Sleepy in Kansas City.

It is 6:43, and I am about to go to bed. For the night.

Last night was game night. Fun was had, snacks were consumed and shared, I kicked ass at Carcassonne TWICE. I got home sometime around midnight and, thinking I was safe from being called to work today, stayed up and interneted for a bit. I think I went to bed around one or so.

Of course, scheduling calls me at six this morning with a trip.

I take it as a sign that I wasn't supposed to go shopping. I had some city cash for NY&C that expired today, and while I do need some long-sleeved shirts and sweaters, I do not need to spend money. So instead I'm making some.

I am unsure, however, if I am making sense, or being in any way coherent or interesting. So, to bed!

Alas, down pillows. I hate down pillows. But I do love down blankets, especially after a long, cold day on an airplane.

Topics.

Snow: Most mornings before I get out of bed, I check my email, facebook, and twitter on my phone. It helps me keep my eyes open between snoozes and convince myself it's time to get up. Yesterday, my facebook feed was full of "OMG SNOW!" I was like, come on guys, we live in Minnesota, you've never seen snow before? I know it's been a few months, but really.

And then I got out of bed and opened the blinds. And I was like, "OMG SNOW!"

Usually the first snow of the year is a dusting that melts within the day. It's a slow, gentle re-introduction to winter. This year, the first snow of the season was this:


OMG SNOW.

And then I spent the day driving around, running errands. The good news is I'm now adjusted to driving in snow, even fresh, thick, and unplowed. The bad news is, I was unprepared for the day...

Inappropriate footwear: I got called in to work on Friday for a quick Duluth turn. I got dressed, slipped on my flats, and headed out the door. I realized I should probably grab a jacket, assuming I wouldn't come home after work but probably go to Jess or Eric's place. Thank goodness the closest coat was a long winter jacket and not the spring coat I was thinking of grabbing.

After work I went to Eric's and ended up spending the night; his is the window I discovered the OMG SNOW from. I had clothes to wear, a winter coat, gloves.... and flats. Somewhere between six and 12 inches of heavy, thick, wet snow (perfect for snowballs!), and I had flats. DOOM.

I left Eric's and headed to Jess's, with whom I spent the day driving around town (part of the excessive errand running was to find me a pair of cheap winter boots; alas, to no avail!), slushing through parking lots, and generally getting my feet soaking wet. My shoes are rubber (they're crocs, actually, which is weird), so they weren't getting ruined, and they stayed pretty warm, but by the time we ended up back at Jess's house, my feet were sopping. It didn't stop at my feet, though...

My pants habits: I've had this habit of wearing flats during the winter for years now. I just love flats. Generally, given the choice of my shoe closet, I would have chosen boots for a day like yesterday. But on a day with no snow in the forecast, and all the previous snow shoveled out of the way, why not wear flats for a day? Days that seem okay for non-boots can quickly turn into boot-necessary days, though.

I lived alone one year during college, and developed a habit. I would say a bad habit, but I see nothing bad about it, myself. I would come home from class with my feet and half my pant legs soaking wet, and as soon as I closed the door, I would take off my pants. Sometimes I would put on different pants; more often I would just wrap up in a blanket sans pants. Flats make the pant situation even worse, with no boots to tuck pants into, and no height to keep pants from dragging through the melty slush. (WHAT?! What do you mean melty isn't a word? Damn you and your red squiggle! Firefox, we are in a fight.)

Yesterday I had buckets of wet snow and flats. By the time we got back to Jess's, I also had very, very wet pants. Naturally, I wanted to take them off. It's apparently considered inappropriate to walk around someone else's house pantsless, though. Luckily, I am an ever-prepared flight attendant, and I had a pair of pajama pants (well, knee-length shorts) in my trunk. They were the same shade of orange as my sweater. They looked especially great with my black thigh-high socks.

