Pug’s Place

…it smells funny when wet.

This is the second day this month with a fluctuating rain all day long. The first time I saw it rain here was on my way to work one morning: I was driving down the freeway, bracketed in by other vehicles. Suddenly raindrops hit my windshield. A second later the car ahead of me slammed on his breaks, prompting me to follow suit while I glanced in my rear-view mirror to check on the guy behind me. Mentally preparing myself to swerve to avoid being hit if the guy was tailgating like so many do, I was startled to not see him back there. Oops, where was he? Oh, he was there alright. Just a good bit further back, slowing down and running his windshield wipers full tilt.

Conclusion: People here don’t know how to drive in rain. If it weren’t dangerous to me it’d be funny.

I was nearly late for work yesterday morning. Over the weekend I found my alarm clock from Gainesville (and high school before that), so I swapped Chris’ spare alarm for that one. So I set it for 5:20 am and went to bed Sunday night… and woke up when Chris checked on me at 6:40 am Monday morning. CRAP! I checked the alarm - it was still set, the AM/PM was correct… but the alarm light was weak and when I touched the clock it got much brighter. Something inside shorted out in the move!

Just to show how weird traffic can be, I left here at 7:10 and got to work on time at 7:30. I usually leave at 6:30 and get there at about 7:20. Too bad it doesn’t work like that every day…

In other news, it turns out my eyeglasses which I’ve had for the last year and a half are the wrong prescription: I had an eye exam Friday which showed that my right lens is a full diopter too strong for the eye. That’s bad. My right eye’s prescription is supposed to be 1.5, the lens is 2.5. So that’s causing my eye to do slightly weird things when the other is closed (apparently) and it’s also working my eye’s focusing muscles really really hard. My new optometrist said, “this should be giving you constant migraines.”

D’oh. I haven’t been having the migraines (and am glad for it) but it’s very bad that I’ve been hurting my eyes for the last year and a half because of poor quality control back in Ft. Walton. My new glasses will be in this week.

Also in that trip I had some sty-like things under my eyes examined. That required my optometrist to not only dilate my eyes for the standard glaucoma test but also paralyze them. So when I left I was unable to focus my eyes at all; they were stuck at the relaxed focal length of about 20 feet. When I got home here I cranked the font size up to 120 pt. on my computer and still couldn’t read the text. It was frustrating beyond all belief. All I could find to do was to unpack box after box since I didn’t need to know more than basic shape info on what I was unpacking. Of course that led to me making educated guesses about what some of the things were: I told my brother when he got home, “I may have mixed up the booze and the cooking oils. Please check for me, I still can’t see the labels.”

The worst part about it was the paralyzing agent made the dilation effects linger for more than 24 hours. I was in pain whenever I looked outside all day Saturday - and we went shopping around the city. Oops.

To close, my room now has furniture and I’m going to Boston next week! Woo!

Chris and I are moving into the new house; we’ll be without ‘net access for a few days, so I will only be contactable via cell phone for a little while. Sorry
Also: I’ve ordered a personalized Arizona license plate which should arrive in the next week or so. The plate ‘number’ is THE PUG.

I went flying again Saturday, this time with a full plane: my instructor, another instructor (Dan), my brother and myself. The title of this post comes from our return landing at Stellar Airpark where we followed an authentic WWII Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress” bomber which was on a “simulated bombing run” over our airfield. It was mighty strange to hear over the radio “bomb bay doors open!” and “bombs away!” right before we landed on the same runway that was just hit by 4,000 lbs of imaginary ordinance.

