Brett Joins the Blue Angels

One thing I am always willing to do is to learn how to do something new. Whether it is how to play guitar, how to install things around the house or even something useless like how to play Rock Band, I am always up to learn something new. Because let’s face it, there is a lot that I don’t know. I don’t even know what I don’t know. You know?

In an effort to continue to learn new stuff I have set my sites on mastering the skies. I have started taking flying lessons. Alexis made reference to this endeavor in her Super Bowl blog. So here is the story of my first flight with an instructor.

There is a small, mostly corporate, airport near out house. Lear jets for corporate big-wigs fly in and out of this airport (Addison) as well as weekend warriors and small plane owners. For a small airport, it is one of the busiest in the country. Alexis and I always hear small aircraft buzzing around overhead.

I got there early Sunday morning, around 7 am. This was to be my first flight in a Cessna 172. The main purpose of this flight was not necessarily to teach, but to get the student hooked so the flight school could suck you in and keep taking your money. I’m guessing by the looks of their large and new fleet of planes that they were good at getting you hooked. The flight plan for the day was simple; I was to do all of the flying. That may not sound too bad if you have lots of experience flying, but my flying experience is limited to seat backs and tray tables in their upright and locked positions.

The instructor readied the plane to taxiing and we climbed in. You are wondering if I am going to tell you about his instructions or lessons before we got in, well there were pretty much none. We get in and he stats the propeller. Then he tells me it is my job to taxi out to the run way, but he would talk to the tower for us. He tells me not to touch the yoke (steering wheel) but to use the pedals on the floor to steer the plane, so I do. As we approach the runway he gives me some last minute advice on how quickly to climb and at what speed to pull back on the yoke to lift us off. With no time to argue, or tell him he was an idiot for letting someone he just met fly, we started to build speed and charge down the runway. Once we hit 55 knots, I started to pull up; and then started to fly!!! We took off and headed east.

We had to stay below a certain altitude due to DFW airport being about 20 miles away. We climbed to 2000 feet. Everything looked familiar so at least I would have known what I was crashing into. But there was no crashing to be done today. As we flew he then took the time to explain what the instruments were that were in front of me; how to use them and what they did. Good things to know. We climbed to about 3000 feet and we were then out of DFW’s range so we were free to do whatever. We flew over some local lakes and continued to climb. We got up to about 5000 feet, which I did all by myself, he was just sitting in the seat next to me. It was very nice and much easier than I thought it would be.

The flying part seemed to be easy. The instructor suggested we try gliding. I didn’t really know what he meant until he idled the plane, which basically shut off the propeller and we started to glide. Gliding seems like a peaceful and relaxing task. No. Not for rookies. It’s terrifying. With the propeller not propelling the plane anymore we start fall. He is relaxed in his delivery of instructions, but there was quite a bit of urgency in my execution of his instructions. The feeling of a freefall in an airplane is not that pleasant. However, with his calm instructions I was able to make the plane glide, instead of fall. We were even able to climb and descend as we wanted to. While I was able to control the plane, I was still terrified and not at ease until he got the propeller cranked up again. I guess the scariest part was not knowing how to get the propeller going again incase he suddenly died. Gliding and landing on my first flight were definitely not things I could master in case of such an emergency. But I got through that unscathed and I deffinately learned from it.

After the gliding we continued to fly. We climbed back up and had a smooth uneventful return to Addison.

For the landing, he gave me instructions on where to go and how to approach the runway. I did all of the descent into the airport. Under power, descending is not bad at all. I lined up the plane for our final descent and got us to about 100 feet above the ground. Then, in the interest of both our lives, he took over and landed to plane smoothly; thanks of course, to my magnificent approach.

It was a great flight and it is something that I will for sure pursue, hopefully! A pilots license can take over a year to get, or as little as 6 months. I will probably be closer to a year since I can’t fly all the time (it’s expensive). It will take a while, but as long as I keep it on my mind, keep up with the studying, and do well when I actually do fly it is something that I will be able to do for years to come.

