Archive for October, 2005

Last Saturday, we had one of Berck’s co-workers and his wife over for dinner. We think they’re Mormon, because they’re from Utah and they’re really nice and they don’t drink. So much for buying two kinds of beer and two kinds of wine. But it’s a good thing we had plenty of IBC on hand.

For me, having people I didn’t know over for dinner is fun because we got to cook all day. Berck got me out of bed by telling me we had to go shopping. Grocery shopping is one of those things I do under protest without Berck, because there’s always something wrong with what I buy… whether he forgot to tell me to get what he wanted or I selected an inferior brand or I can’t find the specific item he wants. I also can’t go to Sam’s, because Berck is his dad’s partner card person, so he’s the only one with a membership. Berck keeps telling me just to hand them his card, that they won’t care. I point out that I don’t have a beard, in case they look at the picture on the back. Berck usually refuses to go grocery shopping by himself, so we both end up venturing into the world of retail food.

After filling the Miata trunk up at Sam’s, we drove over to Berck’s newest favorite store. Whole Foods looks like one of those places that only sells organic granola (which they do have), but it’s so much more too. It’s like a Fresh Market but three times as big. They have a WHOLE refrigerated display case of their own sausages. They have everything from wasabi rice snack chips to rendered duck fat. More importantly, they had juniper berries, which Berck just had to have for his leg of lamb recipe from the Italian cookbook he’s been working his way through. We also got a leg of lamb… well, part of one. “I don’t suppose you want to cut it up,” Berck said to one of the butchers behind the counter.

“Well, I don’t really want to…” but he cut it into a more manageable size for us. We also got bread there, because it’s really good. I don’t think we would have had time or oven space to bake our own anyway. They also have great cheeses from around the world. We got one that appeared all moldy, but I think its rind and the vein running through it was actually ash. It was really tasty. We also got some sheep cheese, which Berck didn’t find impressive (or maybe he found it left TOO much of an impression), but I liked it.

We crammed Whole Foods’ grocery bags into the space between the headrests and the Miata’s rear window, and I held one bag in my lap with a big container of laundry detergent between my feet. Back home it was time to cook. Berck managed to whack the too-long lamb femur down to pot-size. In went the juniper berries and some chopped carrots and celery. Along with the lamb, Berck planned to have stuffed pasta. I guess after a year or so, he forgets how difficult a certain dish is to make and breaks his vow to never attempt it again. Or maybe he was thinking it would be a snap with the pasta-making attachment to the Kitchen-Aid and a Jonah to do all the stuffing.

Colorado Springs has a very dry climate. When stuffing pasta, this environment becomes a liability. The rectangles I was spooning clumps of ricotta, prosciutto, and Swiss chard into would immediately stiffen and harden before I could fold them over and pinch their sides together. I’m not sure how much of the pasta unstuffed itself during boiling, but Berck solved that aesthetic problem by serving it smothered in opaque tomato cream sauce. This dish is so tasty, but I’m not convinced it’s worth the trouble of constructing.

But before the pasta course, we had wilted spinach salad, which is always a hit, even if we forgot to buy mushrooms while at Whole Foods. Add to that roasted potatoes and the Swiss chard stalks, which the Italian cookbook suggested using as a medium for butter and parmesian, and we had a feast.

I love food.

Well, yesterday I informed Michele and Duncan that they might not have me around much longer. “Duncan,” said Michele, “can we afford to hire Joanna full time?”

“That’s what you can spend the afternoon figuring out,” Duncan told me. So I filled out an application for a workers comp insurance quote and called a paycheck service to ask them to give us a total number for what it would cost to hire a full time employee at $25,000 a year. This includes FICA, FUTA, unemployment insurance, the paycheck service–including direct deposit, withholding, and tax deposits. What I discovered is that it’s darn expensive to hire someone! And I thought the respective government hand were taking enough out of my own wallet already. I didn’t realize they raided my boss’ even more.

Today one of my duties was to drive down to the Division of Wildlife and fill out a roadkill form. On Saturday someone out near Baptist Road hit a doe and her fawn. They called the game warden, who gave them the Michele and Duncan’s number and told them to call. So they went into action. The fawn was already dead, but the doe had to be put down. Then they skinned and dressed the carcasses, wrapping them in sheets and hanging them from the porch ceiling. I can now say that I’ve tasted fawn… something I will probably never taste again.

So I got the roadkill paperwork, allowing the holder to legally possess a carcass. Which was a good thing, since I had the doe in my trunk. Then I drove up to Black Forest to a house with a meat processing operation in the basement. “That’s really big for an antelope!” said one of the white-coat-wearing butchers with a sandy handlebar mustache, pulling the carcass out of the trunk and hanging it up on a hook.

“Probably because it’s a mule deer,” I said. “It was roadkill.” I don’t think deer are in season yet.

“Had to drive through some fences and fields to hit it, did ya?” the butcher teased me. He unwrapped the sheet from the carcass. “I don’t see a bruise on it!”

“Well, she had to be put down,” I suggested, “so maybe her leg was broken.”

“From steppin’ in a bear trap?” he laughed.

Michele had told me that this operation had really good summer sausage for sale, so I bought a huge one marked ANTELOPE and brought it home to Berck tonight. We haven’t tasted it yet, waiting for it to thaw. I hear their elk summer sausage is the best, so maybe I’ll get some of it if I get sent back out to pick up the venison.

In other news, I finished entering all of the information from nine years of deposit slips, check stubs, and bank statements today. Then I started matching up ins and outs. More of that tomorrow.

Unless I get to go running more errands.

