Mind your P's and Q's did come from printing, because they're hard to tell apart, particularly when you're setting type by hand.

I always heard it was from "mind your pints and quarts" for tavern patrons so they knew what their tab was at the end of the night.

I just meant that I had as much trouble with db as with qp.

Good thing you have a d and p then, a little less confusion.

Drabble: upside down

My introduction to basic aerobatics started okay with a simple barrel roll, but at the top of the first loop the instructor changed his mind and just held us inverted -- with no warning, the bastard.

The only visible sign that there was something -- anything -- between me and the planet suspended over my head was one-sixteenth of an inch of dusty Lexan. I clutched at my shoulder straps for reassurance that I wasn't going to fall out.

Then he said, "Hey, I've never stalled inverted in this model." Followed by, "Wow, I didn't know it would do that."

Double bastard.

"Wow, I didn't know it would do that."

That sounds like they could have been famous last words. Wow.

My favorite redneck joke:
"What are a redneck's last words?"
"Y'all watch this..."

Ok, I've just got an idea and maybe this is the best place to air it out. I'm applying for a job with a non-profit, and they want a writing sample. Everything recent I've got is fiction and not appropriate, so I started combing through older stuff. Most of what I've got there are analytic papers. Again, no good. But when I go back to freshman year and start looking at some of the journalism stuff, it isn't bad. Topically, though, it's clear that I wrote it years ago. (It dealt with the closing of my college, which happened in 2000.)

There's one piece that I wrote though, after talking to alumni about the school's closing, before the final graduation. What if I presented an excerpt from that and framed it with my own perpective on what it is to be alumni, etc. That way, it could look like something I'd written to submit to the alumni magazine. I'd start something fresh, but I'm seriously blocked for topics and strapped for time.

Would that work?

Lilty, seems like a good plan, give it a try.

SailAweigh, cutting the story down to drabble size made it sound more dramatic than it was. Hod (short for Howard) was an awesome pilot, but a terrible instructor.

He was the gliderport bum -- he lived in a trailer next to the field, and flew every day there was lift. He had two sailplanes, one for summer thermal flying and one for winter wave flying. He could stay aloft when no one else could, and he liked to be the last one landing so that he could finish with his trademark -- a high-speed low-altitude inverted pass down the runway, followed by a quarter roll upright that became a tight 180° turn to final, finishing up by rolling to a stop within 10 feet of his hangar door.

I was thrilled when he offered to take me up with him for some aerobatics, and thoroughly pissed at him by the end of the flight. He had no clue how to communicate how he did what he did, or to observe how what I was doing affected how the sailplane flew.

The SO has a story like that about his pilot buddy in their youth, the pivotal line of which is the SO speaking to his buddy in a low, calm voice, "Start the plane, Dave," repeated at varying intervals and volumes. Heh. Must be a pilot thing.