I love my job.

  For my future recollection, I need to document the past couple of days. Some day when I am retired and bored, I will need to look back and remember why it's awesome to be retired and not working.
This can also, however, be for you to read and be thankful that you have your job and not mine. And maybe you will remember this next time you almost say, "your job is so cool," and it will make you shut your mouth.

  (Forgive the "lingo" I am about to use. It is not that important, it's just a way for me to set up my story).
  Well, I went on call Saturday. I was good for 5 days, and I was number 14 out of 16 to get assigned a trip. Generally when you are sitting at the bottom of the list to get called, there is a reason - you have already flown a lot of hours. And you are tired, so that's why you get to be at the bottom of the list. So there I was, hanging near the bottom and I get a call for OPR ("On Premise Reserve" ... aka Instead if sitting on call at your nice warm home, drag your exhausted arse to the airport and sit on call here) at 9am the next morning. Being the math whiz kid that I am, within 20 minutes I had figured out that if I do not get called from the airport, I will be done with OPR at 3, and be home by 3:30. Just in time to get a workout in and then make some dinner... This won't be so bad - it will be like a normal person job shift (except that it's a Saturday, but who ever does anything on the weekends anyways)!!!

  So up I am in the am to catch the 8:09 light rail to the airport. Things are going swell. I do a bit of sitting, I go for a walk around all concourses of the airport, I eat my lunch I brought from home... And before I know it, it's 2:30! Apparently time flies even when you are not having fun! So I pack my things up and am on my way to the light rail stop. At 2:40p.m., my life changed. I hear a reggae: "I am leaving on a jet plane - don't know when I'll be back again..." which is my ring tone for scheduling. I answer, because I am still technically on call, and it is a scheduler with a trip assignment. My flight leaves at 3:30 for Atlanta. Be there or be square. Now in the airline world, this is enough to make any flight attendant instantly mobile facebook status update "fml"... which I considered doing. But instead I sucked it up, put my phone away and went to print my schedule off.
  The assigned trip was not all that ugly.. Go to Atlanta, catch a flight 30 minutes later to Pensacola to layover. Fly the next afternoon back to Atlanta and then 4 hours later to Minneapolis! I say okay no problem - a little florida sun never hurt anybody (I take that back... skin cancer is incredibly dangerous).
The flight to Atlanta was uneventful. Perfect. I get to Atlanta and I have to travel approximately 45 miles from E12 to A9 for my next flight. No biggie, my legs aren't broken. I eventually get to A9 and of course, all the passengers are chomping at the bit to get on the airplane so they are creating a 4-person deep barrier between me and the jet bridge. Good thing I had my pole vaulting pole with me cause I don't think I ever would have been able to break through them. But I make it down to our little DC9 successfully and my crew says to me is "Hi. Going to Pensacola? We're broken."
  Nice. Those are the best words to hear when you step onto an airplane. Trust me, I know - I've heard them all. But my crew was based in Memphis, so they had funny accents and good personalities, so it's all good. (In case you were wondering, the mechanical issue was this: There is a heat sensor on the tail fin of our aircraft. When the sensor reads that temperatures have dropped below freezing and there is a chance of moisture, it turns on a heating element - like a defroster - that will melt away any ice or snow that might accumulate on the tail/rudders. Well, ours was broken. No bueno. And we were waiting for a part to arrive so the mechanics could fix it.) Eventually the part we needed got to us. And didn't fit. So we were waiting for another part.
  After over 2 hours of sitting and waiting and not much else, scheduling started calling each of us.. We got rescheduled to take a different plane to a different city. Oh you'd like us to go to E34? Ok... Now I'm starting to get a little irritated. You're going to take my Florida layover away so I can sit at at airport hotel? If I had any say in it, I would have said something. But I didn't, so I didn't. 34 minutes later we arrived in Savannah, and the next afternoon I was separated from my crew so I could go to Atlanta to wait for 4 1/2 hours for my Minneapolis flight.
  Then I checked my schedule and it told me something interesting... Instead of the 8:30pm departure for Minneapolis, I would be flying a 747-400 (which we fly to Tokyo, it holds over 400 passengers) at 9:00pm. That's a little weird. Why would you need to fly a 747 to Minneapolis from Atlanta, when there are over 10 flights going there that day already? Well, soon I found out that flights were being canceled left and right, up and down. And our plane was rescuing all the overly tired, hungry, and pissed off people. You want to put them on a plane with me? Suuure, love that. The first 2 hours of my sit felt longer than my entire college experience. I was tired but didn't want to nap because I wanted to be able to sleep when I got home that night, so my option was basically to try to keep myself awake by re-reading the magazines I had gotten off previous flights and keep checking if anyone posted anything new on facebook every 4 minutes (nothing interesting).
  Around 6pm I went to the E concourse to eat a fine Qdoba dinner. Then my wonderful and loving mom called and informed me that my 9:00 flight was now delayed and showing a 10:30 departure. And a bunch of the other flights around it had canceled. So I really took my time eating my Qdoba salad, and then headed over to my gate to see what was happening. People were happening. Sleeping was happening. Glaring at me because I had an airline badge on was happening. But most importantly of all, a college student with acoustic guitar impersonating John Mayer was happening. And he was not shy with the volume of his uncomfortably breathy voice or strums. Besides his entire sound, the thing I was most disappointed about was the fact that he did not have his guitar case opened for passers-by to toss change into because I would have given anything in my suitcase to anyone in the airport to go fart into it. That's how talented that cool tool was.
  So eventually the rest of the crew flying with me to Minneapolis ends up hanging with me in the scowling airline employees section and we wait for the plane to get cleaned so we can get out of the airport, onto the plane and out of the scrutinous eye of the passenger. Finally, after 10pm, we are told by the gate agent in a cheerful voice, "It's ready!" ... So soon? Way to go!

