so basically... soccer. in its most intense form. for me anyway. my body is screaming with sore muscles and that sort of thing. i am NOT in shape at all. ill be glad once i am, but getting there is going to require a LOT of hard work. today was only the second practice too. our coach definitely knows how to work us. pretty embarassing tho. my skills are pretty rusty as well. theyre not horrible but definitely rusty. on the field i tend to take control of the defense, and these new freshman need to learn that there way isnt always best. im tired of them not listening to me when im telling them something. then they get the ball stolen from them or something and you look at them like "told ya." but i remember being a freshman and it was hard so i give em a little bit of slack..... now anyway. a lot of the freshman that were there yesterday were gone today. guess all the work scared em. the jump from middle school soccer to high school soccer is like flying a cessna and then someone going "ok now land this 747" our first game is in like 8 days too. not cool. as always its vaca high too, and they play practically year round cuz everyone is on a comp team. so that sux for us. aight well my food is cooked so im scarfin. im goin to bed soon after that too lol. later....

Man im INSANELY close to my Flight Certificate (Pilots License). i have two flights left. two. count em. this will be the most stressing and painstaking part of all that ive worked too though. ive got a VERY thick book ive got to study from so that i pass my written which im planning on taking in about a week and a half. I'll be cramming a crapload of information into my mind in the next couple of weeks. after the written will be my checkride, which is a process that can take up to 5 hours. tests dont get much longer than that. that involves a one on one talk with the FE (Flight Examiner) where he'll ask me a lot of questions. after that is the flight in which ill demonstrate all the skills ive learned. theyre not easy skills either. before i started flight training i thought that having your pilots license was more a matter of being able to fly a plane more than anything. but ive come to realize its a LOT more than that. All the nitpicky stuff is so important and those that fly with you will probably never catch all those things that may seem so small to the onlooker. All the prep that goes into a flight involves so much knowledge and so much practice and deals with so many terms that an aviation deprived person gets lost in. The acronyms and weird sounding terms are probably the most famous such as: VORs, DMEs, Wind Correction Angles, VFR, IFR, TCHs, AROW, Yaw, Pitch, Roll, Upwind, Crosswind, Downwind, Base, Final, Soft Field, Short Field, ADs, Altimeters, Artificial Horizon, Attitude Indicator, Vertical Speed Indicator, Squawk, Transponders, ATIS, AWOS, Ailerons, Elevators, Horizontal Stabilizer, Vertical Stabilizer, Empanage, pito heat, Carb Heat, Stall indicators. I mean the list is endless, and those are just a few of the terms that come to mind. you have to know what each one means and how it applies to flying. Its no wonder why so many people get involved in flight training and then drop out of it. its not something to take lightly. makes you really respect the people that have done it before you. thats why flying is such an ongoing learning experience. even if you have your license or any type of rating, theres always something new to learn, and you had better listen to those that have been doing it longer than you. but enough seriousness. there is nothing more rewarding for all of that then to strap into a plane and be the PIC. all the controls at your fingertip. i dont think it really set in that i fly planes until my solo when i was the only one in there. there was no one else in the plane to help you. you made it fly, and ONLY you, and thatll give you a feeling that youll never forget. you get up to cruise altitude and all the worries you have are gone, partly because of how hard your concentrating haha, but to see what we get to see up there- its amazing and it never gets old. i mean anyone can get on an airliner and have that one direction view out that tiny little hole of a window, but the view that we have up there- a full 360 degrees- its amazing. thats another thing. i dont kno how some pilots are atheists. to see what Gods created from His point of view, i dont see how you cant agree with creation. everything is truely perfect. well thats the conclusion of my pilot spiel. these next few weeks should be pretty crazy. i expect to be done in about 3 weeks. but once thats over- its only begun...

so today was.... uh... cool i guess. woke up at the butt crack of dawn for an early morning flight. that was good, except that all ive been doing is hood time lately, and that is boring as heck. it was kind of exciting towards the end today because Jason (my instructor) kept me under the hood until right before touchdown. i figured out what he was doing pretty much when we turned final for 20 and he still didnt tell me to take it off. so he read off headings to me as i descended. i was gettin just a tad bit nervous as i watched the altimeter keep dwindling down to close to nothing and i was about to look up but i trust Jason so i didnt. finally he tells me to look up and im about 60 feet above the runway and about 4 seconds to touchdown. craziness.... it was cool though. makes me a better pilot. anyway after that i went home and slept on the couch before work cuz i was worn out haha. work was... ok i guess. 6 hour shifts suck though. tomorrow me and lauren are having brunch at fresh choice so thatll be cool. im flying again on saturday so that i can finish the last of my hood time. thank the Lord. well im out...

man lately everything has been so..... bleh. im just starting to get like MAJORLY tired of chris being gone. he should maybe COME BACK. anyway.... dont want to sound depressing so umm... what to talk about...today i went to get my truck smogged and though the odds were against me, I PASSED. whew. that would have majorly sucked if i didnt. then after that me and sam went to get something to eat, then she had to shop a bit. after that i deposited like $100 in my account at the airport so that i can fly on thursday. thats going to be like an effing early morning flight too. im pretty sure its scheduled for 8AM. definitely not going to enjoy getting up. anyway. after the deposit i went to sams, then my house for dinner, then my dads ball game, where he shined big time. go dad! they smoked the other team too. something like 18 to 8 or something. major butt kicking. yes mom i thought about how the other team felt, so you cant say i didnt. theyll have their time too.... oh! got a call from vanden about fall sports calendar events. its going to be here soon. thatll be... fun. i dont really know if im looking forward to soccer this season. i dont really kno what to expect. it should be good tho since im an upper classmen. all the seniors that pissed me off last year are gone. thats always such a great thing. theyre putting us in a new league this year, which is why i dont kno what to expect. this could either be a really good thing or a really bad thing. its going to depend on the ratio of mexicans to white people on the teams we'll be playing. just kidding. yea so thats whats been going on. later...