1 a.m. I wasn't feeling well at all for a little while there this evening, but if I can keep Kaylee's sniffling from keeping me up all night, we'll all get some sleep and be good to go tomorrow. It's good to be here. :)
Nathan had worked really hard to get the Aerostar ready to go by last night, which was really kind of him, and we had a nest back there for Kaylee. The middle seats were out, so we laid a sleeping bag and several pillows back there. She was buckled in for takeoff and landing per the regs, and then the rest of the flight laid back there in her nest and played games and music and even napped for awhile. It was cute, and not a tough way to get to Florida by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, we were 4 hours from start up to shut down. You couldn't even drive to Indy Airport, arrive two hours early, park, go through security, get on a flight and get to Florida within 4 hours, particularly since most flights have stopovers now. Not only that, but had we taken the 340, we would have only been a bit faster if we went way up high, we'd have burned 10 GPH more to do it, and we likely would have had to stop for fuel. It would have been too close for my comfort on fuel unless we had a lot better tailwind than I saw. As it was, in the Aerostar we were getting groundspeeds of 203-208 most of the way and had an hour and a half worth of fuel left over. Nice, man.
Nathan had mounted the mini iPad on the yoke of the Aerostar, and it also has the Aero 560, the Garmin 530W and the Garmin 430. I had my iPad with me, and Steve had his Google Nexus too. So we set them all up in the cockpit for awhile there. We just weren't sure which way to go, so we kept breaking out the next device in order to be the tie-breaker. I got a picture of that...
One thing was a little different about today. We all felt the altitude. I picked 9,000' even though 11,000' would have been better for winds because of, well, a few reasons, and it was good, because like I said, by the end of the flight we all felt the altitude. I felt...dull. Had a low grade headache, stumbled on a couple of radio calls. Steve had the low grade headache too, and Kaylee was drowsy and slept even though she never sleeps in an airplane. Part of it was also dehydration, I'm sure. We were on a four hour non-stop flight, so we didn't drink more than a few mouthfulls of water before we left. I brought water with me, and just take a swallow a couple times during the flight. Nobody had a restroom emergency, though. ;) It wasn't as bad as it sounds, just a low grade dull headache, just...noticeable enough that we commented on it. But when we landed, had lunch, had a bunch of tea to rehydrate, and came back and rested for a bit, we finally bounced back.
Kaylee had a problem with her ears on descent though, and that wasn't good. We were coming down at a normal descent rate, and suddenly she started crying and holding her head, she couldn't clear her ears, and it got so bad, her face twisted up in pain and almost screaming, that Steve leveled off right when I got on the radio and told center that we needed to stop our descent and go back up about 500' for an ear clearing problem. They didn't blink about it, which was nice, just told me to do what I needed to do and to let them know when I could go back down to 3000'. We got up the 500', and Kaylee's ears were manageable again. I told them I'd come down but only at about 200 fpm if that was okay with them. They said no problem, we came down extra slow, her ears finally popped, and she was able to get down okay. Poor kid, she got her dad's ears.
It was a busy last five minutes. I was talking to tower, and we had a bit of a crosswind and I was talking to Steve about the landing, and glancing over my shoulder monitoring Kaylee on her ears, and I about forgot to get the magic words ("Cleared to Land"). We pull up to the FBO, and the guy gives us this difficult park job, which would be tricky even if you had nosewheel steering. Neither Steve nor I are smooth operators on the ground on that airplane yet, although I gotta say, I've got him beat and haven't been jerked around that much in an airplane on the ground in my life. It was awesome. :D But it was really ironic that the line guy expected these turns right and left and swing around and...yeah, right. lol He mostly got it done though by the end there, and Richard and Ann were waiting for us, and we had Arrived in Florida. Where it's warm, and sunny. Ahhhhh
We ate at a seafood place called Charlie's, which was great, and I sent pictures of our food to Ty so he could pass it on to his significant other so that she'd get jealous and "make" him go back down to Florida and let them get some good food too. He's got a plan-he just needs it to be her idea. See how that works?? ;)
Richard & Ann's trailer looks wonderful-they've been remodeling it and working on it a lot. It has a lovely sunroom, you can sit out and look at the woods with the air conditioning on and just relax, surrounded by windows. I told her I could stay out there, read a book, sip an iced tea, listen to some music, and feel like I was enjoying nature in all its finest.
We are staying in a lovely apartment on the grounds of the retirement community. Everyone took such care to make sure it was clean and comfortable and ready, and it's a great place to be able to stay for a few days. There was a handwritten note on our door that said "Welcome to the neighborhood!"
I had an SMA Support purchase that somebody told me they needed done asap--on Good Friday afternoon right when I'm going to be gone for the next week. I was gone all day anyway, it was too late then, so I told them I'd call in the credit card the next day. So I call it in today when I get a chance--and it's not working. It won't go through. I don't know why, the account is just fine, they got all the numbers right. So now I get to wait until Monday and then call my bank and hopefully figure out what the deal is and then call the guy back and make the purchase. Urgh. That's embarrassing, along with not being very relaxing on vacation. The bank has done something to another one of my accounts too. I'm not very happy with them at the moment.
It's only 11 pm, but it feels to me more like 1 a.m. I wasn't feeling well at all for a little while there this evening, but if I can keep Kaylee's sniffling from keeping me up all night, we'll all get some sleep and be good to go tomorrow. It's good to be here. :)
Friday, March 29, 2013
Zippy
Another full day, though I was home a little earlier this time. Started off doing some instrument work in the RG with someone, landed, checked a few things, and then went down to Mississippi with Kevin in the Cheyenne. There was an area of weather in Kentucky, some thunderstorms, which we were easily on top of in the clear. We went a little early so that the Cheyenne could cool off for an hour or two, and we took a courtesy car and had some lunch. We were driving back in the car when I started laughing as a thought occurred to me. Maaaybe it wasn't such a good plan that we both ate the exact same thing for lunch...and that thing we ate was raw fish. We were going to be flying home with a plane with 10 people in it and we both ate raw fish first. Beautiful. ;) ("Did anybody have the chicken?? Is there anyone else on board who knows how to fly an airplane?") Heh. Kevin said he thought of that as we were ordering, but everything smelled and looked good, so he figured we'd be okay. Fortunately, twas the case. ;)
Over lunch Kevin ran another weight and balance for the known load we'd have, and we were full up, with the CG at the aft end. When the guys showed up, the weights were different than the original list, but it was in our favor, with heavier guys than predicted that we could stick right behind us and a tiny 125 pound guy, smaller by a good 40 pounds than previously thought, to stick in the back. We were at the book's limit on weight and balance, but legal. I kind of wondered how the Cheyenne would fare with that kind of load, and how it would do on one engine. I needn't have wondered. We get rolling, the plane lifts off like nothing new, and we're at 3500' and still climbing at 2000 fpm (and could have done more) before we'd finished circling after takeoff to head north. It handled it like nobody's business. Try that in any other twin I know of... Impressed me, anyway. If you'd seen the clown car load of people that got out of that plane when we landed, and seen how the plane handled, you'd be impressed too.
The trip was just over 2 hours each way, and we were getting close to 400 mph both ways. Sweet. I got home too late to pick up my new glasses and contacts again, meaning they'll now have to wait another week. I didn't get a few other things done either, but that's life. Instead it was time to get ready for tomorrow's trip, and we're leaving the house at 8 a.m. or so. So I've got packing and other things to do to get ready for being gone a week, plus a flight to look into. Most stuff, if you forget it, you can pick it up at a store in Florida just as easy, so I'm not too worried, but still...lots to do. Looks like we can make it non-stop, too. As long as everybody else's bladder will hold out for that long. ;)
Here's Indianapolis International Airport under the engine as we were descending to land at Kokomo. I think we were at 17,000' here, if I recall correctly...
Over lunch Kevin ran another weight and balance for the known load we'd have, and we were full up, with the CG at the aft end. When the guys showed up, the weights were different than the original list, but it was in our favor, with heavier guys than predicted that we could stick right behind us and a tiny 125 pound guy, smaller by a good 40 pounds than previously thought, to stick in the back. We were at the book's limit on weight and balance, but legal. I kind of wondered how the Cheyenne would fare with that kind of load, and how it would do on one engine. I needn't have wondered. We get rolling, the plane lifts off like nothing new, and we're at 3500' and still climbing at 2000 fpm (and could have done more) before we'd finished circling after takeoff to head north. It handled it like nobody's business. Try that in any other twin I know of... Impressed me, anyway. If you'd seen the clown car load of people that got out of that plane when we landed, and seen how the plane handled, you'd be impressed too.
The trip was just over 2 hours each way, and we were getting close to 400 mph both ways. Sweet. I got home too late to pick up my new glasses and contacts again, meaning they'll now have to wait another week. I didn't get a few other things done either, but that's life. Instead it was time to get ready for tomorrow's trip, and we're leaving the house at 8 a.m. or so. So I've got packing and other things to do to get ready for being gone a week, plus a flight to look into. Most stuff, if you forget it, you can pick it up at a store in Florida just as easy, so I'm not too worried, but still...lots to do. Looks like we can make it non-stop, too. As long as everybody else's bladder will hold out for that long. ;)
Here's Indianapolis International Airport under the engine as we were descending to land at Kokomo. I think we were at 17,000' here, if I recall correctly...
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Getting Around
It was a beautiful, clear morning. It may feel good to accomplish a tricky flight safely, but it's also nice not have to have a tricky flight in the first place. :) The moon was huge when we took off while it was still dark; we landed at Indy Metro and picked up a passenger, and as we were taking off to head to St. Louis the sun was just breaking the horizon. A seriously uneventful flight later, we made it to the Arch where it was also severe clear and calm winds.
Whenever I have time to leave the FBO and explore, I usually do, and I usually end up in the downtown area, out by the Arch. Today I went a different direction. I was planning on eating some seafood, but instead I passed this "Five Guys", and I've heard about it forever, and have never had it, so I decided on a whim to stop, even though I wasn't really intending to get a big burger. One thing that cracked me up is that there were three businesses next to each other. On the left was Qdobas, on the right was Five Guys, and in the middle was a new business called "Total Nutrition". Heh. Location, location, location. I do have to say, I ordered a "little five guys cheeseburger", because he said it was only one patty, and good grief that thing was huge. I had to work at that one--it's bigger than most people's mouths.
I got a phone call today about doing photo missions for a warbird magazine again this year. I enjoyed those missions, and it was good experience, and sometimes pretty funny, I got to meet a few good folks out of it, and I got a kick out of seeing the pictures I was part of in magazines, but...it doesn't exactly pay for itself. If it was just my time, then I'm okay to do that for the fun of it if nothing else while it's still new to me, but it's also wear and tear and hours and cost above fuel on an airplane that's not mine. So I was thinking about turning it down or limiting it to only a few shoots that are close by. And then the deal got a bit more interesting when he said that the owner of another T-6 who is involved with the magazine would put me on his insurance and I could fly his T-6 for the photo missions instead if I preferred. The photographer would rather use Nathan's plane because the seat swivels and it's easier for him to get shots, but the other gentleman has some business advantages when his plane is used for the photos, and like I said, I'd rather not put the wear and tear on Nathan's plane unnecessarily. I seem to be a bit over-extended this summer as it is, but...well, we'll see.
I didn't get home until about 8 pm, so it was a long day, but at least it wasn't hard...I've got a couple of errands I need to run before we go to Florida, but I was gone during business hours today and I'll be gone all day tomorrow during business hours too, so I may be out of luck.
Here are a few photos from today:
Moon over Kokomo
Whenever I have time to leave the FBO and explore, I usually do, and I usually end up in the downtown area, out by the Arch. Today I went a different direction. I was planning on eating some seafood, but instead I passed this "Five Guys", and I've heard about it forever, and have never had it, so I decided on a whim to stop, even though I wasn't really intending to get a big burger. One thing that cracked me up is that there were three businesses next to each other. On the left was Qdobas, on the right was Five Guys, and in the middle was a new business called "Total Nutrition". Heh. Location, location, location. I do have to say, I ordered a "little five guys cheeseburger", because he said it was only one patty, and good grief that thing was huge. I had to work at that one--it's bigger than most people's mouths.
I got a phone call today about doing photo missions for a warbird magazine again this year. I enjoyed those missions, and it was good experience, and sometimes pretty funny, I got to meet a few good folks out of it, and I got a kick out of seeing the pictures I was part of in magazines, but...it doesn't exactly pay for itself. If it was just my time, then I'm okay to do that for the fun of it if nothing else while it's still new to me, but it's also wear and tear and hours and cost above fuel on an airplane that's not mine. So I was thinking about turning it down or limiting it to only a few shoots that are close by. And then the deal got a bit more interesting when he said that the owner of another T-6 who is involved with the magazine would put me on his insurance and I could fly his T-6 for the photo missions instead if I preferred. The photographer would rather use Nathan's plane because the seat swivels and it's easier for him to get shots, but the other gentleman has some business advantages when his plane is used for the photos, and like I said, I'd rather not put the wear and tear on Nathan's plane unnecessarily. I seem to be a bit over-extended this summer as it is, but...well, we'll see.
