My First Rattlesnake Kill

Jen and I decided to go to Sierra Vista for the day on Saturday and spend a little time reconnecting. With my school stuff and Jen working long hours, we haven't had much time to just be together. So we did that Saturday, and it was a really good time. After we got bored in SV, we came home and ate some pizza and watched a movie. Then, at around 6PM, we decided to go out and spray the weeds in our yard, so I strapped the big old tank on my back, pumped it up, and got to spraying (I also stuck our pistol in my pocket, which is sort of standard procedure anytime we do anything outside on the ranch). Meanwhile, Jen was wandering around the yard. She was strolling along our driveway, when all of a sudden, she let out a pretty good scream and started backing away from something. When Jen gets... let's say "alarmed," she sometimes becomes a little hard to understand. However, as I came around the bend in the driveway, I was able to gather that she had found a snake. I wanted to make sure that it was a rattlesnake before I pulled the gun and shot it, though, because we also have bull snakes on the property, which look like rattlers without the rattles, and they eat rats and things, which is good. Sure enough, this one was a rattlesnake, and it was laying across our driveway and looking for all the world like it had been run over. I drew the pistol and kicked some dust at it, figuring that if it was actually alive it would react in some way. It didn't react at all; it just kept laying there. I voiced my suspicion that it was dead, hoping Jen would calm down. Instead, she shouted at me, "I don't care! Just shoot it anyway!" Being the good husband that I am, I obliged her, and it's a good thing I did because as soon as the first round of rat-shot hit it, it started heading for the weeds. (I want to point out how tricky it is to get off a good shot with a pistol when you have a big tank of chemicals on your back and you're trying to keep the sprayer and its hose out of the line of fire.) I shot the snake again, a little more carefully this time, and he stopped his retreat. In fact, he stopped doing everything. I was content in the idea I had successfully killed him, but Jenny... let's say "requested" that I shoot him again, so I again obliged her and hit him one more time. The third shot flipped him clean onto his back, so there was no more doubt; the snake was dead. Tired of trying to function with a tank on my back, I went back to spraying the weeds growing on our walkways. When I finished that chore, I took off the tank and went back to the snake. My trusty tape measure told me he was 33 inches long, before I cut off his rattle for a keepsake (the rattle had 6 buttons on it; one less than the last one that was killed in our yard). With the help of a stick, I moved my victim to a flower pot on the edge of our driveway, where Chuck (our landlord) later picked him up and, I'm assuming, disposed of him. Chuck later told me that my kill was the third in three days; he had killed one on Thursday and one on Friday. I have a picture of my snake dangling at the end of a stick, but the limits of the computers in the campus lab won't let me put it on here. Maybe Jen will put up a pic of it (hint, hint).

Here's the odd little postscript to this tale: Today when I got back into my classroom after lunch, there were 4 or 5 people in a little huddle in one corner of the room, and one student was pounding on the floor with a signpost they keep in the room. When I got to the corner to see what was up, the student had just finished braining a baby rattlesnake that had somehow found its way into our classroom. It was 9 or 10 inches long, and only had one little button for a rattle. When the other students first found it, they thought it was dead... until it started furiously striking the sole of one student's shoe. Weird.

Samsonite

Today I got the highest score in the class on my Basic Electricity test. I missed one question out of 33. Not passing the test was never really the issue for me, though. What had me really bothered yesterday is that I feel like I'm just not grasping electricity (the structure of FAA and FAA-related testing is such that you can score perfectly on a test without having the slightest clue what any of the subject matter actually means). I still feel like electricity's somewhere beyond my mental reach, but I'm okay with the idea that I'll pick up those details I actually NEED to know for AMT, when it's time for me to know them. As an instructor told us all today, "We're not training you to be electrical engineers."

I'm admitting, here and now, for those who didn't already know this, that I'm pretty hard on myself (and I apparently LOVE to use commas). When I'm in a mood like I was yesterday, it doesn't matter that I'm at the head of my class. It doesn't matter that I'm in the final bit of my commercial pilot certificate. Like I just mentioned, part of what was getting to me yesterday was that I felt I should be a master electrician after one week of class on the subject. Who cares whether I'm doing well in the program? That's irrelevant (this is all what I was thinking yesterday, you see). The relevant thing is that I'm too stupid to get electricity, regardless of how long I spent studying it.

