I haven't really heard from Kaylee, other than her asking me to help her get her passport renewed. She's doing fine, last I heard. :)
The scale is still moving in the correct direction, so that's good. I've been good and consistent about food and exercise for about 3 weeks here. But wouldn't it be nice if it came off as fast as it went on?
I got a text from D, asked if I'd happen to be available to fly tomorrow morning to Bismarck, North Dakota, for a funeral. My schedule DOES happen to be open on a Saturday, which is unusual, so I said sure. Paychecks are good, especially in February. The only problem is that the 340 isn't topped off and the airport is closed, and we're leaving at 6:30 am before they open. So I drove out there tonight, pulled it out, taxied it over to the self-serve pump, and topped it off. The biggest problem with it was that it's very dark out there. There's one super bright light on the top of the fuel farm, but it's SO bright that it ruins your night vision while not actually making it so you can see inside the tanks. It just glares in your eyes. I was wearing my glasses, which kept fogging over, and I couldn't hold my iPhone light and the fuel nozzle at the same time. So it was a little difficult, and cold, but I got it done. The other hard part was taxiing back to the hangar in the dark with my glasses fogged over. I can't see with them off, and I couldn't see with them on. So that was nice. ;) I got the headsets ready to go in the back, made sure we had enough oil for a nice loooong flight, got the tanks topped, and came on home. We're flying to Mankato, Minnesota first for a fuel stop, then going on up to Bismarck. There's some ice to deal with, naturally, some wind shear, a nasty headwind and gusty surface winds up there, but otherwise it seems like an okay day. Hopefully. I'll have to be out there by 6:15 am, which means I need to leave the house by 5:55 am, which means I need to get up about 5 am. Oh yay. It'll be almost a 5 hour flight out there, plus the fuel stop. It's gonna be a long day. Probably close to 9 hours of flight time, plus an hour on the ground for the fuel stop, plus however many hours on the ground up there, plus about 45 minutes drive time to the airport and back. Like I said...long day.
Meanwhile, there's an article that came out that sort of floored me. Apparently not everyone can hear their thoughts in their head. I hear this in my head as I'm typing it. I hear books in my head as I'm reading them. I can look in a mirror and have a conversation without saying anything out loud, and hear it in my head. I thought everybody did. Apparently not. That's wild--I can't imagine the inside of my head being...silent. All the time. That's so WEIRD.
Friday, January 31, 2020
Thursday, January 30, 2020
Pennsylvania
All right. Mother Nature did cooperate for once, somehow. Nathan and Steve took off in the Aerostar this morning, and I was pulling into the airport and saw them fly about right over my head. It was a nice sight, and made me smile. I was a little surprised, as I assumed I'd be flying the Aerostar and Nathan would take the Cheyenne, but he got out there early and got everything ready, and the Aerostar is slower, so since he was ready, he launched first. It worked out perfectly. I beat them there still, but not by a ton. The timing was great.
The flight over, I was alone, with the tunes on, at 27,000'. The only things that kept it from being relaxing were 1) my GPS failed and came up and said basically "Use other Navigation". The interesting and informative thing to me was that my iPad GPS failed too. All my GPS navigation went out all at once. That told me it's most likely a bad antenna. I only know that from it happening in the 340. It took me by surprise the first time. It won't take me by surprise again. ;) The GPS came back on after almost 2 minutes, which doesn't sound like a long time, but it's longer than you think when you're doing over 400 mph and now don't have a way to properly navigate. I was getting ready to set up victor airways and VORs when it came back on line, thankfully. I was more concerned about having to shoot an RNAV approach into Pennsylvania, and having that happen, but the ceilings were JUST good enough for me to do a visual, and if I had to, they did have a Localizer approach on the other runway. So it was all good. Oh, and as for not being relaxing #2), the left engine was doing that thing where it loses torque, and then the right engine did it too. So you can't help but look at it and hope it keeps on humming along like it has been. It did. I reported it to the mechanic and I'm sure they'll dig into it. I'd even managed to get a little video clip of it doing it, which the mechanic appreciated.
We got in the Aerostar, and Nathan rode in the back and Steve and I up front. We stopped at Muncie to have lunch, and I had bacon and eggs and toast. Good Stuff, man. A nice break-up of the day. Nathan flew us home from there.
I got my walking done, got my correspondence caught up, got some phone calls made and kitchen picked up. You know...stuff! Tomorrow Steve has fasting blood work, so he can't eat after 8 pm. Evenings are the hardest time for both of us to not snack. So we went out to Grindstone's, and I'll try not to snack in front of him later. ;) I actually had a fillet, and broccoli, and fruit. I'm going to weigh tomorrow, so I didn't want anything too salty that might retain pesky water. ;)
The Meijer food delivery went well. They showed up when they were supposed to. The lady who brought me all the groceries though, she was older, maybe late 50s early 60s, heavy, had a bum leg or foot, and here she is hauling my groceries in from the car on the street a few bags at a time. I felt rather guilty about the whole thing. She got paid, and a tip, and I'm sure she appreciates the money she's making, but gosh, I did that because I didn't feel great yesterday, and she was in worse shape than I was! It's too expensive to do regularly. But it's nice to have as an option for those times you just can't get out and need something.
Kaylee texted me last night, asked me a question about grammar. I answered her, and she said "The campus offers a writing lab help thing, but, like, who needs that when I have you!" I said she does better on her own than 90% of adults. She said "I did have a Teacher's Assistant with a Masters in English correct one of my papers, and she didn't find anything wrong with my paper. She said I probably could've used two paragraphs to explain a certain topic instead of the one that I used. But I only did one because it was a single topic. So that's just a personal preference, not actually incorrect on my part. She spoke in class about how there were a ton of errors with commas and comma splices and stuff--but not in mine! Ha ha." I said "Isn't it nice when a Masters in English can't really find anything wrong with your paper? I'm proud. Lol" She said "Thank you, you taught me well." So, Mom, you taught me, I taught her. It's not a terrible thing to pass on, I'd say. ;)
Photos from today. Proof again that there IS blue sky up there somewhere.
The flight over, I was alone, with the tunes on, at 27,000'. The only things that kept it from being relaxing were 1) my GPS failed and came up and said basically "Use other Navigation". The interesting and informative thing to me was that my iPad GPS failed too. All my GPS navigation went out all at once. That told me it's most likely a bad antenna. I only know that from it happening in the 340. It took me by surprise the first time. It won't take me by surprise again. ;) The GPS came back on after almost 2 minutes, which doesn't sound like a long time, but it's longer than you think when you're doing over 400 mph and now don't have a way to properly navigate. I was getting ready to set up victor airways and VORs when it came back on line, thankfully. I was more concerned about having to shoot an RNAV approach into Pennsylvania, and having that happen, but the ceilings were JUST good enough for me to do a visual, and if I had to, they did have a Localizer approach on the other runway. So it was all good. Oh, and as for not being relaxing #2), the left engine was doing that thing where it loses torque, and then the right engine did it too. So you can't help but look at it and hope it keeps on humming along like it has been. It did. I reported it to the mechanic and I'm sure they'll dig into it. I'd even managed to get a little video clip of it doing it, which the mechanic appreciated.
We got in the Aerostar, and Nathan rode in the back and Steve and I up front. We stopped at Muncie to have lunch, and I had bacon and eggs and toast. Good Stuff, man. A nice break-up of the day. Nathan flew us home from there.
I got my walking done, got my correspondence caught up, got some phone calls made and kitchen picked up. You know...stuff! Tomorrow Steve has fasting blood work, so he can't eat after 8 pm. Evenings are the hardest time for both of us to not snack. So we went out to Grindstone's, and I'll try not to snack in front of him later. ;) I actually had a fillet, and broccoli, and fruit. I'm going to weigh tomorrow, so I didn't want anything too salty that might retain pesky water. ;)
The Meijer food delivery went well. They showed up when they were supposed to. The lady who brought me all the groceries though, she was older, maybe late 50s early 60s, heavy, had a bum leg or foot, and here she is hauling my groceries in from the car on the street a few bags at a time. I felt rather guilty about the whole thing. She got paid, and a tip, and I'm sure she appreciates the money she's making, but gosh, I did that because I didn't feel great yesterday, and she was in worse shape than I was! It's too expensive to do regularly. But it's nice to have as an option for those times you just can't get out and need something.
Kaylee texted me last night, asked me a question about grammar. I answered her, and she said "The campus offers a writing lab help thing, but, like, who needs that when I have you!" I said she does better on her own than 90% of adults. She said "I did have a Teacher's Assistant with a Masters in English correct one of my papers, and she didn't find anything wrong with my paper. She said I probably could've used two paragraphs to explain a certain topic instead of the one that I used. But I only did one because it was a single topic. So that's just a personal preference, not actually incorrect on my part. She spoke in class about how there were a ton of errors with commas and comma splices and stuff--but not in mine! Ha ha." I said "Isn't it nice when a Masters in English can't really find anything wrong with your paper? I'm proud. Lol" She said "Thank you, you taught me well." So, Mom, you taught me, I taught her. It's not a terrible thing to pass on, I'd say. ;)
Photos from today. Proof again that there IS blue sky up there somewhere.
Keeping it classy, Kokomo
Blue skies, smilin' at me, nothin' but blue skies, do I see...
Except I can't see.
That was blinding for awhile, but I'm really not complaining.
That's never a good thing to see at 27,000' while GPS direct.
Night time panel is cooler, but I still like daytime panel too.
In between layers now.
Gumby on the way home.
Steve stayed awake most of the time. Just not all the time. So I still got 'em. ;)
A little view of the Cheyenne skimming the tops for about 3 seconds.
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Stuff
I'm not feeling so well today, so I guess it's good that I didn't have anything I had to do today. I got my walking in, but I did it slowly and with breaks. Which is better than nothing, which is what I did yesterday because I hadn't slept and didn't have the energy to do anything but sit and stare at the air. So this is an improvement.
I am trying Meijer's delivery service today. Because I Don't feel great and will be gone tomorrow so I'm not sure what time to arrange for pick up. So I ordered on line, and they will show up at my door with it between 9-10 pm. It's a $10 charge and you do have to tip the person who got it all together and delivered it to your door, so it's definitely a more expensive way to go about it. But I'm going to do it this one time, have it in reserve as an option for days like this.
I'm going to type out what Kaylee texted me today. This was in her Forensics Science class. Oh, and before I do that, she told me that Secret Service is coming to her school to recruit, and she's going to go check it out and get some information. Interesting!
"Today I had to do a lot of math, but it wasn't explained how to find what we needed to fine. We just had to find like the origin of the wound, and I did it! I had to figure it out by doing a whole process of mathy things that were not explained to us, and I feel very accomplished. Math in this context is actually very exciting! I actually liked it so much better since it wasn't completely explained. It was like a mystery, and we had to figure it out ourselves any way we knew how. Didn't have to follow a specific structure or formula. I actually used my precal knowledge and pulled out that inverse tangent.
Who am I.
It was literally a murder mystery! I was able to figure out from just a couple blood spots where the person was standing and how high up the wound was. The suspect said he hit him in the head, but the wound originated from only 2' up, and there was another wound from 4.6'. So I concluded the guy was hit in the ribs first, which doubled him over, and he was then hit in the head! Had to find the angle of impact too, by measuring the blood stain and connecting a pattern together of all the blood stains.
Isn't that cool??"
Yes it is. That is Super Cool. I loved reading about what she was doing, and I'm kind of jealous!