  So we get on and finally someone says to us all... "Has anyone seen the pilots?" Oh yeah, those guys. Do we really need them? Well evidently we did. We started boarding our passengers (which took over an hour) and eventually our captain walked on. So now he could start his checking and calculating of equipment and numbers. At around 11:30, we were loaded and locked and pushing back from the gate and we cue the demo video. It has to be all down hill from here. Right?

  We are doing our final cabin walk through ("I know it's a surprise to you that you can't talk on your phone the entire flight, but please turn that off now"). I am walking forward and I see a woman leaning into the aisle waving her arms trying to catch the attention of the flight attendant about a dozen rows in front of her. Going against my better judgement of walking the other direction, I walk towards her. Expecting her to ask me for a blanket, I ask, "Did you need something?" "She is in a lot of pain," is what she spits out at me, pointing to the woman next to her. And yeah, from the looks of her, that statement was very true... What would you like me to do about it? The woman, wincing and grabbing her own body all over says to me, "I need to lay down. I am in sooo much pain." Although something in me was dying to respond with, "then you should have gone to the hospital, not the airport," I said, "I'm sorry... You can't lay down, we are about to take off.... Do you want some water?" I didn't know what else to say! I legitimately wanted to help, but I'm not a doctor! She let me know it was probably her gal bladder, so I told her to hold on. I went to get another flight attendant who I knew was an EMT and asked her to assess the lady while I called our lead flight attendant and let her know our night was about to get a lot sweeter. She had the pilots stop the aircraft as I paged for a doctor or nurse, and in a few minutes we had a handful of incredibly capable medical personnel on the scene.
  After some poking, prodding, question asking, pulse and blood pressure reading, administering of oxygen and then vomiting, we found out this woman had a son on our flight who had no idea his mother was having big time medical issues. So we page him by name (for privacy purposes I will call him Ron), and right away, someone dinged their flight attendant call button. My coworker finds and says to the man, "Ron please come this way. It's about your mom." The man replies loudly and proudly, "Oh, I'm not Ron. I want to know if we are leaving." Well, thank you for your concern, you big a-hole. You don't even deserve a response. But we did find her son soon after and he let us know about the serious chronic pain meds that his mom was taking.
  Within 15 minutes after the ordeal began, all professionals agreed: "We need to get her off this plane."
So we pulled our big fat plane back up to the gate so the paramedics could come on to retrieve Ms. Pain On An airplane. As we were waiting for our aircraft door to open, she turned to me and said, "You know, I'm really feeling a lot better. I can go to Minneapolis." I responded, "I'm glad, but no you can't." Sorry amiga, only 1 medical emergency per passenger per flight. She was apparently feeling so awesome that she picked up her own bag and walked off the plane to meet her medics. Ron followed suit. See I did feel really sorry for this woman and her son... But it has been one incredibly long day and now we had 2 open seats on our flight. Less beverages to serve. Score.

