we have reached a milestone at airplane mechanic school: the arrival of tools. i like tools. its one reason to be at the airplane mechanic school. because you get tools! so we have all been looking toward this day ever since we started. since this price of the tools is included in the tuition for the school, we all feel like we're getting them for 'free,' even though we all know the price we've paid-$1740.00(just for the tool kit!), and that is after a substantial student discount. they are snap-on tools; highly prized and even more highly priced. they are jewels of the tool world, very highly polished and shiny with chrome. you can spot one from across the room. there was a sales rep from snap-on at class yesterday, he had a whole spiel about how snap-on tools are the bestest ever. actually, most people would acknowledge this, but balk at paying the exorbitant price snap-on wants for their stuff. (good tools cost, but the snap-on takes this to the next level) he had a very clever demo involving a bolt had deliberately rounded off corners. the bolt would turn freely in a craftsman socket, but was held tightly in the snap-on product. it was cool, even though i tried not to be impressed. i had always been told that the snap-on was more about the flash and polish than actual performance, and that you'd be foolish to pay the price for snap-on when craftsman was just as good (and not exactly cheap, either) and has a lifetime replacement policy.

{as i try to write this, ephelba is constantly interrupting me. anytime i am focused on some kind of reading or writing, it just drives her wild, and she has to have my attention focused on her. she's like a large cat, who is always trying to get on my lap while i read. she will consider it a victory that i even mention it here. i finally got her to play kirby on the nintendo 64. this was her mother's day present. a blast from the past.}

but after the demo, you could see there is stuff that the one tool does that the other can't. this is pleasing, because now i can enjoy the seductive pleasure of the snap-on box end wrench while at the same time rationally justifying the extra cost. this is called having your cake and eating it too. sooo delicious.

included in the tool kit was a smallish three blade jack knife. i don't know why. but it was a perfect boy size pocket knife, so i gave it to him. the boy was very pleased, and proceeded to spend the rest of the evening opening and closing his new knife, and deciding which blade was his favorite.

i had a late lunch with my dad yesterday. he gave me a watch that he had lying around his office (dad is a bankruptcy lawyer) for who knows what reason. my dad gets this stuff because sometimes people pay him with stuff, rather than money, and sometimes just because people want to give him something because he helped them out. dad wanted to give watch to boy, even though it is an analog watch, and boy can't really tell time with the analog. and boy already has a digital watch. well it turned out to be a fairly well made swiss army watch. too good, really, to have boy kill or lose it. (he is hard on stuff) so i gave it to ephelba. poor ephelba's watch had just been broken by her in an attempt to retrieve it from where it fell into the space between the double hung (hee hee) window of our bathroom. don't ask me how, but she had ripped the watch from its band trying to get it out of there. she came out of the bathroom very sad, cupping the watch in her hands. later that day, i grabbed the remains of her watch out with this springy-grabby thing that came in my tool kit. but also, i was able to present ephelba with this very cool new watch to make up for her old one dying suddenly. she seems to like it, which pleases me. watches are a very personal thing, and when i saw this one, i knew ephelba would like it. mainly because it is not femme, and because it is straight forward and easy to read. much like my ephelba. she is also well made.

i was wondering the other day if going to airplane mechanic school the male equivalent of attending cosmology school. i decided not. rather, that truck driving school is. i don't know why. i remember thinking, what if ephelba wants to go to cosmology school? what would i do? then i remembered that ephelba detests such stuff and would never do such a thing. she would sooner follow me into airplane mechanic school, that is if she didn't already have her sights set on being a teacher.