Today was also the first time I remember Kaylee not believing me when I said which was the proper word to use for something. She asked, I told her, she said "Are you sure? I think it's the other." Of course I was right, because, well, I know my words, thank you very much. But college may have made her doubt my English abilities! The horror! ;) Lol I couldn't pull out my pre-calc and inverse tangents, so she's probably about to bypass me on a few things. ;) Hey, I'm happy for her.
On the "here's a brag for my Mom" front. Our local CAF guys were emailing the head two guys at the National Headquarters of the CAF in Texas in "operations" to find out for sure what it would take to turn me into an instructor in the C-45 for the CAF. I already meet all the requirements even without a single flight in the Twin Beech, except I have to have a checkout and ten hours before I can give rides. And then the one main guy sent this: "To be honest, she is one of the best IPs in the CAF, and the paperwork is going to be the hard part." (IP is Instructor Pilot, and the CAF is nation-wide.) So that's nice.
Steve locked his keys in the Jeep at the airport today, so I got to go deliver him the back-up set of keys. Fortunately I felt good enough to get a little out and about. I told him I'd make fun of him later. After a 40 minute round trip drive plus a half hour wait at Steak-n-Shake, I earned the right to make a little fun. ;)
Tomorrow is a trip to Pennsylvania and back. Here's hoping for better weather than it looked like it was gonna be!
I am trying Meijer's delivery service today. Because I Don't feel great and will be gone tomorrow so I'm not sure what time to arrange for pick up. So I ordered on line, and they will show up at my door with it between 9-10 pm. It's a $10 charge and you do have to tip the person who got it all together and delivered it to your door, so it's definitely a more expensive way to go about it. But I'm going to do it this one time, have it in reserve as an option for days like this.
I'm going to type out what Kaylee texted me today. This was in her Forensics Science class. Oh, and before I do that, she told me that Secret Service is coming to her school to recruit, and she's going to go check it out and get some information. Interesting!
"Today I had to do a lot of math, but it wasn't explained how to find what we needed to fine. We just had to find like the origin of the wound, and I did it! I had to figure it out by doing a whole process of mathy things that were not explained to us, and I feel very accomplished. Math in this context is actually very exciting! I actually liked it so much better since it wasn't completely explained. It was like a mystery, and we had to figure it out ourselves any way we knew how. Didn't have to follow a specific structure or formula. I actually used my precal knowledge and pulled out that inverse tangent.
Who am I.
It was literally a murder mystery! I was able to figure out from just a couple blood spots where the person was standing and how high up the wound was. The suspect said he hit him in the head, but the wound originated from only 2' up, and there was another wound from 4.6'. So I concluded the guy was hit in the ribs first, which doubled him over, and he was then hit in the head! Had to find the angle of impact too, by measuring the blood stain and connecting a pattern together of all the blood stains.
Isn't that cool??"
Yes it is. That is Super Cool. I loved reading about what she was doing, and I'm kind of jealous!
Today was also the first time I remember Kaylee not believing me when I said which was the proper word to use for something. She asked, I told her, she said "Are you sure? I think it's the other." Of course I was right, because, well, I know my words, thank you very much. But college may have made her doubt my English abilities! The horror! ;) Lol I couldn't pull out my pre-calc and inverse tangents, so she's probably about to bypass me on a few things. ;) Hey, I'm happy for her.
On the "here's a brag for my Mom" front. Our local CAF guys were emailing the head two guys at the National Headquarters of the CAF in Texas in "operations" to find out for sure what it would take to turn me into an instructor in the C-45 for the CAF. I already meet all the requirements even without a single flight in the Twin Beech, except I have to have a checkout and ten hours before I can give rides. And then the one main guy sent this: "To be honest, she is one of the best IPs in the CAF, and the paperwork is going to be the hard part." (IP is Instructor Pilot, and the CAF is nation-wide.) So that's nice.
Steve locked his keys in the Jeep at the airport today, so I got to go deliver him the back-up set of keys. Fortunately I felt good enough to get a little out and about. I told him I'd make fun of him later. After a 40 minute round trip drive plus a half hour wait at Steak-n-Shake, I earned the right to make a little fun. ;)
Tomorrow is a trip to Pennsylvania and back. Here's hoping for better weather than it looked like it was gonna be!
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Yep!
The day went about as expected. Kaylee had a quiz, but I don't know how it went. Hopefully well. :)
The weather made sure none of us flew.
Our house got cleaned, my hair got done, lunch happened. I didn't sleep last night, like at all, so I felt a good bit like a zombie today. Steve and I drove down to Noblesville again, to pick up my Sig P365. Except it was sold out. So Steve can order it online, it'll be shipped to the store down there for free, and then I can go pick it up in a couple more days. We also got a business card for the owner, who is very accomplished in his field, and he will do a gun training course with Kaylee. We just got her a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard 380. He said it'll cover maintenance, marksmanship, safety, etc., and that by the end she will have gone through 100-200 rounds, and will feel comfortable with her weapon. That'll be great, and I know she will be good, careful, and precise.
I got my bloodwork lab results back today. This time it wasn't the full workup of kidney, liver, sugar, etc., but a pre-surgery CBC workup. Something I found interesting was that I had four things flagged on my labs. Two were high, two were low. Two were relating to my iron levels. Apparently I am running anemic right now. I'm low on hemoglobin (iron) and my RDW is too high, meaning I have a nutritional deficiency, usually iron. Then I have a high percentage of neutrophils in the blood which "is called neutrophilia. This is a sign that your body has an infection. Neutrophilia can point to a number of underlying conditions and factors, including: infection, most likely bacterial." Last but not least, I got a low Lymphocytopenia score. "Also referred to as lymphopenia, occurs when your lymphocyte count in your bloodstream is lower than normal. Severe or chronic low counts can indicate a possible infection or other significant illness." So, apparently I'm anemic and have some kind of potentiol infection somewhere that I don't know about. *shrug*. But she didn't want to talk to me about any of it, and other than being tired (the anemia has something to do with that, I'm sure, so I took a multivitamin with iron today to try to help), I feel okay. I also eat a lot of spinach, and I've been having fillet off off and on fairly regularly too. Interestingly, I have craved those things a little bit, so I guess my body knows what it needs.
My surgery is scheduled for Feb. 17th. I guess if a person has to be down for a few days and have a procedure done, it might as well be in the middle of the worst month in the year. The longest, dreariest, month, with the least number of things happening. :p
And here's your Family Story of the Day.
Today after lunch, Steve and I were driving home separately. I was in the lead, by several car lengths. I am coming up on a stoplight, and I think I have time, but I've apparently misjudged it, as it turns red right about as I get to it. So as I roll through, it's clearly red. I blew a red light. I look in my rear view mirror, and I see a police car at the intersection flip on its lights and start to turn towards me. I look ahead and groan and say "Aw, man, I'm busted. I'm going to get pulled over right in front of Steve." I look back in my mirror, and the police car is coming, but Steve is actually back behind me too. I thought..."how could Steve be behind me, he'd have been stopped by that light." Well, he wasn't. He wasn't paying attention and HE blew through the light, only he was waaaay behind me, so when he went through it, it was RED red. The police car pulled in behind him instead and let me go. The officer was not happy. Asked if he'd been drinking. Steve said no, he just...messed up. The officer might have been on his way to something else, because he didn't even give Steve a ticket or a warning, just asked him some questions, looked at his license, asked if it had ever been suspended (no, and glad he didn't ask me that), didn't even run him through the system, and let him go, then drove into the IUK parking lot while Steve left. So. Bottom line. Steve got pulled over for running a red and spared me from possibly getting a ticket for running a red. Ta Da. ;)
Happy Tuesday!
The weather made sure none of us flew.
Our house got cleaned, my hair got done, lunch happened. I didn't sleep last night, like at all, so I felt a good bit like a zombie today. Steve and I drove down to Noblesville again, to pick up my Sig P365. Except it was sold out. So Steve can order it online, it'll be shipped to the store down there for free, and then I can go pick it up in a couple more days. We also got a business card for the owner, who is very accomplished in his field, and he will do a gun training course with Kaylee. We just got her a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard 380. He said it'll cover maintenance, marksmanship, safety, etc., and that by the end she will have gone through 100-200 rounds, and will feel comfortable with her weapon. That'll be great, and I know she will be good, careful, and precise.
I got my bloodwork lab results back today. This time it wasn't the full workup of kidney, liver, sugar, etc., but a pre-surgery CBC workup. Something I found interesting was that I had four things flagged on my labs. Two were high, two were low. Two were relating to my iron levels. Apparently I am running anemic right now. I'm low on hemoglobin (iron) and my RDW is too high, meaning I have a nutritional deficiency, usually iron. Then I have a high percentage of neutrophils in the blood which "is called neutrophilia. This is a sign that your body has an infection. Neutrophilia can point to a number of underlying conditions and factors, including: infection, most likely bacterial." Last but not least, I got a low Lymphocytopenia score. "Also referred to as lymphopenia, occurs when your lymphocyte count in your bloodstream is lower than normal. Severe or chronic low counts can indicate a possible infection or other significant illness." So, apparently I'm anemic and have some kind of potentiol infection somewhere that I don't know about. *shrug*. But she didn't want to talk to me about any of it, and other than being tired (the anemia has something to do with that, I'm sure, so I took a multivitamin with iron today to try to help), I feel okay. I also eat a lot of spinach, and I've been having fillet off off and on fairly regularly too. Interestingly, I have craved those things a little bit, so I guess my body knows what it needs.
My surgery is scheduled for Feb. 17th. I guess if a person has to be down for a few days and have a procedure done, it might as well be in the middle of the worst month in the year. The longest, dreariest, month, with the least number of things happening. :p
And here's your Family Story of the Day.
Today after lunch, Steve and I were driving home separately. I was in the lead, by several car lengths. I am coming up on a stoplight, and I think I have time, but I've apparently misjudged it, as it turns red right about as I get to it. So as I roll through, it's clearly red. I blew a red light. I look in my rear view mirror, and I see a police car at the intersection flip on its lights and start to turn towards me. I look ahead and groan and say "Aw, man, I'm busted. I'm going to get pulled over right in front of Steve." I look back in my mirror, and the police car is coming, but Steve is actually back behind me too. I thought..."how could Steve be behind me, he'd have been stopped by that light." Well, he wasn't. He wasn't paying attention and HE blew through the light, only he was waaaay behind me, so when he went through it, it was RED red. The police car pulled in behind him instead and let me go. The officer was not happy. Asked if he'd been drinking. Steve said no, he just...messed up. The officer might have been on his way to something else, because he didn't even give Steve a ticket or a warning, just asked him some questions, looked at his license, asked if it had ever been suspended (no, and glad he didn't ask me that), didn't even run him through the system, and let him go, then drove into the IUK parking lot while Steve left. So. Bottom line. Steve got pulled over for running a red and spared me from possibly getting a ticket for running a red. Ta Da. ;)
Happy Tuesday!
Monday, January 27, 2020
More Gloom
More grey, more gloom. I guess winter has decided to settle in. Ugh. I had three students today, none of which could fly, of course. Tomorrow's not looking promising either. Thursday I need to go to Pennsylvania, and that doesn't look so good either.
