I decided, about a month ago, that I was only going to celebrate my rebirthday this year, as opposed to celebrating my biological birthday in November. For those unfamiliar with the term, it's the day I became a Christian in the true, Biblical sense (April 4). I'll be 9 this year. That said, Jen gave me my rebirthday present on Sunday. It's a brand new flight bag that I really wanted. My original flight bag was a little bit on the... umm... cheap side. It was a very basic beginners flight bag. My new one (thank you again, Jenny) is more durable, has more pockets (with zippers), and even has a pocket for my headset. I really like it.

After class yesterday afternoon I walked to the library and quit my job. The reason I gave them was that I needed greater flexibility in my schedule in order to succeed in the flight program, which is not a lie. There are times when an opportunity to fly will come up almost spontaneously, and I need to be able to jump at those chances. However, the other, equally true reason for my quitting is that it was just an awful job. No one on campus (aside from the librarians) had anything good to say about being a student worker in the library, or how the librarians treat those student workers. So I quit, but Helen (my boss) basically begged me to finish the week. I told her I couldn't do Friday, because that's prime cross-country time (which I explained in my interview, and they still scheduled my longest shift on Friday mornings), but I'm working the rest of the week. I'm not happy about it; I'd rather just be done. But I suppose it's the decent thing to do.

So I've got a cross-country scheduled for Friday. Whether or not the weather will accomodate my plans is still uncertain, but I'm going to plan on it and see what happens. I've still got 3 X-Cs to fly before I'm done with Commercial Stage I, so I need to get it in gear and wipe them out ASAP. I still need to get a whole bunch of Instrument time logged before June, and I can't very well do that until I finish Commercial I.

And speaking of flying, I made what may well be my best landing ever this morning. What's funny is that I was flying a plane I'm not used to, and I had a really sticky yoke (my flying pet peeve), so I was really wrestling with the controls: don't pull back hard enough, and you slam into the ground, but pull too hard, and you go back up instead of coming down. I'd just made a pretty sorry landing, and I was pretty sure I'd be making another one. Then, just like nothing, I landed so gently I literally didn't feel the wheels touch down. Jackpot! Now if only I could get the rest of my landings to do that.