TOL Practice

The clouds were just high enough yesterday to allow me to fly in the pattern. The automated weather service at the airport was reporting the sky as "clear", which was obviously not the case. I called the next nearest weather station at Hobby and that one was reporting scattered clouds at 2800 ft, so I decided to go. The bottoms of the clouds at Pearland were way lower than 2800. I realized this as I nervously approached pattern altitude at 1000 ft. I stayed clear, though.

I flew 7 landings, practicing some normal ones, and some shortfield/softfield. It's amazing how short you can stop a Cessna 150 when you want to. I had one scary moment when I forgot to close a window I opend while taxiing back to the end of the runway to do a softfield. I should have just ignored the window until I got stable off the ground. I ended up flying in ground effect off near the edge of the runway with the stall horn still going off, which was not the best thing. Live and learn, literally.

Drama

I’m sad... Nobody has updated their blog today. Even me. But I’m fixing that.

The word of the week seems to be “drama”. I know that office politics happen everywhere, but most of the time I feel somewhat immune to it here. In general, I feel that we do that “team working toward a common goal” thing pretty well. Even with the strong personalities that I work with day in and day out.

This week, though, I have had discussions about hurt feelings like 4 times in the last two days. Jokes that were taken personally. People feeling unappreciated. People not talking to the people they should and instead making a big fuss to those above them. People still bitter over missunderstaindings I thought we took care of months ago.

Maybe I flatter myself, but I consider myself a pretty empathetic person. I think I understand why people are taking things so hard, while at the same time thinking that they might be overreacting a bit. I can see the good intentions on both sides, and it’s frustrating to me that the good intentions are getting lost in the communcation barrier.

Really, I just want everyone to get along. If half the world would grow just a slightly thicker skin and the other half would learn to think before they speak, so much drama could be avoided.

Don't Blink

Don't blink
Just like that you're six years old and you take a nap and you
Wake up and you're twenty-five and your high school sweetheart becomes your wife
Don't blink
Just might miss your babies growin' like mine did
Turning into moms and dads; next thing you know your better half of fifty years is there in bed
And you're praying God takes you instead
Trust me friend, a hundred years goes faster than you think
So don't Blink
- Kenney Chesney

I've been feeling like this is the soundtrack of my life right now. Carina turns 1 in a little more than two weeks, and I can't believe it! It seems like just last month I was driving to the hospital with enough adrenalin in my system to make a horse jumpy. And just the other week she started eating people food. And just yesterday that she started crawling. In about 2 seconds, she'll be walking.

The problem is that blinking is an essential human function. I would be happy to remember every second, but no matter how hard you try it just blurs together. I can practically see her growing every time I watch her for 5 minutes straight, and time will not SLOW DOWN for me. So I take a lot of pictures and try to stop blinking.

Blink.

Damn.

Launch Trip

I'm backseating another operator for a simulation tonight, and it's much more interesting than I was afraid it would be. Luckily, I had checked out a laptop for a 2-day meeting earlier this week, so I can fill the slow times with e-mail and other small tasks. I'm still not totally used to being the "voice of experience" in this job, but I'm filling that role more and more every day.

I bought plane tickets yesterday to accompany Gavin to the launch at the end of the month. It's going to be fun. I haven't gotten any tours at KSC since I was there as a teenager and took the public tour, so I'm pretty excited about that. And seeing a Shuttle launch, of course.

Here's hoping for a launch no later than June 3.