Ahh yes...

I finally get the weekend off. I get to kick back, relax, and GO TO CHURCH! yay! If you're ever wondering about the negative effects of skipping church for two months just ask. But don't try it. There's not much in life that's worth it. On Monday I get to fly to somewhere and Evansville and spend the night in HTS (Dad?) then I go to Milwaukee on Tuesday. Somewhere in the first day I will cross 900 hours of total flying time.

It's kind of ironic that I get the whole weekend off and a bunch of my friends were doing fun things last weekend. Today I sat inside and read a book. I also worked on my mail. Caleb need to come down here and try it on. Like tomorrow.

Home again home again jiggity jig.

I can't cook. I thought I could cook but I can't. This afternoon I messed up cooking rice. I mean how hard can it be? Put water in the pan, put rice in the water, and heat it up right? It works until you leave the room for three minutes to start a desperately needed load of laundry. At least I got my clothes clean. And then for dinner tonight I scrubbed a bunch of potatoes and proceeded to peel them. I was about half way through when I was like "Josh I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me why you spent fifteen minutes cleaning something that you are going to throw away." Try as I might, I couldn't do it. I don't even think all the king's horses and all the king's men could do it. ~Which reminds me. What's up with all the dumb protests in America these days? Any time somebody has a problem with something they have to go out and holler about it. Why can't they create a cool nursery rhyme or something? Ahh... the many problems of having a free press. But freedom is pretty nice though~ My captain on this last trip was a Cuban who made it to Florida in 94. It's guys like him that help me realize how truly privileged I am to be able to write this blog.

It was my leg into Cincy this morning and the autopilot failed at 3000'. Started giving us: "Bank Angle!, Terrain! Terrain! Pull Up!, and Landing Gear, Terrain!" messages. I was really glad we were in visual conditions in a familiar area so they didn't have to change my seat cushion after we landed. I only had to kick off the autopilot and everything calmed down right away. That's the third time the autopilot failed on me though. I think pilots will still have jobs long into the future of automation.

Still putting off those emails even though I have more now. Of course it is only seven o'clock, so I might catch up on some after I write a nursery rhyme about uncreative Americans hollering every time they have a problem.


hmmm.....
Little Georgy round and porgy,
didn't like Jammal so big and tall,
....

What happened to Josh and other tales of the midwestern frontier

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. It's not like I haven't had the time, I've just been slogging out the past few days with more important or at least more fun activities. I'm in the middle of a crazy weird four day trip~ sittin' in Kalamazoo right now. We only fly ten hours in our four days, and we have huge 18-19 hour overnights. Ooo! finally enough time to go out and explore the towns we fly to! Of course that only works well if the town has something explorable and the hotel shuttle is willing to take you there. So instead I watched the closing ceremony to the Olympics and listened to sermon downloads.

Good news on the job front: Republic is recalling 23 of their furloughees so that puts me about 15 away from being recalled instead of the 38 I started at. I might have my job back in October if the trend continues. >>>Everybody go out now and buy ten tickets to anywhere delta flies with regional jets for October<<< You can cancel later if you really don't want to fly to great exotic locations like Toledo OH and Fayetteville AR.

I still have a ton of emails that I'm putting off writing, but it's about time for me to shower and head off to the airport so I guess they will have to wait for another day.

Got back from a four day today.

Flew with one of the best captains in all of Chautauqua. He has a great way of making a cockpit really relaxed because he understands that you can fly way better when you are not super tense. Although I was super tense today... But that was only because I let him talk me into going to the Y yesterday. Got worked into a crying heap. My Goodness! I did not realize how out of condition I was! I need to start running seriously again. I don't care how bad it is for my health. I want to be able to run at least one mile if somebody is chasing me.

I got home and talked a little with Shawn & co before they decided to take off for the airport. But that happened to coincide perfectly with the start of my Bible study at my apartment, which consisted of a perfect group for euchre, but a couple of the guys promised to recruit some more people because they actually know people in town. So now that I am done with that run on sentence I am going to think about food.






Mmmmm food is good.

Double Sunset!

I didn't get pictures of the first sunset but...
here we are coming above the clouds

And the Sun is coming up... In the West?!?

Oop. Starting to go back down now.

And there is sunset #2!

Ooo, a cloud that looks kind of like a Nebulon-B frigate.

Got back from a pretty fun trip

a few hours ago. Now I'm siting around watching the opening ceremonies to the Olympics. It's a very cool show these Chinese are putting on. The magnitude, choreography, and unison of the performers is inconceivable! I thought it was kind of funny that the games were brought to me by Exxon: "Taking on the world's toughest energy challenges" (i.e. trying to keep our billion dollar profits when everybody is trying to switch off of oil) Wow! Representatives just walked in from a country where the average ANNUAL income is $130. Can you imagine that?!? I make more in 6 hours of work. I should try to live for 35 cents a day sometime. I think I can do it if I only eat 1 ramen noodle a day and walk everywhere. Wow, this judo dude just came in who is six feet tall and 399 pounds. That's more than twice my size of martial arts muscle. My recommendation: don't get in a fight with this guy.

Well... this is getting quite long. I hope the U.S. comes in soon so I can go to bed. oop..There they are! My next door neighbor Amber Campbell doing the hammer throw in it! So def turn on the track and field events and look for her.

I got to see a double sunset last night. That was very cool. I might put up some pictures later.

Today I fly

to Evansville and Madison. Tomorrow it's State College and Fort Wayne. Still no letter from the company to tell me that I'm furloughed.... Is it really going to happen???

Sitin' back at the apartment

But this time I have company! And it's rather pleasant. Even if he is an aggravating hypocrite. :)

I ended up

not going to the Creation museum. I looked at their website to see what their hours would be, and accidentally saw their admission prices. Extortion I say! Extortion! So I stayed home and ate the rest of my meatloaf. Now I'm trying to decide if I should make the next three meals that I will be away for, or if it's worth it to shell out at Subway.

Last night

I made and botched my very first meatloaf! I put it all together and put it in the oven, and then when I was checking the recipe to figure out when I was supposed to add some sauce, I noticed that it was called mushroom meatloaf. Wait a minute~ I didn't put any mushrooms in it! AAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!! So I just added them to the top and poured the sauce over them. It turned out ok, but I'll have to do better next time. I'm thinking about going to the creation museum tomorrow. Anybody want to come along?