I didn't get home until about 8 pm, so it was a long day, but at least it wasn't hard...I've got a couple of errands I need to run before we go to Florida, but I was gone during business hours today and I'll be gone all day tomorrow during business hours too, so I may be out of luck.
Here are a few photos from today:
Moon over Kokomo
Lightening Sky, Moon over Indianapolis
Launching out of Indy Metro, sun finally crowning.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Up and Down
I got to my first lesson this morning, my student was late, and the snow was piled up against the hangar doors. After getting my feet wet sinking through the snow getting to the hangar door, I preflighted for the other guy then shoveled out the hangar, and then what we tried to do in the air we couldn't really accomplish that well because of an equipment glitch. We gave it the ole college try and worked more on procedures than actual tracking, so it wasn't a total loss. Didn't have time to hit lunch, and my next lesson was in a different airplane, and guess what? Another shoveling job. Unfortunately my back and arms are fine as long as I'm careful with certain motions/directions, so I didn't even have an excuse to not do it. ;)
Kaylee had play practice tonight, and had a great time. They did a run through of the play, and she came home bouncy and pleased, as always. Afterwards I ran her through Culvers for some ice cream, so I'm sure she'll get even more sleep now, huh?
I talked to the PT and sports medicine doc about my fall and re-injury, and they both said that the stretching and exercises I'd been doing kept it from being too traumatic, and that if I was able to stop my face from bouncing off the floor, I must have stopped my fall somewhat, and that I was really lucky, because the head injury would have been bad. I told them I didn't really stop the fall, but my chest kept me from smacking my forehead on the floor. See, being not flat has its advantages! ;) They said that getting back to my new 'normal' within a couple days shows that I'd been working at it, and that the "trembly" feeling I had was from neck/spinal trauma, and that it was obviously a good thing that went away fast. I have some new exercises and stretches to work on--they said the last 10% that I'm having trouble with is the hardest to overcome because of the location of the muscles back there and that it will just take time and continued effort. This is the longest I've continued on any specific exercise routine in my life. When it's important to you to not be a weakling invalid, you do what you gotta do.
I got an email today about someone who said that they have an SNJ (T-6) at a museum in Indiana and one near term need they have is T-6 pilots that will help keep this aircraft flying regularly. He said they have two local T-6 pilot/owners, but both are approaching 70 years old and the museum board would like to locate some younger T-6 pilots, or someone to train younger T-6 pilots, and they were sent to me. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with T-6 pilots approaching 70 years old, since I know of one or two not that far away from approaching 70 that can kick my butt in the plane. lol Anyway, I'm waiting to hear from the museum people as to what exactly they're looking for and what it would cost. I'm plenty busy already, I don't exactly have the discretionary funds to do much at my cost down there, and the museum isn't right in my back yard, so...while I'd like to help them out, because, let's face it, there really aren't people in the existing T-6 community who will, it will just depend on what they're looking for and whether I can. It's kind of neat that I was contacted at all, though.
Suppose I'd better get to bed early and try to get to sleep. Nice 5:30 a.m. wake-up for me tomorrow...
Kaylee had play practice tonight, and had a great time. They did a run through of the play, and she came home bouncy and pleased, as always. Afterwards I ran her through Culvers for some ice cream, so I'm sure she'll get even more sleep now, huh?
I talked to the PT and sports medicine doc about my fall and re-injury, and they both said that the stretching and exercises I'd been doing kept it from being too traumatic, and that if I was able to stop my face from bouncing off the floor, I must have stopped my fall somewhat, and that I was really lucky, because the head injury would have been bad. I told them I didn't really stop the fall, but my chest kept me from smacking my forehead on the floor. See, being not flat has its advantages! ;) They said that getting back to my new 'normal' within a couple days shows that I'd been working at it, and that the "trembly" feeling I had was from neck/spinal trauma, and that it was obviously a good thing that went away fast. I have some new exercises and stretches to work on--they said the last 10% that I'm having trouble with is the hardest to overcome because of the location of the muscles back there and that it will just take time and continued effort. This is the longest I've continued on any specific exercise routine in my life. When it's important to you to not be a weakling invalid, you do what you gotta do.
I got an email today about someone who said that they have an SNJ (T-6) at a museum in Indiana and one near term need they have is T-6 pilots that will help keep this aircraft flying regularly. He said they have two local T-6 pilot/owners, but both are approaching 70 years old and the museum board would like to locate some younger T-6 pilots, or someone to train younger T-6 pilots, and they were sent to me. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with T-6 pilots approaching 70 years old, since I know of one or two not that far away from approaching 70 that can kick my butt in the plane. lol Anyway, I'm waiting to hear from the museum people as to what exactly they're looking for and what it would cost. I'm plenty busy already, I don't exactly have the discretionary funds to do much at my cost down there, and the museum isn't right in my back yard, so...while I'd like to help them out, because, let's face it, there really aren't people in the existing T-6 community who will, it will just depend on what they're looking for and whether I can. It's kind of neat that I was contacted at all, though.
Suppose I'd better get to bed early and try to get to sleep. Nice 5:30 a.m. wake-up for me tomorrow...
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Juicy
I went to amazon.com to look up reading material because I'd just finished everything I had to read. Amazon came up with what it said was "Recommended for You", and the first two books it suggested were "Forever Flying" by R. A Hoover and "I Could Never Be So Lucky Again" by Gen. James H. Doolittle. Amazon is freaky. ;) I haven't even ordered flying books from them, I order fiction books, and even so, for some reason the first two books it recommends for me are from Bob Hoover and Gen. Doolittle...
It's been a week of reuniting. Not only did someone from 20 years in my past contact me, but now someone else from our past, from just prior to Steve and I being married, reconnected with us. Steve is particularly pleased about it because this is someone who remembers the 'good old days' when he was the one doing all the trips and the flying, and I was more the copilot, new around there and shy. This person hasn't been around to see anything change, so for them it is the way it was, and Steve's digging that. ;) It is nice to connect with people from your past sometimes. It's almost a...closure...thing, even though it's not an ending per se. Hard to describe.
Kaylee has been dealing with some 6th Grade Girl drama, but I'm really grateful that she'll sit and talk to us about it, she'll ask our opinion, she'll voluntarily show us what the other girl(s) is/are saying via electronic form, she'll want help on how she should react or respond, and then she'll actually listen and take the advice. The things she is learning now will be things that will shape and impact what kind of woman she becomes. I knew she'd been listening to things I'd said in the past when she told me one of the first things she wanted to tell one particular young lady was "Don't say awful things that you don't mean." That's one of the things I've said over the years a lot--don't say it if you 1) don't really mean it or 2) think you mean it at the time but know you'll probably regret it later. Mean what you say and say what you mean. Anyway, it's something else watching her navigate this stuff for herself now. She'll talk to her dad for awhile, she'll talk to me for awhile, and the biggest thing we're trying to get through to her, which she seems to be doing a really good job at understanding, is to not play games. Be above playing the games. Be in the right, be the good person even if someone else isn't, and when you end up right in it, don't be a snot about it--let it go and move forward. And as in the current situation, if someone treats you badly, don't be awful back to them, but don't let them treat you badly--be kind but firm and if need be move on and find a friend who is truly a friend and knows how to act like it. Today I sent her a text at school asking how it was going, and she replied with "The you know what situation is going great." Made me smile. I'm very grateful. And I'm still glad she can sneak check her cell phone in between classes at her locker and talk to me now and then. ;)
Tomorrow I have lessons and then Kaylee's play practice in the evening, Thursday is an all-day trip to Indy, St. Louis, Indy and home late, Friday is a trip to Mississippi and back, and Friday night or Saturday morning we're supposed to leave for Spring Break in Florida. I need to pack. Ack. This morning Steve called me, stranded by the side of the road, as our Jeep dropped its transmission. That Jeep is a 1995 and it's held up really well for 18 years. Tomorrow we should have a quote on how much that'll be, but the odds are fair that it's our fly-to-Florida fund. We're talking about driving down instead, but...I don't know. We'll have to see...
It's been a week of reuniting. Not only did someone from 20 years in my past contact me, but now someone else from our past, from just prior to Steve and I being married, reconnected with us. Steve is particularly pleased about it because this is someone who remembers the 'good old days' when he was the one doing all the trips and the flying, and I was more the copilot, new around there and shy. This person hasn't been around to see anything change, so for them it is the way it was, and Steve's digging that. ;) It is nice to connect with people from your past sometimes. It's almost a...closure...thing, even though it's not an ending per se. Hard to describe.
Kaylee has been dealing with some 6th Grade Girl drama, but I'm really grateful that she'll sit and talk to us about it, she'll ask our opinion, she'll voluntarily show us what the other girl(s) is/are saying via electronic form, she'll want help on how she should react or respond, and then she'll actually listen and take the advice. The things she is learning now will be things that will shape and impact what kind of woman she becomes. I knew she'd been listening to things I'd said in the past when she told me one of the first things she wanted to tell one particular young lady was "Don't say awful things that you don't mean." That's one of the things I've said over the years a lot--don't say it if you 1) don't really mean it or 2) think you mean it at the time but know you'll probably regret it later. Mean what you say and say what you mean. Anyway, it's something else watching her navigate this stuff for herself now. She'll talk to her dad for awhile, she'll talk to me for awhile, and the biggest thing we're trying to get through to her, which she seems to be doing a really good job at understanding, is to not play games. Be above playing the games. Be in the right, be the good person even if someone else isn't, and when you end up right in it, don't be a snot about it--let it go and move forward. And as in the current situation, if someone treats you badly, don't be awful back to them, but don't let them treat you badly--be kind but firm and if need be move on and find a friend who is truly a friend and knows how to act like it. Today I sent her a text at school asking how it was going, and she replied with "The you know what situation is going great." Made me smile. I'm very grateful. And I'm still glad she can sneak check her cell phone in between classes at her locker and talk to me now and then. ;)
Tomorrow I have lessons and then Kaylee's play practice in the evening, Thursday is an all-day trip to Indy, St. Louis, Indy and home late, Friday is a trip to Mississippi and back, and Friday night or Saturday morning we're supposed to leave for Spring Break in Florida. I need to pack. Ack. This morning Steve called me, stranded by the side of the road, as our Jeep dropped its transmission. That Jeep is a 1995 and it's held up really well for 18 years. Tomorrow we should have a quote on how much that'll be, but the odds are fair that it's our fly-to-Florida fund. We're talking about driving down instead, but...I don't know. We'll have to see...
Monday, March 25, 2013
Snow Day
Day before yesterday we had the blue skies and the bright sun and were outside playing around at Spring-like endeavors. This morning we awoke to another White Winter "Wonderland". School was canceled for the day, so everyone slept in, at least. We ended up with 10" of snow in Kokomo, but it's that real heavy, high moisture snow, and it's going to be gone really fast. In fact, this afternoon I took Kaylee to the sledding hill in town, and the snow was already departing off the top of the hill, and where the grass was coming through up there it was getting muddy. It was perfect snowman/snowball snow. Most kids I know were out of school today and thus out playing in some fashion out in the white stuff, which had better be the last snow we get this season. It's almost April, for heaven's sake.
We had fun on the sledding hill, then went over to Culvers for ice cream. It's Spring, you know, and even if it wasn't, ice cream is always fair game, even if you just came in from the cold...if you're Kaylee. ;)
We had fun on the sledding hill, then went over to Culvers for ice cream. It's Spring, you know, and even if it wasn't, ice cream is always fair game, even if you just came in from the cold...if you're Kaylee. ;)
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Springing
It was a Saturday reminiscent of a real Spring, just a few hours away from our next "Winter Storm Warning" that's supposed to start hitting us in the morning. Originally they were calling for 6-10" then 7-12" of snow, but now we're down to 4-8" by Monday noon. Heck, 4" isn't even interesting. We shall see. And then it needs to melt off, and our Spring needs to be able to come in and stay in. It's time.
The plan for today was a multiple assault. Justin, Kaylee and I took the RG over to Muncie, meeting and barely beating Nathan, Steve and the other kids in the 340. It took us awhile to get our food and get going, but as always, Kacy J's was quite tasty. It was a beautiful day. Pretty blue skies, big bright sun, light winds. On the way home I asked Kaylee if she wanted to do a wingover, and she said "sure". So, we go up and over, and when I rolled out she just said "When I get my license you're gonna have to teach me how to do that." I like that she said "WHEN I get my license", not "if". ;)
Back on the ground I ran over to Glenndale and got in the Champ with L and we changed it up a bit, doing a few takeoffs and landings at Glenndale, then going over to Indian Hills for three or four takeoffs and landings, then over to Kokomo for some concrete takeoffs and landings, then back at Glenndale for a couple. Different crosswinds at every airport. This Champ isn't the best climber, but she's little and we were at half tanks, so even though we didn't have hardly any headwind to help us at Indian Hills, it was okay. But as we were rolling down the runway towards the tall trees, she said "C'mon little plane! You need to fly now!" and I agreed with her. ;) You won't be going out that direction on that runway in that plane with light/no/crosswind with two people on a higher density altitude day. Not successfully, anyway. Over at Kokomo, it was swamped busy. There were airplanes All Over the place. We were trying to do takeoffs and landings, and we'd land and have to taxi off while one airplane was waiting to take off and two others were at the hold short line waiting to back taxi. It took us a long time just to get 3 landings in over there because of all the traffic. Good experience, but annoying when you just want to be able to go. Planes were coming in from all over, not staying in the pattern, except for us; they were all different. It was pretty neat, really.
