Strike two

At the airport in Casper, there are like 5 employees who do pretty much everything. First, you check in with them, then they check you through security, then they load your bags on the airplane, and finally they let you through the “gate”. This “gate” is a doorway that you walk through to go outside to walk to the plane, which you enter by climbing up the stairs. No jetways required in Casper.

Tonight, we got to the airport and checked in. After a while, they called our flight and we cleared security. Then we sat down by the gate to wait for them to let us board the plane. Carina went to sleep (finally – she’d been up since 1:00). We waited. And waited. 30 minutes, we started worrying about making our connection. You see, they cleared us through security, but there wasn’t anybody by the gate to ask what was going on. After 45 minutes, some of the other passengers started flagging down the TSA people to ask the airline people if the plane was coming. A few people started asking to be let back out to the check-in area to look for new flights. Carina woke up hungry.

After about an hour, we heard a rumor that the plane hadn’t even left Denver yet. Gavin went out to see if we should just take a flight tomorrow. About the time he sent word for me to come back out front, they finally made an announcement that the plane was on its way.

I understand that planes are late sometimes. But what’s the deal with the airlines thinking it’s OK to leave passengers in the dark about what’s going on. I’m sure United would have just flown us to Denver and let us get stranded there overnight if we hadn’t taken action to stay in Casper.

We’re 0 for 2 on this trip so far. :P

Happy New Year wherever you are - in 6 minutes (Houston), 66 minutes (here), 126 minutes (Berkeley), or yesterday (New Zeland).

Snoozing

I think Carina inherited her sleeping habits from me. When we don't have the daily necessity of getting up in time to get to day care, we tend to sleep later every morning and stay up later every night. Gavin says that we're just getting her on Pacific time early, but by the time we head back to home she's going to be on Hawaii time at this rate.

I bought my brother-in-law a game called "Masons" for Christmas. We played it a couple nights ago, and it was pretty fun. It's sort of in the "Settlers" category of games. It doesn't have the trading aspect of Settlers, which is one of my favorite things about the game. Masons can be played by two people, though, which could be very useful.

Howdy from WY

Well, we made it to Wyoming, finally. Carina did very well on the airplane. We took her in to the doctor today, and her ears still have fluid in them. They may or may not still be infected, so we started her on a new antibiotic. She's still feeling well, though, so it's all good.

We've had like 18" of snow since we got here. There was about 15" at my parents on Christmas Day. Then we got a few more today. Carina doesn't seem to like the cold too much. Especially if it's windy.

There are tons of kiddos around this year. But we can't seem to get them all awake and happy at the same time for a picture. We definitely need to do that soon.

It Never Rains...

Apparently, it's not enough that Carina's fighting off an ear infection AND a terrible cold. You see, about a week ago (right before she got sick), she learned to roll over from her back onto her tummy. She hasn't figured out how to roll back yet, though. What this means is that when she's asleep, she'll roll onto her tummy, wake up, and start to cry. It also means that swaddling, which we've been doing since day 1 as a means of comfort and also a means of keeping her pacifier in her mouth, no longer works. About all it's doing is trapping her arms so she has no chance of rolling herself back over.

Now the dilemma is that she has to learn to either sleep on her tummy, roll herself back over, or not roll over in the first place. But, I'm also kind of reluctant to let her fuss too long because she needs her sleep to get over the sickness. So Gavin and I have been going in to flip her back over and put the paci back in periodically. Did I mention that this has currently been going on for about half an hour? With no signs of slacking? And that we've been doing it for a week?

Oh yeah, and I think she gave me her cold. :P

Better

Carina feels a lot better today. Her fever is down to between 100 and 101. She stayed up for more than 20 minutes at a time and wanted to play. She smiled. :) We still have lots of boogers, but she'll get over that.

We are going to have to delay leaving town until Monday. Plane tickets between now and then cost about $1100-1200 per ticket. I'm kind of bummed - this was going to be the longest we'd been in Casper for years. We'll still be there for a week, though. And we'll have a happy and healtier baby.

Meanwhile, I "get" to go do the things at work that I was going to miss by leaving Wednesday. Including a sim at 8:00 AM tomorrow. So, it's bedtime.

Ear Infection

After another really tough night last night, it was obvious that we couldn't get on an airplane with Carina today. She was obviously completly miserable, and her temperature had spiked to 103 deg. So, we cancelled our tickets and took her to the doctor instead. Turns out she has an ear infection. So, now she is on antibiotics, still feeling pretty miserable, and we don't know when or how we're going to be leaving for Christmas.

Our original plan was to fly from Houston to Casper today. Then we were going to fly from Casper to Oakland on the 31st and spend a few days with Gavin's grandmother. We were returning directly from Oakland to Houston on Jan 4.

Recreating that itinerary is now going to cost us no less than $760 each. Not including the $200 we forfeited for cancelling the flight today. With 5 fewer days in Wyoming.

:(

Tears

Carina is sick, I mean really sick, for the first time. Runny nose, cough, presumed sore throat, temperature of 101.6. So tired she can't keep her eyes open, but keeps coughing and waking up. And crying, crying, crying.

I know that as the parent of a non-crier, it's kind of bad form to complain about the few little spats we do have. But, when your baby almost never cries, you know that the tears are actually about something. She's tired. She's hungry. You pinched her finger in the seat buckle.

I'm just not hardened to seeing my little angel's face all red with big, fat tears running down. It breaks my heart, and I would do anything to fix it.

Eagle Lake

The weather finally cooperated, and I did my first cross-country today.

