This past weekend was relatively quiet...
On Saturday, I worked in the morning and Jeanie had her weekly call with her mom. In the afternoon, Jeanie and I took a walk through downtown and browsed the local bookstores. We at lunch at a new Italian/Pizza restaurant on island OPS Pizza. Jeanie had cheese ravioli which she thoroughly enjoyed and I had a slice of cheese pizza which was not bad, but not as good as Tony's. So, we will go to OPS when we want Italian other than pizza, and Tony's when we want pizza or calzone. I worked a little more in the evening and that was about it.
On Sunday, I was supposed to fly twice; once in the late morning just to knock the rust off me, and then at night to renew my night currency. Unfortunately, it appears that a seal failed on the nose strut during another member's trip to Savannah on Friday, so the aircraft was grounded awaiting repair. The airplane assigned to our CAP squadron was moved to another squadron over a month ago, and we still haven't been assigned a replacement. The rental aircraft that the FBO used to rent reached its time for overhaul on its engine over a year ago, and because of the ongoing legal battle between them and the city, they elected to not overhaul the engine, so there is no rental aircraft available from the FBO. So, I went to the coffee and whined about the fact that even though I live five miles from an airport with three open runways and an FBO, am a member of the Civil Air Patrol, and a member of the flying club, there still wasn't an airplane available to fly. As a result of the whining, I did learn that the aircraft that had previously been limited to rental only by student pilots was now available for rental by licensed pilots, but it was too late for me to make arrangements to get checked out, and I really didn't want to pay $25 per hour more than the club plane, plus have to pay for the aircraft and an instructor for the checkout. I guess if I get desperate, its good to know that there is an alternative other than having to drive to Jacksonville.
After I returned home (a little later than usual - around noon) Jeanie and I ate lunch, then we bathed Diego and clipped Cali's nails. I then jury rigged a repair on one of Jeanie's rain gauges. The original gauge had a plastic tube that had cracked from old age. Jeanie found a replacement tube made of glass, but it was narrower than the original tube. So, I cut off the old plastic tube flush with the base (a ceramic frog) and then used a piece of large heat shrink tubing as a shim between the glass tube and the old plastic tube. The solution is close enough... Speaking of heat shrink tubing, I finally got around to affixing Diego and Cali's new rabies and county license tags to their collars and then shrink wrapping the now four tags each (the others being their name tags and microchip tags) so that they don't jingle jangle as they walk. Speaking of Cali, she appears to be feeling better. She's still not quite 100%, but she's at least 80%. She went back to not eating on Saturday morning, but Kimberly suggested we give her four fingers of Pepto-Bismol (i.e. dip your finger into a spoon of the pink liquid and then wipe your finger on the dog's tongue - four times) and that seems to have worked to settle Cali's stomach as she started eating again in the afternoon.
Later in the afternoon, we puttered around the yard a bit. Before the last few weeks when it rained so much, the fig tree had started experiencing browning of new buds and yellowing of its leaves and the grapefruit had been dropping leaves and fruit. I thought that the problem was a lack of iron in the soil or improper PH. But, with all the rain, both trees really perked up and started growing beautiful new leaves. So, it appears that the trees just weren't getting enough water during the county mandated limit of lawn watering only twice a week. As such, it appears that we will have to supplement the water needs of the new fruit trees with at least one hand watering per week.
Jeanie made a lovely meal of boiled shrimp and lobster tail, along with corn-on-the-cob, broccoli and salad. I added some links to the aviation page on Witsdom as well as updating some of the meta tags on the four different files that serve as the "index" page. I watched the CAP ground handling video for the third time - this time so I could take the now mandated test. I also accepted four friends invitations on Facebook that I had been sitting on the fence about. Previously, I had been only accepting invitations from people I knew really well, or at least remembered really well. I decided that I'd widen my circle a little bit, even if that means I will be a bit more selective (read less open) about what I post as updates. We ended our nice, quiet weekend by watching a bit of TV.
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Posted by David at June 01, 2009 06:48 AM | Categorized under: A day in the life, Flying, My blog