tomorrow

I'm going to be tired. At least it's only one leg home though. I've been lying here in bed for about 2 hours. Watched tv for part of it but have mostly just been lying here, rolling around, texting, trying to relax and go to sleep. It isn't happening.

So then I started thinking and remembering things.

3 years ago tomorrow I got my nose pierced. I had been wanting to get it done since I was at least a senior in college but knew that certain people whose opinions mattered to me weren't fans. So I decided to wait til I went to Europe. That way, if I didn't like it I could take it out and no one would ever have to see it. If I did like it, at least I would know it was something I was serious about and not just a random idea.

So I got to Madrid. I started keeping an eye out for somewhere to get my nose pierced that wasn't really expensive. I had decided to take a Spanish class at night, and went to sign up when classes started on the first. After I registered I had a little while to kill so I was looking in the shops near the school. There were a lot of tattoo shops and I finally found that would do it for 18 euros - the cheapest place by far. They said it would take about 5 minutes. I had 15 minutes until class so I decided to go for it. It's amazing what you can accomplish with minimal verbal communication and a lot of pointing. 10 minutes later I was in my first Spanish class with a pierced nose and no one noticed because no one had ever seen me before.

That night I went to sleep, and since it was summer in Madrid I had the window and door to my room open. We were on the 5th floor and they don't know what AC is. Fine with me. That is until I wake up to feel something crawling on my hand. I don't think much of it in my semi conscious state. Just flick it off... Could've been air. There are very few bugs in Madrid and we leave our windows open all the time... The only thing is, air doesn't make a loud noise when it hits the wall on the other side of the room.

Then I was completely awake. Whatever it was, I didn't want it roaming free in my room while I slept. Last time that happened I woke up with a bug in a place it didn't belong. So I immediately start searching around in my room for whatever this creature was. I see the paper bag that it must've landed against and before too long locate a ginourmous cockroach scampering about. I hate cockroaches more than almost any other creature in the world. They're fast. They fly. They run. They crunch when you step on them. They're dark so they can blend in with things. And they're just plain disgusting. Unfortunately I was barefoot and ill prepared to be fighting a cockroach. The best I could do was trap it under the trashcan.

With the cockroach under control I take the only preventive measure I can think of. Close the window and the door. And thus I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, suffocating from heat, feeling like I was running out of air in my room, imagining that my nose was throbbing and every little sound was an army of cockroaches.

Such lovely memories... I won't even get into the first time I tried to change my nose stud. That was a miserable night but it makes me smile to think back on it.

This is probably why I only ever drink coffee in the morning. Or eat teriyaki chicken right before bedtime. Today I was so sleepy I could've fallen asleep on the floor. I knew that once I got to where I could actually sleep I'd be wide awake. I was really grouchy today, but I worked hard to overcome it. I had a poor lady get on one flight wearing a lavender mock turtle neck with shoulder pads. I kind of wanted to tell her that she should never wear it again. Sometimes I feel like it's almost my responsibility as a fellow human being to tell people things like this. Good thing I don't, huh? I'm going to try sleep again.

It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you

Man, oh man... I'm having a crazy fun afternoon here in Alexandria, LA. It's a little easier to go to work knowing you only have one short flight and then you can do nothing for the rest of the day, but at the same time, now I'm going to be in Alexandria doing nothing all day. I just finished a fabulous lunch of herb & garlic tuna on pita bread. I know... Everyone wants to kiss me now. In case I wasn't desirable enough, let's throw in some tuna, and then some garlic to top it off. Yeah baby!

There are probably a lot of productive things I should be doing. I need to complain to my company because they like to short me on my paychecks, but I can't seem to access the complaint line from here. I also should go running. I haven't in many, many moons, but I really need to. For some reason my body isn't taking the icecream, hotdogs, hamburgers, and chocolate I've eaten in the last few days and turning it into pure muscle. Crazy, I know.

I found out yesterday that there is officially nothing going on with any future job prospects. They aren't hiring anyone at the moment, which makes me happy cause at least I know I'm not getting skipped.

I don't have anything interesting to say. I seem to have about a 3 second attention span these days. I think of things I'm supposed to do, then I forget as I move to do them. I wrote down things to blog about, but now they all seem silly and ridiculous. C'est la vie. (If that isn't spelled right, I blame wikipedia).

This morning I told my FO how our CA had lived in Africa and liked to tell lots and lots and lots of stories about it. He started singing Toto's Africa, and now 4.5 hours later it's still stuck in my head. I hope the same thing happens to some of you :-D. I'm mean like that.