One group from our airport did a group fly-out for breakfast at Rochester this morning too, which is always fun. Not me--I slept in past that one. But I was busy enough as it was anyway. :) After L and I were done flying I picked up some dessert at Dairy Queen and went back out to Kokomo for a little while. Kaylee and the kids were out there riding bikes and scooters and golf carts in the sunshine while there was still a ton of airplane traffic going in and out of the airport. Like I said, it was a Saturday reminiscent of a Real Spring Saturday. Ahhhhhh, nice. Kaylee came home with dirty stringy hair and a smile. Works for me.
We were going to meet up with AE and Kenny at Half Moon, but we got there and there was over an hour wait in this tightly crowded and loud room. Nope. I was out. So I went to get my car filled up with gas, mostly because of the approaching snow, took Kaylee home and got her dinner, and then we decided to meet up at Grindstone Charlie's instead, where there was no line or wait time. We eat there every day during the week, but never for dinner, so I had a good salmon and some shrimp cocktail with a nice horseradish dipping sauce. Good stuff.
Watched the sun go down in a giant yellow ball--it sure doesn't look like we're about to have nasty weather. It was a really nice day with friends, sun and enjoyable flying.
The plan for today was a multiple assault. Justin, Kaylee and I took the RG over to Muncie, meeting and barely beating Nathan, Steve and the other kids in the 340. It took us awhile to get our food and get going, but as always, Kacy J's was quite tasty. It was a beautiful day. Pretty blue skies, big bright sun, light winds. On the way home I asked Kaylee if she wanted to do a wingover, and she said "sure". So, we go up and over, and when I rolled out she just said "When I get my license you're gonna have to teach me how to do that." I like that she said "WHEN I get my license", not "if". ;)
Back on the ground I ran over to Glenndale and got in the Champ with L and we changed it up a bit, doing a few takeoffs and landings at Glenndale, then going over to Indian Hills for three or four takeoffs and landings, then over to Kokomo for some concrete takeoffs and landings, then back at Glenndale for a couple. Different crosswinds at every airport. This Champ isn't the best climber, but she's little and we were at half tanks, so even though we didn't have hardly any headwind to help us at Indian Hills, it was okay. But as we were rolling down the runway towards the tall trees, she said "C'mon little plane! You need to fly now!" and I agreed with her. ;) You won't be going out that direction on that runway in that plane with light/no/crosswind with two people on a higher density altitude day. Not successfully, anyway. Over at Kokomo, it was swamped busy. There were airplanes All Over the place. We were trying to do takeoffs and landings, and we'd land and have to taxi off while one airplane was waiting to take off and two others were at the hold short line waiting to back taxi. It took us a long time just to get 3 landings in over there because of all the traffic. Good experience, but annoying when you just want to be able to go. Planes were coming in from all over, not staying in the pattern, except for us; they were all different. It was pretty neat, really.
One group from our airport did a group fly-out for breakfast at Rochester this morning too, which is always fun. Not me--I slept in past that one. But I was busy enough as it was anyway. :) After L and I were done flying I picked up some dessert at Dairy Queen and went back out to Kokomo for a little while. Kaylee and the kids were out there riding bikes and scooters and golf carts in the sunshine while there was still a ton of airplane traffic going in and out of the airport. Like I said, it was a Saturday reminiscent of a Real Spring Saturday. Ahhhhhh, nice. Kaylee came home with dirty stringy hair and a smile. Works for me.
We were going to meet up with AE and Kenny at Half Moon, but we got there and there was over an hour wait in this tightly crowded and loud room. Nope. I was out. So I went to get my car filled up with gas, mostly because of the approaching snow, took Kaylee home and got her dinner, and then we decided to meet up at Grindstone Charlie's instead, where there was no line or wait time. We eat there every day during the week, but never for dinner, so I had a good salmon and some shrimp cocktail with a nice horseradish dipping sauce. Good stuff.
Watched the sun go down in a giant yellow ball--it sure doesn't look like we're about to have nasty weather. It was a really nice day with friends, sun and enjoyable flying.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Doctored
Kaylee's "Spend $1,000,000 dollars" project needed a little tweaking, so she decided to drop the airline and fly the C-340 all the way to Russia. I said "Honey, the 340 won't make it to Russia". She said "YOU know that, and *I* guessed that, but c'mon, mom, nobody at school will know the difference." So I looked up how many gallons of gas it would take for her to get from her home in New Jersey to Moscow, Russia, and she plugged that into her formula and flew herself to Russia and back.
All right, I'm done with the medical profession for awhile. I'm official and legal and have my shiny new Second Class Medical in hand for the next year. I've had my eyes checked three times in one week, among other things, so I guess I've made up a little for some lost time. Now, if nobody minds, I plan on staying out of doctor's offices for some time to come. Maybe not 12 years this time, but awhile.
I know I've said this before, but Dr. B is a sweetheart. I don't say that about many people, especially adult men, but if the shoe fits... He's just a very gentle, kind elderly man. He's also a throwback to the good old days. The FAA has forced him to do the online medical stuff now, and to get there he types faa.gov into his search bar because he doesn't know how to go up a little and type faa.gov into the actual URL/website line. It's cute. He left me alone in the room with the eye exam chart, which gave me too much time to learn the bottom line forward and backwards. He was looking through my form and said "Your eyes are good" and I said "Not really that good" and he looked at me and frowned and said "Why do you have glasses on your shirt? Just for reading, right? For reading only? Right?" (Say all that in a heavy German accent.) Maaaaaybe. The near vision, he handed me the card and told me to read the bottom line and I couldn't even tell there were individual letters down there. I laughed and said "I can't see that." So he had me start at the top and move my way down, and as long as I squinted just right and used both eyes even when I was supposed to use just one, I got down to better than where I needed to be for 2nd Class. So I passed the eye exam with flying colors, 20/25 both near and far on both eyes, much to his relief. Afterwards, sitting at the computer, he had me look over his shoulder at the screen to make sure the information he had typed in there was correct--and I couldn't see it, but I didn't dare put on my glasses to look. ;)
When he did the weigh-in, he clucked and said "You have lost weight since last year. You see this? You have lost (this many) pounds since last year. You are doing great!" He takes my blood pressure and says "Your pulse rate is very low, and your blood pressure too. You must exercise a lot." Yep. We'll go with that! Actually, both were a little higher than normal for me today. I can slow down my pulse rate and a little bit my blood pressure if I can concentrate for a minute ahead of time, but his secretary was on the phone very upset at a phone company, for the whole hour I was there, in a very loud and upset voice, and it broke my concentration. Oh well, I'll do better than 64 and 105/61 next time. ;) But if you want to feel good about yourself, just go to sweet Dr. B. He will take the time to talk to you in a way that you can tell he actually wants to know the answers. It's not mindless "I have to do this as part of my job" chit chat like I was talking about the doctor doing yesterday--he actually cares, and you can tell the difference. I can't imagine him doing this for many more years-he is very old. But I will be sad when he's done. I can go to the examiner in town, who is a friend, but...with Dr. B when I forget that my medical is expiring until I need to get it done NOW, he can fit me in the next day. Dr. W is a very busy man whose medicals go out months in advance, unless you call him directly and pull strings, which I don't think is a very nice thing to do if you don't have to, and lack of organization on my part shouldn't have to suddenly be a problem on his part. Besides, I don't like friends checking my pee-in-a-cup or other such things. It makes me feel weird. ;)
I got back from my medical appointment in Indy in time to run home to do a couple quick things and then head right back out to Glenndale for a flight in the Champ. It really was a pretty afternoon for it, and the first time I'd flown out of Glenndale or in the Champ for a couple of months. The ground was a world of various shades of brown. It didn't look like a grass strip, it looked like a dirt strip. But the sun was bright, the sky was a pretty blue, and while the winds were a crosswind, they were light enough to not matter. In other words, it was a lovely taildragger day. After the takeoffs smoothed out, I found myself smiling each time the wheels left the ground, with the shadow of the airplane off to my right getting smaller as we climbed out.
The airplane is covered in dirt and mud--before we took off, I cleaned off the windshield because it was so splattered that you'd have had to look through all the dirt clods to see anything. If Spring actually gets here, we'll get some water out there and clean it off. But Spring is on a definite strike for now. Sunday we're supposed to get (depending on who you look at) between 6-12" of snow. Yay. :eyeroll: But for this afternoon, this was nice.
All right, I'm done with the medical profession for awhile. I'm official and legal and have my shiny new Second Class Medical in hand for the next year. I've had my eyes checked three times in one week, among other things, so I guess I've made up a little for some lost time. Now, if nobody minds, I plan on staying out of doctor's offices for some time to come. Maybe not 12 years this time, but awhile.
I know I've said this before, but Dr. B is a sweetheart. I don't say that about many people, especially adult men, but if the shoe fits... He's just a very gentle, kind elderly man. He's also a throwback to the good old days. The FAA has forced him to do the online medical stuff now, and to get there he types faa.gov into his search bar because he doesn't know how to go up a little and type faa.gov into the actual URL/website line. It's cute. He left me alone in the room with the eye exam chart, which gave me too much time to learn the bottom line forward and backwards. He was looking through my form and said "Your eyes are good" and I said "Not really that good" and he looked at me and frowned and said "Why do you have glasses on your shirt? Just for reading, right? For reading only? Right?" (Say all that in a heavy German accent.) Maaaaaybe. The near vision, he handed me the card and told me to read the bottom line and I couldn't even tell there were individual letters down there. I laughed and said "I can't see that." So he had me start at the top and move my way down, and as long as I squinted just right and used both eyes even when I was supposed to use just one, I got down to better than where I needed to be for 2nd Class. So I passed the eye exam with flying colors, 20/25 both near and far on both eyes, much to his relief. Afterwards, sitting at the computer, he had me look over his shoulder at the screen to make sure the information he had typed in there was correct--and I couldn't see it, but I didn't dare put on my glasses to look. ;)
When he did the weigh-in, he clucked and said "You have lost weight since last year. You see this? You have lost (this many) pounds since last year. You are doing great!" He takes my blood pressure and says "Your pulse rate is very low, and your blood pressure too. You must exercise a lot." Yep. We'll go with that! Actually, both were a little higher than normal for me today. I can slow down my pulse rate and a little bit my blood pressure if I can concentrate for a minute ahead of time, but his secretary was on the phone very upset at a phone company, for the whole hour I was there, in a very loud and upset voice, and it broke my concentration. Oh well, I'll do better than 64 and 105/61 next time. ;) But if you want to feel good about yourself, just go to sweet Dr. B. He will take the time to talk to you in a way that you can tell he actually wants to know the answers. It's not mindless "I have to do this as part of my job" chit chat like I was talking about the doctor doing yesterday--he actually cares, and you can tell the difference. I can't imagine him doing this for many more years-he is very old. But I will be sad when he's done. I can go to the examiner in town, who is a friend, but...with Dr. B when I forget that my medical is expiring until I need to get it done NOW, he can fit me in the next day. Dr. W is a very busy man whose medicals go out months in advance, unless you call him directly and pull strings, which I don't think is a very nice thing to do if you don't have to, and lack of organization on my part shouldn't have to suddenly be a problem on his part. Besides, I don't like friends checking my pee-in-a-cup or other such things. It makes me feel weird. ;)
I got back from my medical appointment in Indy in time to run home to do a couple quick things and then head right back out to Glenndale for a flight in the Champ. It really was a pretty afternoon for it, and the first time I'd flown out of Glenndale or in the Champ for a couple of months. The ground was a world of various shades of brown. It didn't look like a grass strip, it looked like a dirt strip. But the sun was bright, the sky was a pretty blue, and while the winds were a crosswind, they were light enough to not matter. In other words, it was a lovely taildragger day. After the takeoffs smoothed out, I found myself smiling each time the wheels left the ground, with the shadow of the airplane off to my right getting smaller as we climbed out.The airplane is covered in dirt and mud--before we took off, I cleaned off the windshield because it was so splattered that you'd have had to look through all the dirt clods to see anything. If Spring actually gets here, we'll get some water out there and clean it off. But Spring is on a definite strike for now. Sunday we're supposed to get (depending on who you look at) between 6-12" of snow. Yay. :eyeroll: But for this afternoon, this was nice.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Check
So today was Round Two of "Laura's Medical Maintenance Catch-Up Extravaganza". There's a reason I don't go to doctors. If I can't deal with something myself I'd go to the quickie clinic for antibiotics, but otherwise I prefer to stay away. I think that probably only works through about my age though, and then after that if you don't want to end up in trouble unnecessarily from something easily fixed if caught in time, you'd probably better get checked out. So fine. Consider me checked out. When she was taking my blood pressure, she said "103 over 61. Wow." I said "I know, it's a little high because I'm at a doctor's office." She just looked at me funny. Everybody expects chubby people to have high blood pressure. Go good genetics. ;) My other problem is the chit chat fascination. Like hair dressers, some doctors find it necessary to chit chat to apparently distract and relax you while they are checking out this and that. I don't want small talk. I know you don't care in the least what my Spring Break plans are--we've never met before, I'm here for 15-20 minutes, and you're on to the next person. Just do your thing and let me go home in peace. In case you're wondering, I am apparently still perfectly healthy, which the lab will confirm later. I knew it--the first time I've been to a real doctor in like 12 years, and I'm still fine--see, that was $159 wasted. ;)
Kaylee had a blast tonight at play practice. She got some laughs and got some bonus points with a couple friends and the play director, and a new fairy outfit that she liked more than the last one they were going to have her wear. She got to hang out with a friend and run through her part a couple of times, and she came home so hyper I almost couldn't understand what she was saying. She was so wound up that we ended up doing some wrestling and play fighting and playing around, and then she insisted we cuddle up, where she pretty much fell asleep on me. She went to bed and passed out early. Part teen, part kid. I'm glad she had a good day. I love it when she has good days.