The other thing that was getting to me is that I don't feel like I'm doing well enough at piloting. My private certificate was a con job, surely; I didn't deserve it. My instrument rating was a fluke, certainly; there's no way I should have such a thing in my possession. The things I've done well, and do well, don't matter; they're beside the point. The only things I can see clearly on a day like yesterday, are my failures and those things I'm still not an expert at. I've worried, pretty much from my first flight lesson, that I'm not good enough or smart enough or talented enough or perceptive enough to be a good pilot. That thought has haunted me through every flight period and solo flight and cross-country and test and accomplishment. Well, I had a short conversation with my instructor (the new one, who's been making his living evaluating pilots) in which he told me, point-blank, that I have the talent and ability to be a great pilot. He also told me that he's noticed I REALLY lack self-confidence, which is both very accurate and very perceptive on his part. We talked a bit about that, and he assured me he could help me through the head games I'm playing with myself, because those are the only things holding me back from being a very good pilot.

So, to sum up this semi-rambling mess, I'm feeling much better about things today, than I did yesterday.

worthless
-adjective
without worth; of no use, importance, or value; good-for-nothing; Josh LaBo 27.75 years into his lifespan.

Yesterday's flight period went far better than I had expected it to. Mike has a few quirks in the plane that I'm not crazy about, but I'm sure it'll all work out in the end. I do like his teaching style, in general, and I feel pretty good about finishing my commercial certificate with him.

What was I thinking?

I'm sitting in the briefing room waiting for my new instructor to get back from a flight, so we can go up together for the first time. When I requested that Belinda assign me a new instructor, it seemed like such a great idea. I'd get my time in, in a timely fashion, and I'd be able to fly my check ride with Belinda. Now, though, I'm trying not to panic. For those who don't know, Mike (the new instructor) will be my 9th flight instructor since I started my training back in Michigan in 2005. I've had some absolutely miserable experiences with some truly God-awful flight instructors, and those bad experiences have left me pretty gun-shy when it comes to flying with someone new. And now, not only am I about to go up with a new instructor, I'm about to do it at 3:15 in the afternoon, when turbulence is near its strongest and I've already had a fully day of mechanic class. This is suddenly seeming like the dumbest thing I could ever do.

It's Been A While...

I guess I haven't posted much lately (if you think I'm bad on here, you should see my paper journal. Oy!) so I should probably write something, on the slim off-chance someone actually checks my blog for updates.

I started the AMT (read: aircraft mechanic) program at school on July 7, which means that today I finished week 3 (the program runs 15 months total). Because our program is approved by the FAA, we MUST be tested on 129 subject areas, and pass every one of them. One hundred twenty-nine subjects into 15 months means that in the last 3 weeks, we've had 4 tests (I think; everything is sort of a blur right now) which I've passed without any real trouble. But this is the "General Phase" so we're not getting very in-depth on anything yet. Monday will be our first time working in the lab (read: hangar). We'll be making fluid lines (read: little pipes) and pressure-testing them. I'm very excited for a chance to finally use the $700 worth of tools that have been riding in my trunk since the 7th.

It's sort of strange to think that in 15 months, Jen and I will be able to leave Douglas. We've only been here 2 years, but sometimes it seems like we've always lived here. I've been asked if I hope to move back to Michigan when we're done here. Somewhere along the way, Michigan stopped being "home" for me (though I still love the song "Michigan Christmas"). I have no desire to move closer to my family, because it seems like we all get along best when there are thousands of miles between us. And I don't feel as though I left many friends behind when we moved here (just as I don't feel like I'll be leaving any friends here when I go), so that's not a motivation. Come right to it, I can't think of anywhere that DOES feel like home to me which, I suppose, will help me get acclimated when we get wherever we're going after this, but I also can't help thinking it's just a little bit sad.

