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.