TOO LONG!!!!

Sorry. Been busy. Bad excuse. I know.

Wednesday=not a ton. I'm really not remembering anything of great significance.

Thursday was pretty much the same.

Friday was different. I got a bunch of flying in this day. 3.1 hours, as a matter of fact. First, I headed off down to Dayton International Airport to take care of the three solo takeoffs and landings at a towered airport requirement for the private pilot's license requirement. I got back, and while I was planning out another flight, Mom and Dad got me a sub from Subway in Bellefontaine. After eating and finishing up the planning, it was off to Muncie, IN, which has another tower-controlled airport. A touch-and-go there, a touch-and-go at Bluffton, OH, and back home. I had a great time overall--no problems and fun flying. I learned a bunch, too.

One other really nice thing happened on Friday. Nathaniel was home! Only for about 45 minutes, but he was home. He, along with his roommate and a girl from Geneva, was going to Indiana for a week. He's been enjoying his time there so far, which is, of course, very good. :)

Saturday wasn't too active. Not a ton of stuff went on. We had a bunch of snow coming in, so I didn't fly in the morning like I was wanting to. I didn't fly at all, as a matter of fact.

Sabbath was a rather long day. We had the snow come in a lot and the winds were supposed to pick up a bunch, so we didn't have church at all. Somas from across the street came over in the evening, and we had a Psalm sing, and after supper, we all watched Chariots of Fire. As always, it was a very useful and enjoyable watch.

Monday wasn't a ton either. We headed into Bellefontaine for some stuff. School got done. That was about it.

I'm going to have to get to bed soon, so I'll finish this later. If anyone sees this before tomorrow morning, I'd appreciate prayer on something: I'm supposed to fly tomorrow, up to Defiance. Please pray that the weather would cooperate! It's looking iffy...

I'll finish the post soon.

I'm starting to slip...

I'll have to stop this trend. As you've probably noticed, the music has changed. It's now music, I guess, but not the best. This is actually a group of people trying to do it. Wow.

OK. Friday wasn't too much of anything. That's about it for then.

Saturday was busy. We had a hike with the troop around the north side of Kiser [sic] Lake, about 20 miles south of Belle Center. Melting conditions left the ground slippery, leading to several highly interesting points for me. My boots have been worn nearly smooth on the bottoms, so I can't grip the best. Slick snow/mud combining with a slope made it possible for me to ski at a few points, not all of them intended points. :P A few of us had pepperoni rolls baked in a folding oven over a propane stove. We had to eat them a bit under-cooked, since we were running out of time, but they were still great. :)

After the hike, I headed off to the airport. We got there, and I realized I didn't have the logbook, so we went home. I grabbed the logbook and we headed off to the airport again. I preflighted the airplane and headed out. About a minute after takeoff, things started getting interesting. I was about to do some maneuvering, so I checked out the engine instruments, and during my scan noticed something was wrong. I did a more thorough scan and figured out that the oil pressure was quite low--the low end of green. As I watched it for a little while, it decreased further, so I let the guy on the ground at the airport know about it and came back quickly. It turns out that occasionally some bit of crud of some sort or the other gets in and starts blocking the oil lines. I only got .2 hours in, but the airport manager didn't charge me a cent since the plane had mechanical problems. I never panicked and my heart rate really didn't rise any, but, judging from the way I felt afterwards, I'm thinking that I had a bunch of adrenaline pumping through.

Later that evening, Belle Center had the horse-drawn wagon rides to look at the lights around town. I ended up going with a couple families from church. Even though it was slightly drizzling, the whole thing was pretty fun. After getting home, I collapsed and went to sleep before much longer.

