So What did you do Today?

[britfrog 180]

I am sure I speak for all of us here , in that as much as Simming or Aviation is our hobby/passion we all have to occasionally come down to terra firma, real life as such. However most of us crew get on very well indeed so I feel it is only natural that we should communicate the more mundane aspects of our lives, so hopefully  Joe will pin this, as I think this thread will become very well used.

 

SOOOOO 

to get the ball rolling,

this morning brought back into the garden the rubbish bin which was smelling a bit (we get 2 collections a week), as bins do, so decided to give a swill out in the garden with the hose. After swilling it out and still with hose in hand i looked at my sewer inspection cover as it was next to me, opened said cover and guess what? yep the sewer was blocked !! Why is it whenever we rent out our gite, the day after they leave the sewers are blocked! if I rent it out to a feller, never a problem, but you get a couple, namely a female and you can guarantee the week after all hell lets loose. What do women do in the khaze?

So stuffed the hose down the sewer and pushed it as far as I could and gurgle gurgle it all starts to flow away , but it took several repeats from one end of the garden to get it all tickety boo. Well that was 2 hours lost that i hadnt counted on!! Really nice job in 38 degrees!!

I could have chosen a more savoury subject to start this thread, but what the hell,  this thread is about real life, not as we know it Jim!

 

over to you guys! and gals

[mutley 4,498]

Well I was despatched off to our nearest B&Q store to pick up and buy some floor tiles for a conservatory we are having built. The PML was off horse riding!

 

As I carefully selected 14 packs of tiles making sure all the colours and batch numbers were correct I noticed each pack weighed 22Kg, thats 679 pounds or 51 stone 9 lbs! After getting the trolly to the check out I decided to get it delivered, I don't think my poor old car would have coped that well, let alone my ticker!

 

As it turns out I forgot to buy the coloured grout but there's no hurry.

 

Lots of garden work and pond pump cleaning.

 

Other than that, backed up the hangar software and data bases, spent a couple of hours on other admin and replying to emails.

 

Managed to get everything done by 16:30, had a sit down in the garden with a pre-sundowner gin and tonic and read the newspaper enjoying the clear skies and about 25C.

 

Life is good!

[needles 1,013]

Well, having had the best part of a week with our Son, his lovely wife and our two wonderful grandchildren, the fridge and shelves were empty.

So Wifey and I had to go shopping but as our normal shopping day is Wednesday, we only needed scant provisions.

Before we left though, we have a holiday cottage that needed a change around. Pinafore on, my job is always the wetroom as I would rather do that than let Wifey go where no lady should.

We had it all done and dusted in record time, so headed to Inverness for goodies.

Our new guests were not arriving until early evening so we had enough time to be able to saunter.

Heading for the shops, we passed a couple of friends on the road.

They phoned us and asked if we fancied lunch with them, so we mutually agreed a watering hole and met them there.

A nice lunch and a cup of coffee later we parted, having bled their ears dry, by going over what we had been doing with the G-Kids all week.

It's fine talking about your own family but it gets a wee bit boring for others, so we pated still good friends and went our merry way.

Shopping done, we headed for home and that's when the fun started.

What for us is normally a 20 minute drive from Inverness to Drumnadrochit, took us almost twice as long, as we had to run the gauntlet of holiday makers looking for Nessie.

Which entails driving along the A82 trunk road at between 20 and 30 miles per hour straining their necks to look at the Loch. Some of them were even filming as they drove.

YES! The drivers of a couple of cars (left hand drive cars at that), were actually filming with their iphones or similar.

I know what you're thinking......'I bet Needles was ranting'

Nope! I was as calm as a sleeping baby with a belly full of mothers milk.

After a week with two G-Kids who are both akin to the Tasmanian Devil, (in energy not evilness), I was now in a state of sublime serenity.

Wait until next week though, if it happens again, I will be a completely different human being.

We got home safe and that's all that matters. So after a couple of Drams and a lovely dinner, I'm happy again.