We learned tonight that Jim Hartlage died this morning. He was out west with his new Filipino wife, who doesn't speak English. She woke up, fixed breakfast, went to find him, and found him slumped over and gone in the bathroom. Because she doesn't speak English, it took her awhile to figure out what to do, but she used his phone and ended up reaching his brother, who got the ball rolling. Meanwhile she's waiting out there for the brother to come pick her and the trailer up. Jim owns Indian Hills Airport, two hangars/home, a couple airplanes. I'm not sure how this is going to work with a new wife. Did he have a prenup? Or a will? I dunno. Kind of shocking news.
Steve and I drove down to Noblesville today to pick up a couple of new carry guns, one for each of us. I'm getting a Sig Sauer P365. He's getting a Kimber Micro 9. So we drive down there, get one mile away, I pull up the directions in order to find the exact spot, and it says they are closed on Mondays. Doh. So instead we went over to "The Church". The church is a literal church building in the middle of town, owned by one of our instructors, Nick. The inside of the building has been cleaned out, and they have airplane projects in there. They get the bodies of the airplanes inside, and the wings separately, and they are rebuilding a Citabria and formerly had a Kitfox and a Champ in there. It's heated, well lit, has a great paint booth, and is totally set up. So on Facebook the guys always say "Headed to church", and that's what they're doing--working on airplanes. Kind of fun, and a neat set up. We enjoyed our tour of it and hung out for a bit with Chuck, Nick and Ty.
Why was the Democratic portion of the Senate trial on every channel during the day all day every day they were "up", and today I saw nothing on any channel on the Republican side? So one side gets to broadcast to the world, force fed, and the other side can only be seen if someone seeks it out deliberately. Got it.
Two of the flying B-17 rides programs are shutting down, since the B-17 "909" accident last year. The Collins foundation is grounding itself while the FAA investigates its accident. But the "Movie the Memphis Belle" B-17 is shutting down its rides program permanently. Insurance costs, etc. It's a bad deal. :(
On to tomorrow. Getting my house cleaned, my hair done, probably not flying with my student, then possibly going to dinner with Matt Jackson and our friends. We'll see how it goes.
We learned tonight that Jim Hartlage died this morning. He was out west with his new Filipino wife, who doesn't speak English. She woke up, fixed breakfast, went to find him, and found him slumped over and gone in the bathroom. Because she doesn't speak English, it took her awhile to figure out what to do, but she used his phone and ended up reaching his brother, who got the ball rolling. Meanwhile she's waiting out there for the brother to come pick her and the trailer up. Jim owns Indian Hills Airport, two hangars/home, a couple airplanes. I'm not sure how this is going to work with a new wife. Did he have a prenup? Or a will? I dunno. Kind of shocking news.
Steve and I drove down to Noblesville today to pick up a couple of new carry guns, one for each of us. I'm getting a Sig Sauer P365. He's getting a Kimber Micro 9. So we drive down there, get one mile away, I pull up the directions in order to find the exact spot, and it says they are closed on Mondays. Doh. So instead we went over to "The Church". The church is a literal church building in the middle of town, owned by one of our instructors, Nick. The inside of the building has been cleaned out, and they have airplane projects in there. They get the bodies of the airplanes inside, and the wings separately, and they are rebuilding a Citabria and formerly had a Kitfox and a Champ in there. It's heated, well lit, has a great paint booth, and is totally set up. So on Facebook the guys always say "Headed to church", and that's what they're doing--working on airplanes. Kind of fun, and a neat set up. We enjoyed our tour of it and hung out for a bit with Chuck, Nick and Ty.
Why was the Democratic portion of the Senate trial on every channel during the day all day every day they were "up", and today I saw nothing on any channel on the Republican side? So one side gets to broadcast to the world, force fed, and the other side can only be seen if someone seeks it out deliberately. Got it.
Two of the flying B-17 rides programs are shutting down, since the B-17 "909" accident last year. The Collins foundation is grounding itself while the FAA investigates its accident. But the "Movie the Memphis Belle" B-17 is shutting down its rides program permanently. Insurance costs, etc. It's a bad deal. :(
On to tomorrow. Getting my house cleaned, my hair done, probably not flying with my student, then possibly going to dinner with Matt Jackson and our friends. We'll see how it goes.
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Sunday
I plugged in all the food I ate last night and found I actually stayed on track. I tried, but I'd sort of assumed I exceeded. But the fillet is always low cal, I ate the green beans and left most of the mashed potatoes, I ate a few pieces of ahi tuna, which is low cal, and even a cup of the lobster bisque and the creme brulet, they were the higher things, but not 1200 calories each like some of Steak n Shake's shakes, or like Outback's Thunder from Down Under. ;) Anyway, it wasn't as bad as I thought, which was nice, when you can eat like that and enjoy it and still not be that bad. But you gotta save up your calories for the day to pull it off. ;)
This is actually a rough weekend in aviation. Here's where I suggest the Moms don't read. Friday one of the Red Bull pilots went up and did a photo shoot with the team, then went out and messed around before coming in to land. His messing around wasn't well planned out, and he didn't have enough altitude to recover from his last maneuver, and he crashed into the ground, also killing a woman and her mother, and injuring her son along with killing himself. I didn't know him personally, but I know people who knew him, and they were of course shocked and devastated. Saturday comes along with a roar. The Twin Tigers is an aerobatic team that a close friend of mine works with. He flies their airplanes with them, goes to shows with them, etc. Mark S. and Mark N. We watched and enjoyed them do the night show at Oshkosh last year. Well, Mark S. bought a Mustang II, new to him, and he had a trip as a Southwest pilot and was gone. So Mark N. transported the plane home for him, then took up his (Mark S's) 13 year old son Nathan for his first loop and roll. They were at 500' AGL in the pattern when the TAIL FELL OFF of the airplane. There's nothing he could do, they went in like a dart. Nathan's mom was on the ground watching, and his brother was filming it all with an iPhone. The mom called my friend 15 minutes after it happened, hysterical. I can't even. (None of that is public knowledge yet other than Mark N. and Nathan S. dying in a crash.) I lost sleep thinking about those poor families. And about how...the TAIL FELL OFF. Who sees that coming?! You can't do anything about it. You're just done. Yuck. Thank God that pretty much doesn't happen. What a freak, freak thing. So now I'm thinking about that old superstition that things happen in threes. It IS just a superstition. And yet here comes Sunday. Kobe Bryant goes down in a helicopter with his 13 year old daughter (and 3 other people). Not an airshow performer, but a performer. I don't know if that counts on the "bad things happen in threes" front, but I'm going to say it does so that there aren't any more. Even though I don't believe in superstition. There are a bunch of other tragedies and lives lost this weekend than these three aviation accidents, I know, probably even other aviation accidents. It's just two in circles of people I know, and one "public figure". But it's sad, and so many lives impacted this weekend. We'll only hear about Kobe, because he's the most famous one. But there are a lot of other hurting people this weekend.
Here, the sun is shining. I've gotten all the dishes and laundry caught up. Steve is working on projects. Kaylee is happy and warm and well. We have a busy week coming up. Busy in the winter surprises me, but if Mother Nature holds off, I won't complain.
Stay well.
This is actually a rough weekend in aviation. Here's where I suggest the Moms don't read. Friday one of the Red Bull pilots went up and did a photo shoot with the team, then went out and messed around before coming in to land. His messing around wasn't well planned out, and he didn't have enough altitude to recover from his last maneuver, and he crashed into the ground, also killing a woman and her mother, and injuring her son along with killing himself. I didn't know him personally, but I know people who knew him, and they were of course shocked and devastated. Saturday comes along with a roar. The Twin Tigers is an aerobatic team that a close friend of mine works with. He flies their airplanes with them, goes to shows with them, etc. Mark S. and Mark N. We watched and enjoyed them do the night show at Oshkosh last year. Well, Mark S. bought a Mustang II, new to him, and he had a trip as a Southwest pilot and was gone. So Mark N. transported the plane home for him, then took up his (Mark S's) 13 year old son Nathan for his first loop and roll. They were at 500' AGL in the pattern when the TAIL FELL OFF of the airplane. There's nothing he could do, they went in like a dart. Nathan's mom was on the ground watching, and his brother was filming it all with an iPhone. The mom called my friend 15 minutes after it happened, hysterical. I can't even. (None of that is public knowledge yet other than Mark N. and Nathan S. dying in a crash.) I lost sleep thinking about those poor families. And about how...the TAIL FELL OFF. Who sees that coming?! You can't do anything about it. You're just done. Yuck. Thank God that pretty much doesn't happen. What a freak, freak thing. So now I'm thinking about that old superstition that things happen in threes. It IS just a superstition. And yet here comes Sunday. Kobe Bryant goes down in a helicopter with his 13 year old daughter (and 3 other people). Not an airshow performer, but a performer. I don't know if that counts on the "bad things happen in threes" front, but I'm going to say it does so that there aren't any more. Even though I don't believe in superstition. There are a bunch of other tragedies and lives lost this weekend than these three aviation accidents, I know, probably even other aviation accidents. It's just two in circles of people I know, and one "public figure". But it's sad, and so many lives impacted this weekend. We'll only hear about Kobe, because he's the most famous one. But there are a lot of other hurting people this weekend.
Here, the sun is shining. I've gotten all the dishes and laundry caught up. Steve is working on projects. Kaylee is happy and warm and well. We have a busy week coming up. Busy in the winter surprises me, but if Mother Nature holds off, I won't complain.
Stay well.
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Snow Day
We're getting a good inch or so of snow as I type this from the living room. Steve is out at the airport doing a CFI ground lesson.
Last night I started to get a headache. I could feel my sinuses fill up on the right side, my eyes watered, signs I've come to recognize. I pre-empted what I could. I drank a PowerAde, took an allergy pill and Sudafed, and a couple Tylenol before I went to bed. I woke up at 4 am with the start of the headache. I took Motrin, and got out the Zok and did it a few times, and put it by my bed. The headache eased and I went to sleep until 8 am. Woke up with the headache back. Drank another PowerAde and did the Zok thing again. The headache potential is still there--I still feel it like something waiting in the dark corner, but it doesn't hurt right now. It's mostly gone. I haven't had to do big guns medication so far to control it. I can't tell you how much better for your body that's got to be. We'll see how it goes as the day progresses, but I feel cautiously optimistic. :)
This evening, Steve, Ann and I drove up to Wabash, IN, and we met Kaylee and two of her friends, Emily & Meredith, for an official birthday dinner. We ate at "Twenty", a more formal restaurant inside an old refurbished hotel in Wabash. The hotel also has a cheese and wine shop, and a chocolates and ice cream shop. But they closed at 9 and we weren't done eating until then, so I unfortunately fortunately didn't get in there to buy anything. The girls took a break from eating to go look at it before it closed. :) We had so much food, and it was good, as you'd expect. Everyone had a good time, we all did enjoy ourselves! Afterwards I gave Kaylee a present from us, a language translator device that you pair up with an app on your cellphone, and it translates any language into any language. I figured that with her traveling around the world, she might find that handy. She loves it, and she wasn't home (her new home) for 5 minutes before she set it up and texted me that "IT WORKS!" She's been going back and forth with some Thai words she remembers, and says it does a really good job with it. So I'm pleased! I'm not very good at gift giving, but I saw this and it had her name on it, and I was just hoping it worked well. I also got her a piece of banana split cake from J.Edwards, one of her favorites. The hard part for me was not getting my own giant slice of amazing cake from them while I was there. But I didn't. Somehow. Don't test me today though. ;)
The roads weren't the best for our drive to Wabash. It was snowing, slushy, a little sleety. We were doing 35 mph for a long time on a highway, which was ridiculous. It wasn't THAT slick, but you didn't feel like you could pass the line of cars in front of you. Kaylee ended up behind someone going even slower than that. She didn't anticipate the weather though, even though I warned her, so they were like 15 minutes late to the restaurant. lol But we had a good time, everyone arrived safely to both destinations, and oh, yes, my headache was gone gone.
