February 27 - First Non-Work Trip!!

I came back to Boston a day early so my friend, Katie, and I could go to New York City for the night.  She had a friend whose band was playing there, so we went to see him play.  We got a place to stay on airbandb.com.  So excited to take our first non-work trip!!! 

If I were to summarize the night it’d go like this:

“Got searched at the airport, met a guy in a fox jacket, saw a concert, took fireball shots, ate subway, was taken to a back alley to use the restroom, dug through the garbage for my lost earing, drank Demon’s Water, then jumped out of a cab without paying…”  fortunately, we survived.

Here’s the detail:

We flew over, not in uniform (my idea) and were both stopped at security.  Katie left a water bottle in her bag.  I had a giant sized hair spray – it had to be pulled/trashed and then my bag re-scanned.  Then, the buttons on my pockets set off the metal detector so I had to be patted down.  Katie opted out of the metal detectors, so had to go through a full pat down.  Lol.  Def going to wear uniforms next time!

In JFK, we caught the train, rode an hour and got to our room in East Side.  Picked up the key from a deli across the street, grab some liquor and walk to our pad.  When we couldn’t get the door open, a guy with a feather in his ear opens it for us, “Hi!  You must be staying in the other room.”  We have one room in a two bedroom apartment.  I knew it was awesome when one of the two guys staying at the pad walked out in a jacket shaped like a fox.  Seriously.

I haven’t been dressed up to go out in so long, it was fun getting ready!  We wanted to go shopping and stuff beforehand, but ran out of time.

The concert was good.  The band played really well and we met a few weirdo’s in the crowd.  We chatted with Katie’s friends for a bit after the concert, then bounced around from bar to bar, having drinks, talking with people and enjoying ourselves. 

At the end of the night, we were both feeling pretty good and decided to hope in a cab back to our sleeping place.  Unfortunately for the driver, we pulled up our address on the GPS.  “Sir, you’re passing the street.  Ok, you can turn at this next one.  Turn!  You’re passing it again, turn!”  Our fare went from $4 to $7.50 and I started yelling at the guy, “we’re getting out of this taxi, you’re trying to rip us off. I told you to turn and you didn’t.  You’re driving way past our place!”  About then, I see a flash.  Apparently, he had a camera in the back.  Not sure the point of that, but we jumped out anyways.  And This is why I hate cabs.

When we made it back to the airport the next day, we both took a sign of relief…. And then laughed because we both felt the same way “ahhh, safe at home”.

As we boarded the plane, it started to snow.

 

February 21 - Staying awake for over 30 hours

I was on home reserve today, from 12 to 12.  For some reason I woke up at 8:30 and started trying to be productive for the day.    As someone on reserve, you just can’t help but to watch the OpenTime board and the Reserve Grid all day, checking it every few minutes. 

The OpenTime Board:    It tells you what trips are available to be assigned to a person on Reserve.  Things go into “Open Time” if someone calls in sick or drops the trip.

The Reserve Grid:  Tells you how many people are available on reserve for the day, how many days they’re available for, and what order they will be called.  Most of us think the assignments are completely arbitrary, but the assignments are Supposed to go in order of the grid.

I’m still not sure what I did all day.  I probably could’ve completed an entire tax return during the day, but somehow I managed not to.  I tried to take a nap around 4:30 because at this point in the day, if you haven’t been called, it’s pretty guaranteed that you’re going to get a red eye turn – either San Juan, Santo Domingo, or Santiago.    I layed down for an hour.  At 6:30 I got a call from scheduling that I was being put on Airport standby at 8:30pm.  Great. 

Once at airport standby, I tried sleeping, just in case.  All of the ASB people jump when a cell phone rings.    A trip popped into open time.  San Juan red eye.  Me and another girl knew one of us would be called for it so we both sat there hoping it wouldn’t be us.  Guess, what, I got the stupid trip.

I’d been up since 8:30 am and wouldn’t be back to Boston until 10am the following morning.  My crew was awesome.  The girls were really sweet and nice to talk with.  When we got to SJU, I was in a haze from being tired.  I thought about calling out Fatigue, but I didn’t want to cancel the flight for the passengers.  Then once we got all of the passengers on board, we were delayed for take-off.  I started to cry in the back and took off my eye glasses when one of the lenses popped out!  Agh, seriously can this day get any worse!!

We got back to Boston around 10 and I headed back to my crashpad.  I didn’t want to take a nap because I was hoping if I stayed up all day that it would help me get back on a normal sleeping schedule.  Jennifer and I went to the farmers market, which was Amazing!  I need to be more prepared next time so I know what I need to buy.  

Feb 19

Had a fun night in Orlando.  We had game night at our house and a bunch of people came over.  We played Quelf.  It was interesting.  Here are a few clips from our night.

