Sitting, unfortunately not on the dock of the bay...

Day 1 of 3 of the uncompensated reserve sit.
Flew a MYR turn and a MCO turn today with another one of ACY's super-nice Captains...I need to figure out how to get to Boston easily from here. If I can, after recall I want to be based up here.

Tomorrow I've been assigned a RSW turn...show time isn't until 1150, which is nice. No open time left for the 3rd, so I probably won't work unless someone calls in sick. So hopefully that means I can sleep in, go over to Smithville and pick up that stuffed white buffalo, go on down to Ocean City and go to one of our ground crew guy's shop that he owns with his wife and then head on over to the airport to catch a flight home.

I have to be out of my house on Sunday, which means Thursday is packing/throwing stuff out day, Friday/Saturday are moving days (hoping to get everything done Friday) and cleaning days to get the house ready.

Then I think I'm going to hang out in Daytona for a few days to help David pack up for his move, then go home to get my life in order. Hopefully get David to come back with me for a couple days. I want to spend every second I can with him before he leaves for "the north."

Other than that I need to get started on my CFI as soon as practicable and sit around and wait for a phone call from Spirit. Or news that they've closed shop, whichever comes first.

3 days down, I to go...

Back at the hotel after a long day of flying...numerous personal crises led to me not going to sleep until 11pm. Up at 4am, flew from 0600 to 1500, blah. I'm exhausted!!!

The trips were uneventful...best weather I've seen at MCO in a long time, but shittastic turbulence between SAV and ILM. Moderate chop from 240 up to around 380...so basically no escaping.

And to top it all off my flight home doesn't operate tomorrow, so I have to get on the last flight to FLL, then catch the last flight from FLL to MCO. I'll get home sometime around midnight. I really really hope I get a nap at some point tomorrow.

Just another day in NJ

Flew a FLL turn this morning with a nice captain. Actually, it was a good all-around crew. Some of the nicest F/As, too. It was pretty uneventful, which is how you typically want flights to go :) Good omen of the day: a cricket chilling out on our nose during the walk-around!! Got back around noon and have done....jack since then. Kind of depressing, not going to lie. I was going to go somewhere but I wasn't really feeling up to it. But on the plus side I did get a lot done on David's scarf, I'm finally on the last ball! My goal is to get it done before the end of the month. Then work on something for my sister's birthday.In the meantime I'm trying to watch a couple episodes of The Venture Bros. but the hotel internet goes from being perfectly normal to obscenely slow. The next 3 days entail the oh-so-exciting ACY-MYR-ACY-MCO-ACY...at least I'm back with Captain of the month, so I can relax a little and get back in a groove. I'm going to try and go to sleep now, but it's hard when it's still light outside.

It's not a huge conspiracy, just a little one.

It's interesting how much I've learned about the airline industry in these 6 months, even more interesting how much more there is to learn.

Here's how the chain of events is working right now:
Spirit decides to furlough 45 pilots starting 8/1, and another 80 starting 9/1 (including yours truly).
The initial furlough results in a huge amount of open time being available.
95% of the pilot base refuse to pick up said open time (5% remain whores!), since logic maintains that if you don't have enough pilots to cover all your time, maybe you should hire more!

I love how this works...hopefully it'll lead to us getting recalled sooner.

I heard a rumor that they're offering 400% pay to people who pick up open time; while I'd be tempted, I'd still be taking work away from furloughed pilots. Don't be a whore!

I'm in ACY now for a 4 day starting tomorrow morning. I traded my 30th for tomorrow so that another FO could go on a church trip. He's obnoxiously into religion but at least hasn't tried to "save" me yet, so I'll give him credit for that.

So I work tomorrow through the 18th (which happens to be my 25 birthday, yay me!), then the 23rd/24th and the 31st (which I'm going to try and get rid of). Thank goodness I have a lot of days off.

Which, speaking of, I need to do something nice for Dave. He's been putting up with so much lately, and he's been under a huge amount of stress, too, that I feel like I should do something for him. I mean, I bought him a card to send him tomorrow, but that's not really enough...must think of cute stuff to do for him. I'd get him a model kit he wants but the kid HAS everything he wants (well, that I can afford). Anyone have any ideas?

Too bad I can't find some super-rare Martin stuff in an antique shop - he'd love that.

I also need to find some time to go to Houston, while trying to find time to go to Tampa and pack up all my stuff in my room there to make room for all my stuff I'm moving from the Creek. Ah crazy time!!!

Yay I turn 25 on Monday!! Maybe I should contact ATC with "Good morning Washington Center, Spiritwings 347, level 360, and it's my birthday today!"

Finding it hard to write..

I really want to update this more, but find it hard to get motivated since I know I'm probably the only one reading it. I've found twitter is pretty easy for I guess what you could call mini-blogging. I try to post something with twitter when something interesting happens. I always intend to write an update about it at some point, but never do...

