The week through my camera
Flew a 2 day trip this past week. One leg to LAS (Las Vegas) and layover for 19 hours. Then DEN-ORD-IAD (Denver-Chicago-Washington Dulles). Had a fun crew, and laidover with Elvira and Larry. We decided to go out, grab something to eat, and look around. We started at the new Steve Wynn hotel, called Encore. Ehhh..it was nothing to look at, really. Just a big hotel with a casino. Astroturf in the gardens. Kinda boring. Didn't even take any pictures of it!Pictures of our walk....
Treasure Island Hotel
We walked through the Encore, and made our way to Las Vegas Blvd, and saw the Mirage, where Terry Fator was starring. If I didn't have to be up so early the next day, I would have tried to get a ticket to see his show.
In addition to Terry Fator, Cirque du Soleil's Love, which celebrates the music of the Beatles, is playing at the Mirage.
The Playboy store
This is a sports memorabilia shop. Disgraced baseball great Pete Rose apparently signs autographs here a few days a week.
What an embarrassment! Instead of being a Hall of Famer, he schleps his signature now....
Cleopatra and Caesar inside the casino
The next morning, the shuttle to the airport picked us up and 0440. And, we headed to DEN. Had a 22 year old kid pass out when he stood up on our plane. Just fainted in the aisle. We gave him some oxygen and I asked if he had been out late partying--and he said yes. And that he had a lot to drink. A few whiffs of stale O2 and he was good as new!
I love flying out West because the geography just looks sooo different than the East Coast. Here are some pics of the Rocky Mountains.
Yesterday, I had a day trip. We flew Washington-Hartford-Washington-Raleigh-Washington. We flew over the New York City area, and you could see Manhattan.
That's it---right above the engine....
Here it is...the long horizontal rectangle is Central Park.
Tonight, some friends from my old airline are laying over here in Washington, and we are all going out to dinner tonight. Tomorrow, I start five days of Reserve, so who knows where I'll celebrate new Year's Eve. More than likely, I will be in bed, fast a sleep, at the stroke of midnight! So, until the next post, Happy New Year!
Casey's flight to Chicago
I just finished a 2 day trip with a long, 19 hour Las Vegas layover, followed by a very long day today. I'll post about that when I am not so exhausted. In the meantime, my daughter Casey will be my "guest blogger" via an e-mail she sent me.She flew on Southwest (yes, on a real, paid ticket! Something airline kids aren't really used to!) She is in Illinois to visit her boyfriend's family. You may also recall that she recently turned 21...
Hey Mom!
I just wanted to let you know about the crew working on our flight to Midway. Very nice people! While she was collecting trash, I handed Kathy* two gossip magazines and told her thank you for working during the holiday. We chit-chatted about nasty weather, crabby people, etc. John greeted me as I came on the plane, I told him thanks for working on the day after Christmas. He told me later that he volunteered to work, which was rather nice. Kris was a sweet heart, we exchanged stories of "That's not water on the bathroom floor" and laughed our butts off. Kathy was very generous, she offered me a coffee with baileys-and brought me two minis. I definitely pocketed the second single.. hey! I think its better on the rocks!
Let me tell you about our day! Good grief! Matt and I arrived at the airport at 6:05 am for a 7:30 flight (which is plenty of time for our little airport) but the Southwest line was snaked around the terminal all the way past United and down to Northwest. Luckily people knew what they were doing and we had our bags checked by 6:40.. hey it's winter time... my clothes aren't as thin as summer clothes or else I would have had two carry ons. We get to our concourse, grab a bagel and wait a few mins. The overhead announcement came on and there is freezing rain in chi-town we'll get going asap. In fact, MIDWAY was closed.. people couldnt get to work because of the frozen roads. TWO HOURS LATER we finally board. and already Matt is crabby and I'm like whatever... please. Fly standby from Paris and miss 6 flights and get stuck in Boston then you have permission to be crabby!
So, we get flying, yay! We pass Columbus, Ohio, and not too long later the Captain comes on. There is a broken plane on the runway at Midway, it apparently skidded on the runway, and into a snow bank (??) So, we turn around and diverted to Columbus, and land. We arrive at a gate and we're told to deplane so the gate can be cleared for another plane. Well, as we start to deplane, there is a change of plans and "everybody get back in your seats we're heading to Midway." We finally arrived in Chicago at 1pm. I wished farewell to the crew and prayed that they don't come across nasty customers!! As we walk through the terminal, I hear the announcment for the 9:15 flight to vegas to make way to the gate. FOUR hours late! holy crap!!!! I'm glad I was the delay instead of waiting because of a delay!!!