So, back on track, flying today:

My brother waffled about wanting to come along and see what it’s like to be in a private plane (as he had never been up in anything smaller than an airliner) and finally last night decided to come along. It’s a cloudy morning after some rain overnight but my weather briefing showed conditions to be improving rapidly and never being all that bad - it was a nicer day today than it was in July when Katie and I went flying with Barry, actually, but these Arizona folks are a little skittish about clouds and rain and such, it seems. (Don’t worry, I have a healthy fear of clouds). So after I convinced myself that it was still flying weather, Chris and I went out to the airfield where most of the aircraft available for rent should have been airborne according to the schedule… and not only were all but one aircraft there, but all the instructors (including mine who was supposed to be still flying with another student) were chatting in the lobby. Apparently most people canceled/didn’t show for their flights or training today. My instructor, Jason, had already been stood up but he was confident that I’d be there.
Since Dan, another instructor, had also been stood up and had nothing to do for a while, he asked if he could tag along with us today. Well, that makes for a full Cessna 172! So we had to change my aircraft reservation to one without full fuel tanks to make sure we met the proper weight requirements (no danger in this - still about 4 hours of fuel in the plane for a 1.5 hour flight). So it was back in the ol’ favorite, sierra-papa. Anyway, I did my preflight in an ever-decreasing amount of time as I memorize an increasingly efficient ‘flow’ around the plane. I should say I’m not spending less time checking each thing, I’m just spending less time saying, “what do I do now?” or “where is that valve?”. After the preflight we all four piled into the plane, Chris and I plugging in my new (used) aviation headsets I received this week after purchasing them (and other cool stuff) on eBay last week. I had a little trouble getting the engine to turn over in the cold, but everything went well including the “safety briefing” I gave to our passengers:

This aircraft has two exits, one under each wing. [everybody laughs] To open the doors, lift up on the handle and push on the door; to close the door, pull it shut and then push down on the handle until it latches. In the event of a door malfunction, all windows in this aircraft can be kicked out and used as emergency exits. [Dan says, "good to know"] Each seat in this aircraft has a seat belt which works like the one in your car. Keep your seat belt fastened at all times. This aircraft is equipped with a fire extinguisher located between the front seats. In the event of an in-cabin fire, remove the extinguisher from its clamps, pull the ring, point the nozzle at the base of the fire and squeeze the trigger. Only once the fire is out will we open the windows to ventilate the aircraft. In the event of an off-airfield landing, we will exit the aircraft and walk to the wing tips, then circle the craft to meet in front of the nose staying well clear of the prop as it may still be spinning.

Takeoff was weird. At 55 knots the aircraft usually starts lifting off on its own, 60 knots at the latest. Today as I hit 55 knots I said, “airspeed is coming alive… rotating” and pulled back on the yoke, nothing happened. I pulled harder. The airspeed indicator read 60-ish knots. I pulled harder, no go. Jason said, “get it off the ground, James.” I said, “I’m trying!” 65 knots and the nose-wheel comes up. I pull even harder and whoosh, suddenly we’re at 70 knots, in ground effect and have used about a third more runway than I’ve ever used before to take off. More than doubling the weight of the passengers has quite an effect! Of course, Jason knew that and just wanted me to realize what was happening since I’ll certainly fly with a full aircraft sometime!

I told Chris before we left that we’d probably be doing steep turns and stalls, so he should be forewarned that at times (with lots of prior warning) I would be making the airplane fall like a rock for very short periods of time. However, Jason, being a nice and accommodating sort of guy, said that since we had Chris along we’d skip forward a bit and come back to stalls - so we did some constant rate climbs, descents, climbing turns and descending turns to take us out over a massive strip mine near Casa Grande, AZ and then headed for Chandler Municipal Airport so that I could do some touch-and-goes at a towered, controlled airfield. En route to Chandler Municipal Airport I got to fly around clouds for the first time. Theyr’e so big and fluffy and scary. Eep. (Scary because when you’re in a cloud you can’t see anything.)

These touch-and-goes at Chandler Municipal were my first experience interacting with an air traffic control tower. Luckily, Jason handled all of the radio communication so all I had to do was try to land the plane a few times, which I did. 3 times, to be exact. Air traffic controllers speak very quickly. Apparently if you tell them “student pilot” they slow down, but Jason didn’t specify that and so I couldn’t catch parts of their exchanges. I should have asked him to specify “student pilot” when he was doing the calls but I didn’t think about it until later. Ah well. It was still interesting to be vectored around by someone on the ground.