While Kaylee was out at her play practice, (which she told me again she didn't want me to attend and hoped it didn't offend me), Steve and I went to the EAA Chapter meeting at Indian Hills. It was carburetor night part two; this time John D had several torn apart carbs and a set of directions, and people grouped up and put together these carburetors. Steve put one together while I went upstairs and watched a strobe light get wired up in the wing of the Citabria. We had homemade beef veggie stew and homemade AE mint chocolate chip ice cream, and other than me having to put up with people making fun of me getting bifocals, it was an enjoyable hour or so I spent there before heading back to be here when Kaylee was done. ;)
Had somebody who wants to do a flight review coming up, and asked if I minded doing it in a Stinson. I've never been in a Stinson--looking forward to it. Although not this week. Snow, cold, snow, sleet, cold, and more snow is the forecast for pretty much the next 7 days after tomorrow.
I've also got a guy coming from the Washington DC area to check me out officially in the PT-26 within the next three weeks sometime, if the weather will cooperate. I have to do one checkride to be allowed to be PIC in the airplane and then a separate checkride to be allowed to instruct in the airplane. I've flown it twice now, and I told the guy I'd like to fly it once from the instructor's seat (in the back) before the official checkride if possible, but if not, then fine. I can't imagine what they'd have me do in there that I'd have trouble with. I already went through steep turns, slow flight, stalls, falling leaf stalls, simulated engine out to landing, wheel and 3 point TOLS. It's just a puppy dog of an airplane. What they'd more likely get me on is not flying, but systems, and there aren't even hardly any of those...but I'll study that ahead of time, of course.
I can't believe it's Friday tomorrow already. This week went by fast for not having any flights...
Kaylee had a blast tonight at play practice. She got some laughs and got some bonus points with a couple friends and the play director, and a new fairy outfit that she liked more than the last one they were going to have her wear. She got to hang out with a friend and run through her part a couple of times, and she came home so hyper I almost couldn't understand what she was saying. She was so wound up that we ended up doing some wrestling and play fighting and playing around, and then she insisted we cuddle up, where she pretty much fell asleep on me. She went to bed and passed out early. Part teen, part kid. I'm glad she had a good day. I love it when she has good days.
While Kaylee was out at her play practice, (which she told me again she didn't want me to attend and hoped it didn't offend me), Steve and I went to the EAA Chapter meeting at Indian Hills. It was carburetor night part two; this time John D had several torn apart carbs and a set of directions, and people grouped up and put together these carburetors. Steve put one together while I went upstairs and watched a strobe light get wired up in the wing of the Citabria. We had homemade beef veggie stew and homemade AE mint chocolate chip ice cream, and other than me having to put up with people making fun of me getting bifocals, it was an enjoyable hour or so I spent there before heading back to be here when Kaylee was done. ;)
Had somebody who wants to do a flight review coming up, and asked if I minded doing it in a Stinson. I've never been in a Stinson--looking forward to it. Although not this week. Snow, cold, snow, sleet, cold, and more snow is the forecast for pretty much the next 7 days after tomorrow.
I've also got a guy coming from the Washington DC area to check me out officially in the PT-26 within the next three weeks sometime, if the weather will cooperate. I have to do one checkride to be allowed to be PIC in the airplane and then a separate checkride to be allowed to instruct in the airplane. I've flown it twice now, and I told the guy I'd like to fly it once from the instructor's seat (in the back) before the official checkride if possible, but if not, then fine. I can't imagine what they'd have me do in there that I'd have trouble with. I already went through steep turns, slow flight, stalls, falling leaf stalls, simulated engine out to landing, wheel and 3 point TOLS. It's just a puppy dog of an airplane. What they'd more likely get me on is not flying, but systems, and there aren't even hardly any of those...but I'll study that ahead of time, of course.
I can't believe it's Friday tomorrow already. This week went by fast for not having any flights...
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
(Mostly) Good News
I'm officially able to lift the 6 lb weights straight out and up again, so my arms are about back where they were before I put a-hundred-and-many-pounds on them at a high rate of speed. No real harm done then, just an old lady wipe-out and recovery. :)
Speaking of old lady, I went to the eye doctor today. The nice thing is that my prescription for my contacts didn't change in almost 2 years. The bad thing is that my near vision IS worse. So he put me in the machine and said "Can you read this?" and the tiny script was all fuzzy. I said 'not very well, no.' He said that was my current vision with my current prescription. Then he flipped a thing and asked if I could read it now. It was crystal clear. He said "That's how we can correct your near vision with bifocals." He said that around 40 a person's near vision deteriorates. Yep, ladies and gents, I go from not wearing glasses at all to sucking it up and getting glasses that I only wore while reading to getting contacts full time to bifocals and contacts w/reading glasses in about 5 years flat. Sheesh.
I only had two problems with the whole experience. One was paying for it. One eye exam plus new glasses lenses (even with my own old frames) plus one new box of contacts per eye, even with a 20% discount, was P-ainful. The second problem was a new test they have. He dropped these yellow numbing drops in my eyes, and had me sit up and stare at this blue circle light thing. He was bringing it close to my eye, and said "Hold still and don't blink; I'm going to touch your eyeball with this." I involuntarily backed my head up and said "Um, no." He told me not to worry about it, that I wouldn't feel a thing because he'd numbed my eyeballs, but that is NOT the point. I can still see it coming at my eyeball. I guess this test is a replacement for the puff of air in the eyeball which for some reason they can't hardly get anybody to cooperate with. ;) I told him it took me 6 months to be able to keep my eye open and stick a contact in it. Every time he'd get close with that thing I'd back up and close my eyes, like some little kid clenching their jaw shut at the dentist's office or something. It was embarrassing. Finally I sucked it up and managed to get it done, and he was right, I couldn't feel a thing, which still wasn't the point though. ;) He then had me put in my new contacts to try them out and I couldn't feel when the contact was touching my eye because my eyeball was still numb, so I poked myself in the eye to make sure it was on--and taking them back off was worse, squeezing your eye to pop off the contact when you can't feel your eye felt just disgusting. I was afraid I'd squeeze too hard. I'm still creeped out.
My eyeball had one more bit of adjustment today--when Kaylee got off the bus today, she was one bright and cheerful young lady. This picture is in the car, so the lighting isn't the best, but these are the new neon shoes with the new orange pants and wearing the not new lime green sweatshirt. She said that a lot of people came up to her at school and told her they loved her shoes, even some boys. She said she thought that the boys saying something was weird, and I said no, if they were willing to cross the boy-girl line to comment on your shoes, that's not weird, it just means they like your shoes, man, it's a compliment!
Speaking of old lady, I went to the eye doctor today. The nice thing is that my prescription for my contacts didn't change in almost 2 years. The bad thing is that my near vision IS worse. So he put me in the machine and said "Can you read this?" and the tiny script was all fuzzy. I said 'not very well, no.' He said that was my current vision with my current prescription. Then he flipped a thing and asked if I could read it now. It was crystal clear. He said "That's how we can correct your near vision with bifocals." He said that around 40 a person's near vision deteriorates. Yep, ladies and gents, I go from not wearing glasses at all to sucking it up and getting glasses that I only wore while reading to getting contacts full time to bifocals and contacts w/reading glasses in about 5 years flat. Sheesh.
I only had two problems with the whole experience. One was paying for it. One eye exam plus new glasses lenses (even with my own old frames) plus one new box of contacts per eye, even with a 20% discount, was P-ainful. The second problem was a new test they have. He dropped these yellow numbing drops in my eyes, and had me sit up and stare at this blue circle light thing. He was bringing it close to my eye, and said "Hold still and don't blink; I'm going to touch your eyeball with this." I involuntarily backed my head up and said "Um, no." He told me not to worry about it, that I wouldn't feel a thing because he'd numbed my eyeballs, but that is NOT the point. I can still see it coming at my eyeball. I guess this test is a replacement for the puff of air in the eyeball which for some reason they can't hardly get anybody to cooperate with. ;) I told him it took me 6 months to be able to keep my eye open and stick a contact in it. Every time he'd get close with that thing I'd back up and close my eyes, like some little kid clenching their jaw shut at the dentist's office or something. It was embarrassing. Finally I sucked it up and managed to get it done, and he was right, I couldn't feel a thing, which still wasn't the point though. ;) He then had me put in my new contacts to try them out and I couldn't feel when the contact was touching my eye because my eyeball was still numb, so I poked myself in the eye to make sure it was on--and taking them back off was worse, squeezing your eye to pop off the contact when you can't feel your eye felt just disgusting. I was afraid I'd squeeze too hard. I'm still creeped out.
My eyeball had one more bit of adjustment today--when Kaylee got off the bus today, she was one bright and cheerful young lady. This picture is in the car, so the lighting isn't the best, but these are the new neon shoes with the new orange pants and wearing the not new lime green sweatshirt. She said that a lot of people came up to her at school and told her they loved her shoes, even some boys. She said she thought that the boys saying something was weird, and I said no, if they were willing to cross the boy-girl line to comment on your shoes, that's not weird, it just means they like your shoes, man, it's a compliment!
So there ya go--one brightly colored young lady.
I heard my first "boyfriend/girlfriend" story today too. Apparently a young man "broke up with" a young lady in her class, and then at lunch had a group of the other young men poking at and making fun of the said "dumped" young lady, who was then made to cry. Thank you Lord that she's not interested in doing the 'boy' thing yet. I know, I know, everybody goes through bad breakups, can't save them from it. But still. At least if I've seen her pick up one lesson we've tried to tell her about things like this, it's to never let the bullies/buggers see you cry.
Kaylee's math project for the night is to spend $1,000,000 on specific items, and then on whatever you want, in order to spend as close to the million as possible without going over. You have to write the appropriate checks for each expense, so you have to know how to write checks, too. She had to pay for a passport, luggage, a trip to Russia, hotel, food, rental car, etc., She then bought a Ferrari and a home here in the states, a cabin in the woods for her dad (and me), and had enough money left over to buy an airplane. She wanted to know what she could get, and I told her she could get an RG, and she said "I don't want the RG. I want something cool. I can't afford the Mustang, right?" I said no, and she asked how much the 340 was, so I told her that, she went shopping and bought a nice 340 to go with her house and car. The rest she'll donate to charity, which means she'll be able to get right at $1,000,000. Math project and life skills practice, complete. ;)
Well, at least it's the first official day of Spring, even if it is 27 degrees with 25-30 knot blowing icy winds. It'll get better at some point here. C'mon, bring on the leaves, flowers, and warm gentle breezes...
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Blast
So what's one of my least favorite things to do in the world? Go shopping. What's one of Kaylee's most favorite things to do in the world? Go shopping. Since I'm the one with the car keys (for now), she rarely gets to indulge in this past time, but today was the day. Report cards came out the other day, and she brought all her grades up except one, so that A- became A or A+, etc. She was in need of some new shoes and had no shorts that fit her any more for the Spring that I swear is coming up (and even if not, we ARE going to Florida where surely it will be warm by the end of the month here). So since this is a very quiet week for me as far as flying goes, it was the best time to take her to get some stuff.
We spent two hours at the mall, and this kid brought home some of the most brightly colored clothes I've ever seen. Orange, lime green, electric blue, yellow. Her new DC shoes are a mixture of neon purple, pink, orange, yellow, etc., and she plans on wearing those with her new orange pants and her orange and white shirt tomorrow. She's always loved bright colors, so it doesn't surprise me too much, but she is going to be one eye popping kid. :) We were unable to get the first pair of DC shoes she found on the internet that she loved, but she loved these too, so it ended with a happy and bright-literally-kid. ;)
She also picked out clothes that are more form fitting, for the first time. Normally she likes things loose and baggy, but not this time. Not that they're too tight, just that they are more form fitting and stylish. The end result is that she looks more mature. She came out and modeled a dress and then some shorts that she bought today, and when she left the room, Steve looked over at me and said "Aw, no. I get extra points for this." For not saying she had to go back to the baggy t-shirts and sweats and take back the shorts and summer dress, that is.