Worship on Sabbath was edifying, but sparsely attended. The two families that live a good distance away were unable to come due to weather. As well, we weren't in the building we're normally in, since that congregation needed their building all day long. Sermons were excellent, class was useful, and fellowship, although more limited than normal, was up to its usual high standard. :)

Yesterday I basically finished up ground school for flying. I have a DVD course that I'd never gotten around to completing, so I did that yesterday. I need to do a review with an instructor and do a little more work on a couple subject areas, but overall I'm ready for the written, or knowledge, test administered by the FAA. That should be interesting. :)

Today we got a bunch of schoolwork done, along with some other stuff that was necessary. Mom and I got my application to Geneva finished and sent in, so that was a plus. We had a (pretty much) good troop meeting tonight. I'm getting kind of tired now, so I'm probably forgetting something, but right now it's nothing important, so it doesn't really matter. :)

I'm guessing that's about it. I'm going to try to find a video...

Cheerleader and Band bloopers. As long as nobody gets hurt, always good for a laugh.

It's been 3 days, not 2!

I'm starting to slip... hope not! :)

Well, the past few days have been nice. I've been kept busy with school, but overall everything's gone well.

Tuesday I did have one bit of a problem. Around 1 in the afternoon, while doing some British literature, my neck gave out a resounding pop. After that until late that evening, my neck was hurting on and off a lot. For a while, I wasn't planning on going to the scout meeting that night, but a couple times of popping in an aspirin took care of the pain (mostly).

The meeting went quite well. We had talks on preparing for the hike this weekend, but the only one that I was present for was a presentation on proper packing and "ingredients" of a first aid kit. During the rest, I was off talking with several adult leaders on various and sundry topics, ranging from Air Force usage of handheld radios to rats' presence in Bellefontaine. Afterwards, we went outside for a few (emphasis on few) minutes of tag, during which time I managed to get a toe stepped on, resulting in that toe starting to bleed. It turned out being rather uncomfortable. :)

Wednesday was quite interesting. We had about 4-5 inches of snow overnight, and the roadcrews seemingly weren't quite ready for all of it. Mom and I made it to bowling in Bellefontaine, but not by much. We followed a car going 15-30 MPH about all the way into town, where the driver, at one turn, accidentally locked the brakes and slid nicely into a large snowbank. It was kind of funny, assuming you weren't in the car! :)

We were one of only about 4-5 families at bowling that morning. I bowled four games, and did well on two of them! :P Oh well. It was fun, even though I didn't do the best job at a few spots. I just couldn't get the ball to go down the middle consistently--it always went left or right, but hardly ever right down the middle.

Snow shoveling was in order after we got back from town. There wasn't a ton to be doing, since there wasn't a ton of snow. We shoveled four front sidewalks, two back sidewalks, two front porches, one back porch, and a partridge in a pear tree. Skip that last one. Anyway, the shoveling was the first of the season. It was kind of fun. By the time we get to about the 50th time, it will probably have lost some of its appeal! :)

Yesterday evening we had prayer meeting. Attendance was pretty much the usual, and everything else was pretty much average. The short meditation we always have was very good, so that was encouraging. :)

Today was great. I did a bit of school, including a Government test that I did very well on. However, the school wasn't the fun part, although it wasn't bad. Tonight, I got 2.6 hours flying, over half of which I did solely by reference to instruments. I renewed my solo endorsement, meaning I'm now OK to fly by myself again. As well, I finally got to do some VOR (radio) navigation, something that somehow had been overlooked for a while. It was pretty easy, enough that my very first time I was able to do a basic VOR approach for the airport, meaning that I used it to be getting most of the way to the ground. After my first lesson, I had a quick break while I microwaved some pizza and drank Mountain Dew. Yum. :)

Afterwards, I headed out with another instructor. We left Bellefontaine and flew on down to Dayton International Airport, where I got my first taste of operating in busy controlled airspace (Class C if you're interested) and of shooting ILS approaches. Basically, the controlled airspace here is that I'm having to talk to controllers to get approval to do pretty much anything. As well, the ILS is a precision radio approach that will get me almost all the way to the ground even in bad weather. It's precise enough that the bars on the instrument that gives me the approach information will noticeably move for as little movement as seven feet off course! It made it rather challenging, especially since I was referencing only the instruments and couldn't use my eyesight. Oh, had I mentioned this is all at night? It was great!

