Bad weather and the birthing classes

So for the past few weeks I've wanted to fly down to San Diego. I wanted to wait until this past weekend since I did not have the detailed map of the area until last week. Saturday we drove down to Ojai to take back Lisa's bed to free up room in the kids room, so the plan was to fly down on Sunday. Of course nothing goes as planned. First, Michelle got way behind on her masters project and didn't have the time to go then the weather went to crap and it started raining on us, long story short, we didn't fly. Next weekend I was planning on flying to Tehachapi since it will be a sort of anniversary of our engagement 3 years ago. So now I want to fly down to San Diego this Saturday and to Tehachpi this Sunday.

I guess it is the only way to do the anniversary any justice. I had to drag Michelle on two flights in a row before the engagement. The day before we got engaged, we flew down to California City for a Toys for Tots event with airplanes, cars, motorcycles, and food. She didn't want to go flying again on Sunday so I had to drag her along since I didn't it to ruin my plans. Good thing she went because who knows how long I would have sat on it before replanning the trip all over. So it only makes sense to drag her to San Diego, then back to Tehachapi the next day! I might fly up to Mammoth for some practice takeoff and landings at a higher mountain airport too before we head to UT in a few weeks.

On our way down to Ojai, we stopped in Northridge at REI for a SPOT messenger and Office Depot for a laptop. To give a short background on the SPOT messenger, my airplane is equipped with an ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter). If I were to crash, the ELT would transmit a distress signal. Search and rescue satellites would pick up this signal and emergency crews would come out looking for us. They can fly in a search pattern and home in on the signal until they find us. In the next few months, the satellites will no longer be listening for these emergency signals and they want us to upgrade to new ELTs.

The problem is that the new ones aren't ready yet and the few that are out are way too expensive. Since Michelle and I fly in very desolate areas and are planning our trip to UT in a few weeks, we wanted some extra safety. This is where the SPOT messenger comes in. This little devices is essentially a satellite phone that can only send emails and text messages (can't talk on it) that has GPS capabilities. This means it can send emails with GPS coordinates tracking where you are. We plan on turning this on when we fly around so people know where we are. It also has an emergency button on it that if we crash we can hit the button and emergency crews have our exact GPS location. We used some of our REI gift cards from our wedding to buy this.

The laptop was bought as a method to edit the HD video our new camcorder produces. I was going to have to spend $120 to buy the software, but instead this $400 laptop comes with the software included. The laptop is also nice since our office is so small that we wouldn't be able to fit the kid in their when working on bills and stuff. Now I can do this from the living room while watching the kid.

Tonight we have our 4th Bradley childbirth class. The first class was an intro, the second was nutrition, and I don't remember what the 3rd was, maybe home birth. I haven't had a chance to do my reading assignments for tonight yet, but she said it was ok as long as I do it eventually. We did 'The business of being born' by Ricki Lake that we were supposed to watch a few weeks ago. The movie is available on Netflix so we used one of our rentals to get it.

I guess the movie was ok, but I think it was more graphic than what I need to see. I also believe that it overly blames the hospitals for not supporting natural childbirth. I don't completely believe this, but I'm no expert. I really think the health industry is a scam and they are the worst industry (yes worse than oil) as far as ripping off customers, but I won't get into that now. I think the problem is lawsuits and that is caused by Congress and the laws that are passed. Hospitals need to consider lawsuits as a higher priority than healthcare due to ridiculous malpractice lawsuits, but you can't blame them. Michelle and I are hoping we don't have any of the issues we've been hearing about and so far our doctor has been supportive.

Not much to say

I figured I'd put up a new post of what we're up to even though there isn't much to say. We went to Kevin and Sarah Ford's house for Thanksgiving and had a great meal there, but other than that spent most of the holiday weekend working and cleaning around the house.

The attic is now almost finished, I added several additional flooring sections and built up a frame around a recessed light and put a floor over that and the old attic access hole as well. I just need to finish with the putty, paint, and a few other things. I've been putting a bunch of stuff up there cleaning out our closets. I was able to get all of my model airplane, brewing, airplane records, and ski stuff up there. The dogs were very interested in seeing what was up the ladder and kept whining, so I also brought both of the dogs up to take a look; that was not as easy as it sounds.

I took apart the bed we had in the kid's room and that is in our living room now and will go back to Lisa on Saturday. Michelle taped off and started painting the border in the kid room. She also did the artistic sketches of the different walls. Next step is to paint the backdrops and send out the animal drawing requests.

The last thing I was able to finish was cleaning the office. This has been a mess forever since not everything even had a spot to go since we switched rooms after the house makeover. Now everything has a spot and is clean! I forgot that I also repaired the roof to the shed. For some reason, there is a huge hole where the roof cracked apart. Of course, I didn't notice it until after the two days we got rain...

Saturday, we are heading down to drop off the bed at Lisa's and take a look at the pictures of her trip to India. Sunday, I hope to fly down to San Diego for lunch. We've never been west of Cajon pass and I'd like to get some experience flying down in that area. Originally I was thinking about eating at a place called CrazeeBurgers that we saw featured on TV that had all sorts of neat burgers, but instead I think we'll just play it down and eat at the airport. Maybe next time... I'm not sure if Michelle will be able to go since she is frantically trying to finish her masters project.

We also have a trip planned to Tehachapi on the 13th, this is when and where we got engaged back in 2005. After that we have our trip planned out to Utah to see my Uncle Errol and fly over all sorts of scenery, look for a nice post after that trip.