I just couldn't resist posting this video

This just cracked me up. Incredibly. Watch the whole thing. :D

I tried to come up with something like "I've been busy" but it just didn't seem to fit...

I'm sorry. I'll try to do better.

I have been up to quite a lot. Let's start with school.

I'm doing just a light load of schoolwork this year. Since I'm planning on getting a business degree from Geneva, I decided to start on some school after all. Right now I'm near the end of the fifth chapter of the accounting course I'm taking online with Clark State Community College in Springfield. It's going well overall, except for occasional problems with the online server. :P

Work has picked up a lot for me. Since there was very little rain for quite a while, mowing had slowed down a lot. However, now that we've had some more rain, the business has returned. I'm also working 18 hours a week at the airport. I'm doing Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings 4-7, and also Saturdays 8-5. That's going really well. I enjoy the (most of) the work and the people there at the airport are great. I'm able to make a bit of money which is going towards my next topic.

Flying is starting back into learning again instead of recreation. I'm working on what's called the Instrument Rating, which allows me to fly in clouds, low visibility, or other similar situations. So far, it's been a lot of fun. Most of the time I learn pretty quickly, so that's good.

I haven't started driving yet. I really really really need to start sometime soon. Hopefully that'll work out soon.

Unfortunately, one thing that has been sacrificed with my increasing time at the airport is participation with my Boy Scout troop. I'm late for each of the meetings, since I work Tuesday nights. As well, since I'm working Saturdays, I can't really make it to campouts. That's about my only regret working at the airport, since I miss doing things with the troop. It's taken a bit of getting used to.

One thing that people will (hopefully) be interested in is what I got to do with a few other guys and a couple adults from the troop this August. We went out to Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, which is in southwestern PA. There, all of us got to participate in two days of whitewater canoeing on the Middle Youghiogheny River. Those of us under 18 earned the Whitewater Merit Badge, while the adults enjoyed getting to watch us. :D They canoed all the time that we did... just they didn't take the adventurous routes like we did. They also had the record for the least capsizes, at three. My canoe partner and I wiped out four times, while the other two guys did about a dozen. We laughed at them a lot. :) Actually, whenever anybody wiped out, they were laughed at thoroughly. :D

I think that's it for now. I seriously will try to remember to post more often. I'm also going to change the music. If you have any questions, comments, or stupid jokes... go ahead and leave me a comment. I don't mind. Even stupid jokes. :D

I think that safely qualified as my longest sabbatical ever. I'm back, now, though. :D

Just a quick post to get stuff up again. If you'd like to see the first photo album of RP International pics of mine on Facebook... click here.

Hope you like the music!

Great news!

The National Merit Foundation wouldn't let me publicly announce this until today. However, now that it's the 30th, I can tell anybody.

As many of you had probably known, I'd gotten National Merit Finalist. We found out about 5 weeks ago that I'd made it into the next and final cut, Scholar. Not all scholars get any money, but they've given me $2500 to use for schooling. As you might imagine, I'm really happy with this. Praise the Lord for His blessings like this!

Too long

Well, it has been too long. I'll summarize what's been going on in the past month and a half.

Church has been going quite well. We've been having some encouragements. We had a congregational meeting a few weeks ago. The congregation has been moving forward, and we enjoyed the benefit of a meeting that was wonderful due to the unanimity showed. A couple weeks ago, due to two families visiting the area, we had 66 people at church. That's the most that I remember having there in a long time. It was great. Hopefully, we'll soon be having that sort of attendance normally.

We're a bit behind in school, unfortunately. However, we're making steady progress on it. Hopefully, we can get done before too late into summer. :P

Flying has been going well. I'm working on getting checked out in the Star, a 4-seater. It's quite fun. Soon after getting the checkout in the plane, I'm hoping to take a bunch of friends up. :)

I'll finish up tomorrow with more. Night! :)

This would really be an interesting place to land.

No post since last month...

I'm posting again. Finally. :) Guess you figured that out without me telling you, though.

Currently, I am exhausted. Mostly, that's due to two things. 1) I got around 4 hours of sleep, I think. 2) After having something around 12-15 inches of snow, it was necessary to both shovel it and sled in it. I went with a couple of the neighbor kids (most of my readers know them) and their mom to a hill near here, where we spent about an hour sledding. After that, I helped shovel our sidewalk and then shovel out the van. I'm tired. :)

I flew a couple days ago. Hopefully, I'll get some pictures up here sooner or later, but I had a great time. I got 3.2 hours of cross-country time, and I'm now over 25 cross-country, and up to about 52 hours total time. I need 50 total cross-country hours to get my next rating, the instrument rating.

Well, speaking of flying on instruments, I almost had the chance to do that on Thursday. Nathaniel and I went flying down south of here, checking out the Ohio River. The weather was excellent down there. However, the closer we got to home, the worse it got. I was planning on going to Urbana airport, the next county south, but I wasn't too sure about it, so I played it safe and went to the Springfield airport, the next county south of Urbana. That airport is a bit better equipped than Bellefontaine, and I figured it would be all right. Well, after we got on the ground, I talked with a flight instructor (he's also the airport managing company owner) at Bellefontaine, and he told me to come on back, since the clouds and the visibility had gotten better. We headed on back, but I felt kinda weird--flying 500 feet above the ground, 500 feet below the clouds, and about 130 MPH. Only was able to see about 2 miles, too. :P

Oh well. It was legal. I gained a lot of experience--I now know I can fly in that kind of weather if I have to. I also now have some actual experience in having to make in-flight changes and adaptations. Hopefully, I won't have to do this kind of thing more often, but at least I know I can really do it now. That was kinda rambling. :P

School's been going well, but we're still behind. It's going to take us to the end of the year to catch up. Oh well. We'll get done.

Umm... I'm trying to think of something else.

BREAK

That was all last Saturday. Now it's Tuesday, and I'm realizing I forgot to finish the post. I'll update since then...

Letsee. No more flying since then. Done several tests for school, a couple of them pretty big, and they've all gone well. :) We're getting along.

Sabbath was excellent--most people there despite the weather. Sermons were great, the presbytery update was really good (getting to hear how other congregations in the presbytery are doing), and the dinner was tacos. Excellent day spent with the Lord and His people.

I just got back from our weekly scout troop meeting. The last 2 weeks' meetings were canceled because of weather, so this one had elements from 3 different meetings. A few interesting things--I've been elected the Senior Patrol Leader again (basically the guy that runs everything), which is mostly nice. I'll be training my assistant to take over my job by the end of my term.

That's about it for now. I'm going to find a bloopers video and post it.