Flying an airplane "cross-country" means you've gone more than 50 mi away from your airport of origin. You start out by getting an aeronautical chart and marking a straight line from your starting point to your destination (longer routes require some course changes, but a straight line works for these short cross countries). Then you look along that line for landmarks that you'll be able to spot from the air. You use the wind speed and the cruising speed of the airplane to calculate how long it will take you go travel between those landmarks, and how much fuel you'll use doing it. You then call the Flight Service Station and file your intended flight plan and get a weather briefing.

Today was perfect weather for cross-country flight. It was clear and smooth. We took off and I looked out to the west and saw my first checkpoint - Highway 288. I also saw the power station next to the lake that was my second checkpoint. After about 15 minutes, we flew past the antenna farm on near Beltway 8 and Highway 59, and I thought to myself that it would have taken me a half hour to 45 minutes to drive that far. I passed over Rosenburg, and my instructor pointed out the Y junction that I was supposed to fly directly between. About 20 minutes after that, I had Eagle Lake in sight.

I had the pattern all to myself. I haven't been flying in a month, and the runway is much narrower than the one I'm used to. Nevertheless, I managed a pretty good landing. I throttled back up and ascended back to pattern altitude.

I made a right turn and started looking for my next checkpoint, but I was distracted by the fact that I could actually see downtown Houston. 60 mi away. It felt a bit like cheating (not really, since I could clearly see the grain elevator I'd marked as my checkpoint), but I basically just eyeballed where Pearland would be from downtown and flew right toward it. I hit all my checkpoints spot on and landed just after sunset - another good one.

It was awesome. I can do this!

Christmastime is Here

I've been listening to the music from the Peanuts Christmas special pretty much non-stop for a week now. That has to be some of the best Christmas music ever created. I guess I need the help to get in the Christmas spirit, since the weather has been decidedly un-December-like. It finally cooled back out of the 80s again, but it's still in the 60s, and I'm still too much of a northerner to consider that Christmas weather. I'm glad that we have family to visit up there so we're sure to make sure Carina knows what snow is.

It is supposed to clear off again tomorrow. That bodes well for me finally getting to do my first cross-country. I've been waiting for a month for the weather to cooperate. I'll be flying to Eagle Lake. It's just over 50 nmi from the airport I fly out of, which is the minimum for it to be considered cross-country. Every time I've gone to a lesson before, I've been looking to acquire a skill of some sort. I really like flying anytime, but there's a certain stress in knowing that you're going out to learn something new. Maybe something that makes you nervous anyway (like stalls). This flight is going to be fundamentally different. I'll be learning new skills, true, but for much of the flight, It will be my primary job to fly straight and level and look out the window. That's pretty cool.

For Tracy...

Apparently, I've been terribly remiss in posting photos of the Chunk-A-Monk. Let's remedy that a little.

This one I like to call: I'll smile when I'm on my belly, but only if that other baby smiles back!


She won't consider washing dishes entertainment for long.


I love the doggie, and the doggie's scared of me!


Isn't that cute? With the slobber all running down her chin?

I'm Reading...

I recently finished Eat, Love, Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert. On the surface of things, it's a travel autobiography. Really, it's about the author's journey of self-discovery following a messy divorce. She spends a year living abroad exploring different parts of her life. In Italy she lives for pleasure, and pasta. In India she lives in an ashram and seeks God. In Indonesia she seeks the balance between the worldly and the heavenly with an amusing cast of traditional healers.

It's an entertaining book. Gilbert is a good writer and the book is funny. I'd recommend the book to people that like travel literature.

An Essay on Health Care: Socialism vs Free Market

I found this early today while my simulations were running. It is an interesting essay that is rather long, but, I feel it is worth the time reading. It argues against government intervention in mandating health care in a methodological fashion, with references.

I don't yet know whether it is best to abolish all government intervention in health care, but this essay makes some good arguments in abolishing certain aspects of the government intervention.

ReelNASA

What do you think of this? Me, I think it's a step in the right direction.

Random Thought of the Day

My MP3 player really likes Jewel today. What's up with that? I have like 6 Jewel songs on this playlist of hundreds, and I've probably heard 4 of them.

Scrub

No Shuttle launch today - those damn ECO sensors!

For those of you who don’t know all the NASA acronyms by heart, ECO stands for Early Cut-Off. The ECO sensors reside in the big orange fuel tank of the Shuttle. Their job is to detect when the propellant in the tank has been depleted. If the propellant has been depleted early, the sensors send a command to shut down the main engines. This is very important because if the engines were to continue to run after the propellant had been depleted, the turbines in the engines would spin up faster than their design speed. They would likely disintegrate, causing an explosion. Alternatively, if the engines were to shut off too early, the Shuttle probably wouldn’t be able to make it into orbit and an abort would need to be declared.

We’ve been having problems with the ECO sensors fairly regularly since we started flying regularly again. The good news is that they’ve got some instrumentation onboard this vehicle to try to track down the root cause. I wish we’d launched today. The silver lining for me is that I was going to have to sub for someone this weekend if we launched today, but now I don’t have to.

18 lb 6 oz

I was pretty close. We went to the doctor today, and I thought Carina would be about 18 pounds or so. Babies are supposed to double their birthweight in the first 6 months. Carina did a bit more than that. :) She's supposed to start growing a bit slower now, and have a smaller appetite. I would never have known that from how she ate tonight. I couldn't spoon the peas and carrots out of the bowl fast enough to satisfy her.