No flying for a few days...

The weather doesn't appear to be willing to cooperate for a little flying this week. I was going to take off Monday AM and do a little trouble-shooting on a headset that decided it didn't want to work when I took BD up...and also shoot a few pictures of the house from above...but tornado watches, rain, a passing front and wind will destroy all plans for flight tomorrow (at least for a new Private Pilot with little practical experience)...so, maybe this coming Friday.

Also found out today that the airplane I have been flying, a Grumman Tiger (2004 model), N5XW has been taken off the rental line. That leaves a 1978 model (still pretty good radio stack and autopilot and the airplane will be going down in a week of two to get new paint and a new interior!!!) I have flown a few times, and though it is not a new airplane it flies better is some ways...so, just have to be a little keener on scheduling...

Plan on taking Melissa and Hoss up on Monday, April 11th...keep your fingers crossed!!

The two end cabinets will have cut-glass doors...beautiful!. The center dowels will separate supper plates for display. Under is a wine-glass rack...I don't drink wine, but BD does...there is so much space you could buy a particular wine glass for a particular type of wine for each type of wine I think exists...but she only owns 3 wine glasses right now...oh, oh.

Kitchen cabinets are mostly in position. To the right of the refrigerator space is the door to the pantry and mudroom. The whole Great Room (living room and kitchen) is hardwood floored and filled with windows on the East side of the house...bathroom cabinets are in as well

These are the bookshelves that are going in on both sides of the fireplace...as you can see, the hardwood floors are also in, and a lot of the trim...

They have stained the shakes and painted the house...I like the contrast! The shakes look almost honey-like up closer. BD is not sure, though, how she likes it. It looks "orange" to her...I think it looks honey-like...she thinks it looks orange...I think it looks honey-like. We will talk to the builder Monday to ask of our options...I suggested maybe a while line of trim on the fore-most part of the house facing the camera (where there is shake/house meeting) might help. She still says it looks orange...

This is the start of the 425 steps that will take you down to the visitors center from the top of the Falls...way, way far down the mountain! Of course, for a world-class hiker like myself, quickly scaling all 425 steps is nothing...and I would have done it Saturday but BD was feeling under the weather so I drove her to the mountain-top lodge instead.

You can see how far the water travels...very, very steep drop and a long ways down! At the top of the picture you can make out the little lake that sits near the visitors center.

This is the beginning of Amicalola Falls in North Georgia (near Dawsonville, Georgia...home of "Wild Bill" Elliott and the Elliott Brothers Racing concern). The name means "Tumbling Waters" in Cherokee...this was the heart of the Georgia Cherokee territory until forced removal in the 1830's. It is the tallest water fall East of the Mississippi. BD and I took a drive there Saturday afternoon...tired of traveling for 2 weeks straight and what do we do on our first day home? Travel...but it was a beautiful drive, and I am sure BD will never tell the story about nearly running out of gas...sunny, blue skies and 80 degrees...what a Georgia day!

This is the last picture for today and for this update. By the time we come back from our next trip they say they will have the wood floors in and the cabinetry in place. Plus, the trim carpenter's will be finished as well. I can't wait to get back and see what has taken place while we were away.

This is the wall that we were going to have put up to "bound" the drive area...it was to be curved around the edges of the property, and bricked to match the house. It will now be taken down, and rebuilt to match the front porch and front porch railings and pillars...we haven't built the front porch yet, nor the front porch railings and pillars, but I have a good idea of what I think it will all look like...I got this computer application to do stuff like that on the computer so I can imagine what our house will look like...it works much like the paint application we got from the paint store...I'll be watching this project very closely.

It appears here that they are starting to smooth the grounds to build the deck...by the way, see the little round hole in the brick just to the right of the white vertical trim? That is the hole they think was the probable avenue of entry for the spirit whose picture you saw. They said they could fill the hole with a special kind of outdoor water faucet, that they had an in with a local supplier of such products and could get us one at a special, low price, and that would probably help keep the spirit outside the house for good...these guys are always trying to help us.

This is me, looking up at the Happy Face on BD's fireplace chimney. I was startled by my realization that I had captured the image of a "spirit" floating just above the chimney. This one appears to be a circular mass of light energy, visible only on digitally captured pictures. I was told that they are quite unusual, and in houses where they are present they are even more rarely captured by a camera. At least that is what one of the guys there was telling me...it was hard to understand what else he was telling me about the spirit as the rest of the workers, just behind me, were laughing loudly at something that must have been very, very funny. I wish I would have been let in on their joke...it must have been a good one!

