Cooking, Cleaning, and Caring for Flight Students

Navy Knowledge of the Day: NavyGuy had a class this afternoon where he learn how much an airplane cost (sorry, I'm sure he learned other important things, but in terms of what I could understand during the conversation later - he learned how much an airplane cost). The Navy is introducing a new training plane into the training for Naval Flight Officers. The current plane they are using for the training is the T-2 which has been used since 1958. It cost approximately $1.5 million dollars. The new plane coming down the pipe is the T-45... it cost approximately $33 million dollars. That's $33 million dollars... per plane! Now, it seems to me, that either inflation has spiraled outrageously in the previous 50 years, or the Navy has gone from shopping at Kmart, to shopping at Nordstroms. Ah... my (and your) tax dollars hard at work ;)

The bulk of my day focused on cleaning. Since the bug incident of last week, I have been determined to give the house a thorough scrubbing. Despite my hatred of cleaning, I did manage to vacuum and sweep the floors, and disinfect nearly every kitchen surface (I stopped short of inside the microwave - I figure any silly bug that manages to get in there will get radiated to death, hopefully serving as a posterchild for any of his brothers or sisters. Plus the inside of the microwave is just unpleasant). In my quest for cleanliness, I also reorganized the kitchen, much to NavyGuy's amusement/chagrin. On the plus side, I now have counter space available to cook, and the piles of papers/magazines/flight documents no longer make my OCD levels spike. On the downside, NavyGuy now claims to "not be able to find anything" in the kitchen, so my chances of getting him to help with tasks have decreased significantly.

With the cleaning out of the way, I tackled the cooking. The dinner plan was grilled chicken, soaked in a homemade lemon rosemary marinade, asparagus, bread, and "yum yum brownie muffins" (a Weight Watchers recipe forwarded by a dear friend). The plan derailed when it came to the asparagus because neither NavyGuy nor myself had any idea how to grill asparagus, and I didn't leave enough time to cook the bread in the oven, and use the broiler to do the asparagus. The chicken was good - though all I did to it was soak it in a ziplock bag of lemon, oil, etc., for a couple hours. Two cans of corn substituted for the missing asparagus, the bread ended up fine, and miracle of miracles - the brownie muffins actually worked! Success!

Tonight was also my first experience cooking dinner for the flight boys. NavyGuy has become close with several fellow flight students. They are all bachelors who arrive on our doorstep, flight bag in hand, to study with NavyGuy and drink/eat whatever they can find in our house. I don't mind, because they're all good guys (and they eat enough at dinner that we don't have to deal with leftovers the following day!). However, the dinner conversation can be lacking. Long story short, I have no idea what they talked about for the majority of dinner. They mentioned ceilings, landings, takeoffs, EPs, sims, helmets, and... well, most of the other words I didn't recognize. It's like watching a television show at a hotel in a different country; you recognize some of the things you're seeing, and you can generally understand people's emotions, but the entire language is a mystery (except for words like "bonjour" and "adios").

Now I'm off to watch NavyGuy do the dishes!