1st Day of School

The first day of school went really well. In short, 21/27 students showed up (I'm happy about that) and I had no crying students. I'm pretty exhausted, so this is a short post, but I had to put up my first day of school pictures. Don't we look great at 6:45am!?!

2 cameras, 4 chargers, 20 batteries...

...and none that are charged! Mason and I went mini golfing the other night, and while we thought this would be a good opportunity to take some blog pictures, lo and behold, out batteries were dead and the spares were in the car. (I'm sure my Dad is shaking his head at that one). Mason and I enjoyed a pleasant evening in Wichita Falls going to The Plex, which has mini gold, bumper cars, go carts, arcade etc...but we just stuck to mini golf. It seemed like the teen hang out, and we wondered if we looked old to them, and while we tried to guess their ages, we hoped they didn't think we were old. Mason and I don't feel old, but often wonder how others perceive us...although tonight we were out to dinner and the waitress commented that we were out on a school night, and asked if we had school tomorrow. Mason pointed at me and said, she does. When we revealed that I was a teacher, the waitress laughed and simply said I didn't look old enough.

I can't believe that I start my second year teaching tomorrow. I'm sure another blog post will follow soon after. I'm really excited, and a lot less nervous than last year. The only thing I'm a little concerned with is having enough seats, since my roster was up to 27 last I checked. It will all work out though. I didn't have to do much work this weekend which was nice, so I did a lot of cleaning the house. Yesterday we went to a BBQ at a friends house. They are moving to Louisiana next week, Phil will be flying B52s. We also attended our friends son's first birthday party, that was pretty fun, although we left before cake. :-(

Mason studied most of the day today, and we ran to the casino tonight, but didn't end up with much. The casino trip was followed by a visit to Walmart, where we saw far too many people we knew. Normally when I want to buy something, I have to make my case to Mason, explaining why I want the item, why it's most cost effective and mostly why I can't do with out the item...well this must have rubbed off on him, when he started telling me that he needs a new pair of shorts. He first started by saying he thought he could buy some because he bought his last pair of shorts in 2004! His blue shorts were now almost purple (the only ones that fit), two pairs of jean shorts must have been bought to small, and never fit, a pair of green pants had holes in the crotch, and his only other jean shorts are covered in paint, and he said I'm embarrassed when he goes out with me. So, I told him, to go ahead, he could even buy two pairs, AND the black socks he had been talking about, but alas, he only got the one pair of shorts. Oh, practical Mason....

Meanwhile, despite small shorts, we have been eating healthy, and working out every day, so we're both ~6 pounds lighter than last Saturday. Go us!

Crazy Times

Tomorrow is parent orientation at school, and I must say compared to last school year, I'm very calm going into this year. Mason might disagree, but I've tried to get a good start on my planning this summer, and with regular insomnia I was able to plan out the first 9 weeks of school. I'm hoping this in turn will eliminate much of the stress I felt last year, starting teaching a month in to school. On Friday afternoon, Mason and I ran some errands and I took him to see my classroom, he was pretty impressed (I think). It looks pretty cool and I've had lots of the parents complement me on it. I'm excited to start off the school year; so far I have 26 in my class but that can always change. It will be nice to see familiar faces tomorrow evening and meet my new students. I think that I might treat myself to a manicure tomorrow before the orientation, but only if I can hit the gym first.

I've really committed to sticking to a weight loss/exercise plan, and am determined once and for all to lose this access baggage! Mason and I went to the gym both days this weekend, and I ate very healthy. We'll see how I can make it through the week. My goal is to work out a minimum of 30 minutes each day. Mason thinks I'm crazy going around writing motivational things on our bathroom mirrors with dry erase markers, but whatever works, I say. Some other women from work and I have formed a support group for each other, and the accountability will be good for us. Mason is a good one to have at home as well.

Last week, Mason didn't get to fly too much, once he soloed they pushed a few other guys ahead who hadn't soloed yet, and we had some rain...but, he's scheduled to fly tomorrow. The flight is on informal release now, which unlike it's name, is actually a good thing. The guys can leave once the 2nd set of flights steps to their jets, so if Mason doesn't have to fly he can leave earlier. This hopefully will give him some more time to study at home and workout. Today he studied a bit, and cut his hair. When I commented that he was getting quite a few grey hairs, his only comment was, "gee, I wonder who could have caused those..." (can you believe it!)

