If you've been a regular reader of mine (one of the four), then you know that I have a "roller-coaster" type relationship with my mother-in-law. There are times when I really appreciate her and then there are times where I wanna fuckin' kill her and hide the body. Most of the time, I like her and we get along well. But she has her moments. I've explained before (somewhere, you can go find it), that she has a "nervous" stomach problem in which she can't get too far away from her house before she has an overwhelming urge for a bowel movement. I don't know if it's because she's away from what's comfortable or what, but it's basically kept her a shut in. Sure, she gets outside and stuff, but she never really travels more than 2 blocks from her house.

Well, things had been starting to change and I was extremely proud of her. The wife is one of only about 2 people that my mother-in-law is comfortable riding with. So, she would have my wife take her over to her sisters house and she would clean house for her sister. This was a major step. An even bigger one came last week when I overheard my sister-in-law say that her mom was going to be working at her store. My sister-in-law works for a "Party City" party supply store not too far from where we live. Well, I guess they were having a special on balloons or something and needed an extra pair of hands to help out. When my mother-in-law heard this, she volunteered. I was impressed, she was actually going to be getting out of the house and going to a real job. Last Sunday was her first day and the call came in for the wife to go get her and take her to "work". I thought, if this works out, this could only be a good thing. But, life isn't always like that for us now is it? Nope. Not gonna happen.

Yesterday morning, we're woken up early in the morning by the phone. It's the mother-in-law and she's asking the wife if she will go to Party City for her today and work in her place. WTF? Apparently, when the wife went and picked her and her sister up at the store, her mother did nothing but complain all the way home. I guess thinking about going in the next day and doing the same thing again was just too much for her, so she asked her daughter to go and do a job she was supposed to do. Well, the wife, not being able to confront her mother when she is like this caved in. Well, ok, fine. At least she'll get paid for the day of work. Then, I thought about something. My mother-in-law will be watching the kids for the day and I'm sure she'll be charging us for it. So, whatever money the wife makes for her day of substitute labor will probably go to her damn mother as a babysitting fee. What kind of shit is that? The more I thought about it, the more pissed I got so that when we left to take the kids over to her mom's, I didn't even get out of the car. After dropping the kids off, I drove about 2 miles in the opposite direction of the way I needed to go and took the wife to "work". Then, of course, by that time, I'm already late. Luckily, I'm kind of on my own schedule now or I might have gotten in trouble. The rest of the day, luckily went fine. I'm still mad at her though. She apparently was over at our apartment early this morning beating on the door, trying to get us up so she could ask the wife if she'd work again. Thank goodness we were out cold.

Well, time for some good news, eh? I finally went today and took my FAA Written Exam for the Private Pilot certificate. I left the office around 3:30 yesterday to go ask my instructor for his sign off, because I needed to show the folks at the FAA that I'm ready for this. Well, after talking for a while and discussing various things, it was after 5:00 and I figured I'd best wait. We have 2½ hours to take the test. And I really needed to get home and get the wife from "work", so I decided to do it this morning. Unfortunately, they aren't doing the written tests at the Boca Airport, my home airport for now, anymore so I had to go to a different one. I had to drive about 20 minutes or so south to take my written. Once I got there, I got another surpise. I had to pay $70 for this damn thing. $70!! Luckily, after I got done, I came back to the office and told our accountant that AVweb is supposed to be picking up the tab so I'm going to get reimbursed. I want the check today, but it looks like it will be tomorrow. Oh well.

*Update: Not 10 minutes after finishing this entry, the accountant comes over and gives me my check. I love this company!*

After opening a vein and giving them my 70 smackers, I was ushered into a small room with 2 computers. Apparently, they have to approve everything before you take the test so you're "locked out" until someone in another building at another computer gets you up and running. After waiting about 10 minutes, the computer screen finally revs up and the attendant, I think his name was Chris, but I forget, he wasn't too memorable, walk me through the demo and show me how to use this particular type of interface. Luckily for me, I could use the keyboard to enter my answers (A, B, C) because their mouse sucked major wangsac. I knew that I had over 2 hours to take the test, but I also knew that I would be done way before the 2 hours was over. One thing my instructor kept drilling into me was "Take your time". So I did. I got nervous right off the bat because question number five was one that I had never come across in my studying. I guessed luckily however and got it right, or so I found out later.

Well, I finished all 60 questions and looked up and had taken the entire test in a little over an hour. I still had 90 minutes left so I decided to go back through all the questions and double check that I didn't hit the wrong letter or something. So, I go back through each question, one by one, double checking answers. Good, that took about 15 minutes. So, I decide to triple check my answers. The problem is, there are about 7 questions that are really bugging me. They're very vague and I feel that there is more than one right answer so I start tearing my hair out contemplating them. Finally, after a while, I don't know how long, I decide that I'm done and I tell the attendant so. I had about 50 minutes left when he comes in to grade my exam. I didn't want to watch, but couldn't help it.

After all was said and done, after all the sweating, the nervousness and the tension, I got my grade. 90%. Yes, 90%. I passed. But I was very disappointed in myself. Passing had never been a worry for me. I knew I could pass it, that wasn't the point. I wanted to ACE it. But, alas, I had 6 questions wrong. Six! In all of my practice tests over the last 2 months, I never missed more than 3, how could I have missed six. Well, it's because the FAA are tricky fuckers and they ask very vague, very misleading questions. But still, 90% is a good score. When I went back to my instructor all aggrivated at my score, he told me not to beat myself up over it. "It's still an 'A'", he'd said. But I wanted to ace it, or at least get a 98%. Still, it will look good to my checkride examiner and I've gotten it out of the way so I guess I should just accept it. Ok, I accept it.

Well, that's enough rambling for today. I'll catch you all tomorrow, and hopefully, I'll have something more interesting to bore you with. Take care.