Sparkly Bits and Die-cut Planes

It was only natural I'd spot the fluttering banner that said thrift store. I crossed paths with the banner on the way to the park where all the food trucks were. I made a promise with that banner that I'd check out the store on the way back. I was there to hand out flyers for a park that I'm involved with. 

A short while later, I passed out all my flyers. Conversation was limited due to mask wearing and most of the people were happily eating their lunches. I had mistakenly packed and subsequently eaten my lunch prior so I had to skip trying Global Taco or the one called Over the Moon Grilled Cheeserie. I consoled myself with a whoopie pie and headed back the way I came with a promise that next Thursday I'd be back! 

At first glance, the church basement thrift store was exactly that. I had spotted a cool vintage butterfly pin full of sparkly bits right off, but I was pretty sure my sale would be pretty small. Despite the warning that all was half off, I was less than impressed with the first two rooms. Then I came across a small collection of painted plates. Embossed gold with roses, Mine Mine Mine! Inner crow screamed with glee!

A second plate had lovely free form roses with handed painted little pretty flowers at the top. It was also had a $3 sticker on it. Never seen anything like it. It almost looks like the artist was playing with a few styles of decoration. Very entertaining. In all, my little painted plates totally made up for skipping a delicious super cheesy grilled cheese sammy. It was a nice way to slide into the weekend. 

Saturday evening I had a little bit of time while waiting for fried pickles to arrive. The rest of dinner too, but specifically the fried pickles. My earlier disappointment in not having a grilled cheese off the food truck manifested itself in mac and cheese from a local place for dinner. Anyhow, while waiting, I dug out some new stamps I got that came with the ability to die cut out the pieces. I bought them after I had an on-line scrapbooking party. 

Did I tell you about that? A bunch of us got on-line in the midst of the virus and scrapped via web ex. I wouldn't have known how to set up a web-ex except I was taking some on-line classes for something else and happened to have an account. So, we got to all hang out and work together. I made a sh*t-ton of background pages, which I'm likely to do when I don't have 100% concentration and just want to do something mindless. Since evidently there is a little bit of camping this summer, they will come in handy for layouts. 

I made six of these cards. I only needed two, because kids are still graduating and other peeps are still retiring. Despite the bug, life events march on even it's a socially distanced graduation wearing masks and a last day of work after spending your whole life at it but skipping the get together because let's face it most peeps are still working off their kitchen table. 

I am thankful that we will have a little of this and a little of that to look forward to this summer. They say it's the mask wearing which we all have gotten mostly used to, I guess which is why the numbers in my state are down. With the threat of bad things happening, I'm noticing that the majority of peeps are wearing theirs. We've had our big box home improvement store shut down twice for lack of mask wearing and one of the local bars that operates in the sticks lost their liquor license as they kept serving.  I can say that perhaps some should consider running their masks through the laundry, but we've all got our personal preferences, right? 

And with that, I'm off. I have my own laundry to do and left over mac and cheese for lunch to devour! 

A Good Last Day

I was pleased when a couple of weeks back the owner of Costa's Flying Service told me that Lou would be Luke's CFI (Certified Flight Instructor). I've met Lou numerous times. He's flown our Civil Air Patrol Cadets at least once, not to mention he was previously in CAP. I think his membership predated the current members of our Squadron for the most part, but I knew that he and Luke would hit it off. 

Well, I knew they would hit it off eventually. Although Luke is well spoken around adults and confident, he does tend to be on the shy side of things and I was pretty sure Lou also was on the quiet side. This past Friday at work I got the text message that Luke was on his way home from flying and that he had stories. 

When I called on my way home to see if I could coax the stories out of him, Luke said that I had to wait for supper when we had longer to talk. He had been flying on one Cessna in particular, but they had to fly an older one for lessons on Friday as the plane Luke was used to flying had to have 100 hour maintenance done. The older plane Luke wasn't used to gave Lou and Luke a little bit of a hard time. 

First the pre-flight inspection was different as items were switched around and then the headsets stopped working when they did finally get off the ground. You can't hear over the engine while flying so you can imagine there was a bit of yelling as Luke interpreted what Lou was asking him to do. After landing the first time, they were able to work the kinks out with the headsets. Despite these complications, Luke had enjoyed his time in the air and told me that he thought he and Lou were finally starting to bond. Lou had told him about his time in the Army at one point Friday. It had been a beautiful day to fly. I've been with Luke after he lands  and he gets all shiny happy. I imagine Lou probably thought that was pretty cool. 

Later that night I got a text message that Lou had been out walking his dog and had been found unresponsive on the sidewalk and had passed away. Luke was crushed. I'm pretty sure Luke was Lou's last lesson. At least he got to spend the day with one of the best kids I know up above the clouds. That's a good last day. 

Later, I asked Luke if he could have landed if something bad had happened to Lou while they were flying. He said yes, I could have landed. It would have sucked and I probably would have wanted to stop flying for a while. However, I know what to do in an emergency. That made me feel better. 

I asked him this on our way back from junkin. He had managed to score a really old CRT monitor that was small enough for his F-16 project and a handful of servos, so he was feeling the glow after a successful hunt and I thought that he might be willing to talk a little. He had initially wanted to take a week off flying, but his new flight instructor informed him that he would be back in the air on Tuesday. I think when Luke does finally solo that we'll have a quiet moment for Lou and to thank him for his last final instruction.