It was after we departed the traffic pattern of Chandler and were halfway to our home airfield, Stellar Airpark, when we heard a transmission saying “Stellar Traffic, Boeing (something) is 10 miles north of the airfield, inbound for simulated bombing run at 2,000 straight down the runway, Stellar.” I ask Jason, “a Boeing what? Bombing run? what does that actually mean?” He hops on the radio and asks, “Stellar traffic, Cessna niner-sierra-papa is 2,000, entering at a 45 a left downwind for runway one-seven. Boeing, how far out are you?”

About this time Dan says from the back, “traffic, 11-o-clock level.” Jason and I see it and he says, “it’s too close” ’cause, well, it looks pretty big. But it’s pointed nearly right at us. We then hear, “Boeing (something) is a B-17 bomber, we’ll be there in two minutes. You should have time to land before we arrive.” On the intercom Jason says, “ah, it’s not that it’s really close, it’s that it’s really big. And I don’t think we’ll be on the ground before he gets here, so…” and keys his microphone: “Stellar traffic, Cessna niner-sierra-papa is extending its downwind to allow B-17 plenty of room for his maneuver. Cessna extended downwind, runway one-seven, Stellar.”

By now we can see the giant vertical stabilizer of the bomber and, yeah, it was closing far too quickly for us to have landed before it got there. So we just turned and followed it to the airfield on a very, very long final approach. While we were putting in the last notch of flaps it was fun to see movement on the bottom of the bomber and hear someone call over the radio, “Bomb bay doors open” followed shortly by “bombs away!”

As you can probably tell, Chris took tons of pictures on this flight. So unlike the previous post, this one has pictures of me with the actual aircraft I fly, my actual instructor and so forth.

I’ve piloted a plane every morning since and including last Sunday. I had very high expectations, and the experience is almost up to them.
What’s happened…

On Saturday Chris and I drove to speak with three local flight schools, two at Chandler Municipal Airport (KCHD) and one at Stellar Airpark (KP19). We started at Stellar Airpark, a private airstrip which happens to be the closest to my brother’s apartment. Stellar Airpark is home to Angel Air Flight Training, the group that appeared to be the most ritzy and most expensive. Before we even arrived I had pretty much discounted them as being too expensive for my pocket, but I wanted to talk to them anyway if only to have something to which I could compare the other groups at Chandler. So we stopped there and spoke to a flight instructor named Jason. He pointed out the advantages of Angel Air over the competition as being scheduling flexibility and the modernness of its aircraft. We walked out to look into the cockpit of a Garmin G1000-equipped Cessna 172 just as an example of how new their fleet of aircraft really was. Their planes were pretty, clean and recently built, and their prices were painful-looking as I had already surmised. ($120 / hr for a Cessna 172 [includes fuel] and $50 / hr for an instructor [includes jokes]).

We left Stellar Airpark and drove a few miles down the road to Chandler Municipal Airport, a much more active, larger, tower-controlled airport in the southeastern corner of Phoenix. Chandler is home to two appropriate flight training groups: Tailwind Flight Centre and Chandler Air Service. We stopped at Tailwind first. Tailwind’s office was abuzz with activity and we had to wait a while before an instructor had a few minutes to talk with me. He was headed out to the flight line to do a lesson with a student so we had to talk on the go (and also got to see their aircraft up-close). Like Angel Air at Stellar they do all of their training in Cessna aircraft and are a Cessna-certified Pilot School which means they use Cessna’s training materials and curriculum to teach. Their prices for Cessna 172 aircraft are the same as those at Angel Air, shockingly, but they also have several older, smaller Cessna 152 aircraft which are considerably less expensive ($70 / hr, including fuel) and a slightly cheaper instructor rate. Unfortunately, they are short instructors and only two of their current instructors can fit into the cheaper Cessna 152. I was left with somewhat negative impressions about their turnover rate in instructors, how tight the current instructors’ schedule is and the difficulty I might have in scheduling training around my new job. So Chris and I drove onward to the third and last flight school in the area: Chandler Air Service.