Cylons: I've recently (finally) started watching Battlestar Galactica. I... I kind of love it. What's especially funny, though, is that I've been watching it with Jess, her youngest brother (who's 15, I think?), and her dad. We watched three episodes yesterday after running errands. We watched all of it that was on the netflix disc, so her dad hooked his computer up to the tv so we could watch the next episode on instant. We're... pretty nerdy. Also, while watching BSG, Jess and I were knitting furiously. She made a set of wrist warmers. I am a significantly slower knitter than she is (though I am pretty speedy for being new, if I do say so myself), but I accomplished this:


It's double-knit, so the pattern is the same on the back, but in opposite colors. Like so,



See that weird white thing in the upper left corner of the picture? That's my best friend space heater.

My fingers hurt.

Guys, I am really good at knitting. I may not be as fast as Jess (yet), but I can make patterns, and I can double-knit, and my stitches are really even. Now I just have to learn to make something that's not a scarf. Hm.

Coming tomorrow: snow, cylons, my pants habits, inappropriate footwear, and more!

Watch out, y'all.

Between staying in Dallas last night, flying with a Memphis crew for two days, and watching the CMAs, my drawl is in full force today.

Reserve

I'm on reserve this month. Now, I can't complain too much, because I bid to be on reserve instead of getting a line like normal. But... it's different. Interesting.

Pilots have specific reserve periods: am reserve, pm reserve, and high speed reserve. They are only contactable during certain times each day. Flight attendants are, apparently, not so important, so we are contactable 24 hours a day when we are on reserve.

I still have so many days off every month, so I know which days I'm at risk of being called and which days I'm free to go about my business, but on the on days, they could call me anytime from 4am to midnight. It makes life a bit difficult.

One of the requirements of my job is that I do not drink within 12 hours of starting a shift. Since we're on call 24 hours a day on reserve, this means that I can only drink before noon on a day off right before a reserve day. (I say they can call at 4am because Crew Scheduling is usually closed between midnight and 4. If there are delays or cancellations of some sort of shenanigans, though, they could technically call me at 1 in the morning. It's just not very likely. But it does mean that since I go on call at midnight, I do have to stop drinking at noon.) I generally am not up before noon. This means that I generally don't drink much when I'm on reserve.

I am on call Monday through Friday this week. I did not get called Monday or Tuesday; it was like having a couple of extra days off, with the only difference being I was checking my phone obsessively. Wait, scratch that; I'm pretty sure I do that anyway. This morning, though, I got a call at 10.30 saying they needed me at the airport at 12.15 for a flight to Dallas.

Here's the best part: the flight to DFW was my only flight today. We got in just before 4, and we don't work again until 5.35 in the morning. My overnight was scheduled at 13 hours and 26 minutes. That means there was one hour and 26 minutes available for drinking.

Now, I feel I should note that I am not actually a big drinker, not as much as this post makes it sound like I am. But when you are on reserve and you literally don't even have the OPTION of cracking open a beer, well, that's when you want one more than you've ever wanted one before.

So this afternoon I got into Dallas, changed clothes, and came back downstairs to have a couple of beers and some food with one of the pilots.

Ironic, that I had to wait until I was at work in order to have a drink.

Game night

Tonight I got trounced at Carcassonne (a very nerdy and awesome game we play often). I'm talking, I didn't even hit a hundred points, and SOME PEOPLE had over 250. TROUNCED.

(trounce - verb. 1. to beat severely; thrash. 2. to punish. 3. to defeat decisively.)

I was surrounded by friends, and cats. We had a delicious dinner, sweets for dessert, and water to drink. It was a night of good, clean, nerdy fun (punctuated by my swearing, fine). I couldn't tell you when I got this nerdy, or this sober, or grown-up enough to be having hosted game nights at a couple's apartment, but let me tell you, I love it.

Despite being defeated decisively, I could not have imagined a better way to spend my evening.

I just am so happy with life right now. And I thought you should know.

Confession.

I have a huge sweet tooth. Cupcakes, muffins, candy, fruit, cookies, ice cream. I don't actually eat candy bars very often, though, mostly because there's something else I prefer.

Sometimes I eat sprinkles right out of the container.

Irrational fear #1: dinosaurs.

