waiting to see
Still not much going on.
The missing paycheck finally showed up in our mailbox. 17 days after it was issued. Judging from all the notations, it went to both IAH and ONT before someone decided to pop it in the mail. Thank goodness we weren’t actually relying on that money for paying any important bills. Lesson learned here- set up direct deposit immediatly.
Trip to RDU was really fun. I only had about 2 hours of sleep prior to leaving, but we still managed to make the best of it. Flights were nice. We had breakfast with A’s former training partner (who decided to cook at home for us since all the restaurants were too crowded due to it being Father’s Day- delish!); it was nice to meet him after having heard so much about him. We took a trip out to Rocky Mount, where A lived and worked several years ago. An interesting trip down memory lane for him, and interesting look at the greater Raleigh area for me. Again some small snafu’s with listing and checking in, but it all worked out in the end.
A sat in the jumpseat on the way home and then 2 more times on his way out to ONT. Once he got over the first time jitters of asking to ride up there, he had a blast. Says he’s learned a lot, met some nice people and even got to sit in the left seat for a bit while the Cpt. hit the restroom. He’s planning another trip in a few days. So far all of the crews have been pretty hospitable about sharing their cramped space.
It’s now been over 30 days since he completed training. A said he flew with an FO who did his training 2 classes after A started his. A said (I’m paraphrasing here b/c I really wasn’t paying that much attention…) that that class had been speeded up as some sort of damage control for the backlog. Like from now on they are doing people much quicker after training and then they are working on catching up the people from A’s cohort that still need their IOE’s.Whether that’s true or not remains to be seen. I know there are some agitated people from A’s class who feel they were skipped and it was unfair. Hard to know what’s really going on though, so we just sit back and enjoy it. We never did hear back about a LOFT getting scheduled- guess that “few days” isn’t up yet.
I can’t believe that A’s been home with nothing to do for 4.5 weeks now. Sadly, he’s not managed to do nearly as much as he and I wanted with the time. There are still a whole lot of tasks on his list, added by both me and him, that haven’t been touched yet. Things came to a head last saturday when he was cleaning out a storage closet for us. Something along the lines of “your inability to complete a task has ceased being a charming trait and is now just disrespectful.” Definetly wasn’t the nicest thing to say, but there is an underlying truth. I am the one who has to pick up all the slack on the things he doesn’t do. Yes he’s worked very hard and spent more time doing it than I do at work, but at some point (that we’ve already passed) his time off balances out with all that extra work that he put in and now he needs to pitch in. So we’re still working on it. Admittedly I’m a bit jealous, I wish I could have 5 weeks of consecutive vacation.
Thanks to all the people who have left me comments in the last few weeks. I think I’ve had more comments in the last 3 posts than in all my other posts combined! I’ll put out a plug for www.jetgirls.net as a great resource for pilot wives. Stop in to the forums and say hello- you’ll find the comaraderie you’ve been looking for. And if there is something specific you want me to blog about, let me know.
Jetsetting
Tomorrow we’re flying up to Raleigh, NC. Just because we can.
Well, really it’s to pick up the Jepp updates from someone who picked them up in TX for A recently. Raleigh is only an hour plane ride away and there is a 7 hour gap in between arriving and departing flights. So we’re going to rent a car and check out the town for the day. Flying non-rev, the price is right.
Flying to a different city, just for the day. I feel so cosmopolitan…
Whole lotta nothing going on
Well, that pretty much sums it up lately. But I know people are wondering, so I figured I’d update.
Still haven’t been able to locate the missing paycheck. Payroll dept. says they sent it to the Training dept. at IAH, and they (training) either have it or mailed it. Training dept. has no idea what the Payroll dept. is talking about. But we are expecting trips to both IAH and ONT in the next 1.5 weeks, so we’ll get it figured out eventually. Lord knows where the one due to be issued tomorrow will end up.