I had already pretty much made my mind up about going with Chandler Air Service before I even got there. They train in different sorts of aircraft than the others (Piper Warriors rather than Cessna’s), have more reasonable prices and show up consistently as one of the best places to learn aerobatics in the country. They’ve been in business for a long, long time and have a good reputation. We met with an instructor who Chris describes as being an ‘old, unkillable pilot guy,’ by which he means the instructor’s been flying so long he’s already made all of his mistakes and has apparently learned from them. We talked through their training program for a short while as it was considerably different than the Cessna program and then got around to the practical aspects of the training: when and how much? The ‘how much’ was no big deal, they were on par with Tailwind and cheaper than Angel Air, just as I expected. The ‘when’, though, was a problem: you submitted your schedule when you applied to become a student and the following Tuesday they’d assign you an instructor, and then you could start scheduling lessons 2 weeks down the road. Whoops - that’s not how I wanted things to go! I have a week here in Phoenix before I start work and I wanted to do some flying, well… now!
After hopping into the cockpit of a Piper Warrior to see what the plane looks like on the inside, Chris and I drove back to his apartment and talked through the choices.

Chandler Air Service was effectively out of consideration because of the difficulty/rigidity in scheduling lessons. Tailwind didn’t look so good from the student/faculty ratio side of things and wasn’t any cheaper than Angel Air unless you flew a C152 constantly… and Angel Air had the scheduling flexibility. I shifted my lean toward Angel Air, not because of its more modern aircraft but because of the scheduling. I decided I could resign myself to paying more for the convenience of easy scheduling - especially when the bottom line figures aren’t that much different. What’s $800 extra when you’re already planning on spending $7,000 on training? *gulp*

When we were back at the apartment I did a few more calculations and then called Angel Air, spoke to the same instructor with whom we met earlier and scheduled a ‘discovery flight’ in a Garmin G1000-equipped 2004 Cessna 172 for the next day (how’s that for flexibility?). So Sunday I drove back to Angel Air, had a brief briefing, paid close attention to everything I could, sat in the pilot’s seat of the Cessna and went flying.

A ‘discovery flight’ is usually a steeply-discounted hour-long flight where you, the customer, get to sit in the pilot’s seat of a plane with an instructor and go flying. While the instructor does pretty much everything (he is the pilot-in-command, after all), you get to have your hands on the controls and try some maneuvers yourself to see how you like turning a yoke and making the plane do stuff! While on my discovery flight last Sunday I had my first taste of preflighting a plane, taxiing, taking off from an untowered airport, constant-rate turns, climbs and descents, stalls and got to try a touch-and-go landing before returning to Stellar Airpark. My discovery flight had more ’stuff’ in it than most, but I’ve been logging a lot of time in MS Flight Simulator in the last few months so I already was familiar with much of what we did. At my request we also did some high-G maneuvers to see how my stomach would respond: I’m proud of my tummy, I’ve had no airsickness problems, even while doing strange things like holding a 1,300 foot-per-minute descending stall to see how low G’s would affect me. Woo! (Yes, that’s a lot like just falling out of the sky like a rock without a parachute - however, I should say it takes work to stay in a stall in one of these planes, they’re designed to right themselves and continue level flight)