I'll most likely find out on Monday who my flight instructor will be for the rest of my commercial certificate training. I had a talk with Belinda a day or two ago (again, everything's a bit of a blur), and requested a new instructor. It's not that I'm unhappy with the instruction Belinda's been giving me. It's just that our schedules aren't really going to mesh until sometime in October, and I don't want to wait that long to finish my training. I need an instructor who can fly a 3:15 flight period with me when I get out of AMT, and there are 2 new instructors coming in who will be able to do that. Also, having a different instructor means I'll be able to fly my check ride with Belinda when the time comes, which is a definite plus. I've met both of the new instructors, and they both seem nice (and they both have years of flying experience; also a plus), so I don't really care too much which one I get assigned to. It's going to make for a LONG day, sitting in class for 7-8 hours, then getting in a plane and flying for another hour, but there's not really any other way around it; I need to finish my commercial certificate, and it's got to be this semester. God never gives us more than we can handle, right? Right?!

Some long weekends just aren't worth it...

Jenny, in her most recent post, mentioned that Chuck and Patty came over (I think Saturday) to see what the workers had done at our house. Then she said it was another story for another time. That time is now, friends! I've decided to tell you about the workers and their.... umm... work.

By now, everyone should already know that Jen and I moved into a two-bedroom house earlier in June. The house is sort of... I'll say "dividable" in that you can close a couple sliding doors and essentially turn the house into a main group of rooms and a guest set of rooms. That being the original intent of the layout, each side even had its own climate control. The only problem is that the A/C on the "master" side didn't work worth a hill of beans, so we wound up spending a good deal of our home time in the guest side, where it was cool (usually). Well, Chuck and Patty decided to do some work on the heating/cooling situation. The plan was to put in a swamp (evaporative) cooler (for inexpensive cooling in the dry time), as well as a new heat pump (for heating the house in winter, but it's also an air conditioner for cooling the house during the monsoons, when a swamp cooler won't work). And the new package would heat and cool the entire house, rather than have two independent units working. Sounds great, right?

So the workers came on Monday and started working. (I feel a note should be made at this point that the workers are Mexican just like most of Douglas and, thus, have the very typical "manana" mindset, which means there really is no sense of urgency when it comes to working. A job gets finished whenever it gets finished, and there's not much you can do to hurry things along. This mindset is the reason Jenny and I no longer eat at Denny's in Douglas; even the waitresses live by it.) They made some decent progress, and at the end of the day, they told us they'd probably be finished sometime on Tuesday. Tuesday came, and they didn't get as much done as they wanted. Wednesday, I stayed home from work so Chuck or Patty wouldn't have to spend the day sitting in our house with the guys. They showed up around 7:30, worked for an hour, then said, "We have to go to Sierra Vista for a part. We'll be back in the afternoon." So I sat and waited. And waited. And waited. And they never came back. Well, they finally came back Thursday and got some stuff done (I'm guessing; I wasn't there this time), but they didn't finish the job they told us would be done by close-of-business Tuesday. This whole time, they were just leaving their trash all over our yard and house, because apparently cleaning up after yourself isn't something they teach you in Heating & Cooling School. I can't recall if it was Tuesday or Thursday when they installed the control unit for the swamp cooler, but they cut a hole in the wall right above an old standing clock, without moving the clock first, so the little German-looking figurines on the clock were pulverized by hunks of sheetrock. This, unfortunately, wouldn't be the last damage they did.

On Friday they came back and worked most of the day, which meant we weren't able to change our drivers license addresses or do our grocery shopping. At some point in the afternoon, we heard a tremendous crash like something got broken. We went to investigate and everyone played it all cool like nothing had happened. After they left for the day, I went into the guest bathroom and noticed they'd knocked a chunk out of our tile countertop. That, apparently, was the source of the crash, but they made a point of NOT telling us they'd damaged our bathroom. I think it was also on this day that they installed the control unit for the heat pump. But the first hole they cut in the wall wasn't in the right place, so they cut another one, which left a nice, square hole in our living room wall. Then the guy wired it wrong, so the A/C control turned on the heat instead of the cool.