Anyway, I wanted to let you know how our day was--and tell you how awesome the flight crew was! I'll call you later! Love you, Merry Christmas and thank you, Mom for free Baileys!!!!!
*names changed
So, a big thank you to the Southwest crew for being so sweet to my daughter!
May I bring you a drink?
On our flight from Washington to Denver on Thursday, John and I were working the beverage cart. It was fairly uneventful, like most days. Smile, ask, napkin, cup, ice, can, pass it, and smile again is normally how I do it for every passenger."May I bring you a drink?" I asked the lady in 18B? Barely lifting her head from her book to look at my apparently hideous face, she mumbles, "Seven-Up." Apologetically, I respond with "I'm sorry, we don't carry Seven Up, how about a Sprite?"
Well, OH MY GAWD! With her slightly lifted head out of her book, her scrunched face said it all: Sprite?? Are you kidding me? SPRITE?? It was if I was telling her she had to drink octopus blood mixed with the saliva of the guy in front of her, and brewed into a tea of sewage!
Her nose turned up at me, and her expression immediately changed to scorn, then pure hate. The look on her face dressed me down as if I were evil incarnate. How dare I offer a Sprite and not a Seven-Up! How bold of me, the apparent all-powerful person at my airline that chooses the beverages, not to select her precious Seven-Up?!
Lady, please! Chill out! I am not the "deciderer" of soda pop on the airplane! My airline chooses Coca-Cola products, not me. In my world, the only thing I can decide is a cup or a can. Seriously. And how much ice goes into your cup. That's about it. Oh, and how to get you out of a fuel-fed fire onboard an airplane. But, really, other than that, I have about as much power as a 9-volt battery.
After apologizing and telling her I don't have her beverage of choice, I can see her disdain when she brushes me aside with a look of scorn. No longer willing to look into my repugnant eyes, she barely mutters, "water". I pour her a glass of water, and hand it to her. Of course, she will not allow herself to take it from my gruesome hand, and I lean waaa-ay over to place it on her tray table.
Pulling myself together, we move the cart along to the next row. "Would you like a drink?" I ask the man in 19A? With a nod, he responds "Pepsi, please."
Sunrise from my office
I just love the colors of a new day! These were taken through the little three-inch window in the door in the back of our plane--we were somewhere over the Midwest yesterday.
Workin' on my bid...
Every month, all over the world, you can hear a Flight Attendant say, "I'm workin' on my bid." You see her with her reading glasses on, a big stack of 8.5 x 11 paper with funny looking schedules on it. You see her on the jumpseat scrutinizing every single aspect of these papers. You see her make a big circle on some parts of the papers, and big, ugly, extra thick Xs on others. This is as she should--this is important stuff! It defines her days off, what time she goes to work, what time she gets off work, and where she'll lay her purdy lil' head at night when she is working. In short, it is her life for the next month.And, her life is done by bidding and bidding is done by seniority--so, the longer she has been at Flyin' High Airlines, the better choices she will have for her upcoming
There are a gazillion different reasons why a Flight Attendant bids what she bids. Each of us has our unique needs and desires for our work schedule. At my previous airline, I commuted from Washington, DC to Chicago to go to and from work. (Commuting is like driving once a week to get to your job, and driving home once a week, except you fly. Sorta....)
So, when I "bid" for my schedule for the following month, I would bid for a work week that started late enough on the first day so I would have enough time to fly to work that morning, and ended on the last day early enough so I could make a flight home. For instance, maybe the first day of my work week started at 11 a.m. Then, I would take an early morning flight to Chicago to get to work. Then maybe the last day of my work week ended at 3 p.m. Then, I would have enough time and flight options to get home that night. So, bidding a line that was commutable was the most important thing to me. People that live in their base city don't have to worry about that.
The next most important thing to me was the location and length of time for our layovers. I loved our layovers in Cleveland--they were long enough to have fun, and a lot of airline crews stayed at our hotel, so you always had something in common with the person sitting next to you at the bar. Or, there was a mall across the street, or the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame was walking distance. Or the Warehouse District. Or the Browns Stadium. There was just stuff to do that was easy to get to. Other people might bid away from this layover because the hotel needed to be renovated and the mattresses were terrible. Or, it was right on Lake Erie and freezing in the winter. Or, they liked working on one of our airplanes that didn't go there.
Others bid for layovers in their home city. I used to pick up trips that overnighted here in Washington. If I was lucky, I would get the trip that landed at DCA at 9:00 a.m. and go home until 6 a.m. the next morning. Of course, there is a price to pay when you have a sweet easy layover, like this one. To be done working at 9:00 in the morning, that meant my first flight was at 4:40 a.m. and meant I left the hotel at 3:40 a.m., which meant I got out of bed at 2:30 in the morning! Then, the next day starts at 6 a.m. and we would fly until 7 p.m. with very little down time.
Some people like to work nights and don't like working early in the day. I prefer it. Well, I don't like setting my clock for the wee hours of the morning, but it is a small price to pay to be done early and experience fewer delays. Having fewer delays means not having to explain 50 times that "I don't know if your plane will be there when we arrive." Delays creep...they start as a few minutes and build up to hours by the end of the day. No, thank you. I want to be done already.
I am so junior at my airline now (and will be--forever!) that I bid for days on and off. Where I end up on a layover, and what time I end up there, is completely in
I just finished my bid for January. Our Flight Attendant calendars are 30 days long, so New Year's Eve is in January for us. Many senior Flight Attendants will be bidding for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day off. Personally, that holiday is no big deal--so, I don't care whether I work or not. I am trying to be home January 19th & 20th. My daughter Casey may be working as a banquet server at one of the Inaugural Balls, so I hope to be here for her.
You'd think that a Monday and Tuesday would be easy to have off. Not so fast--that Monday is a federal holiday (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) and the next day is a local federal holiday--inauguration day. Couple that with a Saturday and Sunday, and end up with a four day getaway for someone.
Hopefully, me!
Port-a-Potty Update!
The National Park Service was in the news last night. Apparently, someone else, besides me, IS worried about the number of Port-a-Potties that will be needed for the Obama inauguration. (I can hear you breathing a sigh of relief!)WJLA had a report on the 5 p.m. news last night about this very issue. They called it the "Super Bowl for Portable Toilet Providers". Seems the National Park Service usually tries to have one portable toilet for every three hundred people.
Okay, let's do the math: five million people, one toilet for every three hundred people...wait, let me get my calculator.... (There's a reason why I'm a Flight Attendant!)
I come up with 16,666 portable toilets!
Since I live in Alexandria, which is south of Washington, DC, I hope the wind is blowing north on Inauguration Day!
These are a few of my favorite things...
Last night, I decorated our Christmas tree. It's not Norm's thing, but he did put the tree up, and offered to help with the lights. (And, he "ooohed" and "aaahhhed" at all the right times!)Among our boxes of Christmas decorations, I was able to take a short walk down Memory Lane. Thought I'd take you along with me, and share a few of my favorite things....
When I'm traveling and having a great time, I like to bring back tchotchkes as a reminder. Most of the time, I like to find inexpensive key rings and take off the ring part, and turn it into a Christmas ornament. The best are from my family, friends and travels.
One of my treasured memories--a cruise to Mexico with my sister, Donna--where I picked up this little sandal key chain.
This miniature Nativity set I picked up at Feria Artesanal de la Recoleta when Shelby and I went to Buenos Aires.
This pear was part of the wrapping of a gift from my sister Julie, years ago. This is particularly special to me because she has chosen to distance herself from some of our family, and it is the only time I allow myself to "go there." It really is sad. She is missed.
The first Christmas Norm and I were together, he gave me these Hallmark "kissy bears" that have magnets in their lips. I wuv them!!
This is one of a set of four Waterford ornaments Shelby searched Ireland high and low for me. (They had to be purchased in Ireland--they could not be purchased online. That she had to hunt them down for me, makes 'em all the more special!)
Little wooden shoes from Holland.
Eiffel Tower--formerly a key chain.
Shell star from (fill in the name of any Caribbean island, I forget...)
Diving Santa from Grand Cayman island.
These little stuffed animals are from Mela, an amazing Indian restaurant in Central London. It was my first time in London, and Norm and I ordered all kinds of food and drink--it was also my first time eating Indian food, and I had the best time with his (now our) London friend, Danny.
Anyone that knew my Mom, knows the significance of this ornament from my oldest daughter, Jennifer. Long before she got sick and died, my Mom made Raggedy Anns and Andys for the children in our family--she made a lot of them!
My Baby Boy, Chase made this "paper mache" ornament for me in elementary school. My "Baby Boy" is now in college!
A new favorite ornament--daughter Casey gave this to me a couple of weeks ago--just because! She said it was beautiful and it reminded her of me....awwwwww!!
My Christmas tree is full of so many memories for me--but, I'm careful to leave room for more! (There's always room for more!!)
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