Why I haven't been blogging

My laptop charger has ceased to charge so I have very limited access to the internet. I'm supposed to be getting a replacement (evidently my laptop is still under warranty - good to know) but it has yet to arrive.

I have been traveling hither and yon and want to be home for a minute. Well more than a minute actually.

More to come soon when I get my charger.

Randomness from Alexandria

That's Louisiana for any of you who thought I might be in a cool town...

I misbid next month. I am supposed to work every Sat-Tues. The upside of it is I'm scheduled to spend a great deal of time at the beach. hmmm...

I arrived into my hotel room at 207 local time. A mere 4 hours late. Welcome to summer time in Atlanta. The plane we were supposed to take to Moline at 350 got diverted to Savannah while coming in from Baton Rouge and didn't even land until after 7.

I witnessed the Braves beating the Red Sox last night. It was a quite enjoyable experience. I did that after spending pretty much the entire day at the pool. Also an enjoyable experience. Yay for Molly's birthday and for J having a whole day off from flying and his other job.

I think there is a rule that if I have a good looking passenger he must have a baby and/or attractive wife in tow.

My nose itches really bad.

I have had lots of offers for places to live and a potential roommate situation come up. Still no clue what I'm actually going to do.

Peter is the best little brother ever. Who, when they offer to bring you lunch to "use up lunch meat in the frig" brings mac'n'cheese, sandwiches (toasted bread, lettuce, tomato, mayo, mustard, meat, and cheese), the only sweet tea in the world that I like in a big jar, yogurt, and cookie dough (not for cooking. just eating.)? It was very yummy and also great because I haven't had a chance to have a meal since then.

I got my hair cut today which always makes me happy. Nothing like a fresh, short cut and a visit with Faith.

I have sufficiently unwound and must sleep now.

expired food

The yogurt I just ate is a month past it's expiration date and the chocolate milk I'm drinking is 12 days past. Mmmm... They both taste fine though.

I'm finally home from the trip I thought would never end. And I came home to an empty apartment. I hate it. Amie moved out while I was gone and Tanya is in Texas. It makes me ridiculously sad to have Amie gone. Jonathan gave me a ride home last night and I think he thought I was going off the deep end... I don't like that Amie won't be coming in my room in the morning anymore or noticing the little things about me that noone else does. (Who else will tell you they like waking up and just knowing you're in the next room?) I don't like that the only person who got really, really excited when I was going to be home is gone. I don't like that our apartment will no longer be the fun place to hang out. It'll be the empty place. I had dreams last night about moving. Still not sure where though. Dreamed that the complex here was trying to make us stay. Ha! I know I'm probably being a little dramatic cause she isn't moving to the moon or anything, but things are changing and it's happening a lot faster than I'm prepared for and it makes me really sad.

I'm going to the gym. I don't feel like it but I need to. I don't see how I couldn't have lost weight this week. All I've been eating is dried fruit, real fruit and other healthy things. I did have chicken nachos one night and Taco Bell last night... We'll see.

Yesterday I fell in love

With Burlington, VT. I had the pleasure of spending a night and most of a day there and discovered that it was a beautiful, charming little town. The weather was perfect (though I was told it's only that way about 4 months out of the year). It began on the way up when it seemed that my two front seat passengers worked for the BTV chamber of commerce. They seemed to think that it's the best city anyway. They told me lots of places I had to see and things to do. It's nice to meet people who love their home so much.

Wednesday night Adri drove from MA to Burlington to see me. I personally think she was crazy to do it, but I appreciated it so much. It made me feel special. It was awesome to see her. The next day she had to go back to work so I walked back down to the town. The weather was perfect and beautiful. There's a street that's blocked off to traffic and just has shops and restaurants on it. I just wandered around there. Ate Chinese dumplings from a stand, walked to the water front, went shopping, ate icecream. It was generally a very lovely day. When I grow up and am rich I might by a summer house up on Lake Champlain and spend my days wandering through the little towns :).

Today is the last day of my trip. I don't know if it's because I did a dayline before I started this trip, but it seems like it's lasting forever. I have 3 legs today and am supposed to finished at 830 tonight. I have little confidence in that though considering that 4 out of my last 4 days of work have ended anywhere from an hour to 2.5 hours late. Wish me luck, or good weather, or whatever.

Right now I'm in Northwest Arkansas. We're supposed to leave here in about an hour and I've officlally done nothing with my morning. We got in really late last night and it took me a while to wind down so I had to sleep til almost 11 to get close to 8 hours of sleep.

