Tidbits and things.

I get bored at work occasionally, and I fill my time by writing future blog entries, or shopping lists, or to-do lists, or Christmas present lists, or lists of what I would do with the money if I won the Powerball. One of these days I'll take a picture for you of what my papers look like by the end of a trip. Sometimes (like the paper I'm typing from right now), I just have one big sheet; other times I have five different smaller ones covered in messy blue ink. I write upside down and sideways, to distinguish different trains of thought from each other. Many of my blog entries stem from these almost indecipherable handwritten pages.

I actually had an entry written and ready to type up that I could have posted on the 22nd, but I have a pattern going, and I knew which two entries I wanted next. (I don't know if you've noticed my pattern. It was unintentional at first, but once I noticed it, I had to keep it going.) Those two entries were also written up and ready to go, only I'd written them on my last trip and left them at home on my days off. They were quite long, and I liked the way I'd started them, so I just decided to wait instead of posting what I had and interrupting my pattern.

But now my pattern is filled in, and it's time for this random entry, filled of tidbits that I wrote on my last couple of trips. Welcome to the things that happen to me at work...

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You know when you can feel a hair tickling your skin in your cleavage but you're at work and there are passengers sitting right in front of you and you can't reach in and dig around to find it? Yeah, I hate that.

I like to try to sneak peaks of what passengers are reading. A sentence, an author, a chapter title. I don't know why, but I get a strange enjoyment from it.

I don't particularly love wine or beer, but serving them to other people and knowing I can't have any sure makes me want some.

It seems pretty common in the airline business for everyone to have certain airports they get stuck at more often than others. Mine are St. Cloud (which is sadly closing soon), Peoria, and just recently added, White Plains.

Usually flight crews make an effort of avoid airplane lavatories when at all possible. We had an hour delay the other morning, during which we were stuck on the airplane with no heat (just the crew, the passengers were luckily waiting warmly inside, though I'm sure they didn't think themselves lucky). We all had quite a bit of coffee. Despite all three of us having used to lav just before we started boarding, all three of us had to make the walk of shame all the way to the back of the airplane to use the lav during our reasonably short one hour and twelve minute flight. As a bonus, though, that meant I got to be in the flight deck twice during one flight!

Why do people insist on ignoring me? All day long. They pretend they can't see me, standing at the door as they board, or hear me tell them good morning. They stand up AS I'm saying the words, "The captain has turned the seatbelt sign on; please return to or remain in your seats and ensure that you seatbelt is securely fastened." They release their seatbelts as soon as they land, and ignore me asking them to keep them fastened until we're at the gate. (This is a particular pet peeve of mine, actually. Would you take off your seatbelt in your car just because you're in a traffic jam? No, because you're still driving. The aircraft is still active, there are still other vehicles and other planes around, we are not yet parked, so keep your effing seatbelt on. It's not going to help you if you stand up two seconds earlier; the door is still going to open at the same time, the jetbridge is still going to take two minutes to be lined up. So please, just hold your freaking horses.) They lean their seats back as soon as I sit down, despite the fact that I just asked them to please make sure their seat-backs were all the way up for takeoff and we haven't left the gate yet. They ignore the garbage bag that I walk down the aisle with, instead opting to leave their trash stuffed into the seat pocket. They even ignore my smile and wishes for a good day as they exit. Why? Why do people hate me? Why do people think they're so above me? People ignoring me so insistently day after day might be contributing to my dislike of people in general.

Whoever designed the brand-new Wendy's at the airport seems to have neglected the fact that it is not, in fact, a regular restaurant, but rather an airport location. People are in a hurry, cranky, and most importantly, loaded with baggage. But no, the restaurant has no extra room to order, no designated spot in which to wait for your order, not even an inch of extra space between tables in which to stash your multitude of bags. And yet, I cannot resist the siren call of that little ginger hamburger-pusher. I have a weakness for lettuce on my cheeseburger. Even in the morning I can't stay away; who can resist $2 biscuits and gravy?

I swear, people think I have a secret route through the cabin that they can't see. After everyone has stood up and is waiting to exit, someone in the front will ask me, "Can you get my bag for me? It's a couple of bins back." Well, sir, can you get your bag? "No, the aisle is full of people, I can't get through." ... Exactly.

Some guy left me his number on a post-it note on the back of his seat the other day. No name, just a tiny hot pink post-it that said, "Cindy, Call Me 555-555-5555" (except with an actual number). I don't recall anyone on that flight making an effort to flirt or get me to notice them, which means either A - I am oblivious, 2 - he (or she?) sucks at flirting, or C - s/he really didn't make any effort to be memorable. I don't even recall who was sitting in that seat, though my pilots were all for finding out. (Is it weird that, on every single trip, I call the pilots I'm flying with "my pilots"?) I assured them that was unnecessary and would probably upset my boyfriend, which led them down a whole new path of ridicule. For instance, they hypothesized that the mystery-number-leaver was like a secret shopper for boyfriends, hired by Eric to bait me, to see if I'd call, or to see if I'd tell him about getting a number from a stranger, or if I'd hide something like that. My pilots then decided that it didn't matter that I have a boyfriend, and they wanted me to call the guy, and/or to get even more numbers. They even offered, on subsequent flights, to announce that I was looking for phone numbers, and they scolded me for hiding in the galley during a delay, telling me I sure wouldn't be getting any numbers that way.

I would sigh and say, you see? You see the shit I have to put up with? But it was one of the funniest trips I've had in awhile. It's nice when you can actually talk and joke around with your pilots, even if you are the butt of many of the jokes.

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In other news, I have Christmas off! More on that later.