Work-A-Holic

Though I'm not near as bad as I used to be, I have a hard time not working. These past few weeks have been a slow time for me. I've had many students cancel for personal reasons, which is fine, but then I have to sit home. Now don't get me wrong; I enjoy the sleeping-in part, the working-out-for-however-long-I-want-to part, and the getting-a-nice-good-breakfast; but when it comes down to it, I get a bit grumpy when I can't work. It just kills me to know that I'm home doing nothing when I could be at work doing something useful and being around people I enjoy spending time with. I like to work!

Thankfully I work in the student support center at UVU as well as flight instruct. That way when flight instructing gets slow, as it always does in the winter time and around finals, I still have some work. The call center is a pretty great job. I've been working here for just over 3 years now and I'm not quite sick of it. Talking on the phone all day isn't my calling in life, but I work around pretty fun people. This week one of the employees on the morning shift left to do some flight training elsewhere, so I got to pick up his shifts. Yes! My work-a-holic self is coming out.

Hopefully in January I will be able to pick up some more students so I won't have to talk on the phone so much. :) I'll keep you posted.

Christmas

I love this time of year. The music is great, the shopping is amazing, and there is junk food everywhere. :) Dusty and I made a ginger bread house over the weekend, and it was so much fun! We made the ginger from scratch, and that was an adventure within itself. I could have sworn we followed the recipe to a "T" but I must have put in an extra cup of flour. The dough was super dry. As with every cooking experience/emergency, mom's assistance is needed. After adding two eggs to the mixture, it finally looked like a dough. I have to admit that even though I don't like ginger, I had to take a teeny bite. It wasn't all bad.

After making the dough we had to roll it out and then cut it into the desired shapes. I must not have enough muscles or something, because that was not working for me. Dusty had to roll out the dough- guys are tough...they can handle stuff like that.

Then came the cooking portion. The recipe said to cook the dough for only 10 minutes. Since Dusty and I are amazing cooks trained in New York, we thought it would be better to cook it for much much longer. We practically burned it. But it did make it easier to make the house because the ginger was very very hard.

The frosting. It still doesn't make sense to me. It looks so good but it is disgusting and it gets hard as a rock. But it makes good glue for the gingerbread house. Dusty handled the frosting, and I handled the candy. I might have tasted a few pieces of candy through the whole process- but I'm sure it wasn't more than a couple of very tiny, minuscule pieces.

Dusty is pretty creative- I have to give it to him. After we got the walls up Dusty thought it would be cool if we covered the sides of the house with Hershey Bars. "Eeew Gross," I thought to myself, "Brown?" I voiced my doubt but let him proceed. As you can see from the pictures, the Hershey Brown walls look freaking amazing. Way to go Dusty!


All in all, the house took 2, almost 3 hours. But it was time well spent. And I got to spend all that time with Dusty. He's an awesome boyfriend!

I Love My Job!

Talk about a great day to go flying! Breathtaking is the word I would use for it.

The air was perfectly smooth and cool, there was a bit of haze (but not too much), the mountains were colorful and topped with some snow, and there were a few clouds below my altitude. To top it off, I could see three temples and Kennicott Copper Mine just ahead of me. I could have stayed up there all day.

The student I flew with this morning is practicing instrument flying, which means that he doesn't get to look outside the aircraft; he only gets to focus on his instruments. Poor guy. I did let him peek out for a sec because it was too good to miss, but I won’t admit that to anybody…



I think I have the best job ever.

I've Finally Joined the Trend

I think I'm always the last to do something "cool." So here, finally, is my blog! I have to admit that a blog is something I vowed I would never do, but I find myself with way too much free time (the joy of being a mature/responsible adult?).

A little bit about myself. I graduated with my BS degree in Aviation Science a couple of years ago and am currently flight instructing. Flight instructing is by far one of the most rewarding things I have ever done, but also the scariest. Some days of flying are what some people would refer to as "Mondays" but other days are great. Today was a great day. The weather was perfect for flying- scattered clouds 3,000' above the ground, cold temperatures to allow the aircraft better performance, and no sun to irritate my overlysensitive eyes. Like I said, a great day for flying.

My hobbies. I play the piano (though not as often as I should) and the guitar (also not as often as I should). I have also added working out to my list of hobbies because I think a hobby is something one does in the free time, right? I like to feel good and awake throughout my day, so I love working out. If you're not addicted to that yet, you should be!

Traveling. I love it. I guess I travel more than most people, but I don't feel like I can ever get enough of it- maybe one of the reasons a pilot's life sounds great. I was able to go to the Midwest a few times this year, and I definitely love the summers out there. Humid and hot! Though the cold weather is good for flying, cold weather is not good for me- Bring on the Heat! I have also been to the east coast and I loved it out there. I know mountains are great and everything, but I have to admit that I like the earth to be flat. A few hills here and there are okay, but not huge objects protruding out of the ground asking for somebody to have an engine failure in flight and be forced to land on it. Yikes!

My life. It's pretty great right now.