I hope everyone is having a fabulous Friday.

mass confusion

Seems to be the Atlanta airport lately. Last night, once again, it took us a ridiculous amount of time to go from the gate to the air. An hour and a half to be exact. It also makes me a little confused about the way God blesses us. On Monday when I made up the time I would've lost by swapping while we were sitting on the ground I thought it must be God. One of my friends argued though that if God made it rain so I would get paid more was He also making it rain to mess up other people's plans. I'm confused. Now I'm wondering if this is simply a matter of the sun shining on all and the rain raining on all. It's weird when you are benefiting from someone else's misfortune. (Let me insert here that the only time I really benefit from people's misfortune at work is when we are sitting on the plane for ridiculous amounts of time. That's the only time I'm actually getting paid.) But then I thought about how many other people/profession make their business from other's misfortune. Do construction people consider it a blessing from God when a disaster takes place and they have more work to do? I have no answers and now I'm even more confused.

Last night we got to White Plains, NY at 1:20am. Made it to bed around 2:20. Our driver to the hotel seemed like he was asleep. I was a little concerned. Now I have managed to sleep most of the morning away. I don't think there's much else to do around here. Our second flight once we get to Atlanta is already delayed 2 hours. No idea why. This is not a good sign.

Things are changing. Evidently Amie moved out yesterday. Makes me really sad. I feel like another chapter is ending. In my head I know this means another one will begin but right now I'm just a little sad about it.

I found a flaw with my phone. It holds very few text messages. I had gotten used to my old phone that never filled up. And at the rate that I text this could get annoying. We'll see. I like it otherwise but I'm all about my texting so we'll see. I'm going to see if there's anything to do around this hotel. All I see is trees but maybe there's something hidden away.

bad/good

My mother has just set sail back across the wild blue yonder but without me this time. It kind of makes me nervous. I think this must be how parents feel when they send their children off into the great unknown without them.

I'm starting another 4 day trip today. On paper it looks good. We'll see how it goes. It looks like I'll have a hodgepodge of pilots. Sometimes that's good cause if one of them sucks he'll be gone in a day or so, but it can also work the opposite way.

As I mentioned the other day, I switched my Sunday dayline for one on Monday. I was talking to my FO on Friday and he was saying how glad he was to finally have Sundays off so he could go to church. It made me feel bad and realize that I had voluntarily decided to work on Sunday, even though I'm trying to go to church more regularly. It's also the main day I get to spend with my family and I hate to miss that. It's just an all round good for my heart day. When I decided to swap though, I realized I'd lose almost 1.5hrs of time. I figured though, if I do what I know God would want me to do, then He'll take care of the rest.

So yesterday I went to work. I got up really late and had a hard time waking up so I was grouchy (again). We went to Talahassee and back, then headed off to Wichita. On the way back we were doing pretty good except they slowed us down a little. We landed about 7 and then just sat on the runway. Evidently there had been some weather drama that had clogged the airport up. At one point I went up in the cockpit and counted 26 planes sitting on the taxiways around and in front of us. So we ended up getting to the gate at 8:15. Since it took us all that time I ended up making the same as I would've made on Sunday, plus 6 minutes :-P. Contrary to what some may say, I don't think God made the weather and clogged up the airport so I'd get more money. I just know that I'm really glad I made the decision to trust God and swap. I would've rather gone home on time yesterday, but that's life in the airlines right?

Oh yeah... I think I have the worst phone luck. Yesterday when we were flying to Wichita I pulled the ice bucket out from its space. Right over the counter is a cubby where I put things during flight. I had a magazine and some random stuff in there. There's also a drain to the side which you can put things in when you don't want them to slide off the counter during take off. I moved my phone from the drain to the cubby because I had to drain all the water out of the ice bucket. Almost immediately after I placed it there it slid off into the bucket of water........ I gave it to the pilots to put on their dashboard to dry. It still worked when I turned it on later. Then when we got to Atlanta I bent down to unhook the handrails so they could bring the ramp up and it fell out of my pocket, onto the side of the door and onto the ground... I don't know what my problem is. All I kept thinking when this was happening was, I'm so glad my new phone didn't get here when I wanted it, otherwise that would've been it. I don't know how I'm going to do it but I HAVE to figure out a way to take better care of this phone. I love my new phone. It makes me happy. My perfume and the books came today as well which also makes me happy.