I ate way too much, but I prepared for it, eating one grilled chicken sandwich and that's it, until I got there. Even then I ate my filet and green beans (and lobster bisque cup) and left most of the mashed potatoes. You gotta pick your priorities, and I was going to have that creme brulet. ;) Yum.
So, last Happy Birthday for Kaylee for the year. She kept saying "Next year I'll be twenty!" Maybe we should have waited to eat at "Twenty" until she turned 20. ;)
Last night I started to get a headache. I could feel my sinuses fill up on the right side, my eyes watered, signs I've come to recognize. I pre-empted what I could. I drank a PowerAde, took an allergy pill and Sudafed, and a couple Tylenol before I went to bed. I woke up at 4 am with the start of the headache. I took Motrin, and got out the Zok and did it a few times, and put it by my bed. The headache eased and I went to sleep until 8 am. Woke up with the headache back. Drank another PowerAde and did the Zok thing again. The headache potential is still there--I still feel it like something waiting in the dark corner, but it doesn't hurt right now. It's mostly gone. I haven't had to do big guns medication so far to control it. I can't tell you how much better for your body that's got to be. We'll see how it goes as the day progresses, but I feel cautiously optimistic. :)
This evening, Steve, Ann and I drove up to Wabash, IN, and we met Kaylee and two of her friends, Emily & Meredith, for an official birthday dinner. We ate at "Twenty", a more formal restaurant inside an old refurbished hotel in Wabash. The hotel also has a cheese and wine shop, and a chocolates and ice cream shop. But they closed at 9 and we weren't done eating until then, so I unfortunately fortunately didn't get in there to buy anything. The girls took a break from eating to go look at it before it closed. :) We had so much food, and it was good, as you'd expect. Everyone had a good time, we all did enjoy ourselves! Afterwards I gave Kaylee a present from us, a language translator device that you pair up with an app on your cellphone, and it translates any language into any language. I figured that with her traveling around the world, she might find that handy. She loves it, and she wasn't home (her new home) for 5 minutes before she set it up and texted me that "IT WORKS!" She's been going back and forth with some Thai words she remembers, and says it does a really good job with it. So I'm pleased! I'm not very good at gift giving, but I saw this and it had her name on it, and I was just hoping it worked well. I also got her a piece of banana split cake from J.Edwards, one of her favorites. The hard part for me was not getting my own giant slice of amazing cake from them while I was there. But I didn't. Somehow. Don't test me today though. ;)
The roads weren't the best for our drive to Wabash. It was snowing, slushy, a little sleety. We were doing 35 mph for a long time on a highway, which was ridiculous. It wasn't THAT slick, but you didn't feel like you could pass the line of cars in front of you. Kaylee ended up behind someone going even slower than that. She didn't anticipate the weather though, even though I warned her, so they were like 15 minutes late to the restaurant. lol But we had a good time, everyone arrived safely to both destinations, and oh, yes, my headache was gone gone.
I ate way too much, but I prepared for it, eating one grilled chicken sandwich and that's it, until I got there. Even then I ate my filet and green beans (and lobster bisque cup) and left most of the mashed potatoes. You gotta pick your priorities, and I was going to have that creme brulet. ;) Yum.
So, last Happy Birthday for Kaylee for the year. She kept saying "Next year I'll be twenty!" Maybe we should have waited to eat at "Twenty" until she turned 20. ;)
The outside of the hotel/restaurant
The rest are of the three girls in the hotel lobby.
Emily, Kay, Meredith
Emily, Kay, Meredith
Friday, January 24, 2020
Testing
First thing in the morning, I went back to the doc for the ultrasound test. I was in and out of there in 20 minutes. She said it could take up to 2 weeks to read results, though it "usually doesn't take that long", and that they'd call me.
Somebody at Glenndale's lunch yesterday brought Krispy Creme glazed donuts sliced in half with strawberries and strawberry composte on it, and whipped cream. I managed to only eat half of one, but MAN it was good. I overate on everything else anyway, which I didn't want to do as we're going to dinner tomorrow night for Kaylee's birthday and I planned on that day being the one I let go a little on. I've learned about myself, if I eat a big breakfast or lunch, I *still* need a fair amount of food in the evening, and I overeat. If I limit my breakfast/lunch, I'm fine all day, not even hungry, and I can eat a decently large dinner, and I don't overeat and still feel satisfied. I'm down about 5 pounds, in 2 weeks, so that's reasonable, although after Fri/Sat, I might wait a few days to weigh again. ;) I wish I could just drop the first 10 pounds in a week or something, but my 47 year old woman's metabolism doesn't cooperate with that idea. I still hate having to work that hard at tiny increments. But as they say, it is what it is.
Somebody at Glenndale's lunch yesterday brought Krispy Creme glazed donuts sliced in half with strawberries and strawberry composte on it, and whipped cream. I managed to only eat half of one, but MAN it was good. I overate on everything else anyway, which I didn't want to do as we're going to dinner tomorrow night for Kaylee's birthday and I planned on that day being the one I let go a little on. I've learned about myself, if I eat a big breakfast or lunch, I *still* need a fair amount of food in the evening, and I overeat. If I limit my breakfast/lunch, I'm fine all day, not even hungry, and I can eat a decently large dinner, and I don't overeat and still feel satisfied. I'm down about 5 pounds, in 2 weeks, so that's reasonable, although after Fri/Sat, I might wait a few days to weigh again. ;) I wish I could just drop the first 10 pounds in a week or something, but my 47 year old woman's metabolism doesn't cooperate with that idea. I still hate having to work that hard at tiny increments. But as they say, it is what it is.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
Kay
Happy 19th Birthday to my "baby"! She's staying on campus tonight, doing more of the "Mission Impossible" campus stuff tonight. Last night she won 2nd place in the first MI challenge, which was baking and decorating cupcakes to look like a campfire. She gave a presentation in her psych class today, and said that it went "fantastic". She's upbeat, enjoying her time there, and looking forward to her 19th year. She'd really like to settle in on her next course of action, but she's having trouble figuring it out, so she keeps on working at it, and doing her best in her classes. She's still really digging the psych and science classes the most. :)
I had a doctor appointment today, to talk about having a procedure done. It'll require an operating room, but isn't a huge deal. Generically, I'll be having some benign "tumors" removed that have been causing me a few other issues. So after that consultation, I had to go get blood work done, which was done in less than 10 minutes flat (pretty impressive--they weren't busy at all). Tomorrow I have to have an ultrasound done, to be sure that I still qualify for the procedure safely. And then if everything looks good, we'll schedule the procedure. They said I'd be "down" about a week if all goes well.
That's about all the news from around here for now...
I had a doctor appointment today, to talk about having a procedure done. It'll require an operating room, but isn't a huge deal. Generically, I'll be having some benign "tumors" removed that have been causing me a few other issues. So after that consultation, I had to go get blood work done, which was done in less than 10 minutes flat (pretty impressive--they weren't busy at all). Tomorrow I have to have an ultrasound done, to be sure that I still qualify for the procedure safely. And then if everything looks good, we'll schedule the procedure. They said I'd be "down" about a week if all goes well.
That's about all the news from around here for now...
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Traveling
It's been a busy few days. I've been back on the right track with exercise and eating, and even though it's only been a couple weeks, I already feel a little healthier. I'm not winded quite as fast, down a few pounds, but mostly not quite so tired all the time as I was for awhile there. So that's good, and motivating.
Yesterday, Nathan and I took off in the Aerostar to go pick up Jamie from school in S. Illinois, and bring him back to Kokomo for a doctor's appointment. When that was done, we pulled out the Cheyenne, and Nathan, Kevin, me, Steve, AE, and Chuck loaded up, and flew Jamie back down to S. Illinois to go back to school. Then we hopped over to Paducah, Kentucky, just a hop away, and Nathan had a rental car there, and we drove into town and ate at Doe's Restaurant. It's a steakhouse that does huge, semi-famous steaks and fries. As in the fries are almost as good as the steak, and I'm not a huge fries person. The *smallest* steak they have is a 10 oz. fillet, which is what I got. Did you know a 10 oz fillet only has 400 calories? Some of the guys got a 2 lb bone-in ribeye, the rest got whatever their main ribeye is. It's huge, thick, and is presented on a plate all by itself, and fills it up. We ate, and it was wonderful.
We got back to the airport and took off out of Paducah, home in less than an hour. A busy day, two instrument approaches, neither very low, into a nice clear evening where I got some great night shots with my phone. Good company, good food.
Today I had some kind of stomach issue. Trying not to be graphic, but I didn't feel well, and I stayed near the restroom. Steve wasn't feeling that well either (and we ate different things, and I didn't over-eat last night). I had a normal lunch, still wasn't feeling well. Had a 1 pm flight that I wasn't sure I was going to make it to. I got out to the airport, was over at his hangar, had to leave to go back to my own hangar for a minute. I come back, we're talking, I'm wondering if I can make it through a flight. He stops and says "Laura, I gotta tell you, I'm not feeling well today. My stomach has been upset all day, and I'm not getting far from a bathroom." I laughed and said "Me too. Now you know why I went back to my own hangar." He left for a bit, then we spent an hour on the ground talking over some ground stuff. By the time the hour was up, both of us were feeling cautiously optimistically better. We agreed that we'd give it a try, and go fly, and if either of us needed to land asap, we'd call it and come on down. lol So we went up and flew in his Piper Malibu Mirage, did instrument approaches, and I helped him out with a few things. It went well, I actually enjoyed it, and both of our stomachs held off. I seem to be past the worst of it.
After that I sent a student off on his first solo cross-country. Went over his plan, signed his logbook, answered questions, and told him to text me when he got there, and when he got home. He did a great job. And I was done for the day for work.
I came home, and Steve had taken Ann to the eye doctor, then he and I went out to Greentown to pick up Kaylee's car, where we'd had it worked on. Funny story. The check engine light had come on on me awhile ago. We took it to Mark and he said the code was fuel system related, like a leak in the gas cap on up to who knows. He reset the light. It came back on on Kaylee, and she didn't want to stop and have him look at it. And then when she happened to be home over the weekend, it wouldn't start. Steve got it to start after it sat awhile, but we decided to take it in. He drove it to Mark's. And it never started again. It had one more start in it, and they got it to the mechanic right then. The fuel pump failed and it wasn't getting fuel to the engine. So Mark fixed that, and today Steve drove it out to Marion to deliver it to Kaylee. We ate at Texas Roadhouse while we were there, with her, and she had fun telling us all about her classes. She's still really excited about them, which is great.
She'd been having trouble with her printer, so Steve went into the dorm to help her figure that out, which they did, and then we drove home. I'm feeling much better, thankfully.
This is a lot of pictures, but I liked the different angles and views and colors and stuff.
Oh, my mom said a "ham operator" friend of hers heard a girl on the radio departing from Paducah in a Cheyenne and asked her if it could be me. It was, which is extra weird that he heard that. And then he tracked us on FlightAware, and let Mom know when I landed back at home. Too funny!