Oh what a beautiful morning...

This morning I woke up in my bed for the third morning in a row and it has been glorious. I had really bizarre dreams, but that seems to be a trend lately. I dreamed that Angela and Shaun were having another wedding. The dresses were the same color as last time but a different style. We were walking out and no one knew where to stand and we kept shifting around to make room. I'm sure the dream has something to do with all the talk of weddings that surrounds 8302 and beyond lately.

It's kind of old news now but I had two "important" people on my flights lately. The first was the notorious Terrell Owens. Thing is, I didn't know who he was til after he got off the plane (the 50 something year old gay guy I was flying with wasn't up on all his NFL players either). Wouldn't have made any difference really. He's hard to miss and I already felt bad for him being crammed into the window seat on one of our little bitty CRJs. We were coming back to Atlanta from Cleveland.

The other person was the Vice President of Liberia, who according to the CIA library is Joseph Boakai. He was traveling with his wife and 6 others up to Des Moines for some convention. According to the articles I've read there are about 24,000 Liberians in the US and about 600 of them live in Des Moines. There were a bunch of people at the airport to greet them with flowers and cameras. It was funny because the gate agents had told me who they were but I didn't know if they wanted people to know who they were. I asked the VP's wife if they had traveled far that day and she said yes, they had come from Liberia and he was the Vice President. So evidently they aren't shy about his position. Once again I felt bad for them having to fly all that way and end up on an RJ for the last 2 hours. Oh well.

Des Moines seems to be the place to go these days. I had 2 German couples coming to visit their children who had moved there. Another non English speaking couple. And the Liberians. One of the German couples sat directly in front of me and the man smelled so bad I thought that I would be physically ill. Every time he moved I got a wiff of him. Eventually he settled down, thankfully, otherwise I don't know how I would've dealt with it.

I also met a man who was missing part of his finger. I asked him what happened and said it was a lawn mower accident when he was about 12. It happened at a neighbor's house so the neighbor called his father and said they would take the son to the hospital cause he had had an accident. The father tells the mother that he's going to the hospital cause the son had had an accident, but she doesn't realize what he said and just said she had something in the oven so she'd see him later. He goes in the garage and starts to leave and then she realizes what's going on. As she is running out of the house he runs into her with the car so he ended up taking her to the hospital to be treated as well. Nothing serious, thankfully. But I thought it was the funniest story that ever came from asking someone what happened to them. It honestly made my day I was laughing so hard (before you think I'm a jerk, the man was laughing as well).

That's all for now. I have stuff to do on my last day off.

all kinds of stuff

I am finally home and loving it. I had high hopes for an exciting Saturday night, but my body seems to think otherwise. I am very full after eating my overcooked steak (which they ended up comping and giving me a $20 certificate) and extremely tired.

I've had interesting days at work. Some long and miserable, but some noteworthy events took place. Well not so much events, but I guess I heard and saw interesting things and people. I'll write about them soon.

Happy Saturday night to all.

Ray of sunshine

Today upon arriving home from work I checked the mail. In it was a friendly, card-like, envelope addressed to me. I was confused as I did not recognize the return name and address. It was written by hand though so I knew it couldn't be junk mail. I opened it and it said "Something for you, with special thanks"... and had a $25 Starbucks gift card in it. The note inside thanked me for returned their wallet and apologized for it taking them a year to get back to me. I vaguely remembered finding a small wallet on one of my flights. I knew if I turned it in to the gate it would probably just get thrown in lost and found, and since I've had so many things lost or stolen over the last few years I know how frustrating it is to have to replace everything. I decided to mail it back to the girl. I can't say I wasn't wanting any thanks - I did put my return address on it - but really wasn't expecting to hear anything. It wasn't a big deal to return it and I would hope someone would do it for me one day. It was just such a nice surprise though. I'm really excited to have a Starbucks gift card cause it's one of those luxuries that I can't exactly justify to myself on a regular basis. Anyway... It brought a ray of sunshine into my dark view of passengerkind.

I also had a fabulous visit with the family. Peter cooked a scrumptious meal of chicken wings (from scratch), mac'n'cheese, and carrots and celery. It was really nice and as always wonderful to see my family - and my lovely mother who I don't think I've seen on mother's day for the last 5 years. And she still loves me - one of the many reasons she's so wonderful. I bought my Grandma a card on Tuesday in an effort to be proactive and kind and it's sitting in my purse with a stamp on it but lacking a zip code. Unfortunately when Monday comes around and I can mail it the stamp won't be worth enough money... Arg.

