Amandopher: The Unholy Union

As you may or may not know, my company does contracting for Sikorsky Aircraft Company.  Sikorsky won a bid for the new heavy lift helicopter for the NAVY, and Spirit is one of the vendors that Sikorsky is outsourcing to.  They are responsible for the cabin and the cockpit of the aircraft.  In a way, I’m doing the same thing that I do in KY, but I’m doing it earlier in the process.  Spirit fell a little behind in the release goals, and Spirit asked some people at our company to help out in checking stuff before it’s submitted to Sikorsky.  I happen to be one of those people, and Spirit happens to be located in Wichita, Kansas.  So that’s pretty much it.

I switched hotels.  The other one was driving me nuts.  It would have been okay if I only had to stay there for a few days or a week, but due to the tenure of my trip, it was unbearable.  So we found this one, well, I found it by talking to some people at work.  We negotiated them down from $109 (which is the Spirit rate apparently) to $59 a night.  I think Dennis would be proud.  Now let me go into this schedule a little bit…

The adjusted goal to be finished with the designs of all the parts of the craft is the end of March.  Initially I had been asked to come out here on rotation until that time.  Well, we decided that by the time everyone gets access and gets acclimated to the company, we’d be leaving.  So I was to take the first tour, October – December, and then someone else would come out here from January – March.  Sounds alright, right?  Well everything got pushed back and pushed back and I just got out here on Sunday.  So I’ll really only be here two months and whomever comes out after me will be here slightly longer.  No skin off my back.  I do get to go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and after Christmas I’ll be home for good.  Usually the plant would shut down from Christmas until after New Years, but because they’re so behind they’ll be working that week in between there.  Which works for us because we work that week too, and usually we would have nothing to do because Sikorsky shuts down then too.  Now what will probably happen is that they won’t be able to release anything anyway because Sikorsky will be shut down and they don’t like things going on when they’re not there.  But maybe they’ll just continue working like crazy and stock pile them to release after Sikorsky opens in January.  I don’t know.  Whatever.

So I’ve been forced to watch Food Network all day because every other channel has scary stuff on and I’m in a hotel by myself, so scary stuff isn’t really welcome in my little bubble.  I’m anxious enough as it is being by myself, I don’t need to watch Ghost Hunters or Most Haunted.  No thanks.  Although I did switch over onto an episode of I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.  I didn’t know that it was I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant at first because of the creepy music that was playing, and I totally thought that this girl had a ghost haunting her bathroom, but in reality, she mistook giving birth to a baby as a bowel movement.  Who knew?  But seriously, the image of her standing up, with no pants, and an umbilical cord attached to her was just priceless.  Priceless I tell you.  I think I may have peed a little.  Normally I don’t laugh that extensively when I’m by myself.  You know what I’m talking about, you’re just not in the same mood.  Well, not in this case.  It was the most out of control thing that I’ve ever seen.  And they just kept showing that damn umbilical cord.  I almost died.  It was kind of amazing.

I bought Dave Eggers The Wild Things at Barnes & Noble today.  I was excited that B&N is so close to my hotel, and I was looking forward to buying a book or two and sitting down in the cafe to read a little bit and get out of my hotel room, but since it was Halloween I guess there were a billion activities that necessitated having 36 million little kids there.  Not exactly the best environment to sit down and enjoy some coffee and literature when there are little kids and weird emo people running around.  No sir.  So I went shopping instead.  The mall was a lot better than I thought it would be, but there was some sort of science, machine, nerd competition going on, so again, a million people running around and pushing into my space.  Gross.  I went to Payless because there were some booties that I wanted to get but it was so small and there were so many people crowded in there that I started sweating and almost hyperventilating.  Not terribly appealing.  So I left and went to the outdoor mall that’s right by my hotel.  I went to Banana Republic and bought my first articles of clothing.  There was a buy 2 sale items, get one free thing going on, so I got three tops.  One is kind of weird and was definitely an impulse buy, so I’ll probably return that during the week when there might not be the same staff working.  But I liked the other two, and I know they had them in different colors, so maybe it’ll be an exchange.  I’m boring myself just writing this, allow me to move on.

I’m going to Cosmosphere tomorrow with some people from work.  It’s a space center.  Baller right?  There’s space shuttle replicas built and an IMAX theatre that’s playing two movies.  One about nature and the other about ancient Greece.  I voted for ancient Greece, and I think I won, but we’ll see tomorrow.

This Food Network Challenge is kind of lame.  There’s three awesome contestants and one new one, and the new one is kind of lame.  They definitely aren’t using the most of their time and she’s just standing around…  Losers.

Top Chef Reunion Dinner?  Why does Marcel have to be such an asshole to Fabio?  Ugh.  Have you been watching this season?  If you haven’t, catch up.  If you have, my favorites are definitely Jennifer and Kevin.  I like Bryan V. better than Michael, and I’m really tired of Eli.  I liked Mike Isobel, and I think Robin should GO.  IMMEDIATELY.  She’s awful and I’m tired of it.  I think this is officially the longest post I’ve ever written…

Until tomorrow,

Amanda