Yesterday, Nathan and I took off in the Aerostar to go pick up Jamie from school in S. Illinois, and bring him back to Kokomo for a doctor's appointment. When that was done, we pulled out the Cheyenne, and Nathan, Kevin, me, Steve, AE, and Chuck loaded up, and flew Jamie back down to S. Illinois to go back to school. Then we hopped over to Paducah, Kentucky, just a hop away, and Nathan had a rental car there, and we drove into town and ate at Doe's Restaurant. It's a steakhouse that does huge, semi-famous steaks and fries. As in the fries are almost as good as the steak, and I'm not a huge fries person. The *smallest* steak they have is a 10 oz. fillet, which is what I got. Did you know a 10 oz fillet only has 400 calories? Some of the guys got a 2 lb bone-in ribeye, the rest got whatever their main ribeye is. It's huge, thick, and is presented on a plate all by itself, and fills it up. We ate, and it was wonderful.
We got back to the airport and took off out of Paducah, home in less than an hour. A busy day, two instrument approaches, neither very low, into a nice clear evening where I got some great night shots with my phone. Good company, good food.
Today I had some kind of stomach issue. Trying not to be graphic, but I didn't feel well, and I stayed near the restroom. Steve wasn't feeling that well either (and we ate different things, and I didn't over-eat last night). I had a normal lunch, still wasn't feeling well. Had a 1 pm flight that I wasn't sure I was going to make it to. I got out to the airport, was over at his hangar, had to leave to go back to my own hangar for a minute. I come back, we're talking, I'm wondering if I can make it through a flight. He stops and says "Laura, I gotta tell you, I'm not feeling well today. My stomach has been upset all day, and I'm not getting far from a bathroom." I laughed and said "Me too. Now you know why I went back to my own hangar." He left for a bit, then we spent an hour on the ground talking over some ground stuff. By the time the hour was up, both of us were feeling cautiously optimistically better. We agreed that we'd give it a try, and go fly, and if either of us needed to land asap, we'd call it and come on down. lol So we went up and flew in his Piper Malibu Mirage, did instrument approaches, and I helped him out with a few things. It went well, I actually enjoyed it, and both of our stomachs held off. I seem to be past the worst of it.
After that I sent a student off on his first solo cross-country. Went over his plan, signed his logbook, answered questions, and told him to text me when he got there, and when he got home. He did a great job. And I was done for the day for work.
I came home, and Steve had taken Ann to the eye doctor, then he and I went out to Greentown to pick up Kaylee's car, where we'd had it worked on. Funny story. The check engine light had come on on me awhile ago. We took it to Mark and he said the code was fuel system related, like a leak in the gas cap on up to who knows. He reset the light. It came back on on Kaylee, and she didn't want to stop and have him look at it. And then when she happened to be home over the weekend, it wouldn't start. Steve got it to start after it sat awhile, but we decided to take it in. He drove it to Mark's. And it never started again. It had one more start in it, and they got it to the mechanic right then. The fuel pump failed and it wasn't getting fuel to the engine. So Mark fixed that, and today Steve drove it out to Marion to deliver it to Kaylee. We ate at Texas Roadhouse while we were there, with her, and she had fun telling us all about her classes. She's still really excited about them, which is great.
She'd been having trouble with her printer, so Steve went into the dorm to help her figure that out, which they did, and then we drove home. I'm feeling much better, thankfully.
This is a lot of pictures, but I liked the different angles and views and colors and stuff.
Oh, my mom said a "ham operator" friend of hers heard a girl on the radio departing from Paducah in a Cheyenne and asked her if it could be me. It was, which is extra weird that he heard that. And then he tracked us on FlightAware, and let Mom know when I landed back at home. Too funny!
A "Sun dog", the shadow of your airplane within a rainbow circle.
An unattractive photo of the six of us. lol
Sunset at Murphysboro, IL
Flood water
Carnivores. A bunch of carnivores.
Panel shot of the Cheyenne
I like the green glow at top
Steve took this from the back seat. Kind of a neat look.
One of my favorites because you can see the lower panel, one of the two upper panels, and the outside lights.
Indianapolis at night.
Final Runway 23 Kokomo
Monday, January 20, 2020
Out There
I now have the cellphone number of Purdue's basketball coach in my phone, so I can, you know, text him "what's up" now and then. Lol He does seem to be a pretty nice guy, and he's super tall. He makes Kevin D look short, and Kevin is what, 6' 3" or so?
This morning Kevin and I took the Cheyenne over to Lafayette to pick up the coach. On our way in, tower told us to hold to the east of the field, because an airplane was squawking 7600 and they wanted to get him in first before letting me in. (7600 means the airplane lost its radios.) That was a new one, doing big circles out there for awhile waiting for tower to let me in. We picked up the coach, and then I flew us over to Dayton, OH. Kevin and I grabbed a car and ate at BJ's, where I had these really good grilled blackened mahi tacos. Good stuff. The coach got back on time, and I flew him home, dropped him off in Lafayette, and the Kevin flew us home to Kokomo. It was his first time doing the flying in probably years. It was good for him to get back in the groove.
I did have autopilot problems, so I'm trying to get leveled off at the last second when the autopilot didn't catch it, turn, talk on the radio, switch frequencies, and turn to a new heading, and then they said "We have a route change for you." I said "Stand by". I'm like...give me a hot second here, people! lol Keeping me hopping.
Kaylee is back at school. She was up until 2 am talking to her dad last night. We kind of miss her wandering in and out when she's here. She even cleaned up her room before she left. *sniff* ;)
I started watching the new show "911: Lone Star". I really like the show "911". It's action packed, and most of the personal stories don't overwhelm the action. I mean, it's almost all one call after another, or a big traumatic event or two that covers the entire show. Really gets your heart rate up, fast-paced, lots of lessons, lots of humor. So I assumed I was going to LOVE a 911 show with ROB LOWE and Liv Tyler, based out of Texas. I mean, c'mon, that has awesome written all over it! No. It's terrible. Liv is 42 and looks 52 and is doing a worse acting job than I would. Rob is a woo-woo guy who always talks about his skin and vitamin and hair and diet regiment that is straight out of California. Non-stop talking about these fru-fru things, Rob Lowe being as feminine as he can be without wearing a wig. They made sure to hit every politically correct box within the first 10 minutes of the show. They introduced the gay guy first, and then the Muslim woman firefighter, the trans guy, and then...so on and so forth. Next up they had two graphic, close-up, aggressive gay guy sex scenes. One of their actual 911 calls was interesting and good, but it was the first 5 minutes of the show, and then the rest was feelings and relationships and introspection and talking about skin and hair and dairy and... It feels like someone just made a checklist of every single "woke" action or belief that someone 25 and under would be all into, and made sure to explicitly cover every bit of it. Such a forced, lame excuse for a show. It's as bad as a soap opera. *sigh* Oh well.
Here's my brief shot out the window today. Bad shot but I got busy Right then. It was grey and dreary on the ground, and nice and warm and sunny up high. Gotta like that burst of life-giving sunshine.
This morning Kevin and I took the Cheyenne over to Lafayette to pick up the coach. On our way in, tower told us to hold to the east of the field, because an airplane was squawking 7600 and they wanted to get him in first before letting me in. (7600 means the airplane lost its radios.) That was a new one, doing big circles out there for awhile waiting for tower to let me in. We picked up the coach, and then I flew us over to Dayton, OH. Kevin and I grabbed a car and ate at BJ's, where I had these really good grilled blackened mahi tacos. Good stuff. The coach got back on time, and I flew him home, dropped him off in Lafayette, and the Kevin flew us home to Kokomo. It was his first time doing the flying in probably years. It was good for him to get back in the groove.
I did have autopilot problems, so I'm trying to get leveled off at the last second when the autopilot didn't catch it, turn, talk on the radio, switch frequencies, and turn to a new heading, and then they said "We have a route change for you." I said "Stand by". I'm like...give me a hot second here, people! lol Keeping me hopping.
Kaylee is back at school. She was up until 2 am talking to her dad last night. We kind of miss her wandering in and out when she's here. She even cleaned up her room before she left. *sniff* ;)
I started watching the new show "911: Lone Star". I really like the show "911". It's action packed, and most of the personal stories don't overwhelm the action. I mean, it's almost all one call after another, or a big traumatic event or two that covers the entire show. Really gets your heart rate up, fast-paced, lots of lessons, lots of humor. So I assumed I was going to LOVE a 911 show with ROB LOWE and Liv Tyler, based out of Texas. I mean, c'mon, that has awesome written all over it! No. It's terrible. Liv is 42 and looks 52 and is doing a worse acting job than I would. Rob is a woo-woo guy who always talks about his skin and vitamin and hair and diet regiment that is straight out of California. Non-stop talking about these fru-fru things, Rob Lowe being as feminine as he can be without wearing a wig. They made sure to hit every politically correct box within the first 10 minutes of the show. They introduced the gay guy first, and then the Muslim woman firefighter, the trans guy, and then...so on and so forth. Next up they had two graphic, close-up, aggressive gay guy sex scenes. One of their actual 911 calls was interesting and good, but it was the first 5 minutes of the show, and then the rest was feelings and relationships and introspection and talking about skin and hair and dairy and... It feels like someone just made a checklist of every single "woke" action or belief that someone 25 and under would be all into, and made sure to explicitly cover every bit of it. Such a forced, lame excuse for a show. It's as bad as a soap opera. *sigh* Oh well.
Here's my brief shot out the window today. Bad shot but I got busy Right then. It was grey and dreary on the ground, and nice and warm and sunny up high. Gotta like that burst of life-giving sunshine.
Saturday, January 18, 2020
Brrr
Welcome to Winter. High winds, cold temps, gray skies. It's been icky. Tomorrow will be too. It sucks the motivation right out of you to do much of anything. I had a lady who wanted to do tailwheel flying, and when she couldn't do it on a 20 degree day because her water heater broke, I was relieved.
I still had a guy in the 172, and that's better--at least the plane itself gets and stays warm, unlike the Champs. We had gusty winds and worked on crosswinds, I had him set up and see a tailwind, we did go-arounds, and I worked him out pretty hard. When he landed, he said he was almost too tired to drive home. I'm good at wearing people out. ;)
Kaylee came home for the weekend. She just pulled in the driveway, has a 3-day weekend because of MLK Jr. Day. It's good to have her home briefly. :)
Today was Gwenie's 18th birthday, so several of us met up at Don Pancho's for dinner. I ate too much, and two hours later I'm still full. But boy that was an excellent DQ ice cream cake...
I don't have plans for tomorrow, and Monday is a Cheyenne trip with the Purdue basketball coach, and Tuesday is two trips to S. Illinois and one trip to Kentucky. So I'll get back with you then. Until then, stay warm and dry out there.
The picture is of my student on final with a good stiff crosswind. You can see the nose is pointed to the right and we've still been blown left. Good practice.
Thursday, January 16, 2020
Zippy
We had our first EAA Chapter meeting of the new year, and we did our first ever "IMC Club" and "VMC Club" meetings. We started with IMC, which is talking about IFR flying, and did a video on a scenario having to do with icing. The regular meeting was short after that, and then the VMC club was about taking off of a grass strip and waiting too long to abort the takeoff. What would you do type scenario. Each section only lasted about half an hour each, and we had probably 60 people there, standing room only. So it was good stuff!
Kaylee texted me tonight asking me questions about grammar and towards writing a paper for her psych class. But more interestingly, she sent me a link to a reading speed and comprehension page/quiz. She told me to take it. The last test I remember taking on how fast I read was in grade school in Union Grove, WI, and I don't remember the results, but I know I was fast, with a very high reading comprehension score. I figured I'd be slower these days. So I took the test. Kaylee said she got a score of about 300 words per minute (wpm). I did the reading test and got 703 wpm, and then took the comprehension test and got 10 out of 11 correct for a 91% reading comprehension. Then I did the reading test again and read as fast as I could go. I got 915 wpm. No reason to take the comprehension again as it would be the same questions and now I'd know the answers. But that made me feel pretty good, actually. I still got it.
