le sigh

I don't have the teeth of steel I hoped.

3 hours and $200 later, I have 2 :( fillings.  I need 2 more on the left side, too.
They said it's not SO horrible, considering my lack of dentistry for the past 10 years.
Also, since my last dentist decided it wasn't important at the time, I still have my top wisdom teeth. Which my current dentist wants OUT.  Sad.  When I had my bottom 2 out, I spent a week in the fetal position on the couch vomiting every hour.  Or more, if I attempted to eat something. I guess it's the easy way to get a week off in the summer. but not the kind of week off one would want in the summer.

BUT! I did get a new toothbrush (which accounted for $100 of the bill today)

it came with a couple rebates, so it will end up being about half price compared to what retail stores are charging.

also I got all this free stuff! 2 toothpastes, 3 mouthwash samples, a regular toothbrush and 3 kinds of dental floss.

They told me to quit drinking soda, but I drink at most one per week, usually none. I did drink it a lot more often in my past life in NY, but since I moved out here I mostly drink water. I guess once the damage is done, it's done.

Moral of the story: GO TO THE DENTIST. even if you don't have insurance.

Extra Super Bonus: My dentist is a pilot (hopefully not a conflict of interest!). So we didn't have to make any awkward small talk about families or pets or weather. We got right to the good stuff.

okay, you know what?

I'm pretty boring, and I suck at updating my blog. and I'm okay with that.

My major life event this time is getting cable. zomg, 100 years behind everyone else, I know. I got free basic cable when I got internet from comcast, and that was okay for a while, cause I got the weather channel, and I basically only care about the weather channel ever. Then one day at the end of May I woke up and the weather channel was no more. I was so very emotionally distraught. I immediately got online and tried to get actual cable. Comcast wanted $150/mo. they must be out of their freaaaaaking minds. So I switched to AT&T. and it took them a month to get out here, but now I have HD Weather Channel. I love it so much. I can't even begin to describe it.

Coming up: Tomorrow, my first dentist appointment in 10(!) years. ANGST.
Thursday: Doctors appointment. frown.
Sunday: 28th birthday. bigger frown.

what else?! A few days ago, we were graced with the presence of a Boeing 747-8. I was at work at the time. I had a camera with me, but my pictures came out kinda crappy cause I was on the 2nd floor, not in the tower, so there are a bunch of light poles in the shot. Also I was indoors and the plane was obviously outdoors. So the pics aren't the best.

tail's kinda cut off in this one

looks like a 747!!
 

Also we had an airshow here at the end of May.
My camera, yet again, was uncooperative. as was the weather. The blue angels were here, but almost all of my pictures came out craptacular.

Here's a pic of fat albert... taxiiing in reverse!

Here are 2 pics of the Heavy Metal Jet Team. They're pretty much my new favorite thing ever.

things that are awesome that started out not awesome.

Got the bright idea that I was gonna paint my apartment to perhaps increase it's appeal to me. mmmhmmm. Not 30 minutes into starting, I freaking knock over the paint can. All over my floor. All over my beagle, who gets scared and runs away leaving grayish footprints all over everything. Awesome. So I chase him down and throw him in the bathtub. Dogs are much easier to rid of paint than carpets.

Here's a before pic:

After 3 hours of using my carpet cleaner:

I did not even use soap, just straight water. The day is saved! hooray!

And as sad as I am about wasting $25 of paint, it's kind of a good thing, cause once I saw the color on the wall, I really did not like it. So I feel like it saved me, kinda. Cause even though I hated the color, I feel like I probably would've just ended up using it anyway, despite the fact that I hated it. Because I'm cheap like that. haha.

That carpet cleaner has saved the day on many occasions in the few months I've had it. Definitely the best $175 I've ever spent.

I say things and write stuff.

I was on an airplane once. Obviously a while ago cause there's still snow in the pic.

Here's an interesting story about Special Forces canines.

and the Alphabet Google Meme. Type in each letter of the alphabet into the Google Search bar and write the first thing that comes up (lolwut, am I 15?!)