[allardjd 1,853]

We are entertaining our 5 year old grandson this week and last. We spent last week at a resort in Orlando with him and his other grandparents, who are good friends. We did the Disney stuff, of course, but had other fun as well, including celebrating my wife's 65th birthday.

Today we came home, leaving the other grandparents to fly back to their home. Our grandson will be with us until Saturday. His dad is flying in Friday night and will accompany him home on Saturday.

Today was a long car ride, some swimming pool time, a tractor ride, a trip out for ice cream, some sidewalk chalk art in the driveway and, oh yeah, fixing a leaking drain under the kitchen sink.

@ britfrog - I may be able to shed some light on your drainage question - one of the most memorable, if not enjoyable incidents in my long maintenance career was trouble-shooting and repairing a sewage lift pump at the plant. Careful system analysis pointed directly to one 3" check valve, which, when disassembled, was discovered to have a feminine hygiene product caught on a rough spot on the inside of the valve body casting and lying directly across the valve seat. If we could have identified the former owner we'd have been only too happy to... ah, never mind.

John

[Andrew Godden 943]

Ah, a day in the life of a flight sim addict, this could be interesting!  Well, for an Aussie, strangely, my life is rather sedate and comparatively boring.  My meagre existence is firstly limited by a bleak, cold and rainy day in what has been a cold winter so far.  Living on the south coast of Victoria, the wind and storms were being whipped up off the Antarctic and it seemed as though they were being dumped squarely on my doorstep.  For other reasons, for which some of you appreciate, I don't get out and about much anyway - hell, thank goodness, because it gives me the perfect excuse to spend time doing what I am proud to admit to as an obsession.

 

Yesterday, as it was for me now, involved flying some historical based flights in the Douglas DC-3 along the US Civil Airways, Red Routes of the 1940s.  The first one was Grand Island, NE - Denver, CO - Laramie, WY, followed by Fargo, ND - Winnipeg, Canada, and finally Charleston, SC - Atlanta, GA - Jackson, MS.  At this point, there was an overnight rest stop, due to real world sleep requirements.  The Jackson, MS - Dallas, TX - Amarillo, TX legs are now being flown as I type.  The best thing I ever did was to have a dedicated FS computer, with a laptop for admin and other general life stuff.

 

In between all that, I did some route research and planning for an upcoming Mutley's Hangar global event.  This included researching real world aircraft technical specifications on landing runway length requirements for specific aircraft.  I must say, Boeing's web site is fantastic for this.  Why do I obsess with this minuscule detail I hear you ask - well, it emanates from a purely speculative question of whether you could get a Boeing 747 into London City (EGLC).  Now we all know in the real world that would never happen, however, simulating it in MSFS is an excellent test of flying skills.

 

So as to interject some variety in my day, I did some more work on my latest review contribution for the Hangar, Carenado's Cessna CT206H 'Stationair', and some admin for a VA of which I am the Vice President, web master, forum administrator, and general cook and dixie basher (military slang for the pots and plates washing).  Oh, and just so my mental neurons have some sort of balance, I did some admin stuff for my neighbourhood body corporate, of which I am the Chairman.  Well, that took me through until 02.30am this morning, but since my involvement with MH I have become a "creature of the night".  All this is done to the background of epic music, a genre I have been exploring recently, as music, in all forms, is my other passion.

 

Well, there is TOD for Dallas (KDFW).  Better get my head back in the cockpit and back to "work".  See you all again soon. 

 

Cheers

Andrew

[britfrog 180]

@ britfrog - I may be able to shed some light on your drainage question - one of the most memorable, if not enjoyable incidents in my long maintenance career was trouble-shooting and repairing a sewage lift pump at the plant. Careful system analysis pointed directly to one 3" check valve, which, when disassembled, was discovered to have a feminine hygiene product caught on a rough spot on the inside of the valve body casting and lying directly across the valve seat. If we could have identified the former owner we'd have been only too happy to... ah, never mind.

John

 

John, I suspect you are right, despite a request in our welcoming pack and a clearly labelled bin in the Khaze  some people think no one will notice, such is life.