...mostly at the moment I'm having a hard time feeling anything but depressed, anxious or angry. My birthday is less than a week and I can't even get excited. All I think is "ok, wow, I finally can rent a cheap rental car, which'll help me save money this month." I have 7 more days of flying left this month, and all I want is to get a new job. Dave's leaving for Cape Air in October and I'm afraid I'll never see him again. I'm stressed out about moving out of the house. I can't even enjoy playing WiiSports right now. Having days off is great but I just feel like I'm in Dave's way, because he has work and things to do but I know he wants to hang out with me. I don't have a routine when I'm home and that bothers me. I feel like I need to get some sort of part time job so I have that to do on my days off, but what do I do? I want it to be something drama free (i.e. no retail, preferably no people at all) and something where I can set my own hours. Oh, and preferably make some extra cash.

basically I'm feeling very lost right now...like I'm drifting around with nothing to anchor myself to.

Here it goes again...

Starting September 1st I can truly call myself a real airline pilot...

...I'm getting furloughed!!

They say you're not an airline pilot until..

So it looks as if I'll be displaced to ACY starting August 1st as a result of the 45 furloughs that Spirit's enacting.

Unfortunately we already know there's going to be a 2nd, even larger furlough, we're just all sitting around waiting for it to happen, which is even more frustrating.

Got to fly to Montego Bay, Jamaica in the 321 the other day with an all-female crew! I've never seen so many terrified men in my life :P

Unfortunately we left at max ZFW which meant we had very, very little extra fuel. We basically left at the minimum required by law each time. We were so heavy in the 321 that the captain and I decided that the best course of action was to use TOGA power both takeoffs since we had very little available stopping distance. Those Jamaicans can pack!!

I've been on reserve all week, off duty finally tomorrow. I can't wait to get home and see David, I've seen him so little lately. I already got two trips for next week so that'll relieve some of my boredom!

Also, lines come out at noon tomorrow so I'll spend part of my afternoon trying to decipher that. See how it'll be in ACY! There's also been a phone message from the union saying that the company didn't include our 4 days off in between trips, so we'll see if that's still there tomorrow. Hopefully the union raises enough of a stink that we get our days off back! The majority of the pilot base commutes, we need those 4 days off!!

Tales from ATL

Had an interesting day in ATL the day before yesterday. Had a flight from MCO to ATL and got onto the arrival before having to hold due to wx over the airport. Finally got cleared in after about 20 minutes, if 10 more minutes had passed we would've had to divert to Columbia (what dispatcher didn't think we'd need holding fuel?).

In ATL the lovely ground crew disconnected our external power before the APU Gen was spooled. Fifi no like-y. So we were delayed as a result of having to let Fifi refigure out where she was.

Aaaaand then ATL decided to switch from the 9's to the 27's. Spirit 138, you're now 872nd in line for departure!! That was a 50 minute taxi right there :)

Working 6 days in a row this week. I'm tiiiiired.

Well crap...

I've been trying to keep this news from my parents, but it looks like, thanks to some blabbermouth in our airline that the news is out.

Crap.

Ok, I'm back

I've been slacking off on the blog for far too long.

A quick update on life, month by month:

January - my last month at ERAU. Spent studying for new hire class at Spirit and hanging out with friends. Stressing out with Dave over whether or not we'd be able to stay together through training (we're still together, thank goodness!). Left for Spirit at the end of the month.

February - Spent almost every waking moment either at new hire class or in the hotel studying for new hire class :) Every other moment usually involved beer. Class was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be, I really took to the Airbus well. I wasn't really updating through training because I was busy, depressed about not being at home, not really knowing what to update about, etc etc.

March - went through my new hire sims at Airbus in Miami. Didn't post then because I was really stressed out and angsty. My sims were all from 11pm-3am, the hotel was shitty and my sim partner pissed me off sometimes. But I did pass my type rating ride on March 7th and started IOE late March.

April - more IOE. Didn't post then because I was having a hard time on IOE, mostly with my approaches and landings. Had a hard time getting the sight picture down on final and it took me a while to get used to the weight and speed of what I was flying. But I finally got off IOE in mid April and started flying the line.

May - on the line, based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Basically hated being based there. I don't speak any Spanish so it was hard to communicate with people. They'd just pretend to not speak English, ugh. And my schedule was such that I lost a day off before and after each trip commuting to PR. I value my days off, they're the only time I get to see Dave or my family, I don't want to waste them flying to PR. So I bid for and received a base change to FLL. Which meant sitting reserve instead of being on the line.

June - currently I'm sitting on reserve. Yesterday I actually got a call for a Port-Au-Prince turn, but didn't get any work today. So I'm sitting around the crashpad (which thank goodness is awesome) and trying to keep myself from eating myself to death :) Which is why knitting is awesome.

So...I'm going to try and keep this updated more. I finally reached my dream of flying big sexy jets and get paid for them, so I should write about it!!