The $100 hamburger

I desperately needed to fly, but my original plans to visit a friend (that I haven't seen in 24 years) fell through, so I decided to take my first "$100 hamburger" flight (which with inflation is probably more like $200, but who's counting?).  The weather was pretty nice this morning, high only expected to be about 80°F.  I flew from KVTA to KPMH and had lunch at the restaurant there on the airport.  The grilled ham and cheese was pretty good, the pie, not quite so much, but the people and the atmosphere were perfect for the venue.  Got some nice crosswind practice on landing too which I can't complain about.  The flight back was windier than I expected and on landing at KVTA, it was 28°C, alt 29.59, wind 270@16G22.  Fortunately, right down the runway, because that's a little more crosswind than I've done in a while (not that I was really worried about crosswind, but...).  A pleasant little 1.8 in the logbook (and another airport) and I'll still try to catch up with the old friend next month.  Life is good.

More random thoughts

Wow, so I went another month without posting anything.  Sorry about that.  Since I last posted, I finally got the notification that my GREM Gold paper was approved (it hasn't been posted yet, I'll update this (or post a new one) when it is (it should be at http://giac.org/certified_professionals/practicals/grem/48.php when it is).  I actually turned the original draft of the paper in around the end of Feb, but for some reason it took almost 3 months for my advisor to sign off on it even though I made no significant changes in it.  I've written up and done a trial run of my SANSFIRE talk based on the paper, it was too long, so I'll have to shorten the talk up some before I give it on the 18th.  The pool is open, I got in it yesterday, Erin got in today, but it is still a little on the chilly side.  I really need to find some time to fly under the hood with and instructor and get IFR current again.  Mom and Dad leave this week for their Alaskan cruise (did I mention we --the kids-- gave them this cruise as their 50th anniversary present?).  I saw the new Star Trek movie and I'm still (even 3 weeks later) not sure how much I like it and how much I dislike it.  I'm not real happy that they tossed out everything that came before, but I kind of understand why Abrams felt like he needed to.  Mark's baseball team lost too early in the state playoffs, but Marist made the NCAA tournament (where they were promptly eliminated by Ohio State).  Hopefully he can help them get back there again next year.  There still isn't a new contract with the union, so I still have to worry about possibly getting sent out to the New Lex CO.  I finally watched The Bucket List this evening.  I DVRed it a couple of weeks ago.  I enjoyed it though I thought Jack Nicholson had too much weight on him for someone going through chemo.  How's that for an odd thought.  I have built a database using the baseball databank data to give me game info back to at least 1920 and play-by-play back to 1960 (except 1992-1999).  I even figured out how to convert the current season data into retrosheet format and put it in the database.  I want to use it to get more accurate fielding data than I can get from the box scores.  I'll play with it after my SANSFIRE talk and before I start studying for my GCFW recertification.  I enjoyed Leno's last week and Conan's first on the Tonight Show.  I need to call my baby sister, I didn't get to call her on her birthday, I hope she'll forgive me.  How's that for random thouhts?