This is a pretty color and a pretty blue sky outside the bedroom window. This is the sitting room we have decided...it is a pretty, "cool" shade of gray/green...much like what I thought our bedroom would look like. I have learned a lot about interior colors over the course of the past week or so...

This is the Navy Blue I am getting in the Master bathroom...I couldn't find "Navy Blue", so I am getting "Royal Blue." I am thinking it will be nearly "Navy" blue by the time they put on a few extra coats...the whole idea was to make a Master bathroom that was somewhat "dated" like a bathroom in the 1920's...little hexagonal tiles on the floor, the whole floor trimmed about 3" from the edges with dark blue, little hexagonal tiles, then a bright, white tile shower (that would be the entrance to the shower on the left...an 8'x4' shower that I can wonder around in for as long as I want to each morning to get the body up and awake each day) with white porcelain shower controls to set all off...simple, clean idea from a time past...other color would be introduced with hanging colorful towels (blue, green, white...real, old fashioned one-word colored towels). But I had the same trouble finding white, hexagonal tile and plain, white floor and wall tile. Found many, many shades of white, most with one or two adjective preceding names that included white, but they weren't "white." I think, though, we have found what we want and are going to have some laid to make sure. But the builder said we went over on our tile, particularly those large, $15 per square foot tiles...don't recall buying any of them, but then again I got so confused with the multiple-name white tiles I saw I guess I could have...

This is the butt-ugly, 1960's irridescent lime green color BD picked out for the bedroom...I told her I would not sleep a wink for the rest of my life in this room. We are changing it...this is but one of our mistakes when it came to interior colors...we went to the paint store and bought a computer application that would allow us to "paint" colors onto pics in the program...obviously, the images in the program are not true. We are changing it to a "cooler" shade of gray/green...I am not much of a color person, and had a great deal of trouble picking colors for the rooms...I looked at the fan of colors for hours and couldn't find "green"...I did find 38 shades and hues OF green with descriptive adjectives before the word green, but no "green." I wonder why they don't make "green" paint anymore...probably for the same reason they don't make just plain "blue", or "yellow" or any other major color I have been familiar with since finger-painting time in Kindergarten.

The stone work is almost completed on the fireplace...still need to "frame" the firebox and build the hearth. Can you see the "happy face" in the chimney?

This is a little better shot of the color out of the sunlight. You can barely make out the stain on the roof of the front porch...it too will be a honey gold color, but with a touch of cherry in it...

The exterior was painted today. The color is called Cardboard...makes me feel like I live under a bridge in the seedy part of Atlanta...but it is a cool color, and will be even more so when they stain the cedar shakes to a golden, honey color.

But sometimes things come together in such a way that a dream becomes reality rather than wished for fiction. People who support in your attempt to bring a dream to life...support from an emotional perspective, as well as a monetary manner. And, like I said, the end result of such a group of things coming together came to me with the wonder as my own Pot of Gold at the end of my special rainbow...and my dream of learning to fly and earn my Private Pilot's license became instead a piece of paper in my hand that reads "Temporary Airman's Certificate, Private Pilot, Airplane, Single-Engine, Land".BD, the love of my life, gave me the courage, attitude and determination (not to mention some of that monetary support I mentioned a line or two ago...) to pursue it again (I started taking lessons 39 years ago...the first entry in my logbook is 1/15/66...30 minutes of instruction in a Piper Colt at Sanger Airfield south of Chicago.

To her I owe my greatest measure of gratitude and love...the first-hand experience of the joy she helped create...and the first ride (which we had to cancel this AM as the winds were too strong for a new Pilot and passenger)! And as you can see, there is already a line a'waitin' to crawl in the airplane with me...Hoss, my 5-year old GrandSon said last night he was ready to go and showed he knows how to wear the Co-Pilot's headset...though he isn't sure what to do with the ends of the mic and headphone cords!

Yesterday something happened that brought to life a dream I have nurtured and loved for 39 years. Now, most everyone has dreams, some a fleeting thought or two about "what if I could" or "if only I had this or that", or some like imagery in their mind of how things could or would be if their dreams, or wishes illustrated by their dreams, came true. Most of our dreams are, unfortunately, more like fleeting moments of fantasy that bring momentary and temporary gladness to our being...a smile the instigation of which is our own secret, not to be shared with anyone.