sign language doesn't work over the radio

Well, I have resurfaced at the tail end of a dizzying-ly busy December!  Had to pay for Christmas presents so it’s been a lot of flying (8-10 hours a day, 6 days a week ya’ll!) with a lot of parties and events sprinkled in between.  Best news of the month is that I finally got all the credit card debt that I incurred during the times I was earning -$300 (yeah that’s a negative) a week between the slow season of flight instructing and flushing money down the Toilet of Apartment Rental… all paid off!  No more, my friends, no more!

 I did jet-set back over to La…not “LA”, but Louisiana…for the holidays.  Had a nice time hanging out with the family and brought back some nasty allergies.  I blame the weather- the sun did not even come out until I was on my way to the airport to come back to Florida, and even then I only saw it because my flight got delayed 2 hours to “mid-morning” instead of “ass-crack of dawn.”  Surprisingly, the delay was not for bad weather in Atlanta, but for required airline crew rest.  I’m okay with that, I’d rather be late than a statistic- know what I’m sayin’?

 Anyway, this throat crud I brought back with me yesterday is still around and this morning it decided to completely ignore the fact that I pretty much talk for a living so when I woke up, my voice was gone.  Barely a whisper.  This made it interesting when I had to teach one of my Private students to fly a traffic pattern today.  We did brief everything beforehand, but the whispering was catching on.  I’m whispering to him, drawing out stuff on the board, and he’s whispering his questions back to me.  Same thing with, oh, pretty much everyone I talked to.  Isn’t it true that research has shown that we mirror people we’re talking to in order to connect with them?  Yeah, the office today sounded like a library.  My student did a real nice job talking on the radios in the airplane today- he’s still new at it but he only missed one minor radio call (thank god!), which I had to pick up.  To make myself heard, I had to try to amplify my voice through the back of my throat somehow and now I’m wondering if the Orlando tower controllers think Roz from “Monsters Inc” is working at Flight Training Professionals.

 If I get well by the weekend, Scot and I have big plans.  It’s time to start the new floors!  We’re going to bust up all the tile in the kitchen and entryway and pull up the carpet in the rest of the house and install some wood laminate.  After doing 2 full bathroom renovations, we are pros at tile-destroying.  Which reminds me- if you’re in to light reading (or just like funny stuff), download or get the hard copy of the book “If You Were Here” by Jen Lancaster (this is not a paid endorsement)  It’s near and dear to my heart these days-subject is a couple (he a not-so-handy-man, she an author who writes about Amish teenage zombies in love-I know!) who buys a “fixer-upper” and the ridiculousness that endues.  It cracked me up and made glad that when we re-did our bathrooms, it never rained toilets on ME.

 Anyway, have a great New Year and all…I got 4 cookbooks for Christmas this year (set for life now, thanks!) so in addition to the ones I have I’m a step away from appearing on “Hoarders.”  Hey!  New Year’s Resolution- organize cookbook closet.