Steve and I met up with my cousin Jimmy and his wife Jane today for lunch, and they stuck around until about 4 pm. They're both high school teachers now, in Kansas. Jimmy was always my favorite cousin because he would play with me, interact with me like I was more than just a dumb kid, had fun with me, and let me drive his car before I was old enough to drive. He was ornery and a prankster and a lot of fun. He said if you wanted to know what I looked like when I was 12, just look at Kaylee. That's not quite true, but I'll take it as a compliment. :) Anyway, as always, it was good to see him again. He likes airplanes too, so we went out to the airport to look at a few. If the winds wouldn't have been gusting up to about 40 knots, I'd have taken them up in something, but as it was, it would sure not have been a good day for fun flying, not even to me. Who likes getting their fillings knocked loose, let alone if you're not even having to get somewhere specific?
I was going to walk on the treadmill today, but after that shopping excursion I don't think it's necessary. If you think shopping isn't exercise, you haven't been shopping with my kid. I'm tired. ;)
We spent two hours at the mall, and this kid brought home some of the most brightly colored clothes I've ever seen. Orange, lime green, electric blue, yellow. Her new DC shoes are a mixture of neon purple, pink, orange, yellow, etc., and she plans on wearing those with her new orange pants and her orange and white shirt tomorrow. She's always loved bright colors, so it doesn't surprise me too much, but she is going to be one eye popping kid. :) We were unable to get the first pair of DC shoes she found on the internet that she loved, but she loved these too, so it ended with a happy and bright-literally-kid. ;)
She also picked out clothes that are more form fitting, for the first time. Normally she likes things loose and baggy, but not this time. Not that they're too tight, just that they are more form fitting and stylish. The end result is that she looks more mature. She came out and modeled a dress and then some shorts that she bought today, and when she left the room, Steve looked over at me and said "Aw, no. I get extra points for this." For not saying she had to go back to the baggy t-shirts and sweats and take back the shorts and summer dress, that is.
Steve and I met up with my cousin Jimmy and his wife Jane today for lunch, and they stuck around until about 4 pm. They're both high school teachers now, in Kansas. Jimmy was always my favorite cousin because he would play with me, interact with me like I was more than just a dumb kid, had fun with me, and let me drive his car before I was old enough to drive. He was ornery and a prankster and a lot of fun. He said if you wanted to know what I looked like when I was 12, just look at Kaylee. That's not quite true, but I'll take it as a compliment. :) Anyway, as always, it was good to see him again. He likes airplanes too, so we went out to the airport to look at a few. If the winds wouldn't have been gusting up to about 40 knots, I'd have taken them up in something, but as it was, it would sure not have been a good day for fun flying, not even to me. Who likes getting their fillings knocked loose, let alone if you're not even having to get somewhere specific?
I was going to walk on the treadmill today, but after that shopping excursion I don't think it's necessary. If you think shopping isn't exercise, you haven't been shopping with my kid. I'm tired. ;)
Monday, March 18, 2013
Al dente
I got some of my arms back last night while I slept. Now at least I can control them
Get it? Limp? To al dente? Just checking.
I seem to have a quiet week here, without trips or students either one, so I've been hitting other stuff that is usually hard to schedule ahead of time thanks to my unscheduled schedule. So Wednesday I get my eyes checked, Thursday I have a doc appointment, and Friday I get my flight medical done. So that's an expensive week...but at least all that unpleasantness will be over with by Friday afternoon.
Kaylee doesn't really ask for much as far as clothes, shoes, jewelry, that girly kind of stuff. As a result, she has the same pair of tennies I bought her for $5 at the Dollar General Store when she needed a pair for a cheerleading thing she was trying out last year. They're ragged and falling apart. So she mentioned this, and then politely pointed out a specific pair of shoes that she saw and liked, which she rarely does. And do you know I can find a picture of them on the internet, but I can't find them to buy for anything? There are a few pairs used on eBay, but none in her size. I think the store discontinued that exact shoe. I spent an hour looking for those stupid shoes. She hasn't had the best luck on a few things lately, and has handled most of it a lot more gracefully than some adults I know, and I sort of took on these shoes as a Mission. I even emailed the company asking about them. I'm That Mom. I can't do anything about a few other things, so I just want to get my kid the stinking pair of shoes she wants. Dumb, huh? Can't help it. ;)
Today Kaylee took a self-portrait in her room, and then edited it to black and white with her phone. The below is the result. It kind of makes me blink.
Get it? Limp? To al dente? Just checking.
I seem to have a quiet week here, without trips or students either one, so I've been hitting other stuff that is usually hard to schedule ahead of time thanks to my unscheduled schedule. So Wednesday I get my eyes checked, Thursday I have a doc appointment, and Friday I get my flight medical done. So that's an expensive week...but at least all that unpleasantness will be over with by Friday afternoon.
Kaylee doesn't really ask for much as far as clothes, shoes, jewelry, that girly kind of stuff. As a result, she has the same pair of tennies I bought her for $5 at the Dollar General Store when she needed a pair for a cheerleading thing she was trying out last year. They're ragged and falling apart. So she mentioned this, and then politely pointed out a specific pair of shoes that she saw and liked, which she rarely does. And do you know I can find a picture of them on the internet, but I can't find them to buy for anything? There are a few pairs used on eBay, but none in her size. I think the store discontinued that exact shoe. I spent an hour looking for those stupid shoes. She hasn't had the best luck on a few things lately, and has handled most of it a lot more gracefully than some adults I know, and I sort of took on these shoes as a Mission. I even emailed the company asking about them. I'm That Mom. I can't do anything about a few other things, so I just want to get my kid the stinking pair of shoes she wants. Dumb, huh? Can't help it. ;)
Today Kaylee took a self-portrait in her room, and then edited it to black and white with her phone. The below is the result. It kind of makes me blink.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Limp
My arms feel a little bit like alien arms. I have trouble putting enough down force on them at the right angle to push a remote button or the toilet handle. A few times I've reached for something or tried to lift my arm and it flopped around a little, and I'd miss what I aimed at. It's weird, and new. I was fine all day yesterday until late evening and then I guess it caught up to me. It's kind of ironic-months of stretching and light weight lifting and mostly back to normal other than the one thing I can't do-push up style force-and one fall on my face bending my arms back like that and I'm temporarily back to not being able to get up off a chair properly. I got the ribs on my right side too, but that's no big deal. Having trouble lifting my arm up to put my glasses on is much more hassle. I'm sure it'll take a few days to reduce swelling or whatever got tweaked in there. And no, I still don't regret going skating and yes I'd do it again. Just 'cause I have some weird back/neck/arm problem doesn't mean I'm too old yet--I just need to not let small children plow me over. Maybe next time I'll just go ahead and body check the kid into the wall before letting him take me down. ;) I kid, I kid. I think... ;)
I read a book today called "Firefly Lane", a story about two girls who became best friends at age 14 and were inseparable their whole lives, the different paths their lives took-one fame and fortune, the other stay at home mom-and how they found fulfilment in their own lives. It also had a big theme of mother/daughter relationships and school and girl drama in the 12-teen years. Mostly reading that, as well as some other real world stories of moms dealing with issues with their almost-to-early-teen-girls makes me pretty thankful that while my girl is headstrong and stubborn and dramatic, she's also polite and respectful and kind and mature. The hardest part for parents so far is, I think, the whole social thing, the parts you can't control, the hurt feelings and the watching your kid being left out of things and trying to navigate the whole friendship thing. Bleh. You know, just reading this, it occurred to me that this book was pretty much "Beaches" in print form. Including the ending. Two kids who become friends, one flashy, popular and showy who becomes a star, the other quiet, smart, who has a daughter more like her friend than like her, cancer takes her instead of a heart problem, but still, same basic idea. That's funny...goes to show you there are few if any 'new' ideas under the sun. :)
Well, welcome back to Monday, folks...
I read a book today called "Firefly Lane", a story about two girls who became best friends at age 14 and were inseparable their whole lives, the different paths their lives took-one fame and fortune, the other stay at home mom-and how they found fulfilment in their own lives. It also had a big theme of mother/daughter relationships and school and girl drama in the 12-teen years. Mostly reading that, as well as some other real world stories of moms dealing with issues with their almost-to-early-teen-girls makes me pretty thankful that while my girl is headstrong and stubborn and dramatic, she's also polite and respectful and kind and mature. The hardest part for parents so far is, I think, the whole social thing, the parts you can't control, the hurt feelings and the watching your kid being left out of things and trying to navigate the whole friendship thing. Bleh. You know, just reading this, it occurred to me that this book was pretty much "Beaches" in print form. Including the ending. Two kids who become friends, one flashy, popular and showy who becomes a star, the other quiet, smart, who has a daughter more like her friend than like her, cancer takes her instead of a heart problem, but still, same basic idea. That's funny...goes to show you there are few if any 'new' ideas under the sun. :)
Well, welcome back to Monday, folks...
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Productivity
Productivity has been down the last few weeks on my end, so it was good to have a day where I actually accomplished some stuff. Aside from my driver's license being expired, my medical is due for renewal too, so I got that date set up. I now have to use Med XPress, which I've never used before, but how hard can it be, right? ;) What's funny is that the Med XPress website is down for four days right when I need to be on it. But...I'll have about one day before I go down for my medical to get it figured out and filled out. I also hate to go get the medical, because as of now I've got a valid Third Class Medical until I'm 45 years old, because I got my last one right before my 40th birthday. But I have to have that darned Second Class Medical for the MBros flights and any other Commercial Ops, and it's only valid for one year, and now that I'm over 40, even the Third Class will only be good for two years. That stinketh.
I also went through and re-upped for a few memberships that are coming due. One of them is NATA. I still hate to pay money each year for the privilege of...what, exactly...with them? But, I filled out their form and got it in the mail today. Every year I fill out the form, it asks how much time you have in various aircraft. Total time, T-6, T-28, P-51, B-25, and tailwheel. Every other year I have filled out Total time, T-6 time and tailwheel time, and left the others blank. This year I decided to heck with it, and I went through my logbook back when I'd actually legally been PIC and/or been hands on actually flying it, and put in the legal P-51 hours. I didn't before because hours being a human autopilot is not the intent of the question. But, I decided if it's legal and good enough for the FAA, and would be good enough and legal to count for insurance, then it's good enough for those yahoos at NATA.
Speaking of P-51, I got two packages last night from my Mom, filled with specialty chocolates for my birthday. The card said "I DID try to look for chocolates in the shape of a Mustang". Heh. I'm not sure I'd have eaten it for awhile if it was, but I always had trouble eating chocolate Easter Bunnies too, so that's probably just me. :D Now, I have to hide those things, otherwise Kaylee will devastate my supply, and we can't have that--I'd hate to have to beat a 12-year-old...
This afternoon I took Kaylee and we met M & H and Judy at the roller skating rink in town. I went out to assist in the beginning, and most of us had fun. :) Kaylee didn't fall even one time for once, which is new for her, although I did save her about 3 times. And then there was the time I was sabotaged. A young man in red who didn't know how to skate yet was like a squirrel running across the road--wherever you swerve, he swerves to meet you. I was by myself that time, going around pretty quickly to catch back up to the kids, and this young man swerves in my path head on. I go to go around him, and he swerves right back in my face. I tried to hop out of the way, and he ran into my legs and swiped them right out from under me, and I not only went down, I went down flat on my face. I tried to catch myself with my arms, but oh yeah, my arms still don't work in that direction, let alone with all this mass headed straight down at a high rate of speed. *SCHMACK!* That's twice in a couple of weeks I've ended up completely flat on one side of me or the other! lol I got one knee a little, but other than that it was seriously flat out. My arms still feel funny a few hours later, trembly and not working quite right, but as far as I can tell I didn't break anything inside. ;) We skated for about an hour, then went upstairs to their game room, which was a disaster area. Most of the games were broken, parts off of games were busted up, there was a big hole in the wall, it was just a mess up there, so we didn't stay long. The girls all came home with me, where I told them they get the whole front half of the house, I get the back half of the house, we share the kitchen, nobody eat the goldfish, and go have fun. :)
We ended the night by going out to Indian Hills where John D. had created a usual feast. This was a really good, tender pot roast, and cabbage on the side thankyouverymuch, so if you don't want it you don't have to eat it. ;) Homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, deviled eggs, homemade mac and cheese, French bread and butter, AE's homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream (for St. Patrick's Day), a goodbye cake for Walt & Cindy S. who are moving to Tennessee, and just waaaay too much food. I'm still stuffed 3 hours after I ate. Blergh. Kaylee and the kids played outside pretty much the whole time, also taking time to play in the Explorer when they got chilly. So that was good, lots of run around and play time, get some fresh air and some exercise and some time to hang out with friends. Twas a good day. Other than the fact that I can't seem to use my arms again right now, and darn it Chuck I AM going to have to take some Aleve, but other than that it twas a good day. :D
I also went through and re-upped for a few memberships that are coming due. One of them is NATA. I still hate to pay money each year for the privilege of...what, exactly...with them? But, I filled out their form and got it in the mail today. Every year I fill out the form, it asks how much time you have in various aircraft. Total time, T-6, T-28, P-51, B-25, and tailwheel. Every other year I have filled out Total time, T-6 time and tailwheel time, and left the others blank. This year I decided to heck with it, and I went through my logbook back when I'd actually legally been PIC and/or been hands on actually flying it, and put in the legal P-51 hours. I didn't before because hours being a human autopilot is not the intent of the question. But, I decided if it's legal and good enough for the FAA, and would be good enough and legal to count for insurance, then it's good enough for those yahoos at NATA.