On Saturday, they came back to finish up. Jenny couldn't take anymore so she went across the road to visit with our neighbor. I was sitting in the kitchen playing a computer game, and the guy came back in to re-wire the heat pump controls. He fiddled with it for a while, then tried to call someone, then turned and said to me, "You don't have the internet here, do you?" I told him I didn't, so he wandered off to try to figure out how to fix his mistake. Meanwhile, the other two guys, who had come in to hang out while wiring guy tried to work, decided to watch me play my video game. And ask me questions about my video game, and whether I'd ever played Halo 3 (which, as far as I know, they don't even make for PC). Then wiring guy came back in and fixed his mistake. Then he fixed the hole in the wall, which left a big white circle on our wall where there used to be pretty yellow paint. Some time after that, I heard another tremendous crash. Jenny was still across the road visiting, so I went to investigate, determined to get a straight answer this time. It turns out one of the guys broke through the ceiling in the garage, leaving a hole in the ceiling. But that's not all. The guy broke through right above a lighting fixture, the kind they have in businesses, with the long flourescent "bulbs" in them. So he bent one side of the fixture, at the same time knocking out the "bulb" and shattering it all over the floor. That was the last straw for me. I called Jenny and told her what happened. Then I called Patty and told her what happened. Jenny came home, and Patty came over to check things out. Then she laid down the law for the workers. This is where it gets really amazing. Patty told them she wanted the white circle on the wall painted. They asked if she had a can of the paint they could use (I'm not kidding). Then they suggested hanging a picture over the white area (again, I'm dead serious). Finally, they agreed to go buy a can of paint. Patty asked them repeatedly who broke the countertop, and no one out of the four workers would give her a straight answer. So then she asked where the missing chunk was, and again no one would answer her. So she told them she wanted it fixed, and that the tile is 35 years old, so it might be hard to find. They went into the bathroom and ripped up a piece of the tile to take to Mexico to try and match it. BUT THEY TOOK THE TILE NEXT TO THE DAMAGED ONE, INSTEAD OF JUST TAKING THE DAMAGED ONE. So now there's one broken tile and one missing tile. Then she asked why they'd put up the old registers instead of putting up new ones, since they included new registers in their quote, and since they'd told her at the start of the job that new registers would work much better than the old ones. They hemmed and hawed and Patty told them to put in new ones. Then she asked about the hole in the ceiling, and they assured her they'd fix it themselves (God help us all). And then something interesting happened: they got out a shop vac and started sweeping up the messes they'd made on the carpet. This is only interesting because it was the first time all week they'd done it, and I'm not sure it would have happened at all if Patty hadn't been there laying down the law.

At that point, the workers left to go buy registers and paint. They came back a while later and replaced all the registers with new ones (which, I must say, work much better than the old ones). Then they opened up the new can of paint and tested it on the wall. Against all reason and common sense, they tested it on an undamaged part of the wall instead of on the mess they'd made, and it was the wrong color. So now there's a little whitish spot of freshly-painted wall about 2 feet below the big white circle on the living room wall. At least they had the sense to stop at that point and not paint the white circle whitish instead of the yellow it was supposed to be. Patty's plan was to just have Carla (the aforementioned neighbor Jenny was visiting with) doctor up whatever color paint they came back with, and paint the wall herself (Carla is amazing in that way. Bob Vila wishes he could be Carla). But they took the can of paint when they left, without anyone noticing, so now we're back to no paint. Their plan was to come back today and patch the ceiling and finish cleaning up their mess. They may be there now; I don't know. I'm just hoping they're gone for good when we get home tonight.

