Charter Flight to the Drunk Room in Dallas.

3 topics for this cover-all blog: 1) My charter flight 2) Finishing the drunk room paint and 3) Our weekend trip to Dallas for a mini late birthday celebration for Allison's dad. All happened the weekend of the 18th.

Friday, Oct, 17th -- Allison came home from school, packed, watched me tape the edges of the drunk room, and then headed to Dallas for the weekend.

I think by now you are all familiar with why we call one of our rooms "the drunk room." But just in case, when we first looked at the house back in March, the paint in one of the upstairs bedrooms was a little sloppy. Let's call it painting outside the lines. Our realtor made the comment, "It looks like they were drunk when they painted this room." So now you know. It was a dark maroon red and had an incomplete chair rail for some reason. After 2 1/2 coats of primer, it was ready for paint. We went with a medium grey because it will be our office room until it is needed otherwise.

So I painted into the night, finishing the main painting by the time Allison landed in Dallas.

Saturday, Oct. 18th -- The University of Georgia played Vanderbilt at home for homecoming in Athens, Georgia. I got assigned a trip that involved 3 CRJ's flying to Athens to pick up the Vanderbilt football team and fly them back to Nashville after the game. It was fun doing something different than the norm.

Enjoy some pictures:



Oct. 18th later on -- Nashville to Atlanta. I parked our jet at the D concourse at ATL, dumped off my pilot crap at ASA operations, headed out to the main terminal to activate my Dallas ticket, went back through security, grabbed something to eat and got first class on the last flight to Dallas at 9:15pm. Woohoo!

Side note- I pleasure travel in my uniform because I can carry liquids. If I'm NOT in my uniform, I'm subject to the same liquid ban as every one else, despite being a crew member. So just to review, while riding as a passenger, if I'm wearing my uniform, I can have as many gallons of shampoo that I can carry on. Not in uniform? 3 oz bottles only. At this point I will bite my tongue. You really don't want to get me started.

Late Saturday Oct 18th - Monday 20th -- Got to Dallas, Allison picked me up, we socialized a little with Pat and Dave and crashed after a long day.

The next day, Pat and Dave woke up to do their morning church duties before church. Allison and I bummed around for an hour or so. Apparently I was still tired because the next thing I knew, Allison was gone and I was alone on the couch. I'd only had about 5-6 hours of sleep on Friday after staying up so late painting.

Everyone got back from church around 11 or so and we headed right back out. Destination? Freebirds World Burrito! For our Georgia friends, Freebirds is a Texas original. To compare, Chipotle and/or Moes is dog food compared to Freebirds. The last 2 times I've been to big D, a new Freebirds has opened so we go check it out. Last Christmas it was the TCU Freebirds over in Ft. Worth. This time it was Freebirds in Arlington down south.

The purpose for Arlington was 2-fold.

The Dallas Cowboys are getting a new stadium and it is going up in Arlington a block away from the fairly new "Ballpark in Arlington" where the Texas Rangers play. So after lunch (I finished off a Monster with Steak) we drove by to see the construction. Very impressive. A few stats about the new stadium:

Cost to build: 1.1 BILLION dollars. Yes, billion.
# of toilets: 1,733
Concessions: 824
Square Feet: 2.7 million
Capacity: 80K expandable to 100K

Also, it will have the world's largest hi-def LED display hanging over the field that will stretch from 20 yard line to 20 yard line. The arches holding up the roof will measure 1,225 feet, end to end, roughly the length of the Empire State Building. All these stats are credited to the Sept 2008 Wired Magazine.

After the stadium, we drove to Ft. Worth and wandered around the Stockyards, always an enjoyable Texas thing to do. Then it was home to watch the Cowboys game. They lost. Then Allison, Pat and I went to Southlake town square to wander around before meeting Dave at Pei Wei for some dinner.

We headed back to Atlanta the next day and got back home with just enough time for Allison to get ready for Tuesday. It was a very enjoyable weekend all around.

And of course...

1. Drunk Room Photos from start to finish
2. Dallas Trip Photos


Some other albums not mentioned in the blog but recently taken.
1. Burt's Pumpkin Patch in North Georgia Oct. 5th
2. Allison's soccer game at the pro field Oct. 26th.

Gas Fairy!

That's right, I am a gas fairy.

Hurricane Ike made Houston refineries shut down. Apparently that affects us here in Georgia and Tennessee.

Until yesterday, gas was hard to come by. Unless you waited in long lines out onto the main roads. Luckily for me, I've only had to make my 80 mile trip to the airport twice since the middle of September. Also, Allison only drives 30 miles a week total so that helps too.

From what I understand, regular 9-5 commuters had quite an experience these past few weeks. We feel lucky for sure.

So the gas fairy thing... The couple times we DID need gas, I provided services for Allison's car while she was at work. That amounted to her coming out after work and "magically" having a full tank of gas. Hence, the gas fairy.

This was to avoid the long gas lines at peak hours. I think we kind of had fun with it since it wasn't a stress point for us. It was like, "Who's going to have gas today?" One station would have gas one day and none the next and vice versa. Many stations haven't had gas since they first ran out 2 weeks ago.

Fun stuff.