My At Sea Cabin

I'm sure you've seen the news from the campus of Virginia Tech. I'm not sure what to say, other than thousands of grieving students and families need our prayers today. The impact even reaches this far; one of our pilots' youngest sister is a freshman at VT. Fortunately, she is OK, but the stress is palpable, even here.

Not much to write about today. I thought I was going to bed last night when I wrapped up writing to Janell around 3:30am. Then as I walked by Maintenance Control to say good night, the chief informed me that we were missing a flashlight. Whenever a tool is missing, it's a big deal because we must ensure that it isn't lost inside an aircraft somewhere. After a brief search, it becomes a full-blown investigation conducted by our QA division. I am the bottom line on the search, once they have satisfied me that they have searched everywhere and that the aircraft are safe to fly. So I waited up for another hour while the search continued. Fortunately, the guy who lost the flashlight had only been around one aircraft since the last time he remembered having it. I signed off on the search and went to bed a little before 5am. Turns out, the flashlight was found and turned in by another squadron about 45 minutes later. Sheesh.

As promised, