Paris!

My job comes with terrible pay, long hours, WAY too much time away from home and family, etc etc etc....but there are some incredible perks! Say, ummm, First Class round trip to Paris costing me not a penny more than my normal daily expenses at home! Yes I believe sometimes it all feels worth it! We left Seattle on the 2nd, direct Delta to Paris, then back home on the 5th. It was INCREDIBLE! I loved Paris!

At first I was concerned about the rumors that people were rude there, but we found that people were only like that in the major downtown areas. I started thinking about it, I would be annoyed if I had to live in uniform in an airport being asked questions 24/7....similar to downtown Paris and the millions of tourists that pass through there yearly. We stayed in a hostel/hotel in a suburb of Paris and it was awesome! People were very kind and incredibly fun to be around! We spent minimal time doing the tourist-y type of attractions and then most of our time we just would start wandering the city streets and get lost in neighborhoods. This is officially my favorite way to see a new place, you don't feel like livestock being herded some place. Do it as the locals do! It was also endearing to little shop owners as I butched my little bit of French that I tried to use. They were so kind and would help me learn the words I couldn't find. I also learned French people have a general intolerance for small children, so word to the wise, not a great holiday place if you have kids under the age of about 14 years. Well since a picture is worth a thousand words, here come a few :)

Disclaimer: Can't for the life of me figure out why some of my captions are underlined...please just ignore, I'm a bit to jet-lagged to mess with formatting any longer today.

My First Class ticket on our way out of Seattle

Croque Madame: thin piece of french bread with ham and cheese and an egg. Could have eaten this for every meal!

In France, the cafes all close for a few hours in the afternoons, rendering you little to do for a few hours. I decided to introduce my travel-buddy to Kinder Eggs! I remember my cousins and aunts and uncles coming back from Germany and bringing these to us....come to find out they are equally amusing to two adults in the middle of the afternoon as they were to children haha
Carousel at the Eiffel Tower, I just thought it was beautiful
There is this bridge over the water near Notre Dame that you can buy a lock, you then write your lover and your own name on the lock, lock it on the bridge and throw the key away into the river. I've decided someday when I grow up, I'll meet a boy and we'll go do this

I have more pictures, but they will have to come in a later post as my travel-buddy has the camera they exist on. I will get them up eventually. Au revoir!

Ran Out of Excuses

So I haven't blogged in forever, but today I ran out of excuses not to blog...so here comes a bit of a catch up blog. Maybe I'll just bullet point the major events...yes that's a better idea, and less overwhelming.

• Put in a transfer for Minneapolis, struggled with the decision for weeks. Had a long sit in SFO with my awesome crew and ran into a whole bunch of other awesome crew that I work with in Portland. By the end of that day, I realized I wasn't ok with the probability of permanently saying good-bye to PDX. I pulled my transfer that same night and it felt like someone lifted a bunch of bricks off my shoulders!
• Since I have decided to stick Portland out for the foreseeable future, life has gotten quite a bit easier. My days of being on reserve and not being called have become much more agreeable. I have taken to exploring the city more again, working out with my roommate and making myself branch out and make new friends.
• I discovered Powell's Books....VERY dangerous store, I could easily spend my entire paycheck there. I have resisted the temptation and settle to sit in their cafe with my tea and book, surrounded by the beautiful smell of aged books!
• I sold The Mom-Car....very sad but good day. I haven't used my lovely Malibu in months, being in Portland I use the train and have no use for a car. My budget needed a bit of a reprieve. Richie's roommate purchased my steadfast companion from me this month. She did her job well, never broke down on me, sped me to the almost demise of my driver's license, and then on to a new clean life with a new career. Served me well, she will be missed!
• I entered the world of singledom again. Not really much to say there, other than I am really starting to wonder when men will have a shelf life longer than a banana with me. That being said I'm taking a major break and just enjoying life as it comes instead for awhile.
• I worked my butt off for four months, burned myself out, which led to the command decision that I needed a vacation. Grabbed one of my pilot-buddies and hauled off to Vegas for three days! Got some much needed sunshine (after months in Portland, I'd begun to wonder if it even existed anymore) and some play time away from all my communicative devices i.e. cellphone, facebook, email etc etc
• Later on in February I ended up with 5 days off (unheard of in Reserve World) so I headed down to Cotati (hour north of San Fran) to hang out with my awesome Cottrell friends! Love their kids and got some much needed girl time with Erika. And some MUCH needed time to work on my motorcycle and take that beautiful beast out for a quick spin. Had to leave it at a quick spin because I had a little TOO much fun on that spin, new sidewall was visible when I got back.
• I got to have two girl-dates on Valentine's day. First came when one of my besties got called on a trip from Los Angeles to fly up to Portland. She caught me in the airport, I was so happy to see her I almost cried! Haven't seen her in months! Then I jetted off to San Fran, where Erika picked me up from the airport, we decided to do some sushi in the city...totally didn't realize until her husband made fun of us that two ladies out together in San Francisco on Valentine's day looked really REALLY funny for the fact that we're both straight. Ended up being a good laugh and some amazing sushi!
• After my few days in Cotati, I crashed an overnight with a crew in Monterey (that means I knew crew members and could go stay with them in their hotel). We all split the cost of renting a car the next day and drove to Carmel the next day. It was BEAUTIFUL! Got to hang out on the beach for a little bit, hard to remember why I ever left the beach! My Monterey overnight turned into staying at a hotel in San Fran the next night. I picked up the last couple flights for the other flight attendant, but by the time our delayed flight got out of Monterey we had missed our connection back up to Portland. So they put us up in a hotel in San Fran and we got to hang out with another crew that was there, it was so fun! Great breakfast in the morning too!
• I have read all of my roommates textbooks and several novels in the last couple months while sitting on reserve. I actually am really loving the fact that I have all this time to read again!
• I'm still fighting the uphill battle to get out of debt and am really looking forward to that raise in June. I've learned how to live on oatmeal, so it will seem like I'm making tons of money by the time it comes around. Can't thank my parents enough for helping me out making ends meet while I made this crazy career change.
• I found a book that I LOVE, it's called How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. I totally recommend it to EVERYONE! Pretty easy read, was incredibly eye-opening for me and some of my past and current choices and the things that led to those decisions. I'm going to be re-reading it again shortly!

