An answer!

Well, on the plus side, I finally know what's "wrong" with me. I have celiac disease. I guess my body doesn't like gluten, and when I eat it, it affects my ability to absorb nutrients and damages my intestines. Fun!

On the bad side, no more wheat, barley, rye, and maybe oats. I can deal with some of it without much sacrifice. I'm not a huge bread person, and pasta, whatever. Plus there are loads of gluten free breads and pastas. Worst part? No more red licorice, cupcakes, or beer. Seriously. No more beer. That is heart wrenching.

So now, I gorge on gluten until I have an appointment with a gastrointestinal specialist, who will do a biopsy on my intestine. I'm pretty sure biopsy means going up my ass with some kind of instrument. I can not wait.

Speed Bump

So I'm NOT in Peru.

I am in Fort Lauderdale. At the Days Inn. I think technically I'm in Hollywood or something, but I thought that was in California. Anyway, I'm in Florida, not Peru.

I was having amazing luck yesterday. I made it on the flight from Toronto to Orlando by the skin on my teeth... Three people got stuff in customs so I got one of their seats. Had they made it (they were travelling together as well) I would have been stuck for a day in Toronto.

I get to Orlando where I'm supposed to sleep in the airport because the flights were full going from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale to Lima, but I decided to meander to the Spirit Airlines desk and see if there was space. And lo, there was. I handed in my pass, got a boarding pass for Fort Lauderdale AND Lima, paid the fare, checked my bag, went through security and waited to board. The rest of the people board, I am in the midst of being handed my boarding pass for the flight and someone says "HEY WAIT! You can't fly to Lima. There is a restriction for standby passengers until August 27th". I almost threw up, punched the guy and swore really loudly all at the same time. Luckily I did none of those, and calmly asked "WHAT????"

I won't get into the whole next bit of the story and all the details, but yes, apparently 10 people overlooked this teensy tiny travel embargo, messed up my entire trip, and I was stuck in Orlando with nowhere to go.

Blah blah blah I cried a bunch and then figured out what to do. I would fly standby to Fort Lauderdale and then buy a ticket to Lima from there because there was a seat sale. But wait, that flight already left today, and Monday's flight is sold out so I had to buy for Tuesday.

So I'm in Fort Lauderdale. At the Days Inn. (Thanks Papa and Kevin and Mum). Until Tomorrow at 5, when my flight leaves for Lima. On Spirit Airlines, aka the spawn of the Devil. (I don't really mean that. But right now I do.)

(And yes, I made sure I could get HOME on Spirit travelling stand by, and I was guaranteed that it would be possible, and if for some reason it's not, I'm calling the President of Spirit Airlines or even of the United States and telling him to GET ME HOME. And give me more room in my seat because man, they're uncomfortable. And free snacks. Yeah, snacks)

But hey, I'll have a great story to tell. Cause wow that's funny. Can you see how hard I'm laughing. So hard. Oh wait. I'm not laughing. Not at all.

I guess things can only get better. Right? RIGHT???

Okay, fine, I have a crush on a gay guy. What are you going to do about it.

I'll specify that this is more an asexual brother sister crush.

So I got back yesterday from a four day, and oh my god we laughed so freaking hard the entire time. It was me, my crush, another non-women liking guy and a girl. I was uncontrollable laughing for probably 50% of the entire four days. This gay guy, who I have a crush on, is the cutest most adorable boy in the entire world... we knew we were soul mates when he sang a line from a Mary Poppins song and I sang the next line without even thinking about it. It pretty much went downhill from there. We had a lot in common and man was he so so cute. All four of us just laughed and laughed, it was such a great time. Doing the demo was more like trying not to keel over because we were laughing so hard. Oh god... so fun. Our pilots were less that great, and we kept having to pretend we had plans so that we didn't have to hang out with them. Since I was in Ottawa, I used Kristen as an excuse. I called her in the crew van, discovered she was really sick and coughy and sleepy, and so we decided not to hang out. I then muttered into the phone "ok, so now I'm going to pretend that I'm coming over so that I don't have to hang out with the pilots ok?" which one of the other FA's heard, and instantly burst out laughing. I in turn burst into hysterics myself... Then I say "ok so when do you want me to come over?" abnormally loudly over the phone, to which Kristen replies "whenever you want! oh wait? why am I pretending?" which made me laugh even harder. So the two pilots are staring at me and the other flight attendants, who caught on to my clever plan, dying of laughter. Even Kristen is laughing because she can hear all of us. Oh god the tears were streaming down my face. So freaking funny. Then when we went to hang out sans pilots we were all stealthy trying not to run into the pilots. At first I felt bad about ditching them bu then I heard them talking about how I had a nice ass in a super creepy way and then stopped feeling bad.