  12:20 a.m. was the magic moment of take-off. Although the just-over 2 hour flight seemed long enough to have flown us half way around the world, we eventually did land in Minneapolis. I was home.

  I thought the show was surely over when 3/4 of the plane had emptied... But just then, a man with a hairstyle uncannily like Rihanna's decides it is the most ideal time and place to start taking self-pics.
Because I did not ask to see them (my bad), I can only assume they look much like these:

Oddly enough, he was swearing that top. 

  I was able to get off the plane in time to catch the last light rail for the cities leaving at 2:19, and it got me home and in bed at 3. When I awoke at 11am I was so happy to be home. But not more than 3 hours later... "I am leaving on a jet plane - Don't know when I'll be back again..." 

  Seriously, another trip? Don't you know what I've been through?!?! Apparently not. Because I was being assigned a Seattle red-eye turn. That means getting to the airport at 8:30 PM, and getting home at 7 the next morning... Being on an airplane every minute in between. Could I be any luckier?

Allow me to beat you to it...

My job is sooo cool.

Trash Passing Etiquette -- Volume: Pants Bunching

So I know I am technically in the Airline industry, but sometimes I am pretty positive I'm in the Being In Confined Spaces With Strange People industry...
And what an eventful day in that industry it was.
Today I think I will skip right over the simply creepy people (I know you see the window seat next to you is open but you insist on squeezing your big arse into the middle seat anyway so you can better breathe on the uncomfortable beautiful young lady sitting next to you) and incredibly odd "stretching"/shaking/convulsing in the aisle (as I am so rudely trying to do fulfill my job responsibilities and be available to the other 150 passengers in need) right to the insanely awkward social faux pas that people commit that make me wish Larry David sat on my shoulder as I walked the aisles of the airplane. In case you don't know, I reference Larry David because his show Curb your Enthusiasm is so painfully awkward to watch that I literally can't sleep after watching it because my blood pressure is that of a person who eats only butter and bacon. The story I am about to tell should be on a season finale.
My day was going fairly routinely: Woke up (although much too early for my lifestyle) rather successfully to my alarm; made myself a veggie-fruity smoothie and got to the light rail 1 minute after the "get to the airport comfortably" train and 11 minutes before the "have to catch this one to not be late" train. So I got to work just in the nick of time - like I said, today was typical. Hopped on a plane and flew a bunch of eccentric west coasty people out to San Fransisco and then got a bundle of same yet different people to nearly fill the plane to go back to Minneapolis. We went about our flight attendant business as usual, and things were going well for me personally - 6 hours on a plane reeeally fly by when you have endless celebrity gossip magazines to page through. The pilots come on the PA and say " We are going to land in the Minnesota tundra soon... Flight attendants pick up all the crap, sit down and buckle up. It's windy so it will be a real rough landing." It's not like anyone listens anyways. They could say the B word (no, not bitch - I mean the one you can't say on a plane, dumdum) and passengers would still push their flight attendant call buttons saying "Oh I wasn't listening - did they say we are landing soon? Am I going to make my connection? What gate is the flight to Imatotalinbred going out of?"
So anyways, with this announcement things got a bit more entertaining for Super-Stew Lynnette.
I was walking through collecting trash, "You're trash. You're garbage..." when a businessman in a window seat got all flustered because he apparently had a complete origami-destroying celebration on the flight and now had all this rubbish to throw away. Instead of ignoring and walking on to teach him a lesson: "Don't sweat the small stuff, bro," I decided to wait around with my trash bag so he wouldn't leave heaps of crap for the plane groomers to pick up.
And boy am I glad I did.
The kind, helpful, innocent woman in the middle seat sensed his urgency to get all that he was holding out of his hands immediately, so she assisted in the trash-handling process (not unheard of on flights) to get it to my garbage bag. But, like I said, this man had quite a load of trash and poor middle man (or in this case woman) apparently could not handle it all at once.
Okay, dropping a piece of trash or two now and then - not a big deal, right? Happens to the best of you (I would never). But the stars were aligned today in such a way that....