 

had a really intersting flight to round out the day from Orly to Gatwick using fvfr and horizon scenery which to a degree was wasted as there was heavy rain and low cloud at Orly and heavier rain and  a lower cloud case of less than 1000 at Gatwick all supplied by the new rex textures for the aerosoft airbus . most entertaining.

[rob16584 42]

(A day late)

 

Yesterday consisted of me getting up at 6am to feed our daughter, Emma is now back at work so 3 nights a week and all day Saturday i'm in charge. Emma went to work around 8am, Lucy was back in bed by then for her first sleep. I spent the next half hour racing round clearing stuff up, doing the washing and getting lucy's meals ready for the rest of the day.

 

The majority of the day was spent watching the cricket and playing with Lucy whilst surfing the internet until around 4ish when Emma came home.

 

Next up was dinner before Emma went out for the evening, Lucy in bed by 7pm and I fired up FSX for my first online flight for a long time - 2hrs 20 from Innsbruck to Madrid, followed by a few FSX missions and my first ever carrier landing.

 

Emma fell through the door at around midnight after consuming far too much alcohol (I had to stay up as she didn't take her keys with her). After about an hour she finally made it to bed, after waking Lucy up which took me a while to get her back to sleep. Then at 6am I'm up to do it all again!

[hurricanemk1c 195]

Equally a day late, a nice trip out to the Stradbally Woodlands Railway. Little 3ft gauge steam-worked railway

[britfrog 180]

Well as it was steaming again today i took my bike for an 80 mile ride through the gorges and over the col de palheires (6,500 feet) stunning scenery, now sitting back having a glass or 3 of rose cider.

and yes that is snow on the slopes.

[Quickmarch 488]

We (wife, boat and I) were in Friday Harbor, Washington yesterday morning and did some mundane stuff like provisioning for the next few days. When your refrigeration consists of a five cubic foot space with a seven cubic foot freezer beside, you don't keep weeks of suppies on hand.

 

I had to go to the liquour store to source a particular brand of Tequila for a friend back in BC. Successful mission I might add.

 

Departure was at 1145 hrs and a bit of a tussell with the tidal flow before getting around the corner and into a favourable flow for the direction that we were headed. At 1418 we tied up at the Rosario Resort. Tides in the PNW are quite large and, unfortunately, flood through the majority of the day meaning that any southbound travel is done at one to two knots less than still-water speeds. This may not sound like much but can often exceed thirty percent of our capacity.

 

Rosario is a fascinating old mansion, now run as a resort/spa that was built by a man named Moran who was instrumental in the ship-building business around the turn of the 20th century. Quite a guy, shipbuilder and amateur photographer who catalogued an enormous amount of the early 20th century in and around Orcas Island. He also built a huge organ into the sitting room which is played by a local musician every day at 1600 hours. Moran was quite sneaky about this as he did not know how to play the organ. The keyboard is hidden away in an alcove and the machine is a "player" version. This is similar to a player piano in that the music is impressed onto a paper roll that scrolls over a "reader". Moran's guests never knew he was not the organist.

 

A bit of local brew, a good dinner in the dining room and off to my bunk.

 

 

A beautiful old schooner passing us just outside Friday Harbor

 

 

Moran's organ. The pipes are fakes - the real organ pipes are hidden behind. The rather interesting-looking device in the top left of the shot is one of the lights built into the gallery facade.

[rob16584 42]

Today mainly consisted of catching up on paperwork and working through a couple of sets of accounts for someone who needed them back earlier than planned. Now about to sit down and watch the last episode of top gear in the current series

[hurricanemk1c 195]

Today I went to the Birr airfield 'Family Fun Day' aka an airshow with GA aircraft. Photos will come later

[mutley 4,498]

B.e.a.u.t.i.f.u.l scenery Britfrog 

[Mistwalker 3]

Wow Brit! You live in beautiful part of the world, mate.

[britfrog 180]

Thanks guys, yeah it is pretty decent so much to see and do in a short distance.

