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'.