I’m writing this from the DCA crew room. Note, I say writing, not posting as there is no wireless in here. Grrr. I’ve been here since 1030am and it’s now approaching 345pm. Ouch. We were supposed to do a SDF turn and then a DTW turn and then go back to Dayton. Unfortunately the plane that we were going to be using had a MX issue in PIT and never made it down here. So, instead of starting at 1030 we don’t really start until 630. Nice huh? I was hoping they would just have us deadhead back to Dayton on an earlier flight, but no joy. They want us to fly the later one. Contractually they had to provide hotel rooms for us, which they did, but I really didn’t want to truck all the way back to the hotel and then come back here 4 hours later. Call my lazy. Now, after having sat here for several hours I am sort of regretting that decision. But just a little bit.

Today is day 3 of a 3 day flying almost exclusively out of DC. (DAY-DCA-DAY-DCA-PIT-DCA-SDF-DCA and then the canceled SDF and DTW and then back to DAY). I guess we are covering for AWAC again. It was actually a pretty good trip so far. Nice weather all around the system and lucky me got all the DCA landings. They seem to be favoring the slam approach recently (leave the aircraft at 6000 feet until 5 miles out) and it has been sort of fun configuring and dropping altitude all the way down to land.

Pictures are/will be up from this trip. I actually did pretty well with taking pictures this month. Almost too many I think. I doubt I’ll get to them tonight as I’ve got to do laundry and repack because I am heading out to Seattle in the morning. Staying at home? What’s that?

I stayed up way to late last night (for a good cause) and somehow managed to not set my alarm. Thankfully I woke up one minute before it was suppose to go off anyways so that didn’t matter. I had a doctors appointment at 9am so my goal was to be on the road at 8:40 to get there (it was in Tipp City, about 20 min north of here). Well, everything was going fine until I rolled up to the garage door heading out of my parking garage and nothing happened. Normally you roll over a cable it it opens the door. There were some noises, but no movement of the door. I back up and tried it again. Same result. The entry door is a one way thing that only opens from the outside so I had to put the car in park against the door. Go out through the doorway, enter the entry code, run back around, get in the car and drive out before the door shut. Nothing like a little excitement to get your day going.

I had plans for a big update tonight but scheduling stuck me with 5am hot reserve tomorrow which means I have to be up in only 6 hours and I’m not 100% packed yet. So, all you are getting is a picture of the US Airways Alleghany throwback plane. It looks pretty nice. Right after I took this I put my camera down as the ramp was a mess and I wanted to be looking out for stuff. Two gates down was the PSA plane. I’ll have to get a picture of it at another time I guess. Either way, the smile was in the gate so it wouldn’t have been visable anyways.

I was in Amherst for about 10 hours today. I flew up to Boston to take the bus to Southboro to my aunt’s house for a passover cedar. Yeah, I still do the jewish thing from time to time. The cedar was nice (food was really good this time around) and then I drove back to Amherst with Mom and Kas. We got back around 12:30am and I didn’t get to sleep until around 1:30. Fun Fun. Oh yeah, even better… I woke up at 8:15 to my phone ringing. It’s ok… I still love you dad! Really! Anyhow, packed up, took a picture of The Dog and then headed off to BDL to catch a flight back to Dayton. Two hops (through Philly) and we *just* beat a large thunderstorm to the field. It’s been raining/thundering/hailing the rest of the evening. At least the power didn’t go out and I was able to get my laundry done.

Oh yeah, the Easter Bunny was good to me!

New pictures are up from April. Dayton and New York City. Here They Are. The quality is off for some reason. I may try to fix it latter. Too tired now.

I found this rather cool looking clock the other day. Neat stuff.

Check out this picture. Our microwave clock is now one hour behind. When we got it in October it was set to the stove clock, and since then has been falling farther and farther behind. Unfortunately the clocks get set forward in the spring so we had to change it anyways. Hopefully when the clocks go back in the fall the microwave will be on time already.

I was through Charlotte today from Chattanooga enroute to Charlettsville (CHA-CLT-CHO… what a day) and went into the bathroom by E5 to wash some mud off my hand from checking around the tires. (I know I know… what am I doing under the wing there anyways?) So I’m at the sink and I hear somebody talking about what to get grocery shopping for cooking up some sort of rice dish. I don’t see anybody standing near me and I realize it is the guy in one of the stalls yacking on his cell phone while he makes all sorts of bodily noises. WHAT THE HELL! Is nothing sacred any more. I personally don’t want my call of nature broadcast out to the untold masses. Have some dignity, please. Anyhow, I gave him an evil look when he got out but as I was in uniform and representing this great company I work for I refrained from doing more then that.

We got to CHO and went to the hotel (a Doubletree… very nice except for it is the hardest bed I have slept on for a long time) and as we checked in they gave us each a little paper bag with a chocolet chip cookie in it. All well and good (very good tasting actually) but on the front of the bag it says “Sweat Dreams”. Svvveeet Dreeems as my grandmother used to say. Uh… yeah, let’s eat some suger and then sleep like a baby. And to think, some marketing genius is making 2 or 3 time what I do and coming up with stuff like this.

Ok… my blood pressure is coming back down now. Time to go to sleep (oh wait, but I just ate that cookie) for a 6am show tomorrow. At least tomorrow is the end of this trip.

A nice day off with nothing to do. Castle in the Sky is on Cartoon network. Miyazaki was a pretty amazing director. The version that is on CN is the redone version of the 1986 remake of the 1930s original (follow all that?). I saw the 1986 version a few years ago, and this new version really cleaned it up and redid the audio. Very nice.

It’s sort of funny watching something on CN with all the ads for t0ys. They certainly have some neat toys these days. They also have some really dumb ones. The good with the bad I guess.

I got a new computer (actually it’s old) for a mp3 server. It’s an old Netvista 933mhz, but it is more then enough for what I need it for. A nice side benefit is that I got a webcam hooked up to it looking out the window of my apartment. Not really much to see but you can check it out here. Eventually I’ll get it integrated into the rest of the site, but for have fun with it.

Back to work tomorrow with 2pm hot reserve.