Two people had to use their left hands and draw a rhino and an elephant arm wrestling ... who's is better?

Best argument ever.

February 13-14

Another crazy day on reserve.  There's more winter storms, so all of the crashpad roomies were home today.  It was so much fun having everyone there!!  In the morning, we all went to breakfast at Donna's.  The snow is a little crazy, but it makes it even more snugly to be home.

In the evening, we sat in the living room while I flat ironed one of the girls hair and everyone watched "Walking Dead".  I had to put headphones in because I get too scared!  It felt like a big sleep over, I love it.

The great thing about this trip is that it put me into Orlando on Valentines Day :).  We got into Orlando at midnight on Valentines, but Justin was so sweet, he came to the hotel anyways.  He brought wine and some snacks.  The pilots and other flight attendant helped me make a V-Day basket for him too haha.  It was a little ghetto, but I wasn't prepared!  We stayed up for a little bit having wine and talking, but it was a short layover, so we couldn't do too much else.

I used a heart box from some chocolates a customer gave us and packed it with all kinds of goodies from the plane and a men's magazine I found.  I thought I took a picture of it, but I guess this is all I have.

Justin's mom bought me a really nice red lip stick.  I like wearing red with my uniform.  Lipstick is the one thing we can change up, so it's fun to have 100 sticks of different shades.

(me with the lipstick)

View from my hotel on the evening of the 15.  I think this was Buffalo.  I also found a favorite new drink at the bar in Buffalo - a Pineapple Upside down Cake martini.  Mmmmm.

February 9 - Day drinking

Well I spent the day pretty hung over.  However, that didn't stop us from going to my friends house for brunch and lots and lots of drinks.  We hung out all day and I was worried it'd be a little awkward because Steve didn't know anyone, but it was a BLAST.

We ate amazing food.  Polished off more drinks than I can count and played lots of games, sang karaoke, danced and had a just plain good ol' time :-)  I took video's but I Swore not to share any of them.  Stinks for you guys.  **So Funny**

Afterwards, we planned to go out to the gay club, but Steve and I never made it back.  Instead, I took him to my favorite place for some pizza.  Steve fell in love too.  AND our bar tender gave me a huge tub of blue cheese for my pizza.  Winning!!!

February 8 - Uh, what happened last night??

Cara had to go out of town, so Steve rented a bed in a hostel for the night.  I got dressed up and we went out on the town... in typical Steve and Danielle fashion, the night was... memorably forgettable.  lol  I'll summarize.

- Ate dinner and had drinks at Cheers in Quincy Market while watching Olympic opening ceremonies.  

- We bar hopped

- Lots of shots

- Picked up an English chick (stage 5 clinger)

- Made friends with everyone at every bar.  Got phone numbers for a lot of them and were texting all night "Where are you?"  "We're here!  Come!"

- Steve and I told everyone we were brother and sister to help his game.  It didn't work.

- More shots

- Steve left me standing in a corner because I was "a cock block"

- I pulled a bag of Gold Fish and water out of my purse and started eating contently while I stood alone watching Steve go here and there pursuing girls.

- I shared my Golf Fish with a random stranger (don't worry mom, I poured them into his hand)

- Steve left to go to a different bar.  Got kicked out.

- He came back to our bar.  Got us both kicked out.

- We went back to a bar we were at previously, but they weren't serving alcohol anymore. 

- Ordered redbulls.  Pulled a flask from my bag and made our own drinks.  Steve turned down his.

- Fell in the snow

- Yelled at a taxi driver

- Snuck into Steve's hostel, found an empty bed and curled up to sleep fully clothed, shoes and all... without paying.  Steve covered me with a blanket against my will and forced me to take my shoes off.

I don't think the people in my room were very happy with us, because at 6am these freaking Asian kids were SO LOUD!

Cheers!

Bar 2

Vodka Redbull anyone??

Who needs drinks... Vodka redbull shots!!

Bar 4 - "Um, do you have whipped cream for my jello shot".  "Steve, if you wanna talk to that cute girl, buy an extra shot and tell her your sister (me) didn't want it so she has to take it with you".  Girl hands it to her  guy friend to take.  Fail.

Our fav bar.  Live music and lots of dancing.

 Our English girl on left

 Making friends at the bar... English wouldn't get out of our photo's

 So we gave in and let her take a pic with all of us

Text:  "where are you guys"

"Black Adder or something"

"I've never heard of that bar... do you mean Black Rose?"

Snow... so soft...

Next morning
Pedia Lite.... makes everything better

 My vagabond friend

 Walk of shame?  I think not!  I'm def sitting down.

February 7 – Steve Comes to Boston!!

