Diaries || What's on your mind?

I have been sadly unsuccessful in getting a photo of the bees flying in and out of the planter pot. Lots of crisp closeups of the contents of the pot however, with a little bee-sized blur in the frame.

I do, however, have a few photos of bees which may or may not be "my" bees.

On the corner of my balcony sits a decent-sized clay plant pot, big enough to be useful but not so big you can't move it by hand, holding an ugly artificial palm tree thing, one of the things the previous owners left behind for us. (They left a few inexplicable things behind, most of which we threw out immediately.) I haven't gotten around to tossing the ugly artificial palm tree thing because I was going to keep the clay pot and maybe plant something in it.

This weekend, while doing some renovations, we dragged the potted palm out of the corner of the balcony so we could toss the detritus of our old kitchen down to the sidewalk, and out of the planter pot erupted some bees!

Jenko pressed his hands together then stepped back, dropping his bag in the corner of the room. He had created this situation, and despite what anybody else tried, there was nothing any of them could do about it.

My hours in control of an airplane have been increasing. Last week I finally got to fly solo away from the home airport - another exciting milestone! Prior to that, I'd flown solo only in the home airport circuit; flights away from the airport were only done with an instructor.

Another little exercise from the sunday chats. That's Sunday, 10AM pacific, 1PM eastern, and the rest of the time zones in the world, well, I'm too lazy to list them all.

They're fun. They exercise your creativity. Come out and invent a story this week!

I wrote the magic words today. "The end."

54,494 words, 27 days, and a plot that took all my good ideas and used them in a different way than I had thought of.

I like it.

It's the 16th of November. There are 15 days left, including today.

Every night I am happy because I met my target, and every morning I realize that I have to do the same thing all over again.

I pushed a bit last night and hit 10,000 words, which is actually the target for the end of today. A little bit of buffer is nice to have.

The trailer shudders, making the desk and computer shake. Before the fixed supports were installed, when the trailer was just sitting on its wheels (with springs), we would get seasick when the wind picked up. One weather forecast says winds 30km/hr, another 20kts, but I don't buy it. It feels like 80km/hr or more - what you feel when you put your hand out the car window on a highway.

Over the last month and a half, I have spent many dollars and many hours, travelling very quickly and not going far at all. The last while, I have been going around in circles - literally. It sounds like the Red Queen's Race, if you only look at the distance I've gone - or haven't gone.

But in that time, I learned enough to fly a plane without an instructor beside me to save my ass if I screw up. Yesterday, I flew solo. And boy does that little plane climb when it drops more than half its passenger load!