Super Bowl

First of all, congratulations to the Steelers!!
Brett started the day off by flying a plane...he can tell you about the experience later. I baked a dark chocolate fudge cake, hid it in the laundry room to cool and went to run some errands. Brett was gone for 20 minutes and came back inside to this...

Yes, that is a half eaten cake courtesy of Ace. When he called and told me the news, I thought he was joking. Here is a description of the cake, "The irresistible chocolate aroma permeates throughout the house." Ace proved that it was indeed irresistible. I ended up making another cake and watching Ace very closely. Brett made chili and something called bacon explosion. I call it heart attack in a roll. We had 7-layer dip, Chris-kabobs, salsa, deviled eggs, puppy chow, sopapilla cheesecake, cake balls and my football field cake. Everything was amazingly delicious!!

Here is everyone watching the 3D halftime show.

Just having fun!


Meagan playing pool upstairs.

Josh playing darts. I hope he didn't miss the target!

Meagan and Emily

Casey and James

PICTURES!!

We finally have pictures of our house!! They are pictures we took during Christmas, so realize that we do not have the same decorations.

This is the front of our house. We have taken off the white glass door and painted the door the same color as our fireplace. We will be landscaping this spring!

This is our backyard. There is a covered area with two fans and we added the lights
around the top. The window leads to the kitchen. Beyond the patio is grass. As you can
see towards the bottom, there is a hot tub and pool.

There are more pictures in picasa. We just got new carpet upstairs...to go with our pool table.
Click on the link to the right!!

W

Time to stop down from getting you caught up and let you in on something that just happened.

Usually at lunch I go to the gym for a nice mid-day work out followed by a quick sandwich at my desk when I return. Today was going to be different. I had a Bible study that I was going to join in instead so I brought no work out clothes. The guy who was supposed to come in and lead the Bible study canceled. So I was left to my own devices for lunch. Luckily one of my co-workers came by and asked me if I wanted to have lunch upstairs. I agreed and at 11:30 we made our way up to the company cafeteria.

We got our food and sat down at a table. About 15 minutes of uneventful lunch went by. Then a commotion began behind me where you enter the cafeteria. I turned around and there was Laura Bush. Then after further gazing into the crowd of co-workers I saw George W. Bush!

Now, all political opinions aside, if you ever have the chance to see the President in person, let alone speak to him and shake his hand, just about any red blooded American would jump at the opportunity. Red blooded American = Brett

He made his way into the common eating area, stopping at each table to shake each lunch-goer’s hand and greet him or her with a brief word. It was pretty cool to see him do that for everyone. Then he headed over to me and my co-worker. He shook our hands and we introduced ourselves.

Greeting everyone in the room seemed like second nature to him. There was nothing awkward about him at all. As he made his rounds more and more employees kept showing up as they became aware that he was here. He gladly greeted each of them as well.

It was a very cool experience. An experience that probably will not present itself too often in my life, so I was glad I was able to meet him.

Keeping the Momentum Going!

Now that there is blood flowing through this blog again let’s keep it flowing with another update. One thing that you might want more of is pictures. We have them, but I don’t know if we can get them posted. The computer we do that from is suffering from a nasty virus and I don’t think Alexis’ school laptop is set up for us to do picture stuff. Why don’t I use the computer I am on now to upload the pictures you ask? Because I am at work. Time well spent.

The reason I bring up pictures is because I am going to chat about our new house. The pictures would be very useful in a before and after context. But instead you will have to use your imagination in concert with my description.

A little background info. Alexis and I had been looking to buy a house around this time last year, but since I had been self-employed I needed to have two years of that history, which would be around now. But when I was hired in August we went into high gear for finding a house. We were ahead of the game in that we already knew what part of town and even what neighborhood we wanted to live in so we were quickly able to narrow our search and get serious. We looked at several houses. Two of which we really liked and went so far as to make offers on them. But we were a day too late in both cases. This taught us to move faster. We knew what we wanted and how much we could afford, so if we liked something we knew we could respond quickly.