At the conclusion of the flight I purchased the Cessna Pilot Training package, got an account for their online scheduling application and set up a date to come back the next morning for my first lesson. Jason, the instructor who took me on this discovery flight and who is now my flight instructor, also took the time to remark about the oddness which is me. He enjoyed watching the looks on the faces of folks there while describing that I came in for a discovery flight with my Class 3 Medical, an FAA weather briefing and knowledge of obscure things like P-factor (which is asymmetric thrust generated by a propeller at a high angle of attack causing a left-turning tendency in single-engine aircraft). Heheh.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings I went to Angel Air and took command of a Cessna 172 Skyhawk SP pretty much identical to the one Barry took Katie and I into the skies in last summer. Monday started with a lot of time getting a full lesson in how to ‘preflight’ one of these aircraft - what to check in what order, what to do when things look fishy, how to use the checklists to back-up the inspection, etc. We also did more basic maneuvers until it was obvious that I was on top of everything that counted as ‘basic’. Then Jason (my instructor) decided to put me into trying something which is causing me a bit of trouble: slow flight. Slow flight (descriptions: everything2 | wikipedia) is flying the airplane at or just slightly above stall speed - stall speed is the speed at which the airplane’s wings only barely generate enough lift to keep it in the air. When a plane fully stalls, it starts dropping out of the sky. It’s very important for pilots to know how to tread the line between stalling and not stalling safely because a final approach to land is done in ’slow flight’ so as to facilitate a timely cessation of flying. It’s also common to be in a slow flight situation during the first moments after taking off. Slow flight is challenging, at least initially, because it’s in “the area of reverse command” which basically means that you control airspeed with the pitch of the nose rather than the throttle and the altitude with the throttle instead of the pitch of the nose. In other words, backward compared to other flight attitudes. The first few times I tried this it worked out relatively poorly for me - I could keep the aircraft at one altitude but not an airspeed or heading, or one airspeed but not one altitude or heading. I’ve already gotten better at it, but it was hairy the first few times I tried it. I’m still not a fan…

Tuesday Jason had me demonstrate constant rate ascending and descending turns, so in other words adding climbs and descents into the standard turning practices. That didn’t take too long for me to acquire a sense for, so we headed to Phoenix Regional Airport (an airport in the middle of nowhere between Maricopa and Chandler, AZ) and I got to practice a few touch-and-go landings in a steady cross-wind (wind coming from anywhere other than straight down the runway). On our way back to Stellar Airpark, Jason demonstrated a few full stalls for me showing me just how stable a Cessna 172 is in a stall. He made the aircraft stall and managed to keep the plane flying with minimal altitude loss, straight on our desired heading with the stall warning horn blaring for a couple of minutes. He said, “You can control a stall all the way to the ground with one of these aircraft. Look, I can turn to pick a new heading, I can change descent rates — all while flying it below the minimum airspeed. Now, how do I break out of this stall?” Add full throttle, point the nose just below the horizon and then back up to level. It was educational, but still somewhat scary to watch the altimeter scream down “6,000 feet, 5,500 feet, 5,000 feet….” in less than a minute.

Wednesday I got to try my hand at “power on” and “power off” stalls, putting the aircraft into the stall, holding the maneuver without losing control of the aircraft and then breaking the stall off with minimal altitude loss. These are important skills because the most dangerous time of flying an airplane is when you’re taking off and landing simply because of those two stalls and inadvertently causing one of them to happen without sufficient room for recovery. So in training you drill over and over how to get out of the stalls as quickly as possible. There’s a lot of work to be done to set up for a “power on” stall, so much that I still haven’t memorized all of the setup steps… I’ll have to remedy that soon. Jason keeps encouraging me saying that these maneuvers are all about mastery of the aircraft and their perfection will only come when I achieve said mastery. It appears that ‘mastery of the aircraft’ is a term meaning roughly, “being able to maintain control of the aircraft with minimal change in course, altitude and airspeed while also watching for other aircraft, talking on the radio, consulting checklists, peering at charts and cooking breakfast for your passengers while humming the theme to Bonanza.” There’s a lot to do! After the stall practice we moved to less stressful maneuvers - steep turns, airport traffic patterns and I got to try my first radio calls! Ah, radio fright… there’s something magical that happens when a student pilot clicks the “radio transmit” button and his brain immediately turns off.
Thursday we started ground reference maneuvers: learning how to fly precision paths over the ground despite wind conditions. We only worked on the most basic ground reference maneuver yesterday, the S-turn, but it was simple enough… after a few of those we climbed to 4,000 feet of altitude and my instructor yanked the engine’s throttle all the way to idle and said, “your engine has quit, what do you do?” We did a long simulated engine out to demonstrate to me just how far such a plane can glide with no power whatsoever, talked about the best terrain to land on if an airport isn’t close enough and drilled over and over again what procedures one should follow. They get summarized as: A: Pitch the aircraft for best-glide Airspeed. B: Locate Best landing spot. C: Engine-out Checklist. D: Declare emergency on emergency frequency, squawk 7700 on the transponder. E: Evacuate by opening the doors before landing, pulling the emergency fuel shutoff, checking seatbelts and actually landing the aircraft. I expressed concern about how to land at a nearby airport without any engine power - how one should optimize their time aloft to ensure you land where you want to, not short of the airstrip nor rolling off the end of the runway. Jason responded by having me set a course to Phoenix Regional Airport again, asking me to get us there at 4,000 feet of altitude. I complied, even getting to make appropriate radio calls which sounded like:

“Phoenix Regional Traffic, Cessna one-niner-niner-papa-sierra is 5 miles west of the airfield, 4,000, inbound for simulated engine out. Traffic in the pattern please advise. Phoenix Regional.”

Over the airfield Jason again cut the engine down to idle and demonstrated all the way to the ground how to judge each turn of the landing pattern and what observations to be sure to make when you don’t have the option to increase power to the engine. It really was quite comforting.

We intended to stay around Phoenix Regional for a while to let me practice touch-and-go landings but there was 38 knot crosswind which was simply brutal for anyone - Jason said it would frustrate more than teach at this point, so we did some low flight over the desert back to Phoenix and Stellar for the end of that lesson.

At the end of my first week here I have accrued 6.6 hours of flight time toward my private pilot’s license - not bad, really. Had I gone with one of the other flight schools I’d have had nothing to do this week except work on stuff relating to the new house. Ooh, I’ll have to talk about that next.

But not right now - I want to get this entry posted and then find some Internet access for the new place. Then I’ll talk about it.

I’m on a 767 somewhere over New Mexico, heading to Arizona to begin ‘phase 3′ of my life. My stuff is waiting for me in Phoenix, my car is on a truck driving out of Florida and I’m in the air. Transportation becomes consistently faster and cheaper, decreasing the apparent size of the world but moving 1800 miles away from home still prompts teary sendoffs.

I had all sorts of weirdnesses happen before I could get to this point: my move was handled by United Van Lines and despite all of the efforts of my ‘move coordinator’, problems befell every step of my journey. First, it took twice as long as normal for my relocation company to decide I was using United Van Lines for my move, so by the time that had been decided there was only one week before I needed to move out of my apartment in Gainesville. Next, on the move day the moving truck driver who was scheduled to pick up my stuff fell from his truck and was injured, so my 10-am pickup happened at 7 pm with a crew working overtime. Then, despite my being very clear over and over again how my car would need to be picked up in Fort Walton Beach, FL, when it was scheduled to be picked up yesterday the company tried to find it in Gainesville. Next, when my apartment stuff arrived in Arizona today the truck driver sheared off the apartment complex’s gate with his truck and denied doing it. Finally (so far), when a random tow-truck showed up to pick up my car in Fort Walton Beach, the driver had no paperwork, thought the car was broken down and didn’t have a clue as to what was going on.

I’m not impressed with United Van Lines. I feel a little bad for my move coordinator, as I kept him late at work several times dealing with all of these screw-ups, but not bad enough to really weigh on my conscience.

I called this phase 3 of my life. It seems to me that living at home, (relative) childhood through IB was ‘phase 1′, then came ‘phase 2′ at the University of Florida away from home, studying and preparing for what came next. Now I get to apply what I’ve learned so far, learn more, have fun and acquire successes on my list of life goals.

Yes, I have a list of goals, one which I put together on my 486 DX4/100 while I was in middle school and which I have viewed regularly and edited sparingly since. For the most part the goals are private. Some appear a little unrealistic these days (e.g.: have $500,000 in my savings account by age 25) but I have opportunities to meet more of these goals now. One goal I’ll share right now I intend to start working toward this coming week: learn to safely fly fixed-wing aircraft. Oh boy.