Kaylee was a little mad at me though, wants to know why she didn't get my speed reading gene. ;)
Oh, and here's a video from a long time ago. Steve is in it, with an all-brown beard, and I fly the T-6 in it. They speed up the aerobatic footage and set it to "Danger Zone", and it's highly cheesy. :D
Kaylee texted me tonight asking me questions about grammar and towards writing a paper for her psych class. But more interestingly, she sent me a link to a reading speed and comprehension page/quiz. She told me to take it. The last test I remember taking on how fast I read was in grade school in Union Grove, WI, and I don't remember the results, but I know I was fast, with a very high reading comprehension score. I figured I'd be slower these days. So I took the test. Kaylee said she got a score of about 300 words per minute (wpm). I did the reading test and got 703 wpm, and then took the comprehension test and got 10 out of 11 correct for a 91% reading comprehension. Then I did the reading test again and read as fast as I could go. I got 915 wpm. No reason to take the comprehension again as it would be the same questions and now I'd know the answers. But that made me feel pretty good, actually. I still got it.
Kaylee was a little mad at me though, wants to know why she didn't get my speed reading gene. ;)
Oh, and here's a video from a long time ago. Steve is in it, with an all-brown beard, and I fly the T-6 in it. They speed up the aerobatic footage and set it to "Danger Zone", and it's highly cheesy. :D
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Winter Drears
I don't think "drears" is a word, but it fits anyway.
We've had fog and grey for days now. Bleh.
Kaylee told me about her class today again. They looked at different hair under the microscope. Human vs cat vs dog vs all sorts of different variants, in order to be able to see what hairs were left behind at crime scenes. She loves this stuff. :D
My Mom sent me an email that she could read my blog better in orange too, and today Ann told me the same thing. So apparently I'm the only one who could read the white and black okay. It's been like that for awhile, somebody shoulda said something--besides Steve because I just ignored him. HAhaha.
We went down to Kempton tonight and met with about 8 folks, talked airplanes, ate a giant delicious grilled chicken sandwich.
Monday I have a Cheyenne trip to Ohio. Tuesday Steve and I and Nathan (and a few others) are going down to S. Illinois and then Kentucky and back. Hope the weather is nicer than it has been these last few days!
I've gotten a lot done around here though. Nothing fun to take photos of, but at least productivity.
We've had fog and grey for days now. Bleh.
Kaylee told me about her class today again. They looked at different hair under the microscope. Human vs cat vs dog vs all sorts of different variants, in order to be able to see what hairs were left behind at crime scenes. She loves this stuff. :D
My Mom sent me an email that she could read my blog better in orange too, and today Ann told me the same thing. So apparently I'm the only one who could read the white and black okay. It's been like that for awhile, somebody shoulda said something--besides Steve because I just ignored him. HAhaha.
We went down to Kempton tonight and met with about 8 folks, talked airplanes, ate a giant delicious grilled chicken sandwich.
Monday I have a Cheyenne trip to Ohio. Tuesday Steve and I and Nathan (and a few others) are going down to S. Illinois and then Kentucky and back. Hope the weather is nicer than it has been these last few days!
I've gotten a lot done around here though. Nothing fun to take photos of, but at least productivity.
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Kay
Steve and I drove over to Marion today to bring Kaylee a little printer and a single cup Keurig coffee maker that was just sitting on a shelf at the airport. She was super excited about both. Walking to the library, which is closed Sundays, and hassling with public printing, she's pleased to have a printer in her room. And the coffee maker, well, she has a 7:50 am class. In the winter. She's happy to have a warm cup of Joe to help her wake up and get to class. So she was pleased to see us with these goodies. ;)
The shooting in Greentown, I was right. Murder Suicide. Domestic violence. Boyfriend shot girlfriend, then himself. :( They weren't from Greentown. It sounds bad to say "I'm glad", but Greentown is a small town and it's scary if it could be someone you know, and while I'm sorry for their families, I'm glad it wasn't someone close to us.
Kaylee said on one of her tests today, she scored a 27 out of 30 on the extrovert scale. We figured that was probably about right. She always wants to be around someone, doing something.
Then she sent me two texts about stuff she was reading online. One was about a group of people who can't read cursive. She said
"Can you imagine if I couldn't read cursive? People are saying stuff like 'I had no self esteem because I couldn't write cursive well and would get graded lower for it', but like, what if we just did that with everything? I get graded lower in math because I'm not as good at it. Maybe we should just stop docking grades altogether then. All in the name of boosting everyone's self-esteem. We're all special little snowflakes in this world now!"
I laughed.
Then she said "Oh man. I just saw someone post about how they just applied to their dream job and I was like, that's so cool! Turns out their dream job is Scoops Ice Cream. Hmm. We are not the same person."
I laughed again.
I enjoy her.
Monday, January 13, 2020
Brief
Two people were found shot and deceased in a car in the parking lot of the Casey's gas station in Greentown. That's the gas station that Kaylee uses exclusively when she's in this area, right across from Hydration Station, that I always used when I was in that area. They haven't released names, and it's weird that they were found sitting in their car. I don't know what happened yet, but it's always a little disturbing when something like that happens at a place you regularly go to! A guess would be murder-suicide, since they were just found both sitting in a car, and nobody saw anything happen, they just called the police when someone later saw them in a car not seeming to move and called for a "welfare check" on them by the police. But what a weird place to do that. I don't know, but yikes.
Weather kept us grounded this morning, and ended up JUST good enough to let us stay in the pattern this evening. My guy is close to solo, finally, if he stays out of his own way in his head. :) Steve's guy is ready for a checkride. All going well on the flight instructing front.
Steve and I went to "Fox's Trail" tonight for dinner after we left the airport, and came home in time for there to be nothing on TV, so I guess we'll have to do some paperwork instead.
Kaylee called me today and was psyched about her forensic science class, where they learned all about fingerprints today. She learned how to read them, the different types of "markers", how even destroying your fingerprints doesn't permanently stop them from growing back because of how deeply they go into your dermis (skin), and they learned how to take fingerprints off of a bunch of different surfaces, including using super glue fumes. She absolutely loved it. She also answered a couple questions in her Theology class, and got them right, and she was pleased by that because she rarely publicly answered questions in school before, because she didn't want to be wrong. Now she's branching out more and more willing to speak up. She had a great day today, and she's still loving the college experience. :)
Weather kept us grounded this morning, and ended up JUST good enough to let us stay in the pattern this evening. My guy is close to solo, finally, if he stays out of his own way in his head. :) Steve's guy is ready for a checkride. All going well on the flight instructing front.
Steve and I went to "Fox's Trail" tonight for dinner after we left the airport, and came home in time for there to be nothing on TV, so I guess we'll have to do some paperwork instead.
Kaylee called me today and was psyched about her forensic science class, where they learned all about fingerprints today. She learned how to read them, the different types of "markers", how even destroying your fingerprints doesn't permanently stop them from growing back because of how deeply they go into your dermis (skin), and they learned how to take fingerprints off of a bunch of different surfaces, including using super glue fumes. She absolutely loved it. She also answered a couple questions in her Theology class, and got them right, and she was pleased by that because she rarely publicly answered questions in school before, because she didn't want to be wrong. Now she's branching out more and more willing to speak up. She had a great day today, and she's still loving the college experience. :)
Sunday, January 12, 2020
Blues
I just figured I enjoyed the big blue sky for a short few moments today, so you might as well enjoy it a little bigger too.
John needed to drop his airplane off at Muncie for avionics. Originally I was going to pick him up in his Bonanza. But the ceilings never came up today like they were supposed to, so we could either scud run over at 1000', or file IFR in something that could handle ice. So we filed IFR. I hand flew, and started off a little rusty. I haven't hand flown the 340 in IMC in a long time, so it was a good time to get it in, when nobody else was with me. It took a couple minutes, and I was powering back, turning, changing frequencies, listening to ATIS, leveling off, talking, all at once, because it's such a short distance between Kokomo and Muncie. I was behind the plane a little, trying to look at the upcoming approach and do the rest while hand flying. So I needed the practice. A few minutes into it, I felt it click into place, and the groove was back. I hand flew the approach, which went well. John had left first, so I had to slow down some so he could shoot the approach and get in before I got there. I picked up ice the whole time I was in the clouds, about half an hour, and even had to pop the boots once. It was a good thing the heated windshield worked, as my windshield was covered over too. As I broke out of the clouds on the approach, the warm air below caused most of the ice to slough off, almost gone by the time I landed, in just a few seconds.
The flight home I had John with me, and we went up to 4,000', and it just put us right on top of the clouds, into the clear blue pretty sky. The sun felt good on my face. I shot the ILS back into Kokomo, only picked up a little bit of ice, landed and put her away, and I headed home.
Steve worked most of the day getting the Christmas stuff down and put away. I helped with the tree and a few small things, and the house is back to non-festive. I sort of miss it though. The lights in the kitchen and on the deck were cheerful and bright, and I enjoyed having them. Now our kitchen and deck look dark and depressing. Who knew I'd miss Christmas decorations. I'm not even hugely fond of Christmas. But I did like the lights. :p
Normal angle view
Ice over the stall horn
Ice on the nose cone
Saturday, January 11, 2020
Saturday
Steve and I met Nathan at Bob Evans for lunch today, then he went out to the airport for awhile. I got my exercise in, went grocery shopping, brought soup and food home. Kaylee called and asked if we wanted to meet up for dinner, so we went to Olive Garden. Those two places make it very difficult for a person to try to make healthy choices. I managed to stay within where I wanted to for the day, but it wasn't super easy. I love all the bad things at both these places. ;)
Kaylee did go to the party the other night, and had a great time. She says she's been focused on trying to stay ahead of her school work. She says it's taking up all her time, getting organized and staying ahead of all her assignments. Like tonight, she said tomorrow she's doing church, and she has to get homework done for her three Monday classes. She's also still trying to figure out her final path in college. She asked us to tell her what to do with her life, and we're like....nah...just take these classes right now, keep your ears and eyes open for options, but don't stress just yet. It'll come, one way or another.
She turned around and headed right back to school tonight. It was good to see her. :)
Yesterday felt like Saturday which means to me today was Sunday (when I woke up I turned on CBS to watch "Good Morning America" which of course wasn't on because it's Saturday), which means tomorrow feels like Monday and I have to keep reminding myself it's not. I'm all out of whack. But I'm sort of enjoying the rainy, windy, no-fly 3-day weekend.
(The change in how the blog looks was because of Steve. He said my other format made his eyes go wonky when he'd read it. Apparently this works for him and his eyes, and I like sunsets and water, so it works for me.)
Sunday will probably not be too exciting, so maybe I'll see you Monday.
Kaylee did go to the party the other night, and had a great time. She says she's been focused on trying to stay ahead of her school work. She says it's taking up all her time, getting organized and staying ahead of all her assignments. Like tonight, she said tomorrow she's doing church, and she has to get homework done for her three Monday classes. She's also still trying to figure out her final path in college. She asked us to tell her what to do with her life, and we're like....nah...just take these classes right now, keep your ears and eyes open for options, but don't stress just yet. It'll come, one way or another.