Today I worked at Starbuck's and we had a "borrowed partner" from an other store working with us... He walked in the door and my face instantly lit up. We are lacking in the cute single guys at our location, so having one even for a morning was a nice change. I'm thinking I might see him again.

I leave again tomorrow for four more days. I'm in Vancouver... I hope that the snow has sort of subsided so that we don't get any crazy delays. Speaking of delays, I'm watching "View From the Top" with Gwenyth Paltrow, Mike Meyers, Christina Applegate, and Candace Bergen, which for those who don't know is a movie about flight attendants. I've never seen it before, and everyone says that I need to so I'm watching it. It's really funny to see the movie version of flight attending... And it's kind of depressing to see how fancy and nice things are when my job is so not even close to as fancy. (See above note about trying to not keel over and die while doing the safety demo). It's a pretty funny movie though. Maybe one day our* company will get a little higher class... not that I don't like it, because I do, but while in Ottawa my crush and I saw a cafeteria lady cleaning up tables wearing the same uniform as we wear. Nice.

That's about it. Oh right one more thing. So on the last day of my pairing I woke up to my phone ringing. Nothing unusual, since I often get wake-up calls from the hotel lobby desk. Though when I picked it up it was my crush saying "Morning Sunshine!" I said "oh how sweet you're calling to wake me up!" He replied with "so it's 6:45" to which I replied "mother %$#@!*& christ!" since that was the time I was supposed to meet my crew in the lobby. I was not only late, but dead to the world asleep late. I don't really get how I didn't get a wake-up call though, because I know that I requested one. Whatever... Anyways, as he hung up the phone I heard him say to the crew "She'll be right down!"

I madly brushed my teeth, got dressed, surprisingly didn't forget anything and went downstairs. I greeted everyone with a huge smile and said "Good Morning! What a beautiful day!" with sideways hair and no make-up. My pilots were less than impressed and my captain even said "I'm surprised, and kind of disappointed that you weren't crying!". I did my make-up in the van on the way to the airport, my hair in the airplane bathroom, and that was that. What are you going to do right? Crying about it would be kind of stupid, and I was too busy laughing with the other FAs about me forgetting to put my bra on and having to fish it out of my suitcase on the plane to cry! Oh man... I had to sleep in one of these days!

K now for real that's it.

*$%@#! %$#&!

This is what I was screaming yesterday morning at 5 am. Since I had to work at 6 am at Starbie's, I dragged my lazy ass out of bed, drowsily went into the bathroom, did my thing, then flushed the toilet. I'm getting my toothbrush out and I realize the water isn't going down, but instead rising alarmingly quickly. One of the worst feelings in the world I've discovered is watching your toilet water rise and being able to do nothing about it. The water gets to the top, and then just starts spewing out. All over the bathroom. I'm standing there in my undies and a hoodie, in a corner hopping up and down as to not get covered in peey water, and swearing. Profusely. I try to grab everything that's on the ground and huck it in the sink, but the water just keeps coming and coming. I hop out the door and knock on Linda's door and try to say in the calmest voice ever but end up screaming "LINDA! CAN YOU COME HERE FOR A SECOND???"

She sort of sensed the urgency in my voice I guess and came out and I said "LINDA! The toilet exploded!" She just started laughing and said "oh dear." I almost shook her her, but didn't, and said "Don't you see, pee all over the bathroom!" Then she realized the seriousness of the situation and we sort of whipped into action. Except we had nothing with which to whip into action since we have no plunger and no mop. Great. I threw a bunch of our towels on the ground, dry heaving the entire time, and tried to make it as un peey as possible. At one point I said "oh god I think I'm gonna puke" and to that Linda replied "Don't puke though, cause you have no where to puke!" We laughed for a split second and then realized that there was sewage all over the bathroom and got back to work. I still had to work at 6, so I hopped in the shower, did one of the world's longest jumps out of the tub and out the door of the bathroom, and quickly got ready for work.

I left and Linda had to deal with a lot of the nastiness... She came into work and I gave her a giant extra strong coffee to fuel her throughout the entire morning. Basically she unplugged the toilet and scrubbed every inch of the bathroom (and a lot of the apartment) with disinfectant (after a trip to the home depot and walmart). Our place smells very lemony! My gross job was to wash the nasty towels, which I was prepared to do, but my loving mother actually did it for me! I put them through twice with extra rinse cycles, so I hope I'll be able to use them again. If not, I'll need some new bath towels!