I think that's all I have for now. I should go pack for work.

bi polar weekend

That's what I had. Some of it rocked my face off. Some of it made me want to lie on the floor and throw a fit. I've learned that being aware of your grouchiness does not in any way lessen said grouchiness. I don't know why I'm so grouchy. I was probably a big jerk to all my friends and family. I tried not to be too bad.

Yesterday I didn't get back into Atlanta until 440 pm. I guess there are worse places to be stuck for 10 hours, but after getting all of my other flights for the day taken and still getting back later than scheduled I lost my sense of humor. Maybe it's still in Asheville.

I got home yesterday hoping to have my new cell phone waiting for me, only to find that it was locked in the apartment office for the weekend. We bought perfume off ebay. It hadn't arrived. I was also hoping to get some books I had ordered. Also not here. I had visions as I was driving home of the mailbox being too full and what would the mailman do if all my packages filled up the extra boxes. Not a single thing was here... Talk about disappointing.

This was actually a really nice weekend but I'm just a grouch right now. The fact that I have to work tomrorow doesn't help either. I am thankful that I didn't have to work today. I went up to Angela and Shaun's place, ate, swam, and got beaten in volleyball. I got about a million mosquito bites and probably got poison ivy as well, but it was really fun. Also went to church this morning and had lunch with the family. Always a good time. We're trying to get my mother shipped off to China this week. I think it's finally all figured out.

So for having spent as much good, fun time with friends and family you'd think I'd be more pleasant. Guess not :-P. I still am happy, but witha grouchy slant. Not that that makes sense. Just go with it okay?

Last night I saw Peter and Michal dance. It was really beautiful. One of these days I'll learn how to dance properly. I'm going to sleep so I can get up and go to Talahassee and Wichita. Home tomorrow night. Then I start a 4 day on Tuesday. Should be a pretty decent one. Then I'm home for the weekend. Woo hoo.

Last day syndrome

No, I'm not speaking of the end of the world. I speaking of the way that our planes break on the last day of every trip. We're finally on the home stretch. We're missing our homes and loved ones. We're so close I can almost taste the old food in my refrigerator. And our planes breaks. I just wish that there were some way to find this out before I got up at 430 and came to the airport.

I was going to blog last night about not being able to go to sleep, because I couldn't until about 1130, but my browser crashed and I took it as a sign to keep trying (to sleep). I'm all revved up on caffiene and have nothing to do now. So frustrating. It doesn't seem that we'll have to do our TYS turn, but I seriously doubt we'll get back late enough not to go to DTW. Good times. At least I don't have to stand up for 5 flights. My shoes still hurt so bad.

I've had a pretty good trip overall. I'm sad that I've swapped all the rest of my trips out because my crew is really nice. My captain is usually the last one downstairs in the morning, which makes me happy cause then it isn't me.

We're in Asheville right now and last night I was once again reminded of one of the perks of my job. We arrived here yesterday afternoon and my grandpa picked me up and took me to their house for dinner. It's so nice to think "I'm working right now" but to be able to spend time with friends or family. We had a really nice dinner (my grandma makes fabulous salmon) and a great visit. I haven't seen them very much in the last year so it's great to come up and visit. The weather up here is really nice and they also got a lot of rain yesterday. Hopefully some of it hit GA. When we were driving back to the hotel last night we saw part of a rainbow and a really beautiful sunset. It seriously is the little things in life that keep you happy.

Wireless internet in small airports also makes me happy. It's funny how nearly all the small airports have free wireless, but the big ones can't handle it. Not so much funny actually as ridiculous. And it even reaches out to our plane. Evidently the fluid we need is arriving at 9am on the flight from Atlanta. We'll see how that goes. It's also a fun thing getting local maintenance out bright and early on a Saturday morning. I'm supposed to work tomorrow. I think I was on drugs and I picked up a dayline from someone. It's a lot of time, but I still wish I hadn't. I really hate how much church I've missed lately and picking up trips definitely isn't going to change that. I called scheduling to see if they would swap it for one on Monday, but I'm supposed to call back later... I really hope they approve it. I don't want to have to be back to work at 740am tomorrow.

The caffiene is taking over my entire body so I'll stop now.

It's all about perspective

If you think Georgia is bad in the summer, just got to Louisiana. It's absolutely disgusting here. I just went for a little jaunt here in Lafayette. I wanted to go get sushi for lunch so I looked up the directions I saw that it was 2.5 miles away. Not entirely out of the question since I have time and need to exercise. Then I walked out the door and the humidity hit me. There's basically no point in sweating here because the air is already so wet. Needless to say I did not walk the 5 mile round trip. I went to the post office, stopped at some little stores, and got Subway for lunch.