Let me just ask you - have you ever experienced pants bunching? Here's a common case of it:

Of course you've had it. If you've worn pants, you've had pants bunching.
Except it more often happens with you sit down, perhaps this will be more familiar:

However, I think his hands down his trousers are actually keeping his pants from bunching properly. Anyways, the man on the aisle seat in this situation had some quality Dockers pants bunching that, because he was sitting upright with out his hands shoved in them, looked pretty much like this:

You see, the bunching of Aisleman's pants was diagonally directed towards ... well, you see the above photo.
Now. I don't want you to think I roam around looking at crotches all day. The truth is so far from it, amigo, just hold tight.
So Miss In-The-Middle has both her hands full of Lordknowswhat, and as she's swinging the mess around to my bag a few pieces flutter away from her grip. By a few pieces I mean two: A napkin which falls on her tray table, which she quickly recovers and drops in the bag after her hands are free, and a swizzle stick (you know, a miniature straw) which falls - you guessed it, precisely in the Aisleman's pants bunch alongside his own mini aisleman.
Can you feel my face heating up to 211 degrees through the Internet?
WHAT TO DO?!
Well I could tell you what I would do, but MiddleWoman certainly did not do what I would have done (which is pretend like it didn't happen and avoid eye contact with every human within a 50 mile radius the rest of the week). She went ahead and, without thinking, reached and grabbed
First her jaw dropped - almost as if she was watching some other woman reach into a stranger's crotch on an airplane. Next, she made a sound that sounded a little bit like "Oops" but sounded a lot more like "Holy s#!t what did I just do?" Then - and this is my favorite part - she threw the swizzle stick into the same pantsbunch from where she retrieved it and with a petrified child-in-trouble face stared at the man (from 9 inches away - don't forget we are on a plane) whom she just violated.
Needless to say, this little mishap drew his attention away from his Kindle.

And this is where things got dreadfully awkward. Because now he, middlewoman, windowman, myself and several neighboring passengers (it was quite the commotion) were staring at this man's pants bunching and the bright red straw wedged back into it. And for the same reason that I can't watch Curb anymore, I buried my blushing face into my shoulder (as I unsuccessfully tried not to laugh) and could hardly watch as manbunches re-fished the swizzle from his lap and dropped it in my garbage bag. Just as he was giving Missy Handful an uncomfortable but forgiving glance, I speed walked away too fast to hear any apologies (or business card exchanging - I assume both took place) and continued my duties as best I could.

I think we all (well maybe just that woman and I) learned an important lesson today:

Take a deep breath and really take in the situation when something a bit unfortunate happens. Because if you don't, something much worse will probably ensue.
And who knows how a stranger will react to you grabbing swizzles from their bunching.

- OR - I will take that advice to heart, and you keep doing absurd things that I can blog about.