Those of you around me have probably seen me lugging about Rod Machado’s Private Pilot Handbook, a dictionary-sized tome of aviation knowledge. I’ve read most of it two times (and all of it once), as well as the FAA’s Federal Aviation Regulations and about a quarter of the Aeronautical Information Manual, studied aviation blogs, become a member of the AOPA and logged 30-something hours in MS Flight Simulator drilling approach and landing procedures and VOR navigation. I’m simultaneously two steps ahead of most people wanting to learn to fly and a step behind in that I’ve done all of this slightly out-of-order: I’m ready to pass the written exam without ever touching the controls of a flying aircraft. I’m sure I’ll be an interesting student, knowing all sorts of book knowledge but not the (real) practical stuff. At least I recognize that I’m over-educated and under-experienced regarding flight school right now…

I’m intending to go shopping in person for flight instructors tomorrow at the two closest airports to my brother’s new house - I have a considerable mental list of desired traits for both the instructor and the flight school, including being able to study at my own pace (since I’m ready for that exam - I pass the practice exams every time). I’ll write about my experiences along these lines, of course.

In addition to flight school, I have errands to run this weekend and next week (which I have to myself otherwise - I start work on the 15th). Things like having my car’s registration transferred to Arizona, getting an AZ driver’s license, transferring my voter registration, changes of address, etc.

Then I start work on the 15th. It’s defense contracting again so don’t expect me to describe what I’m up to. Besides, that’s work time - this blog is about the rest of my life, not work.
Backing up for a few minutes: Christmas was a fun time. Having so many of my family and friends nearby is always a cause for celebration, this year was no exception. I hope that I don’t have to describe the joys to you, for I hope that your holiday was equally happy. Despite illnesses among those close to me, I still had fun, remained healthy and happy.

I feel the need to brag about a few of my christmas gifts. I apologize in advance for any feelings of inadequacy your gifts may feel due to this description. After forgetting my lunch box in the refrigerator at my former place of employment (the BEBR! Hi guys! How’s Asterisk doing?), my older brother with an excellent sense of timing gave me the Rolls Royce of lunchboxes: a Mr. Bento vacuum-insulated lunch jar! This thing is cooler than you imagine, I assure you. In fact, there’s a photo group on Flickr dedicated to photographs of the device in action called “Mr. Bento Porn“. Basically, it’s an insulated jar with four plastic microwavable containers which stack inside it. The bottommost is a sealed bowl which is intended to contain hot soup. Above that is a large container intended to hold rice or some other hot dish. It has a thick insulated lid to keep its heat in. Then, above these two containers are two ’side’ dishes which do not stay hot. This all fits together into a sealed thermos-like container which is designed to keep your lunch hot for up to 8 hours. The jar fits into a nylon case with two carrying straps and even holds a case with my pair of chopsticks. In the morning I can microwave soup and pull rice out of Chris’ new fancy rice cooker, put sides into the top dishes and giggle with joy at the steady increase of my chopstick skills, pocket money and the sheer coolness of my lunch. I keep imaging scenes like those of the young granddaughter in Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman, just without the gourmet cooking abilities.

Next in line, Stephen sent me Pente! WOO! In initial games it was determined that everyone I’ve played so far can beat me, but I’m not a pushover. Or at least not always.

I also received a copy of “The Tao of Pug” from E. which is a charming photographic narrative from Wilson The Pug about the meaning of life and practicing the art of not-doing until one has it perfected. Everyone who has looked at this book has loved it, even with its peace-nic final pages. My parents gave me diploma frames and I received two books (101 Things to do with your Private Pilot’s License and Blood Trillium).

Now we’re descending into Phoenix Sky Harbor airspace and in just a moment I’ll have to stow my laptop. So, to close: my email addresses are staying the same, as is my other contact information - for now. My mailing address has obviously changed and my cell phone number will change in the next few weeks but I’ll keep most of you informed about that.

Phase 3: begin!