I'm leaving tomorrow morning to fly to Orlando, then drive to Port Canaveral to go on a cruise. I don't know uch about it except we are going to the Bahamas. We'll be back on Thursday morning. So if I'm scarce between now and then that's why. I'm really nervous that I'm going to get seasick, since I can't even sit on a swing without feeling sick sometimes... We'll see how it goes. It's nice to be in my bed tonight.

Just my luck

There's something about going on vacation that makes everything go wrong. We are now in the Canton/Akron airport with a broken plane and no hope of leaving until later this afternoon. I was happy cause our Midway turn got cancelled but it looks like we won't get back til later than we would've if we had gone to Midway. We didn't even get here until almost midnight last night and then didn't get to our rooms until almost 1. I am le tired. At least I'm stuck here with nice people.

I had a really lovely break in LAX. We drove up the coast and had lunch at this beach restaurant. It was so beautiful out there. We ate lunch with the sun on our heads and our feet in the sand. The food was amazing as well. After that we drove further up the coast and gawked at the houses perched up in the hills along Hwy 1. I did manage to get about 10 hours of sleep that night, mostly because I couldn't stay awake. My schedule has been so odd lately that I've been having a hard time going to sleep when I actually get there. Now I just have to make it home today.

I think I've sneezed about 57,000 times in the last few days. I've been in so many different places that I can't seem to pinpoint an allergy. My best guess is that I'm allergic to myself.

If you need me, you know where I'll be for at least the next 5 hours probably.

hotel room gripes

I don't understand what they're thinking when they put the towel rack over the toilet. Don't they know if you pick one up the rest are going to fall? Or in the shower? I also don't understand what they're thinking putting two freaking outlets in the whole hotel room. I don't know where they except you to plug in your cell phone, laptop, and whatever other random electronic devices you may have. That's all the hotel room gripes I can think of. I feel kind of bad cause I spilled food on my duvet cover. Oops. It's only avocado.

I'm in Kansas City right now. It's super exciting. I had to be at work at 6am this morning so I slept about 4 hours and I am le tired. I intend to go to sleep shortly.

Today I was standing in line at the ABC in the airport and I saw one of our pilots who looked familiar. He was like, can I ask you and odd favor. Scary... He said we both got our badges renewed on the same day and he had gone home and told his wife about my haircut. His wife had told him he should've taken a picture, so standing there in the ABC some random pilot took a picture of me with his cell phone. Fun times... Good thing my hair was in tip top shape from my haircut yesterday :).

I failed to mention yesterday that I got to see my lovely sister Joy. And Peter made me an omlet. And it made me happy. My family is the best.

denial

I'm in denial that I have to be at work in less than 10 hours. I don't feel like packing (or unpacking from my last 2 trips). I don't feel like doing laundry either. I just feel like doing nothing. I'm pretty excited about this trip. I get to spend nearly 24 hours in the great city of Los Angeles as well as see J, who has been out there since the beginning of the month. Our company is so organized that they realized they don't have enough pilots out there so they sent 10 guys out there, put them in a hotel for a month, and are paying them $1.50/hr for the entire month. What a smart airline! I'm craving Diet Coke but I know if I drink it I'll be up all night. At the rate I'm going I'm going to be up all night anyway... So though I may be in denial of the fact that I have to work at 6am, I'm in acceptance of the fact that I will be very tired tomorrow.

Good news on the phone front. My text messages now involve punctuation and the letters d, e, and f. I can also now use the other buttons without fear of accidently hanging up on someone or turning my phone off. The replacement came today and I'm very happy. The foot rollers I ordered off Amazon also came today. I got a big one for home and a small one for my suitcase. Got the two rollers and had them shipped all for about $10. So much easier than driving around to a million stores like I did before.

Amie and our new child are home so now I'm going to do something else.

suffering

I'm sitting in an amazing beach house in Florida. I'm drinking Diet Coke, lasagna is cooking, and Faith is making brownies. I spent the day rotating between the beach and the pool. We did get rained out of both but only for a brief time. The water was turquoise (pronounced like Shirley Q - ter-kwozz), the sky was blue, the dolphins were jumping and it was fantastic.