Speaking of P-51, I got two packages last night from my Mom, filled with specialty chocolates for my birthday. The card said "I DID try to look for chocolates in the shape of a Mustang". Heh. I'm not sure I'd have eaten it for awhile if it was, but I always had trouble eating chocolate Easter Bunnies too, so that's probably just me. :D Now, I have to hide those things, otherwise Kaylee will devastate my supply, and we can't have that--I'd hate to have to beat a 12-year-old...
This afternoon I took Kaylee and we met M & H and Judy at the roller skating rink in town. I went out to assist in the beginning, and most of us had fun. :) Kaylee didn't fall even one time for once, which is new for her, although I did save her about 3 times. And then there was the time I was sabotaged. A young man in red who didn't know how to skate yet was like a squirrel running across the road--wherever you swerve, he swerves to meet you. I was by myself that time, going around pretty quickly to catch back up to the kids, and this young man swerves in my path head on. I go to go around him, and he swerves right back in my face. I tried to hop out of the way, and he ran into my legs and swiped them right out from under me, and I not only went down, I went down flat on my face. I tried to catch myself with my arms, but oh yeah, my arms still don't work in that direction, let alone with all this mass headed straight down at a high rate of speed. *SCHMACK!* That's twice in a couple of weeks I've ended up completely flat on one side of me or the other! lol I got one knee a little, but other than that it was seriously flat out. My arms still feel funny a few hours later, trembly and not working quite right, but as far as I can tell I didn't break anything inside. ;) We skated for about an hour, then went upstairs to their game room, which was a disaster area. Most of the games were broken, parts off of games were busted up, there was a big hole in the wall, it was just a mess up there, so we didn't stay long. The girls all came home with me, where I told them they get the whole front half of the house, I get the back half of the house, we share the kitchen, nobody eat the goldfish, and go have fun. :)We ended the night by going out to Indian Hills where John D. had created a usual feast. This was a really good, tender pot roast, and cabbage on the side thankyouverymuch, so if you don't want it you don't have to eat it. ;) Homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, deviled eggs, homemade mac and cheese, French bread and butter, AE's homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream (for St. Patrick's Day), a goodbye cake for Walt & Cindy S. who are moving to Tennessee, and just waaaay too much food. I'm still stuffed 3 hours after I ate. Blergh. Kaylee and the kids played outside pretty much the whole time, also taking time to play in the Explorer when they got chilly. So that was good, lots of run around and play time, get some fresh air and some exercise and some time to hang out with friends. Twas a good day. Other than the fact that I can't seem to use my arms again right now, and darn it Chuck I AM going to have to take some Aleve, but other than that it twas a good day. :D
Friday, March 15, 2013
More MO
I was up and at 'em at 5:30 this morning, and we got to St. Louis right as the sun was hitting the Arch. Unfortunately it was a hazy morning, so no good for photos this time. Not like I don't have enough photos of the Arch anyway at this point...can't help it-it's a sickness...
First thing I did when I got to St. Louis at 7:30 a.m. their time was grab a coffee and try to stay awake. Failing that I did something I've only done a couple time ever in my flying history--I went into the pilot lounge, turned off the TV, shut the door, put my coat on top of me and fell asleep for two hours in one of their recliners. Much better. Maybe I'll be able to turn into Dale one of these days after all. ;)
I spent a little time driving around St. Louis, checking stuff out, wandered around a few shops, went for a brisk walk, had lunch, told people they were wrong on the internet, you know, all that hard work stuff. ;) The gent I fly with is getting pretty good. It's a pleasure to see someone with such low total hours handle a relatively complex airplane in a professional manner. He's seen it all by now, multiple times. Fog, thunderstorms, ice, night, large, busy airspace, short little strips in the middle of nowhere, wind shear and gusts up into the low 40 knot range, all of it. Lately on the trips I'm pretty much insurance baggage and emergency back-up, no matter what the situation. That's pretty cool, actually...
While I was in Missouri and Steve was working on a server thingy, Kaylee was hanging out with Maggie and Hannah and some of the Glenndale Gang. She told me that at dinner somebody asked her where I was tonight, and she shrugged and said she didn't know, she never knows what state I'm in. Tis not true, I always tell her where I'm going, she just doesn't remember. lol She told me on the way home tonight that the one that sticks with her is when I texted her at lunchtime at school and told her that I was in Pennsylvania and was going to be there for two days. She said her friend read the text over her shoulder and was just like "WHAT? Your Mom's in PENNSYLVANIA for two days? And she's just texting you about it??" I said "Hey, I was supposed to be back that night, but I ended up knowing I was going to be weathered in--what was I supposed to do, run home and tell you in person?" :P I asked again if it bothered her that her mom wandered around from state to state sometimes, and she said "Nah, I'm used to it."
Speaking of kids and flying, this video has been making the rounds, and I think it's pretty sweet. I like when she's clapping after takeoff, and I love when she throws her arms out, the huge laughing and waving, the look on her face. It's sweet. This is the real magic of flight. This is why there's an old saying that says you can't grow up to be a pilot--you can either grow up OR you can be a pilot, but you can't do both. Because inside, an awful lot of us are still exactly like this six-year-old girl.
The quote in my inbox today:
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
~George Eliot
First thing I did when I got to St. Louis at 7:30 a.m. their time was grab a coffee and try to stay awake. Failing that I did something I've only done a couple time ever in my flying history--I went into the pilot lounge, turned off the TV, shut the door, put my coat on top of me and fell asleep for two hours in one of their recliners. Much better. Maybe I'll be able to turn into Dale one of these days after all. ;)
I spent a little time driving around St. Louis, checking stuff out, wandered around a few shops, went for a brisk walk, had lunch, told people they were wrong on the internet, you know, all that hard work stuff. ;) The gent I fly with is getting pretty good. It's a pleasure to see someone with such low total hours handle a relatively complex airplane in a professional manner. He's seen it all by now, multiple times. Fog, thunderstorms, ice, night, large, busy airspace, short little strips in the middle of nowhere, wind shear and gusts up into the low 40 knot range, all of it. Lately on the trips I'm pretty much insurance baggage and emergency back-up, no matter what the situation. That's pretty cool, actually...
While I was in Missouri and Steve was working on a server thingy, Kaylee was hanging out with Maggie and Hannah and some of the Glenndale Gang. She told me that at dinner somebody asked her where I was tonight, and she shrugged and said she didn't know, she never knows what state I'm in. Tis not true, I always tell her where I'm going, she just doesn't remember. lol She told me on the way home tonight that the one that sticks with her is when I texted her at lunchtime at school and told her that I was in Pennsylvania and was going to be there for two days. She said her friend read the text over her shoulder and was just like "WHAT? Your Mom's in PENNSYLVANIA for two days? And she's just texting you about it??" I said "Hey, I was supposed to be back that night, but I ended up knowing I was going to be weathered in--what was I supposed to do, run home and tell you in person?" :P I asked again if it bothered her that her mom wandered around from state to state sometimes, and she said "Nah, I'm used to it."
Speaking of kids and flying, this video has been making the rounds, and I think it's pretty sweet. I like when she's clapping after takeoff, and I love when she throws her arms out, the huge laughing and waving, the look on her face. It's sweet. This is the real magic of flight. This is why there's an old saying that says you can't grow up to be a pilot--you can either grow up OR you can be a pilot, but you can't do both. Because inside, an awful lot of us are still exactly like this six-year-old girl.
The quote in my inbox today:
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
~George Eliot
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Snapshots
I had a flight in the 172 this morning for an hour, and then we were in the hangar talking about getting driver's licenses renewed, having to retake the written exam, points on your license, and so forth. When we sat down at lunch, on a whim I pulled out my driver's license, only to see it had expired on my birthday. Doh. I was originally supposed to have a flight from 2-4, but he canceled, so instead I went to the BMV and got my license renewed. Motorcycle endorsement, organ donor and all. The only difference is that this time I had contacts in, so I have a new restriction on my license. When we took the picture, he said "You can't have any hair touching your eyebrows, so push it all aside, and put your lips together." This made me smirk, but I think I stopped before he snapped the photo. I'm glad the conversation came up, because honestly, I don't think I'd have thought about my driver's license expiration date until the next time somebody looked at it, and I don't need another police officer to be the one to find that little detail again. It looks bad, you know? I'm just glad it's such a painless process. Answer questions, pay your money, check your eyes, promise you're not a terrorist or criminal, smirk at the camera, and away you go. New license will be in the mail shortly, wa-la. One thing I wonder about--he told me it would be $21 until he saw I had a motorcycle endorsement. Then he said "That'll be $41." Man, it's just an "M" on the back of your license, it's not like it's $20 worth of ink or anything... Speaking of which, I need to go exercise that "M" soon.
Tonight was Kaylee's first Play Rehearsal. Her part is only in the Second Act of two, so she doesn't have to go to every rehearsal, just the ones for the second half of the play and then the ones for the full dress rehearsal. I asked her if she wanted me to come in with her during practice, and she said "No offense Mom, but I'd rather you not. I'll have a hard time concentrating if you're sitting there watching me." I said "Okay. But how are you going to handle the actual play, where everybody will be coming to sit and watch you?" She said "I did recitals just fine--I'll just pretend like you're not there." So, I dropped her off for her rehearsal and am waiting to hear how it all went. (She just returned and is really 'stoked'. Her fairy was given a name and a line of her own, so she now has an actual speaking part in the play too. ;))
Someone who used to be one of my best friends from flight school (he wasn't in the flight program, where I had no friends, but was in Criminal Justice to be a police officer), whom I hadn't seen nor heard from in about 15 years, just found me on Facebook and said hi. I almost didn't recognize him, and it sure brought back a lot of memories from that time. Now, the next order of business is to have him NOT come up here to visit and share any of those stories around my friends and coworkers. ;) We did have fun. We were all broke, I was in school full time and had a pretty much full time job and still found time to find ways to have fun, cheap to free. A group of us hung out every night, whoever was free stopping in and hanging out at Duane's apartment, doing homework and then doing whatever sounded good at the time. We did everything from benign stuff like midnight sand volleyball and watching movies to stuff that probably should have ended up killing somebody but thankfully didn't. I don't have real great memories about flight training and the people therein, other than the magic of learning how to fly an airplane of course, but I do have some pretty fond memories of college itself and that gang of misfits and ne'er-do-wells...
Tonight was Kaylee's first Play Rehearsal. Her part is only in the Second Act of two, so she doesn't have to go to every rehearsal, just the ones for the second half of the play and then the ones for the full dress rehearsal. I asked her if she wanted me to come in with her during practice, and she said "No offense Mom, but I'd rather you not. I'll have a hard time concentrating if you're sitting there watching me." I said "Okay. But how are you going to handle the actual play, where everybody will be coming to sit and watch you?" She said "I did recitals just fine--I'll just pretend like you're not there." So, I dropped her off for her rehearsal and am waiting to hear how it all went. (She just returned and is really 'stoked'. Her fairy was given a name and a line of her own, so she now has an actual speaking part in the play too. ;))
Someone who used to be one of my best friends from flight school (he wasn't in the flight program, where I had no friends, but was in Criminal Justice to be a police officer), whom I hadn't seen nor heard from in about 15 years, just found me on Facebook and said hi. I almost didn't recognize him, and it sure brought back a lot of memories from that time. Now, the next order of business is to have him NOT come up here to visit and share any of those stories around my friends and coworkers. ;) We did have fun. We were all broke, I was in school full time and had a pretty much full time job and still found time to find ways to have fun, cheap to free. A group of us hung out every night, whoever was free stopping in and hanging out at Duane's apartment, doing homework and then doing whatever sounded good at the time. We did everything from benign stuff like midnight sand volleyball and watching movies to stuff that probably should have ended up killing somebody but thankfully didn't. I don't have real great memories about flight training and the people therein, other than the magic of learning how to fly an airplane of course, but I do have some pretty fond memories of college itself and that gang of misfits and ne'er-do-wells...
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
And So On
I'm not sure why the new Pope has to dominate and interrupt TV coverage. I don't care who the new Pope is. As someone else said, "WE don't have a new Pope--YOU have a new Pope. I don't need a Pope--I get to speak to God directly." I think it's all politics and power, personally, and I want nothing to do with it.