When I was four, we took a trip to the Witte Museum in San Antonio, where we lived at the time. They had (actually, have, still to this day) an exhibit called Dinosaurs Unearthed. It's a whole big display with plants, environments, and full-size dinosaur models. I was wandering along with my family, staring up at the huge dinosaurs from my tiny four-year-old vantage point, having a grand old time. I'm staring up at one of them -- a gentle brontosaurus, of all things -- when all of a sudden, it swiveled its long, life-sized neck, looked directly at me, and ROARED.

I climbed my mom.

I think that's probably when my fear of dinosaurs began.

When I was, I don't know, eight? Nine, maybe ten? Anyway, some time after we had moved back to Minnesota, my sister and I sat down after school one day and watched Jurassic Park. I had a little puppet on a stick, like this guy:

Mine was a white cat. You could make it turn around, or hide inside its little cone. For some reason, I had this with me while we watched the movie. I don't remember much of the movie (I've watched it since, and I still couldn't give you a good plot summary, and I definitely couldn't tell you how it ends; I think I block these things out), but I do remember what I was doing during the movie: peeking out from behind my cat, who I used to translate my fear. I made the cat stop watching during all the scary parts. I'd twist it away from the screen, or if things got really intense, make it hide in its cone, maybe let it peek out of the top a little. I spent most of the movie curled up tight to myself in my chair, peeking around my poor, terrified puppet. To this day, I can't watch Jurassic Park without getting ridiculously tense, and maybe hiding behind my hands a little.

There's a ride in one of the parks in Orlando called DINOSAUR. Even the name is intense. When we took our family vacation to the parks a couple of Augusts ago, Pam decided I needed to ride this terrifying contraption. (Actually, I had been on the ride a few years earlier, when I was in Orlando for orchestra tour, and I loved it. My dinosaur fear must have been in regression in high school.) The picture that resulted from the ride was so hilarious, we had to buy it. I wish you could see it better, but here you have it.

Let's discuss it a bit, shall we?

First, let me tell you that the picture is taken when some sort of raptor or something pops out of nowhere and roars. We think a better place to take it would be at the end of the ride, when a terrifying T-rex swoops down from above and threatens to eat everyone. Then everyone would have looks of terror and surprise. It's a little more hilarious this way, though, when I'm involved.

Note the kids in the back row, who are impressed, awed, and downright delighted.
The middle row has a small child who is hiding, but I think we'll give him a pass; he's young, after all.
The front row is Pam, me, and our dad. Pam and Dad look.... mildly interested. "Oh, look at that. A dinosaur. Huh." I am smiling, but also cowering. This was not a fake pose I thought would be funny; I didn't even know this is where the picture takes. I was actually trying to hide from the dinosaur, because dinosaurs, you see, are terrifying. (The ride is actually awesome, and Pam and I even went on it a second time. It's like scary movies: it made me tense, even as I enjoyed it.)

The moral of the story is, while I may occasionally enjoy them, I am irrationally afraid of dinosaurs. Now you know.

Oh, the horror!

Eric's friend Ed was in town this weekend for some sort of horror convention. There were movies with Q&A sessions, bands, costume contests, all sorts of horrifying activities going on. Ed is, apparently, a huge horror fan.

I saw The Ring in high school, and it scared the shit out of me; I loved it. I've never been a huge horror fan, though. If I get to pick the movie, I can almost guarantee it's going to be a chick flick, maybe a comedy. Action, drama, sure, I guess those are fine occasionally. But horror was never even really on my list.

Then I spent some years with D, who was a horror freak. Zombies in particular, but any sort of horror was at the top of his movie list. I started getting used to watching it, maybe enjoying it. I even requested horror movies a couple of times.

Then I spent some time with no one (and obviously you can't watch horror movies by yourself), and now Eric, who is not a big horror fan. I can't even remember the last horror movie I watched. I am no longer desensitized to the scary.

