We have chosen Ethiopia as our source country, and have begun the 15-20 month process (including wait time) to enlarge our family via adoption.

We would be happy for anyone to leave a comment of encouragement or personal experience if you are also an adoptive family.

Thanks for joining us on this journey.

And a few years later I had a burger on a bagel. I’ve also enjoyed bagels on Arnold sandwich thins.

Combining the best of both of these ideas, try bagel burgers (or on bagel thins) – with cream cheese.

Grill your burger to desired doneness while lightly toasting your bagel [thin].

Apply cream cheese to bagel and add your freshly-grilled burger.

Enjoy.

Of course, other favorite condiments and pairings could be added – bacon, mushrooms, jalapeño coins, etc.

I arrive at the airport a little before 1400 for my flight on Sunday. Adrian, my instructor, is an intensely friendly man. He’s originally from Zimbabwe, though has spent enough time in Kentucky that now his family think he has an accent

NexGen has a Piper Warrior – a four-place, low-wing, single engine airplane they use for lessons.

Things I did not know about operating an aircraft – you steer while you’re on on the ground with your feet.

Adrian opened the door and told me to get in first. That was not what I expected – that put me in the pilot’s seat. After doing a quick preflight, he started the engine, and we started taxiing… more accurately, while he radioed the tower for clearance, he had me taxi us out onto the runway.

So that was pretty cool .. but it got better: when we got to the runway, and the tower had cleared us, I got to take off =D

Adrian ran the throttle, and he took care of the trim tabs and explained to me what I had to do, but otherwise he let me fly for the about 30 minutes we were up – the only time he took over was for our landing. We toured around Lexington at ~2500 feet (buzzing up to nearly 3000 as I tried to maintain our heading, steer, look around, and keep us flying level-ish.

I got to see our house from 2500 feet, and a variety of other parts of Lexington that I think may help when it comes to driving, too.

Now for the bad news: I’m hooked. And the total time and outlay that getting my license will entail will be at least 40 hours of flying time (including different type of solo time), along with several hours of ground school. And all of that combined with needing to take a written test so the FAA will eventually be willing to give me a check ride so I can get my license.

Sigh.

That’ll run ~$6650 … if I go as quickly as I can. Taking too much time between lessons will help to reduce retention, so I’m probably more realistically looking at about $10k to complete my license.

I’m accepting donations, though

• blogging
• tweets
• etc

I know it’s not horribly scientific, but if you’d be willing to participate in this inquiry, please leave a comment.

I’ll be putting up a more formal poll in the coming days.

Thanks!

It’s a spinet style, which is perfect for our living room. And it helps displace the tv which all too often can become the focal point of a home, family, and marriage – not that we don’t still have a tv (we have a couple), but it’s no longer the focus when entering the house

This Saturday from 1300-1500 I’ll be taking ground school. Woot!

I’ve known a lot of pilots in my life, and have always wanted to join the ranks

Along the lines of freshnews, I have launched an rss aggregator/launch service at datente.com.

There are several categories of feeds (imperfectly broken-up, but it’s what makes sense to me) that display in quasi random order. And on the front page is a smattering selected randomly from the master list.

I would love suggestions of feeds to add, and maybe even new categories, too.

On the 31st of December of last year (boy that sounds weird to say “last year” and it only be 4 weeks ago), I traded-in my 2004 Ford Escape which had served me well for 4.5 years (including racking-up nearly 90k miles in the time I had it (and for almost a year it was driven less than 10k miles … which I think means I used to drive a lot)) for a new vehicle.

my cute wife, and our new car

We had been looking at replacing one of our cars for a while, and with the end of the year incentives in place, it was a good time for us to do it.

So we are now the proud owners of a 2012 Ford Fusion in “steel blue”. It’s not quite fully loaded, but it’s more than adequate for our needs.

But since they’re not (more accurately, it’s merely the next roll point on their calendar like 2000 was for us), we have a host of things to look forward to this year and beyond: a presidential election, graduations, births, new friends, and more I cannot think of right now.

So, to all 5 of my readers, welcome to 2012!

I have found a non-VPS ISP that meets the requirements I’d previously outlined, and have everything but the MySQL databases for WordPress instances sync’d to the new host.

With a bit of luck, the migration will be invisible to all 4 of my readers