A is still on paid vacation at home awaiting his IOE. I think we are in week 4 now. He got a call from scheduling today to report to Newark tomorrow for it, but he had to remind them that he had not yet done his LOFT flight yet and that had to be done first. So they said they would schedule that and call him back “in a few days”. He still hasn’t been out to IAH to pick up his uniform yet either, but that’s his own fault. Once he’s done with IOE, we’ll know when he has to report out to ONT.
We did have a pleasant trip non-reving out to OKC last weekend. There were a few kinks to be worked out by the ticket/gate agents, but overall it was nice. I didn’t mind the kinks as a non-rev, but as a paying passenger I would have been a little suprised. Flight crew we had on the way out was top notch. Flight crews for the return trip were ok- one was perfunctory and one was new. But it all could have been a lot worse, so I can’t complain.
Sent Kidzilla out to CA for a week to visit family after the trip. It’s so nice to have a week alone with just me and A. We’ve been out to dinner, to the movies and just hung out. He’ll be traveling out to ONT to get him at the beginning of next week.
A and I have been dealing with our impending separation differently. He’s become more clingy and wants to spend as much time as possible with me. I’ve been pulling away from him to avoid missing him too much when he leaves. It’s interesting what we notice in each other and how we cope.
I’ve been thinking lately about military wives and how they cope. When A is gone, I always think to myself- well at least he’s only gone for a week, he could be military and gone for months. But then I realized that while that may be true, there is also quite a bit of support for miliatry wives that isn’t there for pilot wives. In the military, you are surrounded by other families who are going through the same thing. There is base daycare and activities, a family support office and just a general sense of community. As a pilot’s wife, the only other wife friends I have are part of a virtual community. I don’t know, in person, a single other wife who’s husband is based across the country and only comes home on select weekends. It’s kind of like comparing apples to oranges, but still I feel in some respects they do have it easier. Although I don’t envy the constant worry of whether my husband will return home that they must undergo.
Thanks to all of the people who publicly and privately supported me after seeing the negative comment that got posted. I appreciate what you said. The poster used an obviously fake email address when leaving their comment. My feeling is that if are going to critizize someone then you should at least have the balls to leave your real name. So I don’t take what they had to say very seriously. Yes, my pilot does read this blog; he’s actually been asking me when I was going to post again. And every relationship is different.
Here’s to a hopefully happy and fun filled, adults only weekend for me!
Where’s Waldo… I mean, my paycheck?
It’s funny how during training they make sure you know how to fly that plane like nobody’s business but they neglect to tell you things like- how do you list for a flight, what’s a V-file or where in the heck does my paycheck go. I guess you are just expected to pick that kind of stuff up though osmosis.
We’re currently stuck in a morass of passwords, webpages, new hire materials and all the other extraneous materials A came home from training with. Or came home without as we are finding out. We can tell from the employee website (he was on hold for over an hour to get the password to get on this one) that he was issued a paycheck. But we haven’t yet figured out where it went. We know it didn’t get direct deposited. Is it on its way to our house? Is it in his file in TX (and where might we find that file), since he’s technically a new hire still? Is it in his file in CA (and where might that file be) since he’s technically been assigned a base? What is our pass code and how do we list for our trip to OK next week? How do we find out that info? Trying to iron out these little glitches is incredibly time consuming and frustrating. Seriously- is there not a new hire coordinator or a manual that we can consult to find this stuff out? With as many pilots as the company is hiring, you’d think they’d have the answers to all this stuff handy…
Thanks to my new BFF Emily, we are hoping to go up flying tonight. It’s been a pain to coordinate her being able to babysit with the FBO’s rental availability (more on the FBO part than hers 
) but we seem to have finally gotten it all straightened out. Except that the forcast calls for thunderstorms this evening. But I’m holding out hope.
Today is the first day of hurricane season. I think I’m more motivated than most to actually be prepared b/c I went though a major earthquake when I was in high school. From day 1 earthquake preparedness was pounded into my brain. So we are working on getting our supplies together. Read an interesting blog on preparedness here.
I’d rather have hurricanes than earthquakes any day- at least you have warning that hurricanes are on their way.