May 10
I got up while Aric was still sleeping and went out to the window and looked for the birdfeeder. He'd hung it on a little beam from the garage and there were a bunch of birds all clustered around it. You could easily see who the boss birds were 'cause when they flew over all the other birds went away and waited their turn.
Then a squirrel hopped down from a tree and ran along the roof until he got to the beam and the cardinal who was at the birdfeeder chirped at him but didn't deter him and he sort of slid down the string the birdfeeder was hanging from and held on with his hind paws while he ate his fill of seed.
The little birds didn't mind; they flew in and started pecking at all the stuff he was dropping from the feeder.
I guess I was paying too much attention to the birdfeeder because Aric poked me under the tail and made me jump, and he said that he couldn't help himself because it was right there, and I stuck my tongue out at him and turned my rump away from the bed.
He got out with the sheet wrapped around himself 'cause he said that he didn't want me to get any ideas, and then he looked out the window and saw the squirrel and said that he hadn't been expecting them to figure it out so quick and now he was going to have to come up with another way to hang the birdfeeder to discourage them.
I wasn't sure why you'd want to; squirrels go around and plant trees so they're pretty important to have. And it was pretty funny to watch him when he was done eating and had to turn around to go back up the string, because he missed and then fell down and went running across the yard and up the garage. Aric leaned more towards the window to see where he was going and I had my chance for revenge.
Pretty soon it just turned into us groping at each other and sort of trying to block but not really and then I managed to push him back into the bed and got up on top of him before he could get away from me and I teased him just a little before I claimed my victory.
We sat in bed for a little while after and I told him that I was going to be getting my ham radio license soon, once I'd wrapped my head around the parts on electricity. I told him that Ryan had already made me a stormwatcher and now I just had to wait for the first storm.
Aric said it probably wouldn't be long and he was surprised by how few there had been yet this year. He said the weather was cooler than normal and that was probably why. But he told me that there had already been tornadoes down south, and while we weren't in a prime tornado location here there had been one in the eighties that had torn through downtown Kalamazoo.
I flew out the window and then stopped by the birdfeeder and it had sunflower seeds in it, so I shook it a little to let some of them out and ate them then flew off before Aric could yell at me for doing it. Sunflower seeds are really tasty.
North of town, there were some tractors that were already out plowing their fields. I circled one field a couple of times just because I wanted to watch. I'd wondered how humans could take care of such big fields, but their tractors and plows were huge and it didn't take a genius to figure out that their cultivators and harvesters would be, too. Humans really liked making things just as big as they could. It must have been a source of pride for them to have such huge machines.
I spent more time than I'd meant to on my morning flight, 'cause after I'd watched the farmer I flew up to the base of the cloud deck and poked around there for a little bit, playing with the bits of clouds that were hanging down. So I had to wait for Brianna before I could take my shower, but I didn't mind. We talked about plants some and I promised that I'd introduce her to Aquamarine next time she was in town.
I got to lunch a little bit late but nobody minded. Cedric and Leon were busy arguing among themselves like they always did, and Trevor was just quietly eating his lunch.
I told them that I had gone golfing but that I wasn't very good at it and Leon asked me what course and so I said it was the one in front of the Airway Fun Center and he laughed and said that he had played there before too and gotten a thirty-three. I said my score was about a hundred points higher and he said that I was probably the worst golfer ever.
That was what everyone else had said, too.
I told him that golfing wasn't much of a pony sport anyways and he said that actually now that he was thinking about it how did I even golf. Well there weren't any golf-sticks in the cafeteria so I couldn't show him, but I did get out from my seat and stood on my hind hooves and showed him the motion I'd used which I said was really more of a glaive move.
Trevor looked up and asked if that meant I could use a glaive, and both Cedric and Leon looked at each other and Cedric asked what a glaive was, and so we explained and Cedric nodded and said that he knew I was a badass. Leon said that if you fuck with the pony, she'll cut you, and then just started laughing.
Conrad said that since everybody had tests this week, he was going to let us enjoy an easy day today and read some of Edward Lear’s poems, which were mostly short and simple. A lot of them were in a form that was called a Limerick, and those were strange because it was almost like they were a joke. Even the longer poems were funny, although I didn’t understand why people were snickering so much about the Owl praising his beautiful Pussy.
Also Edward Lear didn’t seem to like bees very much.
Right after poetry class was over I went back to my room and dropped off my books and then went out to the parking lot where Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn were waiting for me.