Ok ok, I think that pretty much covers most everything. I'm having a hard time missing my family up here in the Northwest, I'm seriously looking forward to Rachel, Buddy and Revin moving to Seattle this summer! A 30 minute flight from me so I can go squish my Baby Shark Nephew to death on a regular basis! I also added Richie to my United flight benefits as his Christmas present...maybe we can talk the whole family into migrating to the Northwest ;)

Libby's Ballroom

So since I'm on call in Portland, I couldn't make it to Idaho to watch Libby kick butt live, but I did get to watch it on a live stream! Technology rocks my face off! Anyway, today I had some time to go back and find her performances in the stream that was saved. I'll list them by hours:minutes so you can find the approximate time that her performances were at.

Latin 2:58

Smooth 4:47

Swing 7:12 (which she totally loses her skirt in this one, wardrobe malfunctions are part of every performer's life, she handled it fabulously! And I laughed so hard I choked!)

Caberet 7:46 (she has a key role as the beauty that climbs the stairs and falls to her death in the middle, AWESOME!!!)


I'm so proud of you Bug!!! The link is below...

http://eisn.ezstream.com/play/index.cfm?fuseaction=embstay&id=2A1CD81A45&dsplvl=brd

Rely on Your Crew!

Long time, since I posted...honestly I've just gotten out of the habit and I forget a lot.

I've had a great couple months flying, I've been able to pick up every legal shift possible on my days off. Which led me to the decision to make an attempt at going Part Time so that I can fly more on more days off, like I do now. Now I'm just waiting to see if/when it gets approved.

The biggest lesson I've learned with the holidays and being away from family, friends and boyfriends; is to rely on the crew members that you work with and have built friendships with. They are all out there working too and understand exactly what you're going through. It's a very comforting feeling. Christmas was spent in Seattle after a 5:00 AM phone call from crew support to get sent there immediately. So my Christmas day started with a bang! Flew all day on Christmas day and went to the hotel, where the first officer from my flight also happened to be staying. When we got there my friend Scott (lived with him at the crashpad in Portland) also was stuck at the hotel from working! The hotel was doing a special Christmas dinner for us, so we all had dinner together and hung out the rest of the night. It was a great night!

Christmas Eve I was able to Skype with my family during dinner and get to have some time with them too. Really loving technology right now! I was able to make it to Utah a couple weeks ago to see my family and get some family portraits done.

Passengers have been very kind this week also with all kinds of delays and weird things associated with the holidays. In airports there were all kinds of activities going on to try to help passengers stay de-stressed. Seattle airport was my favorite! They had Christmas parades through the main food court complete with Santa, Frosty the snowman, guys on extended unicycles, a snow princess, a one-man-band, clowns handing out free drink coupons, and a mini remote controlled shark blimp floating through the airport. It was AWESOME! Kids were going crazy, and everyone else was smiling.

Oh the Adventures!

I've been flying for the last week or so, and it's been a blast! All kinds of new, challenging experiences and planes. Along with an unplanned road trip with Rick!

I had an overnight in Burbank, so Rick came to spend the day with me. I asked him if he wanted to hang out in Burbank for the rest of the day and I would come back and then we could drive to San Diego for my one day off before I went back up to Portland. One of my pilots heard us talking and was incredibly gracious and gave Rick his hotel room to hang out in for the next 5 hours while we were flying. After I got back, we drove to San Diego. 2 hours of 90's music, candy, and car dancing! I was so impressed with Rick and how flexible he was when I threw his schedule for a wild ride that day.

Monday morning I flew back to Portland to sit Reserve for 5 days. Right when I landed at 9 AM, I had been called for a trip. So I got ready at the airport and had some lunch. Then flew 7 trips on the EMB (little prop plane that sits 30 people) on Halloween! We had a few passengers that dressed up in costume and gave me candy on the planes, it was so much fun!

The night ended in Seattle for a short overnight (about 4-5 hours of sleep) and back to my little plane the next morning. So yesterday I had some interesting experiences, including having to take someone off the plane because she was "hung over" and throwing up regularly. It was the first time I had to do it, found it challenging to keep her from being upset as well as the other passengers that were now seeing their flight leave 20 minutes late. I'm glad I was able to do the right thing though.

Then my last two flights were on the Silver Bullet (as Skywest employees lovingly refer to it). It's a whole different configuration, one I had only seen pictures of. And of course it was a full house for my flights as I'm rushing around trying to remember where the heck everything was on the plane! I suddenly felt like it had been YEARS since training! I did manage to get everything under control and get everyone on the flights taken care of and we landed early both times!

What an adventure of a week! Now I'm in Portland on Reserve for three days, then this weekend, I'm flying trips out of LA to pick up time on my days off. I'm excited because I'm going to fly our biggest jets that I haven't ever gotten a chance to fly yet, here's to more experience!

Baby Salad!

Baby's first dinner out and what do all the aunts and uncle do to him?! Why throw him in a salad bowl on the table of course!

What a fantastic dinner, we all put in our useless two cents about what to name him too, and faught over who got to hold him, basically that kid is completely the center of attention at all times and we all make sure of it!

New Auntie Am!

I finally made it to Utah to be with this sweet little angel! Took me a couple days to make it, but I made it! Bidding and trading days paid off!