Frosty Flight…..Brrrrr!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!  I sure did.  Even though I really wasn’t in the Christmas spirit this year.  I didn’t even decorate.  It was still nice though.  My little mother stayed over for a couple nights, as she does every year.  Good times!  On Christmas Eve, we ordered from Pizza Hut.  It was so good!  I’m weird and usually dip my pizza in ketchup.  My mother’s head made a perfect ketchup holder:

We made a nice dinner on Christmas Day.  It was a really nice holiday.  My mother still has the ketchup on her head.

I woke up this morning and saw yuckola weather.  It was rather disappointing since I was hoping to go flying today – one last flight for 2017.  Fortunately, things cleared up by 11:00am, so Mike and I headed out to the airport.  We were the only ones flying.  We decided to head to Brantford for lunch.  We didn’t hear another plane the whole way there.  Took some nice shots on the way, like the canal.  I think it’s still open as we saw a large ship at the Lake Ontario entrance:

And heading toward Lake Erie:

I asked Mike to take some shots of the Hamilton Airport:

And Vyctor’s dangly wheel:

Then he decided to try a panoramic shot while we were cruising along.  The first one didn’t quite work out too well.  It made my cockpit look just a tad large.  I think he converted my Cessna 150 into a Cessna 1500:

Tee hee!  Love it!  He tried again and the next one was a little more to scale:

We made it to Brantford – the only ones who flew in at that time.

Coming in to land on the windswept runway:

And the dork pilot:

Mike and I got Vyctor all snuggled before we went in for lunch:

Mike got this awesome burger with egg and pretty much everything else:

I felt bad about Vyc, sitting out there by himself.  It helped that he waved back after I waved to him and blew a kiss:

We had to gobble our food rather quickly as there was a bit of a snowy/foggy system coming in from the east.  If we waited much longer, we would have been stuck in Brantford for awhile.  Here’s the video of our take off:

And the crud to the east:

Heading back, we noticed this crop circle configuration.  We’re pretty sure aliens have been to Niagara.  I don’t blame them.  It’s a nice area – wineries, the Falls, escarpment, etc.  We welcome you, little green, googly eyed alien dudes!

Landing back home – still didn’t see another plane out except a 727 landing at Hamilton, which the tower controller nicely told us where to maneuver to avoid him:

We safely arrived back at CYSN (Niagara District Airport).  Thank you Vyctor – happy new year buddy!  I love him so much.  I tried to give him a farewell kiss but my tongue stuck to his cowling:

I managed to rip it off and all was good in the world again.  Toodle-loo little buddy.  See you next year!

Back home, we got the kitties ready for New Years:

They were not amused, but we were!  I was also amused when Mike and I went to Giant Tiger today and he came over to the cart with a pressie for his favourite daughter, Abby.  I told him to put it back:

Poor Mike! Abby and the other kitties have enough toys!

Today’s symptoms: Still dealing with the insomnia.  It’s going on five months now.  Just awful.  I wake up constantly throughout the night and it takes me one to three hours to fall asleep.  Very frustrating.  I took some of my wakey-up pills today so felt decent and was able to have a very productive and active day.  Paws crossed that tonight is miraculously better. 

Chilly Flight

Mike and I tried to fly to Brantford for breakfast last weekend.  It was before Costco opened and the lot was packed:

I can’t even imagine what it will be like this weekend.  Anyway, flying along, we noticed the weather dropping up ahead.  We checked the weather beforehand and knew that Hamilton was yuckola, so we were going to head south.  Before we made it into Hamilton airspace, the clouds flipped us off and told us to turn around.  Ok!

I wasn’t quite ready to end the flight, so we took a little trip over Niagara Falls:

The Rainbow Bridge was surprisingly quiet:

Then back to land at St. Catharines:

I parked Vyctor, asked the fuel personage to fill him up, and we headed home:

You can certainly see the clouds coming in from the west.  Yuck.

Earlier this week I had to take little Mya to the vet.  She has been eating like crazy lately but not gaining any weight.  She only weighs about 5 pounds to begin with.  I thought maybe she had hyperthyroidism.

It took three of us to hold her down for the blood work.  I have never heard a cat scream so loud in my life.  We could not believe how loud something that tiny could be.  It was so upsetting to see her so scared and angry.  I broke down, like a big dork.  The good news is that all of her blood work is normal.  She had quite a few teeth out over the years and I know it’s not as easy for her to chew the hard kibble, which I leave out all the time.  So, I just have to feed her soft food multiple times throughout the day.  I just bought $65 worth of canned food today so that should keep her going for a few weeks.  Hopefully she will gain a little weight.

Speaking of cat food, something just a wee bit creepy happened the other day.  I noticed the night before that the levels of kibble in their dishes was getting a little low.  There was still enough for a few days though.  Apparently, the cats didn’t think so.  This is the message they left me (and I swear, I didn’t move a single piece!)

I got the hint and the dishes were filled immediately.  Geesh!

Today’s symptoms: I was off for about half of the day.  Jan came by and we went out to Timmies, then Fairview Mall and finally Petsmart.  We were surprised that the mall wasn’t busier than it was, this close to Christmas.  Felt decent today after getting at least five hours of sleep last night.  Still dealing with the insomnia, although I had a full week of good sleep a couple of weeks ago.  It was amazing.  Things are back to how they’ve been for over four months now though, and I’m only getting a few chopped up hours a night.  Blah.