She turned around and headed right back to school tonight. It was good to see her. :)
Yesterday felt like Saturday which means to me today was Sunday (when I woke up I turned on CBS to watch "Good Morning America" which of course wasn't on because it's Saturday), which means tomorrow feels like Monday and I have to keep reminding myself it's not. I'm all out of whack. But I'm sort of enjoying the rainy, windy, no-fly 3-day weekend.
(The change in how the blog looks was because of Steve. He said my other format made his eyes go wonky when he'd read it. Apparently this works for him and his eyes, and I like sunsets and water, so it works for me.)
Sunday will probably not be too exciting, so maybe I'll see you Monday.
Friday, January 10, 2020
The Day
I'm still waiting to hear from Kaylee if she went to her event tonight or not. We live vicariously through our children, you know. ;)
I've got her address now.
Kaylee Stants
IWU
4201 S. Washington St.
2431 Student Center
Marion, IN 46953
She says "Make sure no-one uses any words like "Box" or "PO Box" anywhere in the address, or it will end up going somewhere else." So the address is exactly as shown above.
I mostly took today off. Kaylee's gone, Steve was gone most of the day. I slept in, didn't go to lunch, enjoyed the silence for awhile. My two students canceled because the weather was bad, and I was glad. Then I started working on projects. I went through and added names and addresses to my contacts list (which had been destroyed years ago and I never put back in place). I cleaned out my pile of paperwork, paid bills, deposited checks, responded to all my emails that needed it, did dishes and laundry like it was a Sunday. I also did some weight bearing exercises for my arms, and walked. Am going to work again on that getting healthier thing. There's no real excuse in the winter, when I have a treadmill and am not as busy on the flying thing. The hardest part about winter is food. There's not as much to do but eat, and I like eating, especially when it's cold and icky outside and food warms you up on the inside. I have to find things I can have in stock that I can eat that won't be so terrible. I really need to kick about 20 pounds. I'd LIKE to kick 30 pounds. But based on how that went last time, down to 1200 calories and exercising an hour a day just to maintain a weight, I think I'll be glad if I can get off the 20 and keep it off, and that other 10 pounds may just have to stay where it is. But some of this has got to go.
Anyway. Happy Friday, have a good weekend, stay dry out there, behave. ;)
I've got her address now.
Kaylee Stants
IWU
4201 S. Washington St.
2431 Student Center
Marion, IN 46953
She says "Make sure no-one uses any words like "Box" or "PO Box" anywhere in the address, or it will end up going somewhere else." So the address is exactly as shown above.
I mostly took today off. Kaylee's gone, Steve was gone most of the day. I slept in, didn't go to lunch, enjoyed the silence for awhile. My two students canceled because the weather was bad, and I was glad. Then I started working on projects. I went through and added names and addresses to my contacts list (which had been destroyed years ago and I never put back in place). I cleaned out my pile of paperwork, paid bills, deposited checks, responded to all my emails that needed it, did dishes and laundry like it was a Sunday. I also did some weight bearing exercises for my arms, and walked. Am going to work again on that getting healthier thing. There's no real excuse in the winter, when I have a treadmill and am not as busy on the flying thing. The hardest part about winter is food. There's not as much to do but eat, and I like eating, especially when it's cold and icky outside and food warms you up on the inside. I have to find things I can have in stock that I can eat that won't be so terrible. I really need to kick about 20 pounds. I'd LIKE to kick 30 pounds. But based on how that went last time, down to 1200 calories and exercising an hour a day just to maintain a weight, I think I'll be glad if I can get off the 20 and keep it off, and that other 10 pounds may just have to stay where it is. But some of this has got to go.
Anyway. Happy Friday, have a good weekend, stay dry out there, behave. ;)
Trippin'
No real Kaylee news. She has some black dress affair tonight to go to but doesn't have an appropriate black dress. I don't know if she's not going to go, or if she's going to try to find one. She came home to try on a couple things she had, but they didn't end up working out. So I haven't heard from her yet today. She called Steve while I was up flying yesterday and told him all about her forensic science class where they had photos of a crime scene, and they were supposed to figure out as much as they could from those photos. She loved it. :)
Nathan and I flew Jamie back to school, and the weather ended up way better than it was originally forecast. The winds were still really strong, but not 35 knots on the surface strong like the forecast. The winds aloft gave us a 145-150 kt groundspeed on the way out (bad in an Aerostar) and 258 kt groundspeed on the way home (good in an Aerostar). lol Surface winds were around 25, perfectly doable. The clouds were high, so we weren't IFR, and the rain held off until last night. So all in all, it was a good day after all for a flight!
I did a quick test flight of the RG afterwards, to make sure the new mag was working properly. It was.
The city is replacing all the gas lines down our street. They came into the house today in order to turn off our gas appliances at the source, then turn on the new gas lines, then turn back on our gas appliances, then they did leak checks, extensive ones, with sensitive equipment, at every fitting. They said our house was the Taj Mahal of the houses around there, they kept commenting on how nice our house was (in comparison to several others nearby). That's both nice, and... Then they went next door, and did the same thing. They found that the water heater that had just been installed could have been a few more inches away from something, so they just fixed it. They had the tools right there, and they just fixed it up. They were careful, professional, thorough, and precise. They were really good, and I'd like to be able to send some feedback somewhere to tell whomever hired them exactly that. I'm sure they get plenty of irate feedback, but they deserve some good feedback. They did a fantastic job.
Now we've got two days of rain and IFR. I'm going to take the day off. I feel like I need it today.
Nathan and I flew Jamie back to school, and the weather ended up way better than it was originally forecast. The winds were still really strong, but not 35 knots on the surface strong like the forecast. The winds aloft gave us a 145-150 kt groundspeed on the way out (bad in an Aerostar) and 258 kt groundspeed on the way home (good in an Aerostar). lol Surface winds were around 25, perfectly doable. The clouds were high, so we weren't IFR, and the rain held off until last night. So all in all, it was a good day after all for a flight!
I did a quick test flight of the RG afterwards, to make sure the new mag was working properly. It was.
The city is replacing all the gas lines down our street. They came into the house today in order to turn off our gas appliances at the source, then turn on the new gas lines, then turn back on our gas appliances, then they did leak checks, extensive ones, with sensitive equipment, at every fitting. They said our house was the Taj Mahal of the houses around there, they kept commenting on how nice our house was (in comparison to several others nearby). That's both nice, and... Then they went next door, and did the same thing. They found that the water heater that had just been installed could have been a few more inches away from something, so they just fixed it. They had the tools right there, and they just fixed it up. They were careful, professional, thorough, and precise. They were really good, and I'd like to be able to send some feedback somewhere to tell whomever hired them exactly that. I'm sure they get plenty of irate feedback, but they deserve some good feedback. They did a fantastic job.
Now we've got two days of rain and IFR. I'm going to take the day off. I feel like I need it today.
The Aerostar panel. I'm reading a book while Nathan naps. It was a tough day. :D
Nice-ish view
Groundspeed of 258 kts. I saw it at 260, but didn't capture it in time.
Wednesday, January 08, 2020
Last Nice Day for a Few
I guess during Forensic Science class today, the professor showed them crime scene photos, and based off of nothing but the photos, they had to make some determinations about what may have happened and how. Kaylee loved it. Hey, I'D love it. I'm about to see if they let people audit that class so I can go take it sometime. ;)
For the third day in a row, Kaylee called us to tell us all about her day. I was up flying when she called, so I texted her that I was up flying, and she called Steve and talked to him next. She's had a great first three days, even with having homework in every class. It makes me smile to hear about how much she is enjoying all of this. Today she ran into a girl in the coffee shop that she just met and befriended two days ago, so they sat and chatted and walked to the next class together. Little things like that make her happy. She loves the social interaction as much as anything. It's why going to IUK and living at home just wouldn't have been the best fit for her. If that's what you can afford to do, then you do it and be grateful it's an option. But with her grants and scholarships, it made it possible, and I'm glad for her. :)
Steve took his Jeep in to the shop, and I picked him up at the airport. He took his mom to a doctor's appointment, then we both went to lunch, after which I dropped him off at home (since he doesn't have a car), and then went back out to Kokomo to fly with John in the 421 over to Aurora to pick up the 340, where it's been for almost a month. Too long. My fault, not theirs. What WAS their fault was that it didn't want to start, it had obviously not been kept warm, and the mags were all left on. But...I got her home. John took off first, and I caught him in the 340, which is interesting. We flew loose formation for awhile there, and then he landed on 32 while I landed on 5, holding short of 32, and we taxied in with him leading the way and me right behind him. He pulled in front of his hangar and turned around right as I pulled in front of our hangar and turned around. It looked choreographed, and the two planes are painted the same pretty much, so it looked pretty good, actually!
My next flight was there and waiting. While I went inside to hit the bathroom, he texted me and said 'Well, preflight is done, but while I was checking the fuel, I wobbled on the ladder, and I let go of the fuel stick, and, well, it's in the tank.' Oops. So I brought Jon down, and fortunately he was able to get a grabbie thing and pull it straight out, because it hadn't rolled to the back of the tank yet, where we can't get to it no matter what we do. So Jon saved the day there, and we went off to go fly. He did really well, and we're finally rounding that "I'm going to get to solo you soon" corner. Which is awesome. Now's the time I have to make sure he still has a valid medical and a student pilot certificate. Yay!
I did use my AirPods in the airplane today for the first time. It works better than the wired headphones because I don't have to have the phone attached to me at the same time. They're a little bigger in my ear, but I like how they fit and work in there under headphones better. Chalk up another bonus thing there.
Tomorrow's weather looks a lot ickier than today's. It was sunshine and calm winds, even though it was chilly. Tomorrow we're looking at moderate turbulence, wind shear, 30-35 knot surface winds, and a chance of rain. It'll be a lovely day to go to southern Illinois. ;)
For the third day in a row, Kaylee called us to tell us all about her day. I was up flying when she called, so I texted her that I was up flying, and she called Steve and talked to him next. She's had a great first three days, even with having homework in every class. It makes me smile to hear about how much she is enjoying all of this. Today she ran into a girl in the coffee shop that she just met and befriended two days ago, so they sat and chatted and walked to the next class together. Little things like that make her happy. She loves the social interaction as much as anything. It's why going to IUK and living at home just wouldn't have been the best fit for her. If that's what you can afford to do, then you do it and be grateful it's an option. But with her grants and scholarships, it made it possible, and I'm glad for her. :)
Steve took his Jeep in to the shop, and I picked him up at the airport. He took his mom to a doctor's appointment, then we both went to lunch, after which I dropped him off at home (since he doesn't have a car), and then went back out to Kokomo to fly with John in the 421 over to Aurora to pick up the 340, where it's been for almost a month. Too long. My fault, not theirs. What WAS their fault was that it didn't want to start, it had obviously not been kept warm, and the mags were all left on. But...I got her home. John took off first, and I caught him in the 340, which is interesting. We flew loose formation for awhile there, and then he landed on 32 while I landed on 5, holding short of 32, and we taxied in with him leading the way and me right behind him. He pulled in front of his hangar and turned around right as I pulled in front of our hangar and turned around. It looked choreographed, and the two planes are painted the same pretty much, so it looked pretty good, actually!
