Getting close to Soloing

My how time flies.... I feel like I've just started but feel like I've been flying for a long time already. After my last entry I took a week off flying for a business trip to New York where I got engaged and back to Georgia again.
I started flying that weekend again on both days this time in the afternoons instead of early morning flight time which is a HUGE lifesaver. It really helps to get a little break on the weekend and have some mental reserves when trying to maintain all the information thrown at you during a flight lesson.

Anywhays... it's been 2 weekends of flight time this month and at last count I have about 23 hours of flight time, completed about 37 landings/takeoffs. So it's moving along.
I had my "mid term" exam this last weekend which consisted of my demonstration of all the maneuvers I've learned so far which consist of things like slow flight, ascending turns, descending turns, high bank turns, turns around a point, traffic patterns, power on and power off stalls, short field take offs and landings, soft field take offs and landings, etc etc....

My instructor(s) tell me I'm doing very well for the amount of flight time I have so far even though I'm still very critical of myself and every maneuver I perform that isn't what I would consider "perfect", but, I have to cut myself some slack every now and again.
At this rate they believe I can finish my flight time with the minimum amount of hours required by the program which would be very cool, not just from a proficiency standpoint but from a financial standpoint as well.

At the moment I'm working on my navigation skills and learning to plan a flight and calculate for wind speed/direction and how to adjust to track a straight path to my destination. There's also fuel considerations as you can't just pull off the road and fill up somewhere, you have to be able to make it to the next airport that has fuel, otherwise you're going to have to find a nice little field somewhere to do an emergency landing.

I have a few chapters left in my flight manual that I have to finish up a few chapters in my flight manual and I'm done with that portion. Next task is going to be my ground manual which is going to prepare me for my written exam. As long as I can pass that at 70% I believe I should be good to go.... since I'm only flying on the weekends I have all week to study, so we'll see how it goes.

More to follow......