Tonight, Eric and I were trying to figure out what to watch. The movie he wanted wasn't on netflix instant, we weren't thrilled with any of the options of actual available dvds, so we turned to his dvr. We settled on Walking Dead, the new series on AMC about zombies. About, oh, fifteen minutes in, I realized I was clenching every muscle I have. At the 30-minute mark of the hour and a half long show, I actually said, "Augh, there's still another hour of TENSE!"

See, I do actually like horror movies/shows, I just get so tense. I need to be clutching something: an arm, a blanket, a cat, a pillow. And maybe every once in a while just remind myself to relax. Watching a tv show was good for that; I could unclench during the commercials. Which, by the way, led back into the show with a warning that the following program could be TOO INTENSE for some people. (Does clenching everything you have during a scary movie count as a workout? I think it should.)

The show was good, though, and I actually look forward to watching more of it. Perhaps I need to start watching more horror in general so I once again get desensitized to it. Although, desensitized or not, I'm pretty sure I'll be screwed when the zombie apocalypse comes; I'm so not a survivor girl. Except that I did notice all the stupid mistakes the main guy made in the show, so maybe I'd have a fighting chance. Here's a hint: if there are broken down cars crammed on the road OUT of a big city during a zombie apocalypse, and the roads in are clear as a bell, you SHOULD NOT GO INTO THAT CITY.

But I digress.

The scariest movie of all time, in case you were wondering, is Jurassic Park.

Temperature regulation.

I don't know if this a problem all men have, or if I'm just lucky in my encounters lately, but it seems to me as though men have no concept of temperature regulation.

Eric's heating and a/c settings in his car are always either off or on high. "Oh," he thinks, "I'm cold." He blasts the heat. "Oh," he thinks, "it got hot." He turns the heat off. He never turns it DOWN. Just off.

I'm on a plane, and it's freezing in the cabin, so I call my pilots and ask them to turn the heat up. They oblige. Since I told them it's freezing, they blast the heat, for which I am grateful. Twenty minutes later, people are getting a little too warm, so I call the flight deck back and say hey it got warm, thank you, can you turn it down a little now? And they turn the heat off. Um, guys? We're still in a metal tube at 30,000 feet. You turn the heat OFF, and it's going to get cold again. This has been happening to me on every trip lately. "Hey guys, it's getting a little warm in the back now that people are boarding, but it's still cold in the front with the door open." Heat off. Um.. guys? I can't feel my toes.

Eric has the bonus problem of not recognizing when it's stifling hot in his apartment. All summer long, I'd show up, and go immediately to the door to get some fresh air in the place. I'm usually colder than most people around me, but I'm coming to learn that if most people are comfortable, Eric is apparently freezing. A few days ago, we had some weather in the area, namely a pressure system above us that was the same as a category 3 hurricane, and thus it was a bit windy. He doesn't have a cover for his a/c unit, so wind was charging through and making his apartment legitimately cold. We were buried in blankets, cowering from the wind. We determined that heat was necessary in this case. (Also, we rigged up a pretty sweet temporary cover out of a fitted sheet.)

Yesterday I show up, and it's a little warm, but I don't think much of it. He had the door to his room closed, but again, I don't think much of it. When it is eventually time for sleeping, I head into his bedroom, and am immediately stifling. Having previously been asleep on the couch, I don't have the available faculties to problem solve the heat, so I lay down and attempt to fall back to sleep. After about ten minutes, I cannot ignore how hot I am. I get up to check the thermostat, and he has it set at EIGHTY DEGREES. Eighty.

So I turn the heat off.

This morning we wake up, and it is freezing. "In hindsight, I should have probably just turned the heat down instead of off. I took your extreme approach." Turns out, the balcony door was cracked open, so not only was the heat off, but the outside was also getting in. We close the door, turn the heat back on (at a reasonable temperature), and all is well.

But I have to wonder why the door was open. Could it be that he realized it was too hot, and decided to let in some fresh air? Maybe he's learning. I, however, may be regressing.


Edited to add: Eric's friend Ed is in town this weekend, crashing at his place. This morning, when Eric and I were freezing, Ed was perfectly comfortable. "Guys, it's not even cold." What does it all mean?