Odds and Ends

I figured I would just gab a bit today. Lots of things going down right now and I have been working a lot, thus the limited blogging.

1. I am moving. Before all of you have a heart attack and buy yet another address book, I am staying in the same building. I love my apartment, but it overlooks a supermarket and shopping mall parking lot. Farmers have roosters to wake them, I have the Krispy Kreme truck at 4:45 AM every morning. On top of this, there is a monster car stereo shop below my current apartment. As you can imagine, the patrons of said shop like nothing better than to purchase their gear and then install it directly outside my windows. Ah Oakland, quelle belle Oakland. So, I am moving to an apartment down the hall which trades my large expanse of windows for a large patio and seems to be isolated from the bulk of the noise that I am now exposed to. It is the same industrial style and the same floor plan, just less windows and a patio area. I will post photos when I have them. The patio area is quite large. (My neighbors have a basketball hoop on theirs and I imagine I could have quite a party this summer. I will definitely be investing in a gas grill.) I will be sending out a change of address e-mail, but you can all change my apartment number to 220.

2. Hector was the unfortunate recipient of a unplanned rear entry a couple of weeks ago. Granted, he is in all likelihood a gay car, but still. (Usually you ask before pulling something like that.) An elderly Latin man in an beat up 86 orange Chrysler hit him from behind while I was waiting to pull out of the parking lot of the apartments. Thankfully, there was not much damage. Hector paid a visit to the body shop this week and he emerged on Friday shiny and new. The Minis are very well constructed. This guy's car was at least double the size of Hector and the damage was less than $1K. Courtesy of our friends at Hertz, I had this horrendous orange Chevy SSR thing to drive around. It was brand new, but definitely not my style. I was mighty glad to see Hector after a few days in that beast.

3. I have begun making plans for two more trips this year. My family is having a big reunion in Cincinnati at the end of July. I have been researching how to see a few different things along the way. A friend of mine from high school lives in Louisville, so I would like to catch up with her one day. I also plan to visit the Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio while I am in Ohio. My father is a big airplane buff and he has informed me that this is a must see museum. I have attempted to go several times, but something always ended up not working out. I hope to continue on to Pittsburgh and check out the city and the University of Pittsburgh which I attended for a year in the nineties. (I need some new sweatshirts as the old ones are on their last legs.) From there, I have not yet been able to decide whether or not to continue on east and spend the weekend in New England or not. I was born in Maine and I went to high school in New Hampshire, so I always like to see those places. I also might spend the weekend in Provincetown as I have never been there either and have heard good things. Either that or I will return home for a few days here.

At the end of November, I hope to take a week and a half and visit Asia. I definitely will visit Hong Kong and Bangkok and I am considering visiting Bali for a few days. When I was a flight attendant, Hong Kong was one of my favorite cities and it still is. There is an amazing energy to the city, the meeting of east and west, old and new. Hong Kong is one of those cities that I would consider a crossroad of the world. Some others are London, Dubai, New York, Los Angeles, New Delhi. Cities where worlds, populations, languages, cultures, and music collide and create these brilliant canvases and a cacophony of sound. I miss Hong Kong desperately and it has been calling to me in my dreams. I always have enjoyed vacationing in Thailand. Shopping in Bangkok is always fun and amazing and the beaches are beautiful. I have not visited in several years and am looking forward to seeing the City of Angels once more. I have not had the opportunity to visit Bali yet. Can anyone fill me in? I had always been under the impression that Bali was inexpensive and beautiful, but the prices I am finding online are quite steep for that part of the world. I am not the biggest fan of lying in the sun all the time, so I am hoping there is interesting things to see and a good mix of people there. Any suggestions or feedback would be much appreciated. I love to travel in early December and try to do so each year. The flights and hotels tend to have lower occupancy rates as most westerners scurry around doing their holiday shopping and attending their Christmas parties. I prefer to get away from the madness of the malls and the long lines at the post office and come back as the crowds are easing up.

4. Parties frighten me. There are a couple of work functions coming up and I find myself not wanting to go to them. Part of it is that I do not want to take someone I am dating to a work function because what will I be doing all night? Commiserating with colleagues, bitching about work, bad catered food, expensive alcohol, bad dj playing hits of the eighties, and on and on. I suppose if I liked being intoxicated more, it would help things. But I don't. I would rather be at home watching a documentary from Netflix or reading a book.

Another large issue is that I have reentered a traditional work environment where you work with the same people day in and day out for months at a time. Gossip spreads fast and we work long shifts, sometimes blurring the lines between work and your life. (I definitely have the feeling that work is my life some days.) During my years with the airlines, working with the same people rarely happened if ever. It was a very independent job and one has very little supervision or contact with management. Police work is a very different concept. Someone is always listening, watching, or critiquing and we work in a high stress environment. I am not saying that I do not enjoy my work, far from it. But my feeling is that if I go to these work parties, then I will be bored stiff the whole time and regret my decision. At the same time if I do choose not to go, then I feel like I will not be making an effort to be part of the team. Decisions, decisions.

5. On a related note, National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week will be celebrated beginning April 8th this year. (Bet Hallmark doesn't make a card for this one, huh!) Dispatchers from all over the country will be recognized for the work they do day in and day out. One of our dispatch instructors from a neighboring county had a great saying. We don't give them what they want, we give them what they need. Truer words were never spoken. I wish all of my colleagues under the headset a great recognition week.

Cuidate.