 My friend Steve came back from duty in Qatar and is going to be starting PA school in Gainesville.  Before he starts, he’s traveling the country visiting friends and I made it on his stop list!!  I met him in Orlando and we flew together on a different airline.  We stopped and bought some water in the airport and the lady gave him my airline discount.  Getting onto the plane, I brought chocolates for the flight attendants.  It’s always polite to bring gifts for the cabin crew if you are flying on a different airline.  They were so appreciative!  First, they let me move my seat so Steve and I could be next to each other.  We had a whole row to ourselves.  Then they kept checking on us and gave me a free snack box.  The flight attendant says, “oh is he with you too?” and handed him his own free snack box.  Steve thought I was a super star and said he’ll def travel with me again.  Haha.  I now know the way to win friends… get free stuff lol.  Kidding.

When we got to Boston, Steve went to stay with our friend Cara and I went home to unpack and change clothes.  We all met up for dinner and it was nice just catching up.  Stinks I have to be more aware of prices these days though.  Drinks at the restaurant were Super expensive so I didn’t drink anything.

Cara and her fiancé, Matt, are friends of mine from college.  Found out they only live a mile or so from my house, which is awesome. 

Those two old folks went back to Cara’s and went to bed.  Meanwhile, I stopped at my favorite local restaurant/bar, Jevelli’s, and had some wine with one of my roomies.  Man, I love that place.

The park by my house on our way home.

The rest of dealing with my passport

I went and camped out at the inflight office, trying to talk with the base manager.  I talked to several other flight attendants who said he'd be able to help me.  One of the supervisors came out after I'd been there a while and told me, "I am just being straight up with you right now.  Even if he does meet with you, you don't want to see him today.  He's been in meetings all day and is going to be in a really bad mood."  So I went back to the pad.

This is such a big deal because it puts me on the final leg before I can get fired.  Any other incident with the company could cause me to lose my job.  I've never had trouble at a company and have always been an over achiever so this is ridiculous.

On February 2, I spoke with my supervisor and then sent him a long email detailing what happened and why my passport wasn't updated sooner.

I followed up with my Sup on February 6.  We set up several appointments to meet, but due to scheduling issues. we weren't able to meet.

All this time, I've been paranoid about anything being out of place with my uniform or me stepping out of line - not reading all of the PA's, being late, not saying the right thing or doing procedures out of order.  Paranoid.

Finally, on the 9 or so, I was on a trip, but we had a 2 hour stop in Boston in the middle.  I grabbed my supervisor and we were finally able to talk.  He spoke with the base manager and the manager was unwilling to remove the UNA from my schedule because he felt I had plenty of time since I started here to get my passport updated.  Crap.

"Well, I can tell how much you care about this job because of all your frantic emails and phone calls.  So let's take a look at your first UNA and see if we can get that removed instead.  That way you'll still only have 1"  Turns out, he was able to get the UNA removed where I got back from a 4 day and then they called me but I'd already had a drink.  (ya know, the one after I'd been away from base for 14 days straight?)  Whew, well long and drawn out, but everything worked out.  Stupid scheduling.  I'm sure it's not the last time I'll be saying that.

January 28 - February 1 Picking up my passport

I finally made it back down to the passport appointment.  Dropped everything off and was good to go.  It's funny how curious people get about the airline industry, even the guy at the passport agency was curious about our job.

They told me it would take a day or two to prepare my passport.  I left and flew home to Orlando.

I was scheduled to work on February 1, so I was only going home for 2 days.  I called on the 31 to see if my passport was ready and they said it should be done first thing in the morning.  That was at 10:30am.  I called scheduling immediately and let them know the situation and asked to be put on reserve in the afternoon.

At 3pm, I was sitting at Starbucks in downtown Orlando when the schedule was released.  I was assigned a 4 day trip with a 6am report time and 2 international legs.  There was no way to make it back to Boston in time to try and get my passport early.  The office closed at 5pm and the next flight wouldn't get me there until 6:30.  I called Boston Inflight and spoke with a supervisor.  I called everyone I could to find out what could be done.  I couldn't believe it!  I gave scheduling plenty of notice about my passport and there were 17 people still available on the "grid" to work a 4 day trip.  The Boston Supervisor had the trip removed from my schedule with a UNA (Unavailable for Assignment).  Just like the other UNA's I've received, this one is a big deal.  The supervisor told me if I called in the morning and was available to work, they could add me back to the schedule for the day and maybe it would help me get the UNA removed.

I flew to Boston and was at the passport agency at 9am, as soon as they opened.  I called the Inflight Office and talked with a supervisor.  I had to call him back 3 times throughout the day and he finally informed me that I would not be added back to the schedule.  What?  I was good to work 4 days and it was 9:15am.  There was plenty of time for me to be assigned to a trip.

When I got back to Boston, another one of my crashpad mates said she'd called scheduling the same day and asked to be put on a late report (just like I did).  Scheduling was able to put her on airport standby at 1pm.  I swear they hate me over there.  So frustrating.