On Spiritual Solitude

Since I'm apparently using my blog to vent lately, and because I'm presently thinking about Kara's "church family" comment on her blog, and Kelly's "thought you found a church" comment on my blog, I guess I'm going to talk a bit about our present situation. Jen and I have been living in Douglas for very nearly two years now (our two-year anniversary is July 13). In that time I have established one relationship that I would call a good Christian friendship. Just the one. Unfortunately, he's in the Marine reserves, and he got deployed to Djibouti last winter. So he's gone. You might be saying to yourself, "Wow. One Christian friendship in two years? What's Josh doing wrong?" God knows I've asked myself that question more times than is probably healthy. But consider our circumstances out here. We visited the Baptist churches in Douglas and didn't find a single regular attender of any of them that was our age. Plus, the preaching was WEAK. So we moved on to Sierra Vista. We reasoned that churches in a bigger city would be bound to have people our age. And we were right; we found some people our age at First Baptist in Sierra Vista. We even started attending the age-appropriate Sunday school class in order to get to know those long-sought-for people. And they more or less ignored us. One Sunday I even made an emotional little speech about how Christians needed to stop ignoring the people around them, and everyone wholeheartedly agreed. But nothing changed. We eventually stopped going there (between the unfriendliness and the fluff sermons every week, and the fact that we had to drive an hour to get there, there wasn't much to keep us there), and we didn't hear a peep from any of those people. The only e-mails we got from any of them were mass mailings. When I e-mailed them to take us off their mailing list, they finally said, "Yeah, we noticed you stopped coming. What happened?" Keep in mind that this was MONTHS after we stopped going there. So we moved on to First Baptist in Bisbee. It was a bigger church, by southern Arizona standards (maybe 80 people each week), but again there was no one our age. Not even close. A few older people were nice enough to introduce themselves, and every so often would come over and say hi, but it never really went much past that point (though I will say that the pastor and his wife are very nice people). So we found ourselves in the sorry state I described in a comment on my last post: we'd come in, sit down, get ignored, listen to the sermon, and leave. The one big advantage this church had was that the sermons were actually GOOD. But we can sit at home on Sunday mornings and listen to good sermons on the radio. What we need is a church family. We need to feel like we belong somewhere. We tried Valley Bible Church this past Sunday; it's basically our last hope. There aren't really any other church options for us if this one doesn't work out, unless we want to drive all the way to Lordsburg, NM and look there. Valley's a pretty popular church for New Tribes people, but it's also a very small church, and there was only one couple there around our age. We've met the couple once before, and they're nice enough. But they're also missionaries in training, which means they're going to be gone soon. And we'll be back in that same lonely church boat.

So if a guy can't find a friend at church, where else can he look? Campus is full of young people. But a lot of them are fresh out of high school, and I'm going on 28, so our perspectives just aren't the same. Plus, the aviation department is sort of separate from the rest of the school, so the only other students I ever meet are other aviation students. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but this is also a very small department. I know for a fact that the only other Christians here are a 19-year-old girl (not the best person with whom to strike up a friendship) and a twenty-something guy with whom I've unsuccessfully tried to form a friendship.

What this all boils down to is that I'm feeling pretty lonely lately. Like I mentioned in my last post, if I have something I want to talk about with a friend, I'm out of luck. I don't want to sound like I don't appreciate Jen. I appreciate her very much. I wouldn't have been able to last this long out here without her. But a man needs other men to talk with, just like a woman needs other women. I think that really had a lot to do with how I was feeling when I wrote my last post. I'm lonely, and that feeling is aggravated by our utter lack of a church family, of a place where I feel like I belong. Where I feel welcome. Or wanted. I guess all I can really do is look forward to finishing the AMT program 16 months from now, because we'll be able to move on to the next place God has for us. Maybe I'll find a friend there.

"Ghosts appear and fade away..."

Okay, I'm going to admit something. The overwhelming majority of the time, I have no desire at all to ever go back to Michigan, for anything. Ever. That's not what I'm admitting, though, as I already consider it pretty common knowledge. What I am admitting is that, after taking the time to check in on some blogs this morning, I find myself wanting to go back to Michigan. There, I said it. I want to visit Michigan. I want to eat a #18 (whole on white, cold, with everything) from Intermission Deli in Bay City, then grab some Superman ice cream and take a stroll on the Riverwalk. I want service with a smile (or at least not a scowl) from wherever I go. I want to not have to knife-fight with enormous bugs in order to walk through my home. I want to hear english spoken in public by someone other than me or Jenny. I want to get caught out in a nice, warm rain. I want to see water when I'm out and about, without going two hours out of my way to see it. I want to hang out in a mall I can't walk the entire length of in 2 minutes. I want to know for sure where I'm going to church on a Sunday, without having to consider drive-time, sermon quality, or the fact that no one will talk to us while we're there. I want to be excited about telling something to a friend, without immediately afterward realizing I don't have any friends around to tell. I want to see green grass and smell it being cut. I want Bob Barker to host The Price is Right again (okay, that one's not really Michigan related). I just want to get out of here for a while. I think I might even NEED to get out of here for a while.

