Fun and Games Dept

I woke up this morning moments before the alarm went off. My dream came to a natural conclusion and as a result, I awoke with a smile on my face. I got up and worked out, had a decent breakfast and made it to work with plenty of time to spare. (I drove to the office this morning).

What a great way to start the day.

It is amazing what one can accomplish after hauling your butt out of bed when you originally pledged to do so. Over the past few months I’ve gotten in the habit of sleeping in and I think it has had a detrimental effect on my mood and health. Hopping out of bed this morning and getting my day started seems to have supercharged my mood. I need to get back on track with not lounging around in bed after waking up.

The flip side to this is that I’m now going to take a 20 minute power nap in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot near work. It’s important that I not nap for longer than 20 minutes because then I’ll be too groggy to get through my afternoon at work. Luckily, I still use the Pzizz app for napping, which does a great job of waking me up on time.

ZZZZZzzzzzzz.

It’s starting to look like the Christmas season in these parts.

Our home sits just to the right of the approach to Runway 33 at Griffiss Airfield.

Earl and I spent the afternoon assembling festive displays for the front of the house and putting up the new lights we purchased yesterday. We have one strand of 50 lights leftover. I’m trying to decide where they will go. I think I’ll need a couple more days to think about it.

Earl and I decided to go for a ride in the Jeep this afternoon. We had no plan other than to relax and just enjoy each other’s company. Random navigation found us in Rochester, the third largest metropolitan area in New York State. We stopped at one of our favorite malls, Eastview Mall, and ended up getting quite a bit of our Christmas shopping done.

We decided on keeping it simple for supper and hit the food court, which includes one of our favorite regional quick serve restaurants, Tom Wahl’s.

The service is always friendly and the comfort food is delicious at Tom Wahl’s. We were not disappointed.

We ended up buying all new decorations for the outside of the house as our decorations did not fare well last season. Whilst perusing the selection at Sears, I found this sign to be confusing.

Like a photo I took a couple of years ago; the photo was of an 8×11 sheet of paper with MERRY CHRISTMAS printed in 36 point in Arial, I suspect the wording of this sign is an attempt to somehow be politically correct, but honestly I just found the sign to be confusing. And why are holiday decorations 30% off already, it’s not even December yet!

With the shopping we did today I’m finding myself easing into the Christmas season with a smile. It’s a nice change of pace.

Earl made an absolutely delicious feast for Thanksgiving this year. He does something a little different for each Thanksgiving celebration; this year he made the brussels sprouts with a sauce from champagne jelly. They were absolutely wonderful.

Our little family says grace before each meal. This surprises visitors from time to time but it’s something that we do. We are thankful to a higher power for what we have. It’s not an organized religion thing, it’s a spirituality thing. The blessing is brief and occasionally recited at warp speed. Live long and prosper.

As I type this Thanksgiving evening blog entry, the bread machine is doing its thing so we can enjoy the turkey all weekend long.

Life is grand.

And it’s started. We have less than a half inch of snow on the ground at the moment (we had more yesterday) but the television is covered with so many warning crawls you’re lucky if you can see more than one eyeball of any character on any given show this evening. Winter storm warnings. Winter storm watches. Winter weather events. Polar vortices. Snow Devils. Icicle launches. Blizzards. Typhoon. Bad breath. The list goes on and on.

Undoubtedly the weather channel has named all of these events. So have I. I have dubbed the “asshat”.

Either I’m getting crankier as I get older or people are becoming insane. I lean toward the latter. Folks are Up. In. Arms. about the fact that it’s snowing in these parts in November. Global Climate Change. Gas emissions. Starbucks. Chemtrails. Everything is to blame because it’s never been this way before. Snow in November. Who’d a thunk it.

Except when I was kid I went trick or treating on several occasions in snowstorms.

When I worked for ARC in the 90s school was closed in mid October due to an early snowfall.

I’ve ridden a sled or snowmobile on Thanksgiving day at least a dozen times in 46 years.

Listen people of Upstate New York, I don’t know where all the fair weather freaks are coming from but I ask that you kindly leave and take your hysteria with you. I’m damn proud to be born and raised in the Lake Ontario snowbelt and just to prove my point I’ll haul my ass into the office everyday the local schools close as administrators cower in fear and teach their students to do the same.

I was born and bred of hearty stock and I’ll wear that like that badge of honor it is. And I don’t care if it’s covered in snow, get the hell off my lawn.

The club airplane has been grounded for the past couple of weeks for a maintenance inspection. Luckily, I was able to fly in Kansas City in a rented Cessna 172 with a rented instructor and my husband in the back seat. It was Earl’s first time flying in a small plane and first time flying with me at the controls. He’s really excited for when I have my license now.

Because the club airplane has been grounded, we haven’t been doing a lot of flying. My instructor sent me a text message on Sunday advising that he had rented another airplane for Monday after work. He was “getting the itch” and he invited me and another student and friend to tag along.