I spent Friday afternoon wandering around Ottawa. It's a beautiful city and I would like to spend more time there. We saw the parliament buildings, complete with their very own stray cats on the hill. Not really impressed with the random little cat houses. I think it was more the randomosity of it that I enjoyed. I love cities with rivers in them and Ottawa has a river and canals. It seems very well taken care of as well. I just wish I was there a few weeks later when all the tulips were blooming. The buds were there but that was about it. After wandering around looking at the shops, then having lunch, I went back ot the hotel, read for a little while, and was asleep by 7pm. I needed it.

Yesterday morning I began the 3000 mile journey to Floriday. Okay, maybe it wasn't 3k miles to Florida, but that's how many miles I went before I got there. I took 2 people to Lewisburg, WVa, brought 13 back, went home, grabbed a few things and Kathryn and now here we are. Such a hard life. My main problems today have been what color to paint my toenails, which lotion to rub on my burn/tan, whether to lay by the pool or on the beach, which couch to watch tv from... I've been suffering.

we heart baton rouge

I have just returned from an oh so fabulous tour of the LSU campus and some random parts of BTR. Work is definitely much less like work when you get to see friendly people and spend mornings doing real stuff, instead of sitting in a hotel.

Last night one of my passengers had glasses with one square frame and one round frame. She was kind of odd. She kept wiping her cheeks and mouth with her handkerchief, even though she wasn't eating anything. The glasses kept me entertained though.

I need to find a way to make notes on my flights. I come across some of the oddest people but forget about them when it comes time to tell anyone about them.

My pilots this trip seem to be fun again. They're mean and I'm mean back to them. Woo hoo. They were dinging the call button while I was doing my announcements yesterday. I sure hope their mental capacity is greater than their maturity. I've had some really fun crews lately. The ones I flew with last week liked to make random announcements about me that weren't true. First they told everyone they might recognize me from the Olympics where I was a silver medalist in archery... Then they told everyone it was my birthday and to wish me a happy birthday. (No, I didn't get any money this time.) I was telling everyone that it wasn't my birthday until I got to one of the front rows and this little girl had drawn me a picture of an airplane and written happy birthday Grace on it. She also wrote "roses are red, violets are blue, candy is sweet, and so are you." So I couldn't bear to tell her it wasn't really my birthday. Sometimes my passengers are really dull, but sometimes they make it really interesting. I had a guy give me 4 or 5 of these little magnetic pins that you twist and they light up. One was shaped like Texas, one like a cowboy boot, a hot pepper, a star... All the things that are sooo my style. Another guy gave me a pin that was evidently the pin for NASA's next mission. I'll have to look it up and see if it's real. Whether I like the stuff or not, at least it breaks up the monotony of the day.

I think it's time to start getting ready. That or I'm really late. I get confused with all the different time zones on my clocks. My phone still hasn't fixed itself. It's definitely limiting my communication. I wanted to text someone yesterday and say we were about to take off but it involved too many f's so I had to say about to go, which doesn't really deliver the same message. Oh well. There should be another phone waiting for me when I get home. I called my Verizon connection and he's sorting me out. :-P

Life is good.


6:48 AM

ppl ont git how important som ltters ar

I'm killing time until I go to work. I swapped my ridiculous trip for a ridiculously lazy trip. I won't be making as much money as I would've, but at this point my sanity is more important. I think I worked too much in April. It was a good month. I had good crews, but the last 2 day trip I did put me over the edge. It wasn't a bad trip. I think it was just the fact that I spent 14 hours the day before working for a caterer at the most insane wedding I've ever been to/worked at. That would require a whole other blog, but the moral of the story is, my feet hurt sooo bad and I was sick of work. I was off yesterday and practically all of today. Instead of going in at 9am and doing 5 flights, I'm going in at 9pm and doing one. Yay!

My cell phone is not well. I think it might have something to do with me dropping it into the toilet (pre use) a few weeks ago. It was working fine the next day but seems to be deteriorating. I can no longer text using any punctuation or words that have d, e, or f within the first 2 letters or so. It's definitely making for some creative texting.

The last 2 days have been very productive. I've spent a lot of money but it's pretty much all been necessary. I haven't gone grocery/necessity shopping in months. I did laundry. Cleaned my room a lot. Got my oil changed. And did various other chores. I also managed to squeeze in some pool time. Got to do the important stuff. Now I'm just lying on my bed. Trying to memorize what it feels like since it'll be another 5 nights before I'm in it again. When I get back from my trip on Saturday I'm going to Florida with lots of girls. Should be nice.

I guess that's about all for now.