Quickly. One weekend, during our house hunting, Alexis had to go out of town. I had one house that we were supposed to look at, so I went solo. I loved it. It was everything we wanted; updated, well kept, pool, hot tub, sprinkler system, game room, the whole nine. Only problem was Alexis had not seen it. Another problem was that I thought the house was priced really low for what we were getting. We had to act quickly, I did not want to be a day late on this house. So I made an offer that day. Ballsy I know…

The whole time I was in contact with Alexis, so she knew what I was doing, but she had not seen it for herself. I started with a low-ball offer. It was rejected. I considered that the house was priced to sell, and certainly would in this neighborhood, so I met their asking price. By the time they accepted our offer, Alexis had returned and had a chance to tour the house, she liked it too. My gamble paid off; luckily.

It was a fun time during the whole process. The house was vacant so we could go whenever we wanted. We were present for the inspection, and besides a dirty pool, the inspector only found small things; nothing major. A relief for both of us.

In the days approaching our closing and move in date, we brainstormed about all of the things that we wanted to do. Painting, carpet, landscaping, furnishing the game room, and generally making the house our own.

As for acting fast, we learned during the days leading up to close, that if things fell through, the sellers had a back-up offer in hand and had received a couple other offers on the house. Who knows, if we had not acted as quickly as we did, we probably would not have gotten the house.

The description will be posted later...

It Has Been a While!!

May 5, 2008 was the last time that I put up a blog. After reading it recently I realized how half-ass it was so I thought for 2009, I would try and redeem myself as a novice blogger. I suppose that I lost interest in this for a while, or maybe I got really busy, or maybe I just forgot to keep it up. To tell the truth, it is probably a combination of all of those things. Maybe Alexis and I are just not that interesting…no, that’s not it!

Also, when I recently looked at my blog, I saw that I had been tagged by Jessie, which I will get to, but probably not today. So Jessie, I will respond to your tag, soon.

Let’s get you caught up with our world.

Alexis completed her first full year as a kindergarten teacher at Northwood Hills Elementary. She liked it so much that she decided now would not be a good time to retire and that she should keep teaching. This year’s class does not seem to be as well behaved as last year’s class. I think this year’s class is 20 boys and 2 girls. OK I am exaggerating, but not by much. The boys tend to group together and act like 5 year olds.

She has a repeat from her class last year, who was not ready for Kindergarten so he was sent down to pre-K. Evidently is grandmother did not wish hard enough for him to get smart (she once told Alexis that for her other grandson, she wished and wished and wished that he would become well behaved, and he did. She thought she would wish and wish and wish for Alexis’ current student to get smart.) Thus far the grandmother’s plan has not worked. Who knows, the Smart Fairy could still make a visit.
*The previous paragraph was not written or approved by Alexis*

Alexis is also not working the long hours that she did her first year and even the first part of this second year. It’s pretty nice, she leaves after me and gets home before me.

As for my job, it has changed a little. I was a contractor at an oil company based in Dallas run by some guy named Ray, and in August I was hired as a full time Landman. Finally, after over a year of being “self employed” I had benefits, company paid health insurance, 401(k), opportunities for raises and bonuses and promotions. All the things some people might take for granted if you work in a corporate setting. I have been responsible for land activities in North Dakota where our target formation is the Bakken Shale. Things were really great at $140 oil, but things aren’t as great at $40 oil. But all things aside, it’s nice to have some job security for once.

The only complaint I have is that our dress code is formal business attire. That means suits, jackets, and ties. What is this, the ‘20s? Oh well, I still sport the crazy hair though!

There are many more things to cover including Ace and Steve, our new house, Texas Tech football, and other current endeavors. But for now, I have neglected my job for long enough. I need to get back to work and try to figure out how to get the price of oil back up!