Seriously, how does a toilet clog from pee? That's all I'm asking.

And why does it clog at 5 in the morning?

Wherein I swear, just to let you know.

So I've been avoiding a new post until I had pictures from Vegas so that they wouldn't be like a week later and me being all "here are those pics from that time I went to Vegas" and you're all "I really don't care about some trip you took a while ago, I cared a while ago when I was reading about the trip" when really you don't care at all but at least there was something visually pleasing while reading about some trip you don't care about, but alas, I haven't gotten the stupid cord from my mum's place yet, and thus not having a way to get the pics on the computer to put on the internet. BUT, it's been a while since I posted and I was getting bored, so new, vegas picture-less post is here.

I got back today from a three-day, which was pretty easy/fun/annoying. The easy part was that it was easy (duh), the fun part was that I got to see Steph in London, where we had dinner at this awesome restaurant with her boif and bro, another fun part was that I got to see anOTHER friend in Grand Prairie and had dinner and chatted about people and had to use the staff bathroom at the restaurant*, and the annoying part was that my flights from GP and Edmonton got delayed so much today because stupid Edmonton only had one de-icing truck that a bunch of people missed their connections and I felt horrible about it. Especially this one guy, who has a really long weird story, but the jist is that he missed his flight, and his ex-wife will be pissed off yet again and hate him even more. My heart went out to him, especially when he was in the back galley trying to phone her to tell her he was missing his flight and he was leaving a message and me being the queen eavesdropper listening in and hearing how awkward the message was. (And FYI I wasn't even staring at him while I was eavesdropping like I normally have to.) ANYWAY, I was sad that people missed their connections.

I'm VERY glad to come home to more tolerable weather... It was minus a bazillion when I left, and now I think sitting around zero, which feels like a heatwave! Yay for chinooks and missing the transition so I don't even have to get a headache! My feel are still cold though. When will they ever warm up?

I'm almost done my Christmas shopping, which is not as much of an accomplishment as it sounds since each person is getting one small gift plus something from Starbucks. Nonetheless, I only have one more main gift to purchase and then maybe a couple for some friends if I have any money left. This Christmas is really hard for me, because one of my favourite things is to give gifts, and whenever I'm shopping I ALWAYS see things that I would love to buy for people (especially Kristen... I find probably 20 things a day I'd love to buy for her) but I don't have any money this year, so I'm limited to one gift for under the tree and one gift for the stocking per person, both gifts being probably worth the same small teensy amount of money. It sucks. I wish I could buy more, but I really really can't. I also wish I could buy presies for my "extended family" like friends, family friends, fake in laws etc. but I don't know if it's in the cards. We'll see.

I have more to say, but I don't feel like it right now. Sorry! I'm busy reeling on the fact that I just got invited to go to Hawaii with someone, but can't go because I'm working on Sunday. Who gets invited to Hawaii and then doesn't go? ME. Fuck I'm an idiot**.

*I will however tell this story. So we're in earls in GP. I get up to go to the bathroom shortly after getting our bevvys. I go into the bathroom, and all the toilets are, um, full. I go to flush one of them. Nothing happens. I try them all, and none flush. I walk out of the bathroom and some manager type walks by. I tell her the bathrooms aren't working. She says "oh, well I'll try to fix them".

Flash to 10 minutes later, me REALLY having to pee. Manager type brings us our calamari.

Me: "How are those bathrooms coming along?"

Manager Type: "well, yeah they aren't working, I don't know what to tell you."

Me: "Ummmm, so where am I supposed to pee?"

MT: "Do you have to go that bad?"

Me: "Well, ummmm, yeah, and we're about to start our appetizer and we're planning on having dinner, and I don't really want to have to sit here the whole time having to pee."

MT: "OK."

Then she walks away... I look at my friend and we giggle uncomfortably. MT comes back.

MT: "I can walk you up to the Staff bathroom. Come on."

So I go as well as my friend, since she has to pee now as well, and we walk through the kitchen, up some stairs, down a hall, into a bathroom where servers have left their street clothes to pee. The most awkward part? Waiting for my friend to pee, in the staffroom, with Manager Type and other servers talking about how wasted they were all last night. MT is looking at me nervously hoping I'm not listening, but this time I wasn't as good an eavesdropper so I'm staring at everyone as they're talking. Weird story.

**Sorry I swore. Seemed like the thing to do.

Something a little less boring

Guess where this little flight attendant is going on Wednesday? Toronto... not too exciting. BUT, the next day? VEGAS BABY!! That's right, twenty hours in Las Vegas, staying ON the strip... I seriously can't wait!