Kaylee's been doing the ISTEP testing this week, and today was one of the last days. That's meant that all week she hasn't had any homework--until tonight. Tonight's homework is a series of math problems where they circle three words in a sentence. Like "sneakers are $19, socks are $11, how much are shorts?" So two of those words are given dollar values. sneakers = 19, socks = 11. You have to figure out the dollar value of the third word, shorts. Consonants in each word are worth something, vowels worth something else. So first you have to figure out how they came to the dollar value of the first word, see if it works on the second word too (there are multiple solutions), and then you can easily determine the value of the third word. This was the kind of thing that would have left me banging my head on the wall as a kid in impatience. She's doing much better than I did, thank heavens. ;)
The FAA has come out with five new "Safety Alerts" for pilots for this Spring. They basically say "don't stall low to the ground, don't fly into bad weather, show good judgement", etc. I know they need to spend millions and millions of dollars to try to do something to stop the same accidents from happening over and over, but I think they're missing something. Nobody starts off a flight ignorant of what a stall is, for example. It's taught in the first few lessons. Nobody doesn't know what bad weather is. Nobody thinks they have bad judgement in general. The problem is that usually these things happen in a way you didn't see coming, didn't expect, didn't mean to do. Beyond that, telling somebody to use good judgement is like telling somebody to be smart. You can say it all you want, but you can't make it happen, and sometimes, neither can they. I don't know what the answer is, other than the obvious--you (hopefully) learn to make good decisions from experience and you gain experience from sometimes making bad decisions. The problem is, in this arena, you have to survive the bad decisions, and not everybody gets the chance to do that. So how do you get people to not make bad decisions in the first place? Figure that one out and you'll be wealthy for life--especially from parents of teenagers. :)
Speaking of parents of teenagers, almost, Kaylee and I had a conversation on the way home from school that made me laugh. She asked me about what a "stick shift" was and how it worked and what pedals went where and such. So I went into a fairly basic explanation of manual vs automatic transmission vehicles, and she said "I don't think I'm going to drive a manual." I said very firmly "Oh yes you are." She kind of huffed and said "WHY? It sounds like a pain." I told her that no kid of mine was going to be unable to drive a stick shift. We went back and forth a little bit, and then I said "Besides, remember, our Corvette is manual." She said "Don't they make automatic Corvettes?" Oh, the heresy!! I was offended. I said that they do, but that it's like putting training wheels on a bicycle, just Not Cool. She said it seems like an unnecessary thing to learn, and I told her she had to learn to drive a stick, period, just like she was going to learn how to fly a taildragger, not just "tricycle gear". That's where the song came in that I belted out in the car: "Mommas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to Only Drive Automatics-or-Nosedraggers..." She rolled her eyes at me. I don't care. She's still going to learn to both drive and fly a stick. ;)
One other Kaylee story. On the bus this morning, a kid was cursing and dropping F-bombs and being really rude, loudly. Kaylee said there were kindergartners on the bus asking what some of the words meant. When she got off the bus, she told the bus driver what had been going on, the bus driver told the principal, the principal called Kaylee into his office to tell him about it, which she did. The principal thanked her for stepping up and letting them know about it. I asked her, out of curiosity, "so what if he finds out you were the one who told on him?" She shrugged and said "He wouldn't be a problem--he's a 5th grader and he's small. I could handle him. Besides, I'd have backup from some of the other kids on the bus." I wonder if any of the other kids on the bus told him to knock it off first. I'll have to ask. Anyway, it wasn't a difficult decision for her to make, she didn't feel the need to ask if she should or shouldn't, she wasn't worried about it afterwards, she just thought a grown-up needed to tell the kid to knock it off because it was affecting the "little" kids...
A pilot for the Collins Foundation just "friended" me on Facebook, and under his quotes he had listed this one, which made me laugh (I apologize to some of you for this one):
Aviation is the abusive white trash boyfriend that I am too stupid to leave.
~Unknown
Kaylee's been doing the ISTEP testing this week, and today was one of the last days. That's meant that all week she hasn't had any homework--until tonight. Tonight's homework is a series of math problems where they circle three words in a sentence. Like "sneakers are $19, socks are $11, how much are shorts?" So two of those words are given dollar values. sneakers = 19, socks = 11. You have to figure out the dollar value of the third word, shorts. Consonants in each word are worth something, vowels worth something else. So first you have to figure out how they came to the dollar value of the first word, see if it works on the second word too (there are multiple solutions), and then you can easily determine the value of the third word. This was the kind of thing that would have left me banging my head on the wall as a kid in impatience. She's doing much better than I did, thank heavens. ;)
The FAA has come out with five new "Safety Alerts" for pilots for this Spring. They basically say "don't stall low to the ground, don't fly into bad weather, show good judgement", etc. I know they need to spend millions and millions of dollars to try to do something to stop the same accidents from happening over and over, but I think they're missing something. Nobody starts off a flight ignorant of what a stall is, for example. It's taught in the first few lessons. Nobody doesn't know what bad weather is. Nobody thinks they have bad judgement in general. The problem is that usually these things happen in a way you didn't see coming, didn't expect, didn't mean to do. Beyond that, telling somebody to use good judgement is like telling somebody to be smart. You can say it all you want, but you can't make it happen, and sometimes, neither can they. I don't know what the answer is, other than the obvious--you (hopefully) learn to make good decisions from experience and you gain experience from sometimes making bad decisions. The problem is, in this arena, you have to survive the bad decisions, and not everybody gets the chance to do that. So how do you get people to not make bad decisions in the first place? Figure that one out and you'll be wealthy for life--especially from parents of teenagers. :)
Speaking of parents of teenagers, almost, Kaylee and I had a conversation on the way home from school that made me laugh. She asked me about what a "stick shift" was and how it worked and what pedals went where and such. So I went into a fairly basic explanation of manual vs automatic transmission vehicles, and she said "I don't think I'm going to drive a manual." I said very firmly "Oh yes you are." She kind of huffed and said "WHY? It sounds like a pain." I told her that no kid of mine was going to be unable to drive a stick shift. We went back and forth a little bit, and then I said "Besides, remember, our Corvette is manual." She said "Don't they make automatic Corvettes?" Oh, the heresy!! I was offended. I said that they do, but that it's like putting training wheels on a bicycle, just Not Cool. She said it seems like an unnecessary thing to learn, and I told her she had to learn to drive a stick, period, just like she was going to learn how to fly a taildragger, not just "tricycle gear". That's where the song came in that I belted out in the car: "Mommas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to Only Drive Automatics-or-Nosedraggers..." She rolled her eyes at me. I don't care. She's still going to learn to both drive and fly a stick. ;)
One other Kaylee story. On the bus this morning, a kid was cursing and dropping F-bombs and being really rude, loudly. Kaylee said there were kindergartners on the bus asking what some of the words meant. When she got off the bus, she told the bus driver what had been going on, the bus driver told the principal, the principal called Kaylee into his office to tell him about it, which she did. The principal thanked her for stepping up and letting them know about it. I asked her, out of curiosity, "so what if he finds out you were the one who told on him?" She shrugged and said "He wouldn't be a problem--he's a 5th grader and he's small. I could handle him. Besides, I'd have backup from some of the other kids on the bus." I wonder if any of the other kids on the bus told him to knock it off first. I'll have to ask. Anyway, it wasn't a difficult decision for her to make, she didn't feel the need to ask if she should or shouldn't, she wasn't worried about it afterwards, she just thought a grown-up needed to tell the kid to knock it off because it was affecting the "little" kids...
A pilot for the Collins Foundation just "friended" me on Facebook, and under his quotes he had listed this one, which made me laugh (I apologize to some of you for this one):
Aviation is the abusive white trash boyfriend that I am too stupid to leave.
~Unknown
Monday, March 11, 2013
Superior
I had just gotten up for the morning when I got an email and text asking if I was available to go to the northern corner of Wisconsin today. I was indeed, so as fast as I could get ready and get out there, we took off and headed north. A little ice, a little snow, a GPS 4 approach there and an ILS 23 approach here, neither one very low at all, and 4.8 hours of flight time for the day. I could practically see Canada from where we were. I stole a courtesy car and went to town to find a good place to eat (success), and was driving up the airport road on my way home when a Jeep swerved into my lane headed at me, then swerved away. Okay. I got inside the FBO, and the guy behind the counter said "My friend Bob just called and told me to apologize to you. He told me that either I was not the one driving my vehicle, or my hair was a lot longer than he thought. He said he was sorry for swerving at you." Heh. I thought that was great.
On the way up, Chicago Approach routed us around briefly for traffic, and then said "Resume own navigation, cleared direct Bong." Then he paused and said "I just had to say that once." The name of the airport we were going into was "Bong Airport." It was named after a WWII fighter pilot, an ace, Major Dick Bong. Major Bong was the leading Ace of WWII, in fact, with 40 kills. Forty.
The airport itself had these beautiful murals painted on the walls, was almost on Lake Superior, and surrounded by little hills. It was a really pretty airport with a lot of history. Here are a bunch of photos I took today of the airport and the flight home...
On the way up, Chicago Approach routed us around briefly for traffic, and then said "Resume own navigation, cleared direct Bong." Then he paused and said "I just had to say that once." The name of the airport we were going into was "Bong Airport." It was named after a WWII fighter pilot, an ace, Major Dick Bong. Major Bong was the leading Ace of WWII, in fact, with 40 kills. Forty.
The airport itself had these beautiful murals painted on the walls, was almost on Lake Superior, and surrounded by little hills. It was a really pretty airport with a lot of history. Here are a bunch of photos I took today of the airport and the flight home...
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Forty-One
Twas a quiet day, which was just fine. I finished the first book in the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series and will probably finish the second book before I go to bed tonight. It sure started off slow, but when it finally kicked in, it got pretty interesting. I ordered in Chinese for dinner, and we just hung out.
It seems to me that 40 went by really fast. I have to admit, I feel and have felt for awhile (and look) kind of beat up and worn down, not a usual nor usually lasting state of affairs for me, but while I joke about being old and 40 now, I don't actually blame the age. I don't think, anyway. I'm still the youngest one around, you know. ;) Normally I'm the annoyingly optimistic one, looking forward to what's next, no matter what. Instead I feel more like I'm looking out for what's next, for awhile now, and it's worn on me. Well, hopefully spring and the promises of life therein will take care of some of that.
Kaylee has an irrational dislike of Chinese food. So this place has chicken nuggets. She wanted them until she found out they were "Chinese chickens". At that point she couldn't stand the thought of eating them. She can't explain what the difference is, and won't listen to us when we tell her there's no such thing as Chinese chicken. Crazy kid. ;)
We've got Spring Break plans about finalized. We'll be going down to Florida, we'll visit Steve's mom and dad for a bit, and then we'll bunk in a hotel on Daytona Beach, the same hotel one of Kaylee's classmates is going to be staying at, and we'll hook up with them. There are some fun things planned, along with good old fashioned beach time, and she's excited. Steve got a rental car, and we had a compact car, until he saw a picture of it. He showed it to me, and my first reaction was "Well, that's just embarrassing." Normally we don't care-after all, I'm the one that gets a kick out of playing Courtesy Car Bingo-but I'm not even sure we'd get all three of us plus our bags for a week into that clown car. The upgrade for the whole week was $20, so we decided that would be worth it. Originally we were set up in a nice hotel at St. Pete; now we're at a more...laid-back...hotel at Daytona, so that Kaylee would have some friends to "Break" with. Saved some money, too. It's coming up fast, so I'd better make sure we have what we need. Like sunscreen and hats and swim suits and flip flops and shorts and...stuff. I think it's going to be fun.
Onward.
It seems to me that 40 went by really fast. I have to admit, I feel and have felt for awhile (and look) kind of beat up and worn down, not a usual nor usually lasting state of affairs for me, but while I joke about being old and 40 now, I don't actually blame the age. I don't think, anyway. I'm still the youngest one around, you know. ;) Normally I'm the annoyingly optimistic one, looking forward to what's next, no matter what. Instead I feel more like I'm looking out for what's next, for awhile now, and it's worn on me. Well, hopefully spring and the promises of life therein will take care of some of that.
Kaylee has an irrational dislike of Chinese food. So this place has chicken nuggets. She wanted them until she found out they were "Chinese chickens". At that point she couldn't stand the thought of eating them. She can't explain what the difference is, and won't listen to us when we tell her there's no such thing as Chinese chicken. Crazy kid. ;)
We've got Spring Break plans about finalized. We'll be going down to Florida, we'll visit Steve's mom and dad for a bit, and then we'll bunk in a hotel on Daytona Beach, the same hotel one of Kaylee's classmates is going to be staying at, and we'll hook up with them. There are some fun things planned, along with good old fashioned beach time, and she's excited. Steve got a rental car, and we had a compact car, until he saw a picture of it. He showed it to me, and my first reaction was "Well, that's just embarrassing." Normally we don't care-after all, I'm the one that gets a kick out of playing Courtesy Car Bingo-but I'm not even sure we'd get all three of us plus our bags for a week into that clown car. The upgrade for the whole week was $20, so we decided that would be worth it. Originally we were set up in a nice hotel at St. Pete; now we're at a more...laid-back...hotel at Daytona, so that Kaylee would have some friends to "Break" with. Saved some money, too. It's coming up fast, so I'd better make sure we have what we need. Like sunscreen and hats and swim suits and flip flops and shorts and...stuff. I think it's going to be fun.
Onward.
