"Merry Christmas" and "Thank You" to the NG

I have been around here for a few years, and today I would like to extend my
special thanks to the participants of these newsgroups. In spite of the
sometimes bizarre politics and occasional outright hostility, there was
still plenty here to help inspire me....

.... so this year I started flight training...

.....and today for the first time, the Instructor saw fit to remove himself
from the right hand seat, and allow me one take-off, which I managed to
"equate with the same number of landings on the same piece of pavement,
followed by returning the airplane in a sufficiently serviceable condition
such that it could be used again".... as someone once put it.

They might let me do again, sometime soon.

I am a little embarrassed by the number of dual circuit hours to this
point... but I don't think that it will increase the national average by too
much :-)