Passages

Today's entry is about nothing in particular - mainly a bit of catching up and adherence to my self-imposed rule of at least one blog entry approximately every week. I'll hold off on more airliner pictures until next time.

Passages:

Yesterday was my trainee's last day at LAX; he starts at Santa Monica tower on Monday. I wish him well (and hope that he doesn't show up with an attitude about 'how we did things at LAX').

The farm back home lost the most senior of the pig population, and the next senior is reportedly off her feed as well. As they're both over ten years old (and more importantly - mom's pets), I don't think there's any bacon in the offing.

Not her best side, but one of the few shots I've got!

And here's the other one!

After several weeks of looking, I've managed not to buy a Jeep. I don't need one, but that's never stopped me before. As I alluded to in an earlier posting, I suspected my sudden desire for a Jeep to be the harbinger of some sort of mid-life crisis. If so, either the crisis is past, or it's beyond the stage of getting a completely impractical car (of course, I've already got the Rover, but I don't think a car you've already got counts).

Close, but didn't happen!

Possibly related, possibly not: Yesterday, having a 30-percent off coupon, I went into Borders and, after at least an hour of browsing, walked out empty-handed. Definitely not normal. On the other hand, there wasn't anything I particularly went in to get, but usually I can't even come close to a bookstore without finding something. Maybe it's because I've read everything by the authors I'm familiar with, and the cost of books these days, even with a discount, is significant enough that I'm not willing to get something on mere speculation (i.e., on the basis of its cover).

After a year of inactivity, the Baron's annual inspection has come due. As I'm still recovering from the debacle of the last annual, I'm planning to do this one myself, or as much as feasible. Annoyingly, the battery operated towbar has chosen this moment to fail. This is not a serious impediment, as I do have the Clarkat. However, the hangar door is only about a foot wider than the Baron's wingspan, making entry and exit a tedious operation; using a 3000 pound tug (and that's the small one) doesn't make it as much easier as you might expect. Here are a few shots of it when I pulled it out for a bath:

As you can see, it's a tight fit!

Here's the view from the tug operators position: not much help!

My experiment with the roses is not going quite as expected: instead of having them bloom in rotation, they all seemed to bloom at once. For the last week or two, it's looked like a rose garden around my place - to the extent that one of the neighbors commented on it. The downside is that now I've got two dozen plants that need deadheading.
I just got my bike back from the bike shop. About a week and a half ago, I went out on it and had a flat on the front tire about a mile from home. No biggie, I just got my exercise by pushing the bike instead of riding it. Anyway, this was enough for me to go ahead and have both tire tubes replaced. Why both, you ask? Because this bike was blessed with those funky Presta valves, which require a funky inflator tool. Which I don't have and didn't want - everything else uses normal Schrader valves, including my other bicycle; why should this be any different? The bike shop wasn't overly enthusiastic about the change, as it requires modifying the rims to accept the Schraders' larger valve stem. But they relented when I threatened to go buy tubes at Walmart and do it myself.

Topics for upcoming episodes: The new camera and Airplane Names. Stay tuned!