Darrell's weblog

I haven’t made a blog post since my return from overseas, so I have some catching up to do. Heather is much better about posting in a timely manner at her blog, so you should be reading her blog, too, if you don’t already. Anyway, here goes…

1) I got back from my overseas trip on December 2nd. It went well, and the trip was a really good one. It was really great to finally get to work with the people we support directly. Also, I got 130 hours of flight time, which is quite a bit for only 2 months.

2) Shortly after my return from oversea, Heather and I took a week-long vacation in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. This was our 3rd visit to Playa del Carmen (as well as our 3rd stay at the lovely Playa Maya hotel on the beach!), and we really enjoyed it. Heather remained “unsick” for almost the entire trip! Next time our goal is for her to feel great the entire time. I guess I just have an iron stomach or something, as I felt fine the whole time.

3) After being off for nearly two weeks after my return, I finally went back to work. Getting back to work was rather anti-climactic. Over the holiday season, there isn’t really anything going on, so there wasn’t much to do.

4) Even though there wasn’t much work to do, I still manage to smash my finger while reinstalling an engine on a Super Puma. It was quite a scare! I’ll spare you the details, but I will say that at the time I was convinced I was going to lose my finger, but now it is almost completely healed up (note: linked picture is *not* gross, I promise), although I need to exercise it more before I get full range of motion back.

5) I got to help fly Santa in to our company’s Kid’s Christmas party! It wasn’t much of a flight, but the kids thought it was pretty awesome. Heather blogged about it already, but the pictures can be found here.

6) We bought a new 42″ plasma TV to replace our broken one in the living room. When we move, this beauty will go in our bedroom, and we’ll buy another, more expensive(!), plasma (or maybe LCD) TV for the living room.

7) Speaking of moving, our new house (link to floorplan) should start getting built in a week or so, and should be finished at the end of March or the beginning of April. I’m very excited to move into a real house!

We have sort of adopted a new cat. The is this (presumably) homeless cat that has been sleeping in the bushes next to my garage and has been greeting us for a few weeks now. Well, it got down below freezing here the last few days, so Heather decided that it would be best to give this cat some shelter for a while. The only problem is that our cat HATES other cats, so we have to keep them separated. We recently bought a heating pad for our cat, and she loves it! Here’s a picture of what happens when you put the heating pad in a basket!

9) I’m leaving again on my next trip overseas on Monday, Jan. 7th. I’ll be back on Feb. 28th. I had to spend several hundred dollars on extra cold weather gear, because I haven’t exactly needed it anytime in the last decade. The weather forecast at my destination for Tuesday is a high of 33F and a low of 11F, with snow. In fact, it’s snowing there now, and snow is forecast for everyday until I get there. Brrrr.

10) Heather and I will be heading to San Antonio to visit family and friends during the first week of March! We should be getting into town on the evening of March 1st, and we expect to leave on the morning of the 6th, and we hope to visit many of our favorite places and people!

Well, that’s it for now, please excuse the long update. I’ll write again with some pictures from my overseas destination!