Hanging up my wings
After much thought about many things, from my job to my marriage, and everything in between, I am hanging up my wings. I am on my last trip now, with two more nights out, Little Rock tonight and Roanoke tomorrow, and I will be done. I have family in West Texas, and am headed that-away as soon as I can wrap a few things up in Illinois. There is freedom and change and a much different world ahead of me…and I welcome it. Good, bad, but never indifferent. Time to go.
In uptown, downtown Moline, IL
This is, oddly enough, the part of the job I love the most… being elsewhere. Moline is part of the Quad Cities, right across the river from Iowa. The hotel we stay in is right downtown, literally in the Arts District. Unlike the place I’m living right now, it’s a vital, bustling little town, and I just like it. I like the way the town feels, the way it breathes.
Gloomy day…
Am in Atlanta, in the Holiday Inn (funny, I don’t feel smarter) 
just outside Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport. It is a grey and gloomy day here, as well as back “home” in St. Louis. I’m letting the depressing weather get to me because my Beloved CheeseHead is off to Texas for the next couple weeks, including over my birthday. Texas is truly my home, so it’s kind of a double blow. Not only is he leaving, but he’s going to my home, and I can’t!
I also have my six-month review actually ON my birthday. Trying to get up the energy to do the studying I need to do for that–but I know I don’t need to study much. I know this job, I know the general operations manual, and that’s what I’m responsible to know for the verbal review. I will also have a six-month checkride in the next six weeks or so. A check airman will board my flight during my preflight, without giving me any kind of notice, and will observe everything about how I carry out my job responsibilities. Again, I have no worries that I know how to do my job. It’s just one more hurdle to jump over…and a hurdle that I have to get past in order to open up other jobs with the company, should I decide that galley wenching is no longer to my taste.
I need spring to get here. I need sunshine, and I need the rain to diminish. Maybe I am being affected by the season…or maybe it’s just not seeing the BCH for two weeks. I just need to brighten up–and I need the next two weeks to be over and done with soon…
