March 30th

I put together a short video from my flight at the weekend.

March 26th

I went to the airport and flew up to Lake Oroville to see it pretty much full.  It was getting more turbulent, so I flew back down the other side of Beale Air Force base and on to Auburn to meet Chris and Vic for lunch.  Because I was low and in the middle of nowhere, there's no track for me :o(

It was still quite sporty on the way home, and I could probably have landed on one of the East / West taxiways if there hadn't been anybody around :o)

Oh, and Tilly likes the gourmet French squirty cream, if anybody was wondering.

March 25th

I went to the airport early and flew a couple of Young Eagles...

The second one was longer because there was a Citation in the pattern and three of us extended South to let him in :o)  I ended up on a 3 mile final.  Into a 15kt headwind.

Afterwards, I hung around for the Air Traffic presentation at the EAA, then headed home.

The inverter for the solar panels has been cutting out...

(The lighter blue line is the solar output, the big jump is the car charging)

so I'd called the manufacturer (because the company that installed it has gone out of business.)  SMA told me to get an installer to work with me, and they came out and looked at it today.  Billy wasn't impressed with the factory wiring - it seems they've wired the ground to the neutral - but he's aiming to talk to SMA, and fix some of their bad wiring.  The fact that it's run fine for 9 years suggests that it's the AC board though, so that'll probably end up needing to be replaced.  I'm expecting an argument about the warranty, based on my call with them - the inverter was manufactured 12/12, but wasn't installed until 5/14.

March 19th

It was raining, so we went and met Chris and Randy for lunch, then I mostly did dumb paperwork for the afternoon.

March 18th

John came up, and we went to the airport to meet Don and Matt.  Shane and Liza were there with the family, and when everybody had taken off again, we pulled the plane out and went for a short flight - Shane actually landed as we were taxying out.

Don and Matt had headed back to Cameron Park, but the rest of us met Vic for lunch, then headed our separate ways.

In the evening, we watched "Violent Night," even though it (like this) is an Xmas movie.

March 15th

While I'm working, I generally have cup after cup of Lift, and Tilly comes into the kitchen hoping for a treat while I'm boiling the kettle.  So this time I give her a baby (cut) carrot, and go on with my day.

A little while later I looked at her, and she had a lump on the side of her face.  We went through the usual "don't touch me" thing when there's something I want to look at, and it was a hard lump... I was having visions of getting to take her to the vet and so on.  I pressed on it a little harder, and it moved.  Moved?

It was a piece of carrot stuck between the top of her teeth and her cheek.  It fell down into her mouth, and she ran off happily, as it was free carrot.

March 12th

It was another crappy day, so we ran Tilly through a game for the Dog Aging Project.  Basically it was a test of remembering where the treat was between 3 boxes.  Tilly did about as well as you'd expect a random sampling to do... she remembered pretty much none of them.  I'm so proud.