Letter Openers, Flight Simulators and Piles of Leaves...

A person doesn't realize how old they are until they work with a young person who has never touched a typewriter before! That happened to me yesterday...oh and it gets better...today that same young person helped me open mail and I suggested that they use the letter opener instead of tearing the envelopes...I was asked what a letter opener was and then I had to show them how to use it. This person is a college graduate and one of the most intelligent young people but just never worked in an office before. I was sure feeling my age.

A brighter side of yesterday, was something that happened to me at my second job at Fox Valley Technical College. The site where I work has an aviation program and recently installed two large flight simulators. I've been itching to get into one since they have arrived. Last one of our interns let me fly in the simulator. The entire thing moves, I even had to put a seat belt on and in case I got motion sickness he had a barf bag all ready for me to use...and just so you know I didn't need to use it. I took the controls, the feet petals were difficult for me but once I got up in the air I didn't do too bad with keeping the plane pointed at the horizon. I was surround by three windows with a view of Oshkosh and Lake Winnebago below me. He asked me if I wanted to make a loop, which I did. Then he asked if I wanted to flip the plane. I was hesitant but finally agreed. I felt myself actually going into a backwards flip. It was AWESOME!! Then it was time to land. NOT too awesome. I did land, but nose down into the grass short of the runway. Everything is computerized and then I got out of the simulated I got to watch myself as I tried to land. I fly so much and this was so real-like I actually kept thinking I had to sit still while we taxied on the runway to the gate. Thank you Joe for a fun experience that I will be talking about for a long, long time.

What would a day be without me taking more pictures? There are so many leaves on the ground that I can't even see the grass. Bella isn't too impressed with how deep those leaves are getting. At first she was afraid to walk on the leaves. She's getting use to them now and isn't quite as hesitant to go off the steps. But I just saw all the leaves as another photo opportunity.

I had forgotten the smell of freshly fallen leaves. If you've never experienced being in a pile of leaves in the fall of the year, you just wouldn't understand. I can't describe it but it's one of those scents that immediately releases all those childhood memories of playing in the leave piles when you were a kid. I remember we actually raked leaves and made play houses on the lawn with them. We'd section off rooms and everything. And then there was always piling the leaves as high as you could get them...stand a ways back...then run and jump into the pile. You'd have to pick the leaves out of your hair and off your clothes and then you'd grab that rake and start making the pile again. These kinds of activities kept us entertained for hours at a time. God, I loved growing up here in Wisconsin.