A - Ashton Pointe Apartments
B - Berkeley Commons Apartments
C - Central Park metrolpolis apartments
D - Dividend Miles
E - Eagle Chase Apartments
F - Firefox Plugin CommentBlocker (this has saved my sanity)
G - godby
H - Hoover replacement brush F74129
I - Indy apartment bark park
J - Japan buildings swaying
K - Keith McCutchen
L - Land's end
M - meijer self checkout
N - nashua airport
O - okc
P - Patrick newark dog
Q - quixotic
R - rtv6
S - Somerset power plant
T - The Islands apartments
U - UAL830
V - Van Rooy properties
W - Why can't women be airport firefighters (I swear to god someone told me this, then I saw an interview on a documentary with a woman airport firefighter)
X - xbox
Y - youtube
Z - Zillow

Pretty sad that 7/26 of the things highest up on my googling list are apartments. I'm pretty sick of where I'm living right now, but I'm not convinced moving to another complex will be any better. people are people-y no matter where you go. I need to buy or rent a house. I'm too old for this apartment living crap anymore. I'm just gonna throw this out there: If you don't like animal noises, don't move into a pet friendly apartment and expect total silence 24/7. Actually, what the hell? Don't move into an apartment, period, and expect quiet 24/7. It's an apartment. It's gonna be noisy. DEAL.  Cut the crap with the passive aggressive notes posted around the building. Got a problem? Say it to my face. Holy crap.

Also my mailman. he is not. He is just a man, because he does not DELIVER my mail, he does not TAKE my mail.  My mailbox is a void of despair.  When I do get mail, it's for people that live in the next building.  I haven't gotten a netflix in a week.  I'm annoyed, cause I can't complain, cause we've had a different mailman constantly. I don't know who I'd be complaining about, I never see the same one twice in a week. it's ridiculous.

Basically I have a problem with everything lately. Give me a topic and I can go off on it for at least an hour. I have never been in such a foul mood as I have been the past few months. I dunno why.

my daaaags.

still here, sometimes.

I haven't updated this thing since the end of October. And here it is MARCH. I am really bad at this crap.

All that's really happened between October and now is an endless cycle of going to work, coming home, back to work, back home. over and over and over. Oh, and I adopted my foster dog! After bringing him to OKC with me (and chasing him all over the apartment complex a couple times) I got kinda attached. So did Ken. So, now I have two hounds.  ARoooooO!

 Ken's in front, Dylan is in back.

Also I spent two months (and $1300) doing physical therapy for my neck/back which I've had a problem with since I fell down a tiny hill snowboarding like 6 years ago. It worked, for a minute. But now I'm right back to the pain level I was before I started. Not good. What a waste of time and money.

Went to Providence/Cape Cod area in January. It was the first time I'd ever been to Rhode Island! And the first time I'd been near Cape Cod since I was like 6. It was very cold, as is to be expected in January. It was also the first time I'd flown since before I'd started this job. I was picking everything apart from my window seat, trying to figure out what kinda climbs/descents and vectors we were being given. Looking for converging aircraft. Nerdy!

We had some severe weather here last night. An EF1 tornado about an hour north of here, an EF2 tornado an hour south and lots of flooding all around the city. A couple days ago it was 70. A couple weeks before that we had an ice storm. Midwest weather is rarely boring.

Let me preface the rest of this post with this: It'll make a hell of a lot more sense if you familiarize yourself with the contents of this post.

When I last left you, I was waiting oh so patiently for my local class here so I could start training in the TRACON. That's Terminal Radar Approach CONtrol, if you didn't know that already. Oh. So. Patiently.  When the three of us were in Oklahoma for the FAA class, we were on the schedule for a class a few weeks after we got back, around the end of September 2010.  Which was perfect! Considering we'd been strung along during our tower training an extra 6 months because they treated the three of us as one person. If one of us messed something up, we'd all get extra weeks of training tacked on. Never mind that we only got like an hour or 2 of training per week, since we were all fighting for scarce time that had good traffic.