Lots of Great Stuff

My last blog mentioned the tragic event in Rochester, when I inadvertently took a little chipmunk’s life.  I think this blog will focus on the more positive things I’ve experienced lately.  Referring back to last week, Jan and I had a wonderful trip to Rochester for three days.  It started out a little rough when we stopped at our local Tim Hortons and brought our coffees out to the car.  Jan spilled some of her coffee on her coat and pants – not surprising as she is a bit of a klutz around food.  After getting her cleaned up, I was reaching for something not knowing that she had lifted up her coffee for a slurp.  I elbowed the cup and coffee flew everywhere again.  This was not a good start.  A few minutes later, we were on the St. Catharines Skyway, and the truck in front of me threw a stone at my windshield.  There’s a smidge of a chip.  Fortunately, that and the chipmunk issue were the only downfalls of the trip.  The first night we were there, we nommed at this fine establishment:

It reminded us of how Lil’ Jan always used to call me Lizzy Drips.  We have no idea why, but it stuck all these years.

That evening, we sauntered down to The Christmas Tree Shop.  This place is awesome and I wish there was one in Canada.  I’m still trying to figure out what this item is:

Lipstick for Legs.  Huh.  We also discovered this fine product:

Tee hee!

Whilst driving in the States, I thought it might be a good idea to take video from the dashboard.  Last year, we almost got in what would have been a pretty severe accident, when a car ran a red while we were going around on the advance green.  So, this year I stuck my GoPro to the back of my GPS (with stick tack!).  Worked great:

Fortunately, it wasn’t needed as there were no traffic issues.

On the second day, I wore this shirt.  I had about a dozen people stop me and say how cool it was:

The whole trip was awesome – probably one of the best we had. It was, however, wonderful to get home and see all of my angels again:

A few days ago, we had our annual Recreational Aircraft Association Christmas dinner at the Niagara Falls Mandarin.  I was taking pics of our great group when I decided to get a nice picture of Mike.  I asked him to make a nice face.  This is the result:

Good grief!!!

Today I met up with my father and we went somewhere we’ve been countless times when I was young – Swayze Falls.  It was so great to be back there.

Some of the trees there are a couple hundred years old and massive:

I hate pics of myself, but at least this one was from far away.  It took him a few tries to take this picture which resulted in my running up and down the rocky hill in front of the tree a few times.  Good exercise!

You can see how the deer nibble on all of the trees, as far as they can reach:

It was a great visit to this Niagara gem.  I’m looking forward to taking Mike there for a hike one day.

Afterwards, I went to Reptile Kingdom to pick up some more crickets, as my current batch of eggs doesn’t seem to be hatching.  I also grabbed a couple of pressies for Zim and Peanut:

I met an adorable girl there who enthusiastically told me about all of their pets.  Chameleon, geckos, turtles and I think she also mentioned a spider and snake.  I asked her if she would email me some pics of her pets, so I can include them in an upcoming blog.  Paws crossed she follows through!

Tonight, Mike and I are meeting up with some of his work folks at The Keg for dinner.  Ohhhhhh…..steak…..  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Today’s symptoms: I feel quite good today.  I had a bad cold all week and unfortunately, missed some nice get-togethers with friends and co-workers.  Just have a bad headache today and still a bit of a sore throat.  On a very bright note, the last three nights of sleep have improved.  I got about 6 hours two nights ago and last night was ok, sleeping through once I fell asleep around 3:00am.  I’m hoping Santa brings me a cure for this insomnia!  One for the MS would be nice too, but I don’t want to be pushy!

My Gift To Rochester

I had a pretty cruddy event happen a couple days ago.  I was having an amazing time during my annual Rochester trip with my mother.  For some reason, we always have a slightly (or majorly) bad event – only one though, and the rest of the trip is phenomenal.  Well, the first day of our trip on Thursday was amazing. I’m going to discuss more of my trip over the next blog, but I’m going to tell one sad experience.  Jan and I were driving back from Eastview Mall in Rochester, NY.  Just so you know, I’m an extreme animal lover.  You hear “They couldn’t kill a fly.”  That’s me exactly.  I hate spiders yet I catch them and let them outside.  Well, something horrible happened – we were heading back from the mall to our hotel.  We were driving along at the speed limit, as to not get thrown into prison by a State Trooper.  Less than five kilometers (or like 2 miles or something) from our hotel, a chipmunk ran out into our lane.  We were on a busy two lane highway, with a string of traffic behind us and another going the opposite direction.  There were no shoulders.  So little chippy ran out into my lane and he looked over at me.  I could only swerve slightly since there was oncoming traffic within feet to my left.  I hate to admit this, but I hit little chippy.  I looked back in my mirror and there he was.  I couldn’t lose it because I was driving.  But I was so upset, I can’t even tell you.  Brutal – but I had to keep going.  Something made things a little better though.  I realized the exact moment he ran out on the road, I knew something was severely wrong.  Yes, he looked over at me, but within that split second, I saw that he wasn’t a normal chipmunk.  He grinned maliciously, with blood dripping from his fangs.  If that wasn’t enough, he was foaming at the mouth.  It was beyond clear he was rabid.  Still, with that second, I saw an even more disturbing scene – he was holding a chainsaw.  I had a brief look at the brand and saw it was a Stihl.  Nice choice, buddy!  That’s a pretty expensive chainsaw.  So this event was extremely tragic, but I now realize what I have done for Rochester.  How many lives did I save from a savage, rabid, evil chainsaw-bearing chipmunk?!  He was clearly out to get as many souls as he could.    You are welcome Rochester…..yes, you are welcome.  (But I’m still beyond upset)

Today’s symptoms: Feeling a tad weary, but what would I expect after three days of awesomeness.  I have a full week planned so not sure how this will this work out.  We’ll see.  Stay tuned for the the next blog about our awesome trip!