We went right to the airport and Mister Salvatore had to show his wallet again at the gate. He has a special identification like my student identification, and it lets him get into places that other people can't go.
We parked in a special small lot that was different from where all the other cars had to park, and by the time we had gotten out of the car two men in blue clothes which were like police officer uniforms came over to meet us. They shook hands with Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn and then with me.
The back of the airport wasn't very nice. It was like the center we'd first arrived at, all cold brick and hard tile and bad lighting. There were some posters up on the wall but instead of pictures of happy people in nice places like the ones I'd seen at the airplane stations where I got on and off, these were all words and looked very stern and official. I stopped to read one and it was rules about being paid and right at the top it said that this poster was required by law.
We went up a flight of stairs and they led us into a room which they called a lounge. It also looked kind of run-down, but there were posters on the wall of airplanes and a big corkboard that had things pinned to it along with a couch and a television and a little kitchen.
And there was a woman sitting in one of the chairs drinking coffee out of a paper cup and when she saw me she got right up and came over and hugged me and she said her name was Dori which was short for Dorinda.
We talked for a little bit and then she led me up to the tower. She said that there was an elevator but I said I'd rather walk if she didn't mind.
We couldn't interrupt the people at work, but there were some extra computers and so she showed me how they could see where all the different airplanes were, and explained how there was a ground controller who I had never spoken to that kept track of where the airplanes were on the ground and then another one who was the arrival and departure controller and that was who I usually talked to. That was an older man with a big bald spot and I asked her kind of quietly if he was the grumpy man and she laughed and said he was and if I stayed around long enough I could meet him when he went on break.
Then she told me to wait where I was and she went over to her desk and picked up a little strip of paper and brought it to me and it had my callsign on it and then a bunch of little letters and she explained it was a flight strip and that all the airplanes got one and that was how they kept track of them all, and this was the one from my morning flight. She said I could keep it because they made a new one each time I flew.
There was a UPS airplane leaving soon, she told me, and so I watched as the ground controller gave it instructions and had it wait until a small airplane had landed before it could go on the runway and leave, and we listened until the grumpy man had given control over to the regional controller that handled flights which were outside of Kalamazoo's airspace.
It looked like a whole lot of work to keep track of all those things, and she said that the ground controller not only had to give permission to airplanes but to vehicles that needed to cross runways and taxiways as well. And she showed me the special telephone that they used in emergencies—it was called the crash phone, and it talked to the airport fire department.
She was explaining how they made sure that airplanes wouldn't bump into each other when they all flew at different altitudes and different speeds when I saw a man go stand behind the grumpy man and look down at his screen and all the little blocks that contained the flight strips and I asked what he was doing and she said he was getting the picture of all the traffic so that he would be ready to take over and after a few minutes a medium-sized airplane that had a blue tail landed and once it was clear of the runway he took off his headset and the other man took over.
He was a little surprised to see me, but he agreed to meet me in the lounge. So we went down there and he came in after a little bit and said that it was nice to put a face to a voice on the radio and I asked him why he sounded grumpy all the time. He ran his fingers through his hair and said it was 'cause whenever I went flying it was a pain in the butt to clear my airspace and I hadn't realized it was so much work so I told him that I was sorry and was there anything I could do that would make it easier?
He told me that if I stayed below a thousand feet whenever I was over Kalamazoo it would be a lot easier because airplanes weren't supposed to fly that low except in special circumstances, like the medical helicopters, and he said that as long as I went west it became a lot easier as long as I stayed outside of the normal descent routes into the airport. So I promised that I would do that and then he shook my hoof and I wanted to hug him but I didn't think he wanted a hug.
After that I did give Dori a hug and she said that she would like to visit the Air Zoo with me sometime and I said that sounded like fun but I wasn't sure if I would have time until after classes were over and she said that was okay.
I was pretty hungry by the time we left the airplane station, so we stopped at Jimmy John's and got sandwiches and then they took me back to my dorm so I could study some more.
I could have gone over to Meghan's after I finished studying for Anthropology, but then I decided that I should read some more of my radio book so I could get my license. And then I thought I had it all figured out so I took a test on my computer and didn't do very well; I only got half the questions right so I made a note of what I'd gotten wrong so I could study it more.
By the time I finally went over to Meghan's I was pretty tired. It had been a long day, but a fun day, and it was really nice to end it by snuggling up with her in bed even if she was wearing her sleeping clothes because Amy was there.