hello, diaryland,

as i write this, i think about how small the difference between diaryland and dairyland. but a huge difference in meaning. i am a little dyslexic at times, and its a wonder that i'm not writing dairyland entries all the time. i have taken up at school again, and not without some misgivings at first. i am going to aviation mechanic school, and it has some problems. you see, i wanted to have a job that could not be outsourced, and that would pay well, and would not take too long to learn. the friendly folks at my local michigan institute of aeronautics told my that aviation mechanicing would fit the bill nicely, and in just 19 months, i too could have a lucrative and well paying career as an aviation maintenance technician. it all sounded so good, a technically challenging job in a field that needs people and pays well. so i signed up. previously, i had figured that you needed a fair amount of intelligence to work on the complex technology that is the modern jet aircraft. but so far, my greatest challenge has been to not explode from boredom. the faa (federal aviation administration) mandates that prospective amt's spend a certain minimum number of hours in class. this is all very excruciatingly documented in tenths of an hour, and any time that we miss, whether its three minutes late to class or missing a whole day due to illness must be made up. its just that what we do during those hours is so mindless. we spent a day adding fractions. a! whole! day! and thats not the worst of it. we spent a week doing math that everyone should have learned in sixth grade, that my nine year old son could probably do, these people in this class are just freaked at how hard it is. many of them had to take the remedial math class (what could they have been taught there?) before getting to this one. it just blows my mind. now, i like these folks, and i don't mean them any disrespect. ephelba, who aspires to be a math teacher, just wants to scream at how badly these guys were taught their math by incompetents. and i have to agree. these are not stupid folks, well, not the ones i mean. there are a couple duds, but by and large, they are sharp enough. but somewhere, someone told these people that they were not good at math or science or whatever, and made it stick. and now they have to try and change this image they have of themselves, and learn some very, very basic math. i help them out, of course. they think me smart that i can do this stuff in my head. they ask if i think they are stupid. i say different people know different things, and it will be their turn to help me when we get to the engines. a lot of these guys have tons of experience there. we're getting to be friends. now that we are past the math part, things are getting more interesting. we are doing aircraft drawing now, and that is unfamiliar to me, so i am having fun learning this. so by november, 2005, i will be a licensed aviation maintenance technician and ready to make the big bucks. oh yeah.

my wife peed on the floor the other day. if you're like me, you'll need to have to read that again. but she did. there was kind of this shriek from the bathroom, and when i asked what was going on, there was no answer. finally, after much prodding, the story came out. apparantly, she had slept on it funny. you heard me. and in the morning when she had gone to have her first pee of the day, instead of everything going down as per usual, it shot out at a strange angle. well, she stopped, screamed, and tried again. and the same thing happened. another scream, and then some investigation. i don't know what she did, but the next try was a success. this was quite the event. i tried to make ephelba feel better by telling the same, well, analogous anyway, thing has happened to me. the dreaded forked stream. and its fielder's choice which one goes in the bowl. ephelba didn't know what i meant by 'forked stream.' i was in the middle of telling her when she decided that she didn't really want to know.

i got a new digital camera for my birthday. this of course means that i am taking naked pictures of ephelba. she is a wonderful good sport about it all. you can see she is torn between being flattered that i think she is that sexy to be taking pictures of her, and the horror that i am taking naked pictures of her, and someone could see them. the expression she has on her face at that exact moment is totally precious, and makes me love her all the more. and take more pictures. it is so cool to have naked pictures of my wife, i can't tell you. i'd post some, but i promised not to. not even the ones that don't have her face in them.