I know we technically haven't even left the United States yet, but I'm afraid I'm already experiencing the first hints of missionary burn-out. Or maybe it's just a mood.

Update

Here's what's happened in the week since I last posted. I was able to get that night solo out of the way, and it mostly went well, except for a couple small mistakes on my part. I still have 0.8 of an hour of night solo to log, but that'll be easy enough to take care of once the new semester starts. For reasons that haven't been made known, it was decided there will be no summer flights this year, which means all the college planes are grounded until the end of July.

We finished moving into the house on Friday, though we're still a ways from being fully unpacked. Our A/C doesn't work at the house, so some dude is supposed to come today and install a new swamp cooler (and possibly also fix the A/C; I'm a little hazy on this point).

Jenny's wrist is healing up well. She still has to take a painkiller now and then, but I guess it's bothering her far less than it used to.

And that's about all the news that's fit to print.

Jenny

Oh, and for those who don't know (which is probably everyone except possibly Kara) Jenny sprained her wrist over the weekend while we were moving stuff into the new place (not sure exactly how or when). She's on painkillers and wearing a wrist brace. Please pray it heals up quickly, so she'll be out of pain, and so we can finish moving this weekend. Thanks!

Joshua 1:9

It's 4:48 right now. I'm waiting for 5:00, because that's when the new Terminal Aerodrome Forecast (TAF) comes out. Unless something drastic has changed since the last forecast came out at 11:00, I'll be making my night flight to Tucson for 10 stop-and-go's. I think I posted about this before and said I just had to do 10 touch-and-go's, but I found out about 90 minutes ago that I'm required (by the school, not the FAA) to do stop-and-go's instead. They're essentially the same thing, except a stop-and-go has me bringing the airplane to a complete stop on the runway before taking back off. It's really a pretty minor inconvenience, but it's going to add some minutes to my already-considerable (in my opinion) flight time. I don't expect to be back to the college until around 11 PM. Another half-hour will be spent securing my plane and driving home, so I won't be getting in until maybe 11:30. That's not necessarily the end of the world, but it'll be some time after that when my adrenaline rush finally burns out and I can sleep.

All of this kind of makes me sound like I'm bored with the idea and I'm just waiting to get it over with. In actually, I'm finding it hard not to be scared of this flight. I've already made one attempt at it, and my nerves got the best of me so I aborted the flight. This is probably my last chance at it until July, though, because the powers-that-be decided there will be no summer flights this year, and the semester ends on Friday. So I either trust God and just go do it tonight, or else I sit and kick myself for a month. If any of you read this before 10:30 PM Michigan time, I sure could use some prayer.

Decisions, decisions

Let's talk about the house. For those who don't know, Jen got a call last week from Patty Chambers who, along with her husband, Chuck, own Lee Station Ranch north of Douglas. Patty was calling with a fairly unique offer, especially in light of our recent move to Twin Buttes. Turns out Patty's mom, who owned her own home on the ranch property, passed away in March. Chuck and Patty don't want her house to sit empty for 4 years until their son and his family come to stay in it, so they're looking for someone to live there in the meantime. Since we're only going to be in the area for another 16 months or so, they've offered the house to us. They don't want any rent from us; the only thing we'd have to pay is the monthy electric bill. Nice as that seems, living on the ranch would turn our five-minute daily commute into an almost-thirty-minute commute each morning and evening. Because of that, our gut reaction was to turn down the Chambers' offer straight out. But we decided to at least go take a look at the house and talk to Chuck and Patty. So we drove out to Lee Station yesterday morning, and the house is AMAZING!!! It's big, it's clean, it's furnished, it's in good shape, It's quiet and secluded, it has an unbelievable view and a garden and a sewing room and a monstrous kitchen (all HUGE selling points for Jen).

After our tour and some time spent talking with Chuck and Patty, Jen and I went to El Chef for breakfast and made a list of pros and cons, to try and help us decide what to do. And when it comes right down to it, the only real big con we could think of is that longer drive time every morning and evening. With gas prices steadily rising like they are, the thought of adding 25 minutes to our commute seems a little silly. At the same time, though, we'd be saving $265 a month on rent, so we'd be able to buy more gas if need be. Another drawback is the thought that we just moved a month ago, and we'd have to do it all over again. It's a hassle, sure, but I'd be hard pressed to think it's not worth it.

