about my dog

here is a picture of my dog, Ken.
He is a basset hound.  He is cranky, lazy and full of dog rage. When I moved to OKC for training, he tried to bite my landlord the first night in my new apartment.
He barks at everyone and makes lip-smacking noises when I'm trying to sleep.  If I leave the bathroom door open when I go to work, he will shred any piece of paper, toilet paper tube, or qtip that he can get his mouth on.
One night I got home from work and he had eaten a Sharpie and left a giant black stain on the carpet that took me 6 hours of scrubbing to get out.
He also whines non stop, and sometimes buries his slobbery, soggy dog food under my pillows and blankets.  Getting a handful of cold, soggy, half chewed dog food when you're half asleep isn't pleasant.
He is a spectacular pain in the ass, but he is always there for me, always happy to see me when I get home. His silly face cheers me up when I'm in a shitty mood (unless he's making the lip-smacking noise).

reason 297 why I'm glad I made this career change

I haven't posted anything in MONTHS cause I haven't had anything worth posting really.  Til today...
it was a shitty weather day here in Indy, so traffic was reaaaally slow. I was training on Local Control (clearing planes for takeoff and landing) and I had 2 planes taxiing out for departure, an Air Tran (callsign “Citrus”) in front of a US Airways regional jet (callsign “Brickyard”).  Air Tran was holding WAY short of the runway, and USAir had a release time.  It went a little something like this:

me: Citrus###, you ready to go?
pilot: uh… we’re… ummmm… we’re gonna need a couple minutes.  we have a passenger out of their seat… he’s… uhmmmmm… doin a number 2

I look at my trainer and we burst out laughing.  I’m pretty sure “doin a number 2” is not found anywhere in the 7110.65 or the AIM.  So I go back…

me: roger, hold short of the runway and advise when ready

couple minutes pass, I retell the story to everyone else in the tower who didn’t have the joy of hearing it… it’s getting close to the Brickyard’s release time so my trainer keys up

trainer: hey, citrus, maybe if you start moving, he’ll stop going!!

the pilot comes back and LOLs on the air and says something dumb, and another couple minutes pass while my coworkers and I make immature shit jokes. finally they call back

pilot: uhhh, hey tower, this is Citrus###, our passenger finally pinched it off, we’re ready for takeoff!


uhh, yes.  the pilot not only used the phrase “doin a number 2”, he topped it by saying “pinched it off”!!!  I always jokingly called Citrus “Shitrus”, cause I like to swear as much as possible, but today they really earned that nickname. probably the funniest thing that’s happened to me in my short career at the FAA.

real post... maybe

so I have been training on Ground for about 2 weeks now.  it makes me want to die all over the place. I'm 26 years old and I still don't know my left from my right, my 14 from my 32, my ass from a hole in the ground... I didn't know twy D connected directly to the Signature ramp...

but my trainer says I'm doing fine!

I just don't feel like I am.

I think I need this shirt...

it'd be the perfect thing to wear to a briefing or a training team meeting.

classy AND professional!  haha

bird strike

We had a bird strike at work yesterday. It was not the catastrophe the media paints it to be. The CRJ landed with no problem and life went on as usual. I was quite disappointed to not see it plastered all over CNN 10 minutes later.

I finished my Ground Control class today. YAY! I couldn't take another day of pushing tiny planes around a tiny airport diagram. Most people would love to play with planes all day, and it was fun the first few days, but after that I was over it.

I went to Eagle Creek the weekend before last. I got to see some Commanders. I'm obsessed with them!

Labor Day

I'm not laborin' today!!!

I got certified on Clearance Delivery on Thursday. YAY, I can finally work something by myself. Unfortunately I go back to the classroom tomorrow for a month for ground/local. :( blah.

Being in class is the absolute worst. I feel like I learn 1000 times faster by DOING something, not pretending I'm doing something. it's ASSinine. I think 2 weeks learning proper phraseology, LOAs, SOPs would suffice. Not over a month of "self study" blahhhhh

dumb

I keep forgetting I have this blog, as evidenced by the fact that I haven't updated it since mid-March. Since then I went to the FAA Academy and passed and survived 2 months at my facility. 1 month of shitty classroom shit and 1 month of reading clearances to pilots who don't find the intersection "WEGEE" (pronounced like the thing that occurs when underwear goes up your buttcrack) humorous.

I think I should update this more, but I always forget. I just recently started updating my tumblr on a semi-regular basis. I didn't even have internet at my apartment for the first month I was here. It was hellish. I jacked a neighbor's internet for about 2 weeks before their router disappeared off my list :(


here is a picture of one of my airport's paralells, taken from the ladies' room, 300' up.


here's a picture of a Commander at KEYE. Commanders remind me of my basset hound. They're kinda shaped the same.

I took out food for dinner but now I don't feel like cooking. Chick Fil A sounds delectable right about now!