Then a few days after we returned from the shimmering city of OKC, we were all inexplicably off the training schedule and back on the floor schedule. Only to find out the next day they'd booted us out of class for "STARS refresher training". MMMmmmhmm. Word travels kinda fast in a 50 person facility, and I soon caught wind (and passed it on to my 2 cohorts) that the son of the guy who runs the training department had gotten a class in place of ours. STARS refresher training my ass. So we all just shut our mouths and filed away that little nugget for a later date.

Days... weeks pass. Still no word on our class. We ask around and get told the same STARS refresher training line. Okay, well, if you're not gonna have a class for us because of that, then at least START THE FRIGGIN CLASS! come on now. We're already the laughing stock of the facility due to the 1039329832 extra hours it took us to certify in the tower. Now we're the laughing stock of the facility because we're getting screwed by the training department. People start a pool when our class is ACTUALLY gonna start. Awesome.

So, skip ahead a few months. We finally get this class. FOUR months after we returned from RTF in OKC. 6+ months after we certified in the tower. Meanwhile, pretty much everyone else had certified in the tower, gone to OKC within a month, come back, gotten a local TRACON training class within a month and started training.  Here we were, held back in the tower 6 months, then another 6 month delay for our stupid class.  A year behind everyone else, pretty much. The other girl and I never stopped complaining about it to anyone who would listen. The guy with us didn't really care, he doesn't talk ever, so it was up to us lady folk to be pains in the ass. Finally we got the attention of the ex-NATCA FacRep. The current FacRep didn't seem very interested in our grievance, but the former one was ALL over it. He wrote up all sorts of stuff to help us, and with that, I have my first grievance. Yee haw.

So we started class in the middle of January. (after it got moved back another 2 days at the last minute due to a "scheduling conflict". AKA the training department taking a mini-vacation to Florida to golf.) And boy, were we fired up. Finally we were getting this shit OVER with!! Or so we thought. The first week of class was freaking SELF STUDY.  One day we sat in the classroom with the door closed until after NOON and no one came in to check to see if we'd even showed up. So, basically we waited 4 months to sit here and play scrabble on our phones. cause let's face it, it took us about a day to memorize what we needed to, but they wouldn't let us take the test early, so we just sat there for 2 days and didn't do anything til they let us take the test. Can you say waste of time and resources?! We were freakin PISSED. Even more so than before. So we got a meeting with the AATM and OM. they were "shocked". Yeah, you should be. You've got these contractors who are retired ATCs, getting ATC retirement + $50-70k/year from this "job" where they stick us in a classroom and don't teach us shit. We get a whole day of them reading out loud from the 7110.65.  I can read that myself, thanks. Being able to read was one of the requirements for getting this job, I think I can handle it.

Okay, so enough complaining about that. It's over and done with and I'm training in the TRACON now. I'm actually not as horrible at it as I was in the sims. My new trainer is very impressed with me. He says I might be a natural. *Insert sound of ego inflating here*  He hasn't trained anyone in years due to a spat with a former OM here, something about bad phraseology. It's a shame, cause he's a very good trainer. He writes up page long training reports, but instead of the scathing ones I used to get from my old trainer ripping me to shreds for telling someone to turn left off the runway instead of right (come on, like no one has ever done that in the history of air traffic control), they're incredibly positive, pointing out what I did right, in addition to my mistakes. It's so much easier to learn when you don't feel like the person training you thinks you're a piece of shit. And when he says, "Oh, you did that really well! good job!" instead of picking me apart for little things like not knowing the frequency to the VOT (which I'm still pretty sure does not even exist at the airport anymore).  I no longer dread having to train. It's such a good feeling.

In other work-ish news, the Indianapolis Zoo got a new dolphin Sunday. How do I know this? Because they flew it in in a DC93. How else would you get a dolphin to a place that's more than 1000 miles from any ocean?! Duh! ;)