We had a lucky run at the casino last week. Mason won $34. That was a big winning. We tried a new restaurant in town, since Thursday has become our new date night; unfortunately the place wasn't very good. Oh well. Friday and Saturday night we went to our friends house to play Wii Rock Band. Mason wasn't too excited to go at first, but then I had to drag him home at 12:30am. I must say, it was pretty fun, I never got to try the guitar, but the drums and singing was fun. Mason even sang!!! He said it was a once in 5 year event so I shouldn't get used to it. Too bad...We had a good time hanging out with our friends.

We were quite jealous/sad that we couldn't be in Chicago this weekend for the annual Air and Water Show, but from all the reports, it seems like it was really cool! Two of the IPs in Mason's flight flew T-38s in the show. Mason tried to convince them to let him ride in the backseat, but they didn't go for it. Someday Mason can be in his own air show, but for now 4 solos, and 3 dual rides before his first checkride! Wow!

Oh yes, as for a weather update, we had an amazing upper-70s weekend! It was perfect!

T-38 Solo!

Today, I had my first solo in T-38! We had a couple guys in our flight scheduled to solo in the morning but the weather wasn't cooperating, so nobody solo'd in the first line of jets. I flew dual and we were in and out of clouds the whole time. Then it started to clear up in the afternoon and the weather status changed to allow solos in the pattern only (as opposed to unrestricted where solos can go out to the practice areas and do acro). So with the probability of bad weather tomorrow, our flight launched 4 initial solos and the other flight in our class launched a few of theres. So the 6 or 7 of us all stepped out and did laps in the traffic pattern practicing our landings. It was a solid ride, nothing scary, nothing broke, no emergencies. It was cool too since the clouds were only 500 feet above us or so and there were small showers all over the place. You could see the rain showers, all only a mile or so around, so we all were basically flying in between the cylinders of rain and picking up so rain here and there along the way. I even got to fly through a rainbow. It didn't really look like much as I went through it, but the thought of it was pretty neat.

In the T-38 phase, there's a lot more solo rides. Unfortunately, there's less rides overall before the first checkride. So I've only got about 4 solos and 4 dual rides to get ready to take my contact checkride. Every flight is short since the jet burns fuel so much (flights over 1:15 or so are pretty rare). And when weather is bad, we get even more restrictions, so there's no time to take a lap in the practice area and think about what you're doing or talk about the maneuver you just screwed up. You step out with a compact plan, execute it as best you can with lots of flexing here and there to make it all work out (ATC, weather, and everything else always changes things), and then you rush back home and debrief the whole thing for an hour.

Unlike the solos in T-37, we'll eventually get the chance to do solo instrument flights in the T-38 (fly through the clouds and shoot instrument approaches down to other airports). I've down that in civilian flying, but it's a lot different when you're going 5 miles a minute. Everyone in our flight has been pretty stressed out in this first contact/visual flying stage with a handful of busted flights (Unsatisfactory). "Emergencies" also seem a lot more prevalent these days. I guess it's just because we're all flying so much and so the odds just work out that way, but you can never let your guard down. Pretty much all of the emergencies have been calm low-threat situations where something just isn't quite working the way it's supposed to. But every day has its potential. And we always train for the emergency to hit in the worst weather, when you're probably solo, and have no fuel left to play around with. I've been lucky so far with getting good jets and having relatively decent performance out of myself, but I'm still just trying to keep up in the jet. Next step, in a couple weeks, checkride.

On a side note, our last assignment night here at Sheppard brought TWO F-22 drops. There's still a lot of U-28s and NSAs (which suck). And although having F-22s dropped to fresh 2nd LTs is cool, our class has a feeling that there won't be any for us since they only drop them in spurts of 3 classes or so and that puts us just past the timeline. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the F-15C drops come back since their training units have been getting back in gear lately.

And it's HOT! I have no idea how high the temperature gets when the canopy is closed and I've got my flight suit, G suit, parachute, and helmet on, but I sweat buckets every day. Texas sucks!

Is it Saturday yet?

Well, no big news for this post. I've gotten about a third of the way through my lesson planning for the first quarter of school. I'm excited about this, because my plans should take me through the end of October, although trying to lesson plan during the school year never works out as well. Check out my (still in development) class website at http://mrskehs.tripod.com (*you probably want to turn the pop up blocker on). I used this site last year, but am starting to make changes or this year. I found out that I will for sure be teaching 3rd/4th homeroom, 3rd-5th Reading/Language Arts, and Texas History...that should be interesting.

Mason is busy in pilot ville. He hasn't flown for two days, but is back to the flight line tomorrow. I think he's looking forward to the weekend again. I know I am, and I'm not working these days. Tomorrow night (Friday) there is an assignment night, so that will be fun with all the rumors lately. There's news that an F22 might be dropped which would be awesome! (for those guys, anyways)