It was my first time flying with my instructor in the left hand seat. He did some maneuvers that I haven’t done in a long time. The three of us did Lazy-8s, Chandelles and some fancy landing maneuvers usually used in formation flying. The rented Cherokee, a Cherokee 180, is a faster airplane so there was an extra dose of exhilaration. As I sat in the right seat, carefully watching every move he made, every indication of the instruments and felt every shift in gravitational pull, I had a huge grin on my face. We were flying like I had flown when I was a kid with my dad and the best part was, I now know how to do what he was doing. It was awesome.

The checkride for my private pilots’ certificate is not too far away. I am more excited than ever to be a pilot and I’m looking forward to the challenge of doing well on my checkride.

Flying is so awesome.

The origami case I recently purchased for my iPad has to be one of the best purchases I have made for an Apple device. This case allows me to store and efficiently use a full-sized Apple keyboard with my iPad, and it all fits on a snack tray on a CRJ-700 whilst flying Mesa Airlines doing business as United Express.

The smaller things amuse me.

We were about 45 minutes late for takeoff on the second leg of this trip; a computer responsible for “making the dinging noises” in the cockpit wasn’t doing its job, so they had to replace the computer. This involved going back to the gate, having maintenance come on board, swapping out a module and then rebooting the airplane. All in all the fix took about 15 minutes once maintenance was out to the aircraft and then we were on our way. Folks on the flight were good natured about the delay. This isn’t a full flight. Earl moved across the aisle to a pair of empty seats so we have lots of elbow room.

I’m wondering if this flight is using the traditional Victor Airways for navigation instead of going GPS direct, because we just jumped in line with four different aircraft flying in the same direction at differing altitudes. This is very cool to me. As a student pilot, I’ve flown a Victor Airway on just a couple of occasions and I’ve only seen one aircraft within reasonable eyeshot when on that Airway. It’s kind of nifty being on the highways in the sky. The aircraft closest to us the flight we are currently on is close enough in that I’m able to identify that it’s an American Airlines flight with the new livery.

I’m excited about our trip to Kansas City. Even though Earl and I will be working for a couple of the days there, the change of scenery and new experiences will be quite enjoyable.

Earl and I are on United flight 4583 from Syracuse to Dulles. This is the first leg of a two leg trip that will eventually find us in Kansas City later this morning. Our flight attendant’s name is Kyle. He is on Twitter. I’m good like that.

Our flight left at 0600L this morning and we were right on time. The captain advised the passengers that there could be a little choppy along the flight but it’s nothing thus far.

I am always like a kid when I’m flying, even as a passenger on a commercial flight. My head is plastered against the window and now that I’m allowed to, I take many photos. I don’t feel sorry for those that see flight as a form of transportation, but I consider myself quite lucky to experience awe, excitement, wonder and beauty every time I’m on an airplane. Sometimes I believe that the U.S. Security Measures are designed to make the flight experience as miserable as possible, but once you’re through that theatrical mess, they are left behind and quickly forgotten. I’m too overwhelmed by the amazing experience of flight, even as just a passenger, to be bothered by such things.

I just remarked to Earl that maybe I should be one of those old guys that becomes a pilot for a regional airline late in life. It doesn’t pay much and it’d probably cost more than I could ever earn, but flying everyday would be such an awesome thing. My current plan is to become a flight instructor and enjoy flying the two of us around in a Cherokee 180 or something similar. I want to see the land from the sky as often as possible and I want to share my passion with anyone that wants to share it with me.

I don’t know how people can sleep on flights. There is so much to see, so much to feel and so much to experience.

Life can be such a beautiful journey.

I was slated to fly the club airplane to KSCH, or Schenectady County Airport, this morning. The plan was to have me drop off the airplane at the maintenance facility on the field and another student and instructor would pick me up and fly me back home. As a student pilot that has soloed, I am allowed to do this sort of thing with the proper endorsements in my log book. I just can’t take passengers along with me.

I started planning the nearly 70 mile flight last night, with the intent of completing the flight plan this morning once I got the relevant weather information.

I’d show you a picture of my flight planning work here but for some reason Apple has decided to stop syncing my camera roll and photo stream on my iPad. It probably has something to do with iOS Vista iOS 8.

Edit: The picture just showed up on my iPad after turning my iPad on and off and then disabling photo stream and re-enabling it.  There was a message about “Photo Stream (beta)”, but the accompanying message with the suggestion was so dire that I decided not to risk it.

This morning I received an email from the club maintenance officer who decided that perhaps the airplane shouldn’t go to Schenectady, so my flight was canceled and I am sitting on the ground working like a good soldier today. While I understand the motivation for canceling the flight, I was a little bummed because it turned out to be a beautiful day to fly and now the club airplane is in for maintenance so I don’t have any airplane to fly. Well, it’s not actually maintenance, it’s an inspection.

Earl and I are traveling next week so the timing of the airplane inspection is almost on the money. I plan on flying a lot when we get back because it’ll be crunch time to ready myself for my checkride with an FAA examiner.

After I pass that I’ll be able to take passengers.