It's Not That I Don't Care... It's that I'm Finally in Ground School

...and I'm just extremely busy these days and can't update this as often as I'd like to, but I'm trying.

I came back from San Diego August 26th and immediately spent the next week working on getting settled back here in Meridian. None of my stuff had been unpacked from Corpus and my room in my roommate Charlie's house had yet to be painted.

A few short days after completing that project I was sent off to Reno Nevada for the annual Tailhook Convention. Yes everyone, it was the same one that made the headlines about 15 years ago. Tailhook '91 got the Tailhook Association kicked out of Las Vegas and this year our Casino/Hotel was totally isolated from downtown Reno, but everyone still had a good time and we all learned a lot from the lectures at the symposium.

Not more than a couple days after I returned from "The Hook" I took some leave to attend my mom's wedding (congrats mom and John aka Gus!) in New Hampshire. It was a really great experience and I was so glad to have attended.

Two days before my mom's wedding, while at my Dad's house of all places, I received a message on my phone from the Duty Number. If you remember one of my past entries addressed the subject of the dreaded phone call from base. Back then my message told me I was getting a free trip to New Mexico for a month. This time the message told me that I was starting class two weeks early...

I started Ground School for the T-45C the day after I returned from New Hampshire (which involved me leaving the day after the wedding at 0300 ... 3am, driving two hours to the airport and getting back to Meridian in time to do about 15 minutes of studying before I passed out tired). That was Monday and I've been in class every day since and will have my first test in the middle of next week. Oh, by the way, it's the hardest test in the syllabus.

So I'm a little annoyed that I missed out on my planned two weeks to prepare, however I'm really glad that I came back from San Diego when I did and that I put in for leave for Mom's wedding over two months ago because otherwise it surely wouldn't have been approved.

That brings us pretty much up to date. Unfortunately there were a ton of great stories that I really would've like to tell you about (say getting stuck in El Centro for 5 hours the Friday before I left Miramar, flying the F/A-18F simulator at Tailhook after a cocktail party and still trapping or even Maj Collins' going away to the Blue Angels party), but I'd rather spend the time learning Hydraulic System failures and Engine Gas Temperature limits... so sorry.