We assured the Chambers' that we'd pray about it and try to have an answer for them in one week. I'd appreciate it if you all would pray, too. We really need to know what's the right course of action in this situation. We had a hard enough time deciding to move off-campus; now we're talking about moving much farther.

Because it tickles me

Here's my favorite line from the new Indiana Jones movie:

"Well, the way you're sinking your teeth into those wubbleyous, I should think Eastern Ukraine."

The Car

Jen tried her best to keep people up-to-date with the whole car situation. I thought, though, for anyone who might be even remotely interested, that I would try to explain in a bit more detail what went wrong. On Thursday night, the car started acting up. It had a little shimmy to it when it was stopped or in park, and it tended to stall if we decelerated too much too soon. Based on those clues, I guessed we had a bad cylinder. Turns out I was right; our number 3 cylinder was only registering 20 pounds of compression, while the other 5 cylinders were all around 120 lbs. Upon inspection, it was revealed that our number 3 cylinder had a broken rocker arm (rocker arms open and close the valves that let in air to be burned with the fuel, and let out the exhaust gases created by burning the fuel and air). I'm not sure which rocker arm was broken (intake or exhaust), but either way a valve wasn't being fully opened when it needed to be to keep the cylinder firing correctly. Since the problem was a rocker arm, there wasn't much need to take the head off the cylinder (which would have been expensive), because the rocker arms are outside the cylinder heads. This was really the preferable diagnosis, since the only other likely problems were a cracked cylinder ($$$) or a damaged valve (which would have meant taking off the cylinder head, which ultimately would have meant $$$). We were also told, by our mechanic, that Buick engines have a tendency to break their rocker arms, so the next time we experience engine trouble, we'll at least have a starting point for figuring out the problem.

As for my long-awaited glasses we picked up last night... they have to go back. Again. They used a too-long screw to hold the frame together around the right lens, which means that 1) I have a doofy-looking screw poking up out of my frames, and 2) the included sunglass clip won't sit properly because there's a stupid little screw in the way. This whole issue is becoming far too complicated, as far as I'm concerned. Does anyone know of anywhere else in Cochise County that takes Avesis vision insurance?

The Move

The past week and a half have been pretty disheartening for me as I've seen what a hard time Jen and I have had in adjusting to a new home. Jen was just telling me last night that the trailer still doesn't feel like home to her yet. It has started feeling like home to me, except at night when the trailer starts making all sorts of night noises that are unfamiliar to me; then I can't sleep. For instance, the floor boards started creaking last night at about 11:15, as though someone was walking down the hall. It woke me up, and I thought it was Jen going to the bathroom, but then I opened my eyes, and she was lying right next to me. After that, every time I was just dropping back into unconsciousness, they'd creak again, for no good reason. I'm also really struggling to adjust to being at school all day, now that we don't live on campus anymore. We've already had to deal with a handful of minor repairs and upkeep issues, but the one we're faced with now is a doozie. We've been trying for over a week now to get our computer to connect to the wi-fi that runs through the trailer park. But when it gets to "acquiring network address" it just sits and sits and never gets any further. Now, I know our wireless works, because it instantly connected to the college when we first moved here. I called a computer-savvy friend, and he walked me through some troubleshooting before coming to the conclusion that it's something on the server's end of the connection. After hounding our landlord all weekend, we finally got him to bring the park's resident computer guy over to try and fix our situation, to no avail. Now it's looking like we're just not going to be able to have the internet at our home. Frankly, I'm perfectly fine with that. As you've no doubt already noticed, I don't spend a whole lot of time blogging or anything; I basically only use the internet for games and weather forecasts. But Jen's a different story. The internet is an extremely valuable tool for her to keep in touch with friends and family she left back in Michigan. For reasons we haven't completely figured out in the last two years, making friends in southern Arizona is like trying to catch a leprechaun; it just ain't happening. So most of Jen's social circle consists of the people she left behind. Now, if she doesn't have free access to the internet, she's basically shut off from that social circle. Being a guy, I see this basically as a problem that needs fixing, and I'm desperate to fix it for my wife's sake. The only real solution I'm coming up with, though, is to buy a laptop that can go wireless, so we can go to McDonald's or somewhere else that offers wi-fi, and tap into it whenever Jen gets the urge to check in with her circle. I'm thinking that our "economic stimulus" check would be more than enough to cover a laptop, but I've been unable to talk Jen into making the purchase. The girl doesn't even like to spend $5 on herself to buy a shirt; buying a laptop to meet her needs is almost unthinkable. It's just frustrating for me not to be able to provide my wife with something she really needs.