 

So today i replaced the facia boards of the pool house, Rats have been living in the roof there for 20 years! i wont describe the smell or mess but it filled 5 wheelbarrows full.

So how to stop them getting in again?  I have left the guttering off as this was a walkway for them and covered the new facia boards with 1cm wire mesh that tucks up under the roof tiles. shall now monitor the situ to see if they get in elsewhere..

 

Then had a nice flight from Barcelona to Athens using the NGX the night lighting at Athens (fly tampa) was pretty special!! coming out of low cloud, very atmospheric.

[brett 2,315]

I do not recommend this!!!!

 

My neighbour asked me if I had some chicken wire to cover a hole in his facia made by squirrels. I said they could chew right through it but he said he had a plan. Later that day I spied him sitting on his front lawn. What are you doing I asked, shhhhh he said, you'll scare him away. I looked at his roof and the squirrel was headed toward the old hole, now covered with chicken wire which had an extension cord hanging from it. When the varmint reached the hole, my neighbor reached down and plugged in the another extension cord(this one was plugged into an outside outlet) to the hanging one and the squirrel took off like a bat outta hell and never came back. It worked but I still think my neighbour is a little nuts.    

[britfrog 180]

I do not recommend this!!!!

 

My neighbour asked me if I had some chicken wire to cover a hole in his facia made by squirrels. I said they could chew right through it but he said he had a plan. Later that day I spied him sitting on his front lawn. What are you doing I asked, shhhhh he said, you'll scare him away. I looked at his roof and the squirrel was headed toward the old hole, now covered with chicken wire which had an extension cord hanging from it. When the varmint reached the hole, my neighbor reached down and plugged in the another extension cord(this one was plugged into an outside outlet) to the hanging one and the squirrel took off like a bat outta hell and never came back. It worked but I still think my neighbour is a little nuts.    

 

I like your neighbour I would heartily recommend this !!!

after all squirrels are just tree rats with fluffy tails

 

[Mistwalker 3]

I luv my squirrels, lol.

 

I'm joining the Squirrel Liberation Front!

[allardjd 1,853]

I kind of like seeing them around but they really are only rats with a good PR program.

John

[SEATAC 400]

I hope someone hooks that Homemade electric fence up to your neighbor and gives him a nice big zap.

The poor little squirrel is just out foraging for food and shelter.

[brett 2,315]

Haha to all. Those cute little furry things steal all my bird food and scare them away. They dig up my yard, clog my drain pipes storing acorns and have tried to eat into my shed. I do enjoy watching them and their antics, as I enjoy all of nature but I also think they make good target practice. D.E.C. considers them varmints so they lose and the deer eat for free. I might even go undercover in the Squirrel Liberation Front.   

[Mistwalker 3]

Gah! You know what the SLF do to spies, right? It ain't pretty, I tell ya!

[brett 2,315]

I heard they cut your tail off and stuff it.....never mind it's too horrible to think about.

 

What did I do today? Nothing, it is raining and foggy so me and the wife plan to laze around, watch old movies curled up on the couch and eat everything in the house. Tomorrow we will have to work it off.

[britfrog 180]

well it has been grey here today temps finallyout of the high thirties For you guys using old money that means that temps have finally dropped below 100F and the pool has dropped below 33 or 91 degrees. so took advantage and got down on my knackered knees and weeded out some of the vegetable garden, with knees screaming , after a couple of hours had a flight with ryanscare from Stansted to Gerona, just walked the dogs a few miles so am sitting down with a glass or few of wine Hic !

[Quickmarch 488]

Today is a "Government" day - have to go into Victoria and early renew my passport.

 

@Britfrog: I'm on my way to France in a month or so and my passport will become useless around Christmas - while I'm out of the country. The passport doesn't expire until May, but they're no good if they're within six months of the expiry date. Right there is a clue to the stupidity that I'm going to be dealing with all day.

 

Canada has finally wakened up to join the rest of the known world and they're handing out ten year passports. They were always five year documents which means they were only really good for four and a half years.