Breaking Necks and Cashing Checks

^^ My classmate from flight attendant training, Annie, once quoted that to me from I believe the comedic film Stepbrothers. It clearly amuses me, even having never actually seen the movie myself.

Today I took a big step in my quest to become a big kid. I paid the rest of the deposit on my four weeks in Deutschland. I also invested in another study guide, courtesy of my sister's generous Borders gift card from Christmas. Now I just have to put in the time to be a solid student for my first day of class, Monday, April 19!!

Seeing as I have the next five days off, I figured what better way to spend them than in Italy visiting my best friend! I'm booked on tomorrow night's flight to Milan and I'll be back Monday. This way she'll feel obligated to come visit me in Germany in a few month's time. Mwahaha.

Lofty Career Aspriations... auf Deutsch

As a reserve flight attendant, we normally only get ten days off a month. Which means you can block them together each month and take a week vacation every month, or a long weekend two or three times a month. Fabulous. Now, if you have vacation during the bid month, you have seven paid days off as well as an extra nine (somehow you always lose a day in bidding) from the line value! If you bid your vacation to be in two consecutive bid months - BAM! An entire four weeks off!

Therefore, this April into May, I will have a month off from work and guess where I'll be? Augsburg, Germany. Ich studiere Deutsch! I have the Rosetta Stone and a few grammar books to bump up the knowledge and I by no means expect to be able to pass the test when I get back to the states mid May. But I'll be that much closer to the speaker base and a line!

For those of you who know me and know when my birthday is - May 12 -I will be celebrating in Munich and you are all more than welcome to join me. May 13 is also a national holiday. Score. Clearly, I've recovered from my pity party yesterday :)

Pity Party

After some Facebook stalking, I have been forced to confront something that I usually choose to ignore: vast majority of my cyber "friends" are like, adults. It would appear to some (ME) that everyone is married or paired off and already has or is currently searching for a house. Like a real ring and a real home. I'm not even from the south or midwest or any of those crazy places where people get married to the first person that comes along, or where houses are close to being affordable.

Guess who's single and collecting minimum guarantee at her airline??? Cue violins.

And I know things won't always be this way. Someday someone WILL like it so much as to put a ring on it. That I'm pretty much going to get a raise every March until 2022, and will be able to buy my OWN house, down the shore of course.

Its just some days it feels like the race has begun and I'm still hanging around the starting line waiting for something to happen. Perhaps if I was a more patient person, it wouldn't be as painful. Or if I knew more people who lived at home. Even worse, if I could accept the things that I cannot change, and work towards changing the ones that I can.

What IS the worst thing that can happen on day 1 of a 4 day?

How about your suitcase can break and the zipper can decide it would like to no longer function?

So I came home from my very last trip as a fancy line holder - I had Frankfurt over New Years. I was on crew rest when the ball dropped in NYC, and we were still in the terminal when everyone was wishing each other a Frohes Neues Jahr in Deutschland. I landed Saturday and spent the rest of the night in my sweats, looking at a list of 25 open nta pairings thinking I was heading to Europe Sunday night. Wrong. I came downstairs at 9:30 and was enjoying my oatmeal, getting ready to start a cup of coffee when my phone rang - scheduling. Whah whah. I had a domestic (DOMESTIC???!!!) 3 day, 30 hours in Raleigh Durham that checked in in exactly three hours, leaving me 45 minutes to shower, blow out my hair, get dressed, packed and out the door. I didn't even bother to put my face on until 5 that night!

My first leg was deadhead to IAH, middle seat row 34. Awesome. I couldn't even pretend it was crew rest and take a nap! I ended up watching Love Happens and honestly, I wasn't impressed. There were two episodes of Big Bang Theory, and that made me happy. My fellow nta reserve and I had dinner in the crew caf, and eventually made our way to the gate. We get on the plane and right before boarding, she realizes that her suitcase won't zip back up. The zipper had completely dislodged from the zipping track and as we all know, suitcases are nothing like a jacket when you can go back to the bottom and start again. What to do??? So we grabbed a few seat belt extensions (obesity in America, it's an issue especially in a place like Texas... where everything really IS bigger!!) and secured them around the width using the handles. Luckily fellow reserve had a nice long black scarf/wrap and used that to seal the top and bottom closed. Had this been my roller, I would have been screwed because there's no handle on the bottom of my Travel Pro, that I've had since training. We made it to the hotel unscathed and off to the mall the next day. She bought a new roller; crisis averted. She said this was her third roller since she started flying; I'm getting ready to purchase a new tote and that will be my third tote bag. I'm thinking I can hold out till the summer when we really start flying again.

I got back to my domicile around 1:30 on day 3 and headed to my Grandmother's house unannounced. That's what happens when you give someone the key. She's not really doing better yet, and has another doctors appointment on the 12th. Talk about a Frohes Neues Jahr.