Michele has pointed out that if I work anywhere else, I won’t get my daily smoothie. (Wild-cherry peach is the best I’ve had so far.)

Actual Fact: Gabriel Duvall, associate US Supreme Court Justice from 1811 to 1835, served his last ten years deaf, so oral arguments left little impression. He apparently refused to leave the bench until what he considered a suitable successor would replace him.

I applied for a cool looking job at Compassion International recently. Michele wrote me an awesome letter of recommendation (she knows the big kahuna there). And I wrote a kick-ass story for the part of the application called “Statement of Faith.”

But I haven’t heard back from them. Apparently, they got lots of applicants.

Back when my family lived in Colorado Springs, my Sunday school teacher at the church we attended was a guy named Al. He always had an interesting lesson and truly employed the Socratic method. I think it’s been the only time in my life when I couldn’t wait to get out of bed on a Sunday morning. Unfortunately, we alternatively hyperactive and sullen teenagers started to drive him nuts, and he quit being de facto youth group leader to protect his sanity. Anyway, Al worked at Compassion. So I looked him up, see if I could get an edge on the inside.

Al doesn’t work there anymore. He’s started up his own consulting firm, helping organizations gather and enable volunteers. So I wrote him an e-mail and sent him a copy of my resume (because that’s what I do these days, send out as many random resumes as I can). He was excited to hear from me and told me he was passing my credentials on to a client of his.

Well, today his client gave me a call…the head of the fairly new volunteer wing of a major organization, to be exact. He is looking for someone to mind the organizational aspects of the program, freeing him up to do the fancy talking. It’s doing stuff that I would enjoy and that I’ve got experience with. It sounds perfect. He asked me what my minimum salary requirements were, and I told him $25,000/yr., and he said this position would pay 24-30, depending on experience (more money than I’ve ever made, to be sure). He’s a USAFA grad and thought it was cool my husband teaches people how to fly. He’s also got nieces and nephews who attended Wings Like Eagles. He told me their names, and I recognized them. Then he said that he was going over HR’s head to contact me, and we were going to have to pretend like this phone call never happened. The position would have to be posted inhouse for a week or so, then I would have to apply through the human resources department. He would call me back in a week to let me know what to do next.

So I’m very excited. Even if it doesn’t work out, it’s still very encouraging to get a call like that, from someone who’s never met me but seems really willing to hire me. I just have to tell Michele and Duncan my days with them might be numbered.

Speaking of which, Duncan handed me a company checkbook and a huge file of bank statements and deposit slips today. The earliest date on them is 1996. I started entering them into an Excel spreadsheet… because I know how to use Excel now!

But I may have to hurry.

Actual Fact: In 1936, Adolf Hitler declared Mickey Mouse to be an enemy of the state in Nazi Germany.

On Friday, several boss-people asked me if I wanted to work. “No, but I will if you want me to,” I told them. It turns out that as of so far, Saturdays are optional since we won’t make much more money for it. They told me not to come in then. So I didn’t and did my best to rest this weekend.

But here it is, Monday, and I’m already feeling worn out. Part of it is the 10 hour days. Part of it is the exhausting reality of the constant possibility of screwing up and letting a student kill me. Or the possibility of getting in trouble for something silly.

I flew three times today and signed off two lieutenants for their final checkrides. I tend to think that I’m giving them good instruction, but I don’t really know if that’s the case. One of the students had everything down except simulated emergency landings. After the first one, we had quite a bit of time left over. So I explained what he did wrong, pulled his engine again and watched him make new mistakes. Finally, on the fourth try, he got it. During the debrief he thanked me for taking the time to make sure he understood it. Course, he came within about 10ish knots of stalling the airplane on his base to final turn. I didn’t yell, but spoke loudly, clearly, and displeasedly. Not so much because I was angry (though I was) but more to make a point. “Don’t you dare stall on approach! 65 knots! Full power! 51 knots is NOT 65 knots! Can’t you hear the stall warning horn?” It’s often best to just let the student make a mistake and let him learn from it. But there’s really know way to let him learn what happens when you screw up and bury a plane in the dirt, so I chastising is the next best thing. I thought about taking the airplane from him but figured he’d learn more if I made him fix it. It did wake him up. He’s got 25ish hours now. He shouldn’t be making that sort of mistake.

I talked to one of the other instructors about it, after he mentioned that his student did the same thing. How to instill a respect for airspeed? Is there a better way than simply yelling at them?

The Chief Flight Instructor at Airman (with thousands of hours of instruction experience) claimed that some of his most effective tools in flight instruction are fear and intimidation. Maybe he’s right.

My last student just wasn’t trying. His last flight before his checkride, and after he lost THREE HUNDRED feet during slow flight I asked him, “What the hell are you DOING?” “Uhh.. losing altitude?” “YOU’RE not doing anything! FLY! What good does it do if you just sit there and watch the altimeter unwind? Recover and do it again.” He did much better the next time after actually trying.

It’s hard for me to figure out just what tact I should take with these students. Unlike any other flight training situation, they’re being PAID to learn– not the other way around. It’s not my job to be nice to them, it’s my job to teach them. It’s not important that they like me. Still, I know from experience that being mean isn’t necessarily the most productive method. I suppose that with any luck, I’ve got a few hundred hours to figure out what works best.

Overall, I like the job. Admittedly, I haven’t even been doing it a month, but I’m happy with it. It’s rewarding, challenging, and I get to fly planes. Or at least ride around in them and look at the pretty mountains.

I think I’ve gotten used to being called sir. It’s about time that someone in my life treated me like the all-knowing deity that I am:)