Yard Signs and Lunatics

Distributing 8664 yard signs is a pain in the butt. Not because they're 8664 yard signs; I believe in the cause fervently, or I wouldn't volunteer for such pain-in-the-butt duty as yard sign distribution. Try it sometime, dear reader, and you'll see what I mean. It's tedious. It's frustrating. And it's very, very time consuming. And 8664 supporters, it seems, have a maddening propensity for living in obscure alleys, the very ends of dead-end streets, or the invisible corners of hard-to-find cul-de-sacs. Oh, well. At least they're on our side.

I finished my biennial flight instructor refresher course today. Flight instructors have to renew their certificates every two years by taking some kind of recurrent training, which these days can be done on the net. It's not a big deal, although it takes about ten hours to complete. I've done it for years, but now the course includes a TSA-mandated section about vigilance and terrorism prevention. The literature was replete with pictures of the World Trade Center on 9/11 and small airplanes that had been run into buildings by lunatics. The course reminded me that I must now seek permission from TSA before giving flight instruction to anyone who is not a U.S. citizen - a group that includes my wife, many of my friends, and a fairly large part of my extended family. The whole thing was bloody depressing.