I had my first major puke incident this pairing... A poor lady just kind of puked all over herself and the seat and the floor and everywhere imaginable. The rule is, you find it, you deal with it. So, I happened to be the one walking by when I heard "um, excuse me" and I turned and she had puke EVERYWHERE. SO, I won't go into major details, but I had to go back to the seat three separate times and clean more and more because the smell wouldn't go away. I was on my hands and knees, with my face all up in it, and dry heaving the entire time. I even cried a little bit, just because I was in a "I hate my life" kind of mental state. BUT, as sorry as I felt for myself, I felt sorrier for the lady because she still had a long way to fly and she didn't have extra clothes. And plus she was a grown lady who puked everywhere, and she was so embarrassed. (Don't worry I didn't let her see me cry... only the floor and the piles of puke saw that. And maybe the guy sitting behind her... he certainly saw me dry heaving and he was laughing. I wasn't laughing back.) As soon as I got to my hotel room, I called my sis and we felt sorry for ourselves together. I thought that if anyone would understand how I was feeling, it was her, and she happened to be on the verge of puking herself from a bad headache, so we talked to each other in whiny pathetic voices for a little while and I felt better. She felt better later since talking to me probably only made her headache worse, but she sacrificed... that's what sisters are for!

That was my weekend. Kind of crappy.

BUT,
VEGAS BABY

Chapters?

So today I have to work at a different Starbucks for a shift, and this one happens to be in a Chapters. I'm kind of scared, because I'm always in my little niche of people at MY Starbucks who understand that I actually don't know anything about my job besides the coffee making and drink calling since I rarely work. Now I have to step outside of my bubble and work somewhere where people don't know me and who aren't amused by my ridiculous stories which makes them love me and forget that I'm slightly incompetent. Yesterday's shift didn't really give me any more confidence because my brain was not working whatsoever and I pretty much wandered aimlessly until I had the thing I was looking for and then wandered again until I knew what to do with it. Hopefully they'll just stick me on till or bar and leave me there until the day is done. (fat chance of that happening.) At least they don't have a drive through. Now THAT would be crazy.
Mix the hungover shift yesterday, the new Christmas drinks that I haven't made, the staff meeting I missed last week re: Christmas drinks, Chapters Starbucks that can get SO busy that the line up travels around the Chapters, and me not knowing anything, and you get a potentially horrendous shift today at Chapters.

Wish me luck.

Update: I got a call from the Chapters Starbucks double checking that I was still good to work tonight. Guess what the male voice over the phone said? "I think we actually went to high school together Heather, I played the flute in Band and was one year younger, and in Marching band too!" (I know I'm making myself look REALLY cool here but this isn't the point, look beyond that and focus!) So I'm trying to deduce which of the two guys it could be who were in band who played the flute and were younger. One I'm PRETTY sure's name is Kyle, and that wasn't this guy's name. So who am I left with? Kristen I think you're following. I think he may have been friends with a recently discovered CSA and a supervisor at Famous Players.... Shit. I'll just roll with it when I get there. Blech. "I didn't know you were a Starbucks Partner! How neat!" Wow, I use neat regularily as well! Wow, I can't wait to go to work now!

Sexy Pictures

I pretty much love titling my posts "sexy pictures", only to frustrate people searching for porn and getting my useless blog post.

Anyway, last night I had the goal of taking some sexy pictures of me and my new car, but it didn't really happen. First, I had to get my car washed. Then, we decided to go out and spent far too long getting ready and by the time we went outside it was dark. Then we decided to try anyway, and the batteries in my camera died. So all in all, it was a total bust. But soon. I will have the pictures soon.

Today the sis came to town with the brother in law (who doesn't have a blog to which to link, loser) and it's great to have them back in town. I feel kind of selfish since I see them way more often than everyone else because of the whole flight attendant thing but still want to hang with them in Calgary. So far the selfishness has worked because Kristen and I have been hanging out just the two of us all day. That was slightly accidental because I ended up taking WAY longer than expected at the university picking up my degree. It took me AN HOUR to get a freaking paper with my name on it. Lame. Hopefully tonight we'll hang out with other people too so I don't feel so bad. (And by bad, I don't REALLY mean bad because I'm totally fine with hanging out just the two of us but I say bad just to look better to others).

Here's a little shout out/question for Steph, and the others who know "the story" and have benefitted from my misfortunes and laugh at me daily because of it... Guess who I ran into at the university? Just take a wild guess. The result was giggling and me saying to Kristen "funny story after we walk by this group of people". Will I ever stop providing people with constant amusement because of my ridiculousness? I think not.