I'm very pleased with myself. Probably for the first time in my life I mailed a birthday card and gift on time. Of course, I did get the gift when I was in China in February with the intention of giving it to my sister then. So it's in time for her birthday Monday but actually about 4 months late.

I need to get ready for work. My new shoes are killing me. Evidently my feet are just too bony. And my new flip flops rubbed a bare spot on my foot just now. Good thing I only have to fly two legs today. We end up in SCE, wherever that is. Somewhere in PA I think. I should be getting ready right now.

Persistence

I just woke up from a lovely night's sleep. It's my last night in my bed for 3 so I figured I'd enjoy it as long as possible. I have to be at work at 1423 so I should probably get a move on if I want to accomplish anything beforehand.

This morning I had all kinds of dreams. I did yesterday as well. I dreamed that the captain from our cruise ship called Charity and wanted to take her out. I wish I could remember more details of it. Just now I dreamed that we were swimming around in somewhere with clear water and tropical fish - and our living room. I dunno. Earlier I dreamed that we brought a flight in from somewhere. I think most of the people were going crazy cause they were singing "It's a small world" and wouldn't stop. We also had to get in line and turn in our report cards (odd) and if you did well you got some prize. But since I was at the back of the line by the time I got up there they were handing out crappy, navy blue afghans.

I also dreamed about Flica, my interenet scheduling site. I was not pleased with the schedule I got this month. My trips had too many legs each day and were all short ones. Those are the trips that tire me out. And they were all Wed-Sat. I'd prefer to be off on Saturdays since most of my friends have real jobs. So I've been trying to swap but keep getting denied for low coverage on the Saturdays. It's ridiculous to me because if you have a reserve who can work the Tues-Fri one let me do it and let them work the Wed-Sat one... But whatev. So I've swapped the last two trips of the month out for much better ones, but have been denied 7 times for low coverage on the 16th. 3 of the denials were for the same trip. So I kept putting it in. Last night I dreamed that instead of it saying Denied it said Wired to some email address. I was thinking I was getting in trouble for resubmitting so many times. Then I woke up this morning and it had been approved. HA! I beat scheduling at their nonsense. If at first you don't succeed, bug them til they give up and give you what you want :-D. That's my motto.

My legs are a lovely shade of sore this morning. I went to the gym yesterday with the lovely Molly and ran/walked for 40 minutes - over 3 miles. I did a lot better than I expected considering I haven't run in over a month. After the gym I cooked stir fry with the veggies I had in the frig. It was yummy. Then we ruined it by eating cheesecake. Go us. I blame Tanya and Molly for getting it out. They did, of course, force feed it to me.

This is what I do

When I can't decide what to do. I had a big day of lying (is that the right word) by the pool planned, but there seems to be thunder going on. I've spent the morning messing around online, going through my bills, catching up on emails, sorting things... but somehow feel like I haven't gotten much done. I need to go to the gym. I went yesterday for the first time in a long time. It was pretty pathetic. I guess it was better than not going at all...

Last night I enjoyed some amazing sushi. I had a hot date with a married person. Woo hoo! I love reconnecting with old friends. I love having people that I can be completely honest with.

I can't believe it's June already. Our lease is up at the end of July and I don't know where I'm going to live after that. I might just live in my car. Everyone is getting married. Moving on with their lives. I'd say I don't like it but there isn't any point in not liking it. It's life. It happens. I don't always accept the changes as quickly as I should, but I'm getting better at it. I think I have pretty much accepted that all of my friends are getting married and that when people get married things change. I'm not making any blanket statements because each of my friends has reacted differently to being married. Some have stayed the same. Some have gotten closer to me after they were married. Some have drifted away. Everyone is different. What can you do? You can't make someone be close to you. I'll probably do really obnoxious things if I ever get married too. Oh well. Growing up definitely teaches you not to hold on to anything too tight. It's ok. There is always something or someone wonderful just around the corner.

I had a lovely weekend with friends and family. They're fantastic. Poor Michal is sick. We celebrated Peter's birthday on Sunday. He's already blown all his money on lottery tickets and cigarettes since he's old enough now.

Today I need to get ready for my trip tomorrow. Go to the grocery store. Go to the gym. Get organized. Clean my room (it never ends). Call about this stupid bill I just got. I don't know what order to do everything in though. Fun times...

Oh yeah, I added some pictures.

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.