Jackpot!!!

Jenny called Twin Buttes today, just to verify that we were still going to be able to move in on Monday, and the owner told her we can have the place tomorrow afternoon!!! To that end, I spent a pretty fair chunk of my morning packing more boxes, and that's probably how we'll spend the rest of our afternoon, as well. This is very, very exciting!

Night Solo

I logged my very first night solo flight time tonight. I've been in my own head far too much lately, about my landings. All it's really done is make me real jittery when I fly. To that end, I spent some time this evening praying that God would get me out of my head and show me when to flare so I could make some decent landings and start building up my confidence again. I did three landings tonight, and all of them were really pretty good. Each time I came across the runway threshold, God showed me just when to flare, and each time I made a landing I was very pleased with. A part of me wanted to keep going and do more, but I decided that sooner or later I was bound to have a landing that wasn't so pretty, and it would just get me all freaked out again. So I took my three well-made landings and used them to assure myself that landing isn't such a hard thing to do, after all. Flare was found; confidence was built up; prayer was answered; God is still good.

Fail-safe

Despite not being in the mood to fly this morning, I went over to aviation bright and early and got a plane all ready to go to New Mexico. The duty pilot checked over my planning and gave me the okay to fly, so I got in my plane and started it up. I noticed that my fuel pressure gauge was bobbing back and forth, but I figured it was just the plane getting itself awake and situated. I took off, turned to my heading, and began my climb up to 9,500 feet. One thousand feet above the ground, I switched off my electric fuel pump, per procedure, since the engine-driven pump would be operating just fine on its own by them. When I finally got up to 9,500 feet, I noticed that my fuel pressure was on the low end of the green arc, which isn't too terribly rare in the Cherokees, so I switched my electric pump back on to boost me back up to a wide margin of safety. Things were good for a few more minutes, until I noticed that my fuel pressure had bled back down to where it had been before I turned on my electric fuel pump. Before this morning, that was something I'd never seen before. Usually, turning the electric pump back on solves the problem and everything is ducky. I flipped the pump switch off, then flipped it back on again, and my pressure spiked back up to normal... and then bled back down again. It was at that point that I did a 180 and headed back home. After the plane is started and running, the electric fuel pump is more or less just a backup for the engine-driven pump. I probably could have made it to Silver City and Deming and back without any difficulty. But my fuel pressure with the engine-driven pump was already lower than I really like it to be, and it was looking very possible that I wouldn't have any options if the pressure dropped below the green arc. No fuel pressure equals no fuel to the engine. When my engine is starved of fuel, my airplane is magically transformed into a glider. Now, it's true that a glider can make a perfectly safe landing just like an airplane, but that's assuming the glider has someplace to land. Since I happened to be flying over the southern slopes of the Chiricahua Mountains when my fuel pressure dropped, it would have been quite a feat to find a safe spot upon which to set down my glider. I took a little flak from an instructor who happened to be in his office when I got back to the school, about my decision to abort the flight. Then I called my instructor and explained my situation, and she praised my decision and assured me it was the right thing to do, which boosted my confidence quite a bit. I guess the lesson here is that being a good pilot is more a matter of decision-making than actually handling the controls of a plane.

Again and Again

Well, I know I never really posted about my long cross-country that I flew a couple weeks ago (I haven't been online much lately), but tomorrow morning I'm flying to Deming and Silver City, both in New Mexico. I've still got quite a bit of solo cross-country time to log, so a nice Friday morning flight to NM seems like a fair way to knock some of it out. That's assuming the Friday forecast is still favorable in the morning, of course. Otherwise, I'll be enjoying a nice Friday morning on the ground.