Saturday, March 09, 2013
Quick
Late last night I got a text from one of the formation guys--several of the guys were backing out because Sunday's weather didn't look good and they didn't want to go all the way to Kentucky for part of a Saturday. A couple of them were still going, but I decided not to go if I wasn't going to be able to get a good solid practice time in. It's two hours minimum just to get there and back, which is a lot of gas to burn without a better return on "investment", no four-ship flying, etc. So instead I slept in all the way to 8:15 a.m. and went out to Kokomo to fly with a student and send her off on her first solo cross country. The winds were right down the runway, so I had her do a direct crosswind landing on the other runway. She said "But the winds won't be this much of a crosswind where I'm going", and I said "Good, then it won't be any problem after this, right?" :) The cross country went well, thankfully, one more big one to go then on to checkride prep.
We went to Outback this evening, ate way too much, including dessert, and while I should go walk some of that off on the treadmill, I'm going to wait until maybe tomorrow, if I can get back up off the couch even by then. ;)
We went to Outback this evening, ate way too much, including dessert, and while I should go walk some of that off on the treadmill, I'm going to wait until maybe tomorrow, if I can get back up off the couch even by then. ;)
Friday, March 08, 2013
Falling Rust
What a cruddy night's sleep! I saw 3 a.m. come but I was gone, finally, shortly after that. Nothing like feeling like a crank most of the day.
I met up with a new "Discovery Flight" student today, and we went up and did our thing in the 172RG. It was a nice sunny day, warmer than it has been, no snow on the runway anyway, and light winds, and I thought to myself "Hmmmm". Tomorrow I'm supposed to go to Kentucky in the T-6, and it hasn't run in 4 months, and I haven't touched it in 4 months either. While I had Jon out at the airport to help me shuffle around the airplanes, we pulled everything out, topped off the Six with oil and fuel, pulled through the prop a Lot, and after my Discovery Flight left, I fired it up and ran it awhile. It started a little reluctantly, a little slow to start purring smoothly, but eventually it settled in, and I took it up for a bit. I wasn't up long, ended up burning a whole 8 gallons of gas (Steve) total, but I wanted to make sure all was well. Of course I had three airplanes lined up to watch my first landing, only a 40 degree crosswind at 9 knots, not much. I'd been planning on 3-pointing it because those are harder to do nicely, but when I saw I had an audience I thought briefly about wheel landing it, before sticking with the original plan and ignoring them. It wasn't a total greaser, but it was close. The left main touched just a bit before the tailwheel, but it was nice and smooth and I'll claim it. This also probably means that tomorrow I'll plop it on, but that's the way it goes. It's one of the reasons I like this airplane-you really cannot relax or let your mind wander (unless you're in the middle of the sky) until the mags are off. I can't think of any other airplane I fly where I can't be thinking about something else too while I'm landing. Not that one, yet. Well, maybe I could, I don't know, but I don't dare. lol
Kaylee recorded her band playing a couple of songs today at school and posted them on her Facebook page. If you know your instruments, she's the saxophone.
I'm really beat. I think I'll find a snack and a drink and something to watch and relax before tomorrow...
I met up with a new "Discovery Flight" student today, and we went up and did our thing in the 172RG. It was a nice sunny day, warmer than it has been, no snow on the runway anyway, and light winds, and I thought to myself "Hmmmm". Tomorrow I'm supposed to go to Kentucky in the T-6, and it hasn't run in 4 months, and I haven't touched it in 4 months either. While I had Jon out at the airport to help me shuffle around the airplanes, we pulled everything out, topped off the Six with oil and fuel, pulled through the prop a Lot, and after my Discovery Flight left, I fired it up and ran it awhile. It started a little reluctantly, a little slow to start purring smoothly, but eventually it settled in, and I took it up for a bit. I wasn't up long, ended up burning a whole 8 gallons of gas (Steve) total, but I wanted to make sure all was well. Of course I had three airplanes lined up to watch my first landing, only a 40 degree crosswind at 9 knots, not much. I'd been planning on 3-pointing it because those are harder to do nicely, but when I saw I had an audience I thought briefly about wheel landing it, before sticking with the original plan and ignoring them. It wasn't a total greaser, but it was close. The left main touched just a bit before the tailwheel, but it was nice and smooth and I'll claim it. This also probably means that tomorrow I'll plop it on, but that's the way it goes. It's one of the reasons I like this airplane-you really cannot relax or let your mind wander (unless you're in the middle of the sky) until the mags are off. I can't think of any other airplane I fly where I can't be thinking about something else too while I'm landing. Not that one, yet. Well, maybe I could, I don't know, but I don't dare. lol
Kaylee recorded her band playing a couple of songs today at school and posted them on her Facebook page. If you know your instruments, she's the saxophone.
I'm really beat. I think I'll find a snack and a drink and something to watch and relax before tomorrow...
Thursday, March 07, 2013
This is Life
Tonight was the Parent Meeting and first run-through of the script for Kaylee's play. She learned that she doesn't have a name, just "Fairy", and I don't believe she has any lines of her own, just a couple of group lines. Meanwhile a friend of hers who was shy and stuttering and didn't read the script well at all got a part with a name and 13 independent lines. That friend's little 6 year old sister got "fairy" too. Kaylee decided she was pretty bummed about this. We talked about it some, and I started off patiently, reminding her that she was willing to just work behind the scenes, that she was excited to get any part at all, that you have to start somewhere, etc. She kept on with the pity party a little longer than I could do, though. When Steve got home, he asked Kaylee "So what did your Mom say about it?" and she replied with "She told me to suck it up." He said "Well geez, *I* didn't say that!" It's true, I did say that, but only after about an hour--I had lots of other good motherly things to say before that!
She's actually doing a lot better now--it was the initial disappointment that got to her, but within a couple hours here she's cracking jokes about her role and ready to have some fun with it.
I guess this is the start of practice for her at dealing with disappointments in an appropriate way. See, there's this kid, his parent bought him a C-172 to get his Private and Instrument in and build time in, and then sold that and bought him a Mooney for his Commercial, with which he travels all over the USA meeting up with people and having fun, then sent him off for his Commercial Instrument Multi-engine, though they haven't bought a twin yet. They bought him into flying with a B-25 around the country, though not at the controls (yet). They bought him a racing motorcycle, they send him on vacations to foreign countries...he just turned 18. He was just handed an opportunity to get his SIC in a Citation, which he turned down temporarily but will go back to later because he was handed a job to fly 402s in Alaska, even though he didn't meet the hourly requirements for the job. He gets a phone call that of the 8 pilots they hired in Alaska, they only needed 5, and of the 8 applicants, 5 of them met the IFR Part 135 requirements, so those were the ones they were keeping. He Pitched A Fit. He had a public temper tantrum, ranted about how terrible his life was, ranted about how he'd been planning on this job, how awful they were, etc. He became extremely bitter and furious at a girl pilot with low time who was sitting right seat in a Gulfstream, angry that HE couldn't "sleep" his way to the top like that, etc. He was just a nasty, nasty little whiner about for once not getting his way. So I read all this and then come out from the play...and that may be why I wasn't able to be just warm and fuzzy about it with her for too long. If he was my son, and I had been able to do all those things for him, and then he acted that way when something didn't work out, I would be so embarrassed and disappointed and angry. I know he's young, but young doesn't give you the right to be a public jerk, particularly when you've had everything you ever wanted handed to you thus far in life through nothing of your doing other than being lucky in who your parents are. I've had to walk my fingers away from the keyboard so I don't tell the kid to grow up and try getting a real job and life sometime. I just told my OWN kid, who is a good kid and whom I love very much, to "suck it up". Somebody else's pampered 18 year old whiner is just about more than I can bear. ;)
Having said that--I'm disappointed for her too. She did a good job. She did a better job than some people who got real parts. I think that kind of stinks and I think the fact that it's likely politics that has something to do with it stinks even more. But it also is what it is, getting bent out of shape won't help her any, she still gets a chance to be on stage in a play for the first time, and I hope that she enjoys this, and that the next time she tries out for a play she maybe gets a role with a name, and some lines, and is given a real chance...
The parent meeting tonight lasted over an hour, where they told us what all the committees were, and that we all had to volunteer for one or two of them. You could paint and design and build the set, or you could do hair and make up, or you could sew and design costumes, or you could organize the opening night party or the after show cast party or you could organize all the parents and committees and keep things running smoothly or you could be the contact for all the parents and call them all when there were things that needed done. Everyone is expected to babysit the 38 kids in the waiting room in rotation during the practices--they practice 4 days a week from now until May 5th. Oh please shoot me now. I signed up for selling tickets at the door, taking care of the t-shirt distribution, tearing down the set after each showing, stuff like that, but there weren't many things like that. Most of it was sewing, cooking, makeup, crafting, even shopping for and making props. I'll help where I can.
To end on a discordant note having nothing to do with this entire conversation--the other night when I was coming in to shoot the approach, I had thought I'd let the autopilot do it. But you can't put any flaps down with the autopilot engaged or the airplane wildly vacillates, so I kicked off the autopilot, put down the flaps, slowed down, got everything lined up, then kicked back on the autopilot. At this point the localizer was coming in, so it went to capture that, and I noticed the airplane was pitching up pretty hard. It gained 250 feet, then suddenly pitched down, pretty hard. So I got to take over as the localizer was coming in and the pitch and trim and altitude was goofed up, and hand fly the rest of the thing anyway. 1. Something needs looked at there, I think. and 2. This is why you don't just rely on technology to get you places.
Bedtime...
She's actually doing a lot better now--it was the initial disappointment that got to her, but within a couple hours here she's cracking jokes about her role and ready to have some fun with it.
I guess this is the start of practice for her at dealing with disappointments in an appropriate way. See, there's this kid, his parent bought him a C-172 to get his Private and Instrument in and build time in, and then sold that and bought him a Mooney for his Commercial, with which he travels all over the USA meeting up with people and having fun, then sent him off for his Commercial Instrument Multi-engine, though they haven't bought a twin yet. They bought him into flying with a B-25 around the country, though not at the controls (yet). They bought him a racing motorcycle, they send him on vacations to foreign countries...he just turned 18. He was just handed an opportunity to get his SIC in a Citation, which he turned down temporarily but will go back to later because he was handed a job to fly 402s in Alaska, even though he didn't meet the hourly requirements for the job. He gets a phone call that of the 8 pilots they hired in Alaska, they only needed 5, and of the 8 applicants, 5 of them met the IFR Part 135 requirements, so those were the ones they were keeping. He Pitched A Fit. He had a public temper tantrum, ranted about how terrible his life was, ranted about how he'd been planning on this job, how awful they were, etc. He became extremely bitter and furious at a girl pilot with low time who was sitting right seat in a Gulfstream, angry that HE couldn't "sleep" his way to the top like that, etc. He was just a nasty, nasty little whiner about for once not getting his way. So I read all this and then come out from the play...and that may be why I wasn't able to be just warm and fuzzy about it with her for too long. If he was my son, and I had been able to do all those things for him, and then he acted that way when something didn't work out, I would be so embarrassed and disappointed and angry. I know he's young, but young doesn't give you the right to be a public jerk, particularly when you've had everything you ever wanted handed to you thus far in life through nothing of your doing other than being lucky in who your parents are. I've had to walk my fingers away from the keyboard so I don't tell the kid to grow up and try getting a real job and life sometime. I just told my OWN kid, who is a good kid and whom I love very much, to "suck it up". Somebody else's pampered 18 year old whiner is just about more than I can bear. ;)
Having said that--I'm disappointed for her too. She did a good job. She did a better job than some people who got real parts. I think that kind of stinks and I think the fact that it's likely politics that has something to do with it stinks even more. But it also is what it is, getting bent out of shape won't help her any, she still gets a chance to be on stage in a play for the first time, and I hope that she enjoys this, and that the next time she tries out for a play she maybe gets a role with a name, and some lines, and is given a real chance...
The parent meeting tonight lasted over an hour, where they told us what all the committees were, and that we all had to volunteer for one or two of them. You could paint and design and build the set, or you could do hair and make up, or you could sew and design costumes, or you could organize the opening night party or the after show cast party or you could organize all the parents and committees and keep things running smoothly or you could be the contact for all the parents and call them all when there were things that needed done. Everyone is expected to babysit the 38 kids in the waiting room in rotation during the practices--they practice 4 days a week from now until May 5th. Oh please shoot me now. I signed up for selling tickets at the door, taking care of the t-shirt distribution, tearing down the set after each showing, stuff like that, but there weren't many things like that. Most of it was sewing, cooking, makeup, crafting, even shopping for and making props. I'll help where I can.
To end on a discordant note having nothing to do with this entire conversation--the other night when I was coming in to shoot the approach, I had thought I'd let the autopilot do it. But you can't put any flaps down with the autopilot engaged or the airplane wildly vacillates, so I kicked off the autopilot, put down the flaps, slowed down, got everything lined up, then kicked back on the autopilot. At this point the localizer was coming in, so it went to capture that, and I noticed the airplane was pitching up pretty hard. It gained 250 feet, then suddenly pitched down, pretty hard. So I got to take over as the localizer was coming in and the pitch and trim and altitude was goofed up, and hand fly the rest of the thing anyway. 1. Something needs looked at there, I think. and 2. This is why you don't just rely on technology to get you places.
Bedtime...
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