My next flight was there and waiting. While I went inside to hit the bathroom, he texted me and said 'Well, preflight is done, but while I was checking the fuel, I wobbled on the ladder, and I let go of the fuel stick, and, well, it's in the tank.' Oops. So I brought Jon down, and fortunately he was able to get a grabbie thing and pull it straight out, because it hadn't rolled to the back of the tank yet, where we can't get to it no matter what we do. So Jon saved the day there, and we went off to go fly. He did really well, and we're finally rounding that "I'm going to get to solo you soon" corner. Which is awesome. Now's the time I have to make sure he still has a valid medical and a student pilot certificate. Yay!
I did use my AirPods in the airplane today for the first time. It works better than the wired headphones because I don't have to have the phone attached to me at the same time. They're a little bigger in my ear, but I like how they fit and work in there under headphones better. Chalk up another bonus thing there.
Tomorrow's weather looks a lot ickier than today's. It was sunshine and calm winds, even though it was chilly. Tomorrow we're looking at moderate turbulence, wind shear, 30-35 knot surface winds, and a chance of rain. It'll be a lovely day to go to southern Illinois. ;)
The panel of the 421.
The panel of the 340
The moon under the wing of the C-172 at sunset
Final approach in 739KS at sunset
Tuesday, January 07, 2020
More Kaylee
What another beautiful day, and it's in January. How long can this last? Hopefully longer. Steve had a dermotology appointment, and the doctor removed a pre-cancerous spot from his cheek. Nothing big. I had a dental appointment, and got an all-clear. I used to not go for a couple years at a time, but then when I would go in, I'd have issues to have to go back for. So starting last year, I'd began going every six months like a grown-up, and so far it's kept me from having any additional teeth problems. Who knew. ;)
Kaylee had her last two classes for the first time today. She loves the psychology class, even though it's at 7:50 am, really likes her professor, and everything about the class. It and the forensic science class are the two she's most excited about. Next was a music class, and she started off less excited about that. The professor is a "Dr. Somebody", and "old", and "stuffy", and "severe". He also started off talking about super basic music stuff like "what is pitch", and she was bored. And then it changed, when he started deconstructing music, putting things together, changing rhythms on the piano, etc., and then tied it all together and started playing "Piano Man". She loved how he talked about the thought process, the construction and deconstruction of the song, and is looking forward to diving into more "song writing" stuff. So all in all, she's looking forward to all of her classes.
She had to call and talk to us for another hour and a half tonight. She's so funny. Her roommate is gone until the weekend, she's procrastinating (already) on doing her homework, she took two college personality tests that are required, and who knew, she was an extrovert. ;)
She's doing well. Day Two down, and doing fine.
Tomorrow I need to get a ride to Aurora, IL somehow. We have no planes available. That makes it a little harder. If I don't get it tomorrow, the plane is stuck until probably Sunday at least, for weather, which doesn't make them happy. Doesn't make Steve happy either. Need to get the plane back home. *sigh*
Monday, January 06, 2020
Kaylee Update
Today was Kaylee's first full day of classes. She had chapel at 10 am, and then three classes in a row. A base class where they basically help people figure out where their interests lie, and paths they can take to follow those. She said it was really interesting and good, and she has a friend in there. Next is a theology class, and her roommate's father is the professor for it--and her roommate is in the class too. She said he's a real laid-back guy, and it seems to be an interesting class.
Last but not least, she is Extra, Super, Way excited about her last class on Monday and Wednesday. It's a Forensic Science class. She is the youngest in the class by far, and the only Freshman. Apparently there's a waiting list, and it's hard to get into. The guy helping her with her class load helped her out, and actually got her into this class. There are several Seniors in there. She is so excited to be doing this class that she wants to get Started Right Now. She called me and talked for 45 minutes straight about her first day, and a good portion of that was the last class. lol They will be doing blood spatter analysis, talking about serial killers, forensic entomology, forensic accounting, forensic pathology, bones, fingerprinting, hair follicles, ALL of it. And it's more lab than lecture, hands on learning. He said they'd be spattering (fake) blood, not just looking at photos. She is giddy with excitement about this. The one thing she's nervous about is that there is chemistry and calculus and trig involved. But there are no math requirements prior to the class, so I told her that hopefully it's just a specific formula per application, and she can follow formulas.
She said she went up after the classes and introduced herself to the professors, "because that's how adults do it". I didn't do that in college my first day. She's so much better at social interaction than I ever was. :) :) I think it's fantastic. She said in the forensic science class that she'd better introduce herself to him now considering if there's much math involved she may be needing to talk more to him down the road. She also said she made friends with two Seniors in that class, and was excited about that.
She has someone she knows and likes in every class she had today, and her classes end at the same time as Meredith's classes, so they're going to get together afterwards to go get some food, and then she's going to work on homework.
She loves her refrigerator. It's the biggest one on her floor, and it was a free prize she won at Eastern's "Spring Fling". She loves it, can keep an entire gallon of milk, a bunch of water bottles, a gallon of sweet tea, and all sorts of stuff in there. Her roommate is great, and has introduced her to all the girls on her floor. She said it's a hopping floor, busy, happy, active, but not loud and obnoxious. Everyone was super friendly and welcoming.
Her first night there, Saturday, she went to bed at 8:30 pm and didn't wake up until after 11 am the next day. She missed her first church service there, and Sunday group activity, but she apparently needed the sleep!
Also today, she met with a kid from her high school. He'd been wanting to get together, and she wasn't super excited about it, as he wasn't her favorite person. But she decided, he's just trying to be nice, I'll get together with him. And she said it went really well. He's matured a lot in the last almost year, he would listen and not just talk. He was taking his spiritual life more seriously, and she said they had a great conversation. That's a relief, because it was one thing she wasn't looking forward to there at school--a person she'd hoped to not have to deal with anymore who also ended up going there. And it's going to work out, I think.
Tomorrow morning at 7:50 am is her first Psychology class, and other than being so early in the morning, she's really excited about that class too. Her last class is a Humanities class, with the first half of the semester focused on Music.
So. All in all, she's lit up excited, she's having a blast, she has people in every class that she knows and likes, she has so far liked all of her professors, she has so far found every class interesting, she already has friends in her dorm and class, she loves all the food options she has on campus, she loves the campus itself--there is even a heated outdoor walkway in between buildings--and she is just pumped up excited. It's great, because up until now, she's been a little unsure. She's not unsure any more. One day of classes under her belt, and she's raring to go do this college thing after all.
It's fun to hear. She texted me twice at 2 pm and said she needed to tell me about her day and before I could even answer the texts, she was calling. After awhile, she was still super excited and wanted to keep talking about it but she'd already told me everything, so I said "Would you like to talk to your Dad so you can tell him all about it again too?" She said "You know me so well." So they've been talking the last 45 minutes too. :D It's cute.
She also told me that one great thing is how many people she spoke to today were there to get a degree and wanted to use it to go into missions. She was getting ideas from all of them on ways to go about it. A lot of them were going into nursing, and she said "Nursing isn't for me", but she's learning a lot about what options are out there, things she hadn't thought about.
I'm relieved. And pleased. Even more pleased that all of her tuition for this expensive place was covered by scholarships and awards. She/We just have to cover room & board. So far it seems to be well worth it. :) I know it gets harder as classes settle in and winter settles in. I know very well. But college can also be a lot of fun and a great overall experience.
I don't have an address for her yet. She has her own box so I'm assuming it's a box number and not her dorm name and room number. I'll post it when I do know it.
For now the girl is doing great and having a fantastic day and learning a lot and excited about it all. :)
Last but not least, she is Extra, Super, Way excited about her last class on Monday and Wednesday. It's a Forensic Science class. She is the youngest in the class by far, and the only Freshman. Apparently there's a waiting list, and it's hard to get into. The guy helping her with her class load helped her out, and actually got her into this class. There are several Seniors in there. She is so excited to be doing this class that she wants to get Started Right Now. She called me and talked for 45 minutes straight about her first day, and a good portion of that was the last class. lol They will be doing blood spatter analysis, talking about serial killers, forensic entomology, forensic accounting, forensic pathology, bones, fingerprinting, hair follicles, ALL of it. And it's more lab than lecture, hands on learning. He said they'd be spattering (fake) blood, not just looking at photos. She is giddy with excitement about this. The one thing she's nervous about is that there is chemistry and calculus and trig involved. But there are no math requirements prior to the class, so I told her that hopefully it's just a specific formula per application, and she can follow formulas.
She said she went up after the classes and introduced herself to the professors, "because that's how adults do it". I didn't do that in college my first day. She's so much better at social interaction than I ever was. :) :) I think it's fantastic. She said in the forensic science class that she'd better introduce herself to him now considering if there's much math involved she may be needing to talk more to him down the road. She also said she made friends with two Seniors in that class, and was excited about that.
She has someone she knows and likes in every class she had today, and her classes end at the same time as Meredith's classes, so they're going to get together afterwards to go get some food, and then she's going to work on homework.
She loves her refrigerator. It's the biggest one on her floor, and it was a free prize she won at Eastern's "Spring Fling". She loves it, can keep an entire gallon of milk, a bunch of water bottles, a gallon of sweet tea, and all sorts of stuff in there. Her roommate is great, and has introduced her to all the girls on her floor. She said it's a hopping floor, busy, happy, active, but not loud and obnoxious. Everyone was super friendly and welcoming.
Her first night there, Saturday, she went to bed at 8:30 pm and didn't wake up until after 11 am the next day. She missed her first church service there, and Sunday group activity, but she apparently needed the sleep!
Also today, she met with a kid from her high school. He'd been wanting to get together, and she wasn't super excited about it, as he wasn't her favorite person. But she decided, he's just trying to be nice, I'll get together with him. And she said it went really well. He's matured a lot in the last almost year, he would listen and not just talk. He was taking his spiritual life more seriously, and she said they had a great conversation. That's a relief, because it was one thing she wasn't looking forward to there at school--a person she'd hoped to not have to deal with anymore who also ended up going there. And it's going to work out, I think.
Tomorrow morning at 7:50 am is her first Psychology class, and other than being so early in the morning, she's really excited about that class too. Her last class is a Humanities class, with the first half of the semester focused on Music.
So. All in all, she's lit up excited, she's having a blast, she has people in every class that she knows and likes, she has so far liked all of her professors, she has so far found every class interesting, she already has friends in her dorm and class, she loves all the food options she has on campus, she loves the campus itself--there is even a heated outdoor walkway in between buildings--and she is just pumped up excited. It's great, because up until now, she's been a little unsure. She's not unsure any more. One day of classes under her belt, and she's raring to go do this college thing after all.
It's fun to hear. She texted me twice at 2 pm and said she needed to tell me about her day and before I could even answer the texts, she was calling. After awhile, she was still super excited and wanted to keep talking about it but she'd already told me everything, so I said "Would you like to talk to your Dad so you can tell him all about it again too?" She said "You know me so well." So they've been talking the last 45 minutes too. :D It's cute.
She also told me that one great thing is how many people she spoke to today were there to get a degree and wanted to use it to go into missions. She was getting ideas from all of them on ways to go about it. A lot of them were going into nursing, and she said "Nursing isn't for me", but she's learning a lot about what options are out there, things she hadn't thought about.
I'm relieved. And pleased. Even more pleased that all of her tuition for this expensive place was covered by scholarships and awards. She/We just have to cover room & board. So far it seems to be well worth it. :) I know it gets harder as classes settle in and winter settles in. I know very well. But college can also be a lot of fun and a great overall experience.
I don't have an address for her yet. She has her own box so I'm assuming it's a box number and not her dorm name and room number. I'll post it when I do know it.
For now the girl is doing great and having a fantastic day and learning a lot and excited about it all. :)
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