I think that's it for right now. I had a blast. I'm going up again on Saturday (assuming weather cooperates) so I think I'll be able to get a lot of time this week! :)

Have a good evenin'.

Keeping up with posting finally!!! :)

Well, yesterday was interesting weather. The temperature was about 50º or higher most of the day. We had a few times of intense rain, one period strong enough that it almost looked like the storm at summer camp at one of the calmer parts! That's saying a lot. :)

One family wasn't able to make it yesterday, so that was a bummer. We had only one worship service as well as class, due to the Presbyterian church, whose building we use, needing it for longer than normal in the morning/afternoon and then a bunch in the evening. They had a children's Christmas pageant, and they needed to set up for it a lot. When we got there, the entire platform was covered with sheets and poofy cotton for snow. We grabbed a lectern from downstairs for Dad to use, and it seemed to work well. We also had communion yesterday, so we had to grab a table from another place to put the elements on. Overall, it was a blessed day.

Today's been fun. I did five school lessons, starting with an English review and then a test that I didn't do the best on, as I hadn't quite figured out when to use who and when to use whom. Don't bother commenting to tell me how. :) I also did some physics and math.

We went out on the town tonight, really living it up. After stopping at Rite-Aid quickly, we went to Kroger and Aldi. Then, we headed off to the gourmet Italian restaurant known as Fazoli's. Their pizza was especially scrumptious. Finally, for the highlight of the night, we visited the wonderful land of Walmart. I ended up getting a couple things for myself--a pair of 88% Merino Wool socks (very nice) and a new Hawaiian-style shirt, since mine is getting old. After this wild excitement, we came back home, where our across-the-driveway neighbor presented us with a plate of gingersnap cookies (of which I've already had six--they're wonderful.) While I'd been getting a lot of exercise walking around Walmart, I decided I needed more so I walked to the library, about 4 blocks away.

The walk was nice, even with the temperature being in the 20's. I got to the library and found a few good books and at least one not so good. I checked out a Clive Cussler book that's pretty new, and also got "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis. As well, I got a DVD that I'm about to start in.

I think that's been about it. Just so you know, I was kinda exaggerating about it being a big night out on the town. It's not too big. It was kinda fun tho. :) Good night.

Unfortunately, no more flying...

As the title says. I got some groundschool done, but both of the Eclipse's (trainer aircraft) are down for maintenance. Oh well. The weather near the end of the time when I was doing the lesson fell apart incredibly. We had a sleet squall. Quite interesting for the plane that was about 2 miles out, on approach for the runway. They were a bit nervous for a little while. It turned out all right, though.

Our Scout troop marched in the Christmas parade today in the county seat, Bellefontaine. Bumpas and I got to be the main color guard for the Scout section of the parade, holding a large American flag. It got kinda cold since we had to have uniforms showing (no coats.) As well, I wasn't wearing gloves, since I wanted to be able to hold the flagpole very securely. Everything worked out nicely, as I warmed up afterwards with a nice cup of hot chocolate. :)

Schoolwork yesterday was interesting. I did well on a pre-calc test, completed some physics, and finished up with British literature. Literature isn't my favorite, but this was interesting, reading some of the works of Sir Thomas More and then William Tyndale. More could have been such an asset, if he would have seen the truth. As it is, he was a horrible detriment to the progress of God's Word. Thankfully, the Lord has said that His Word will endure forever, and Tyndale was a tool to help that. I hadn't remembered this, but about 90% of the KJV is Tyndale's translation. This man lived only until his early 40's until he was publicly strangled as a heretic, but his contributions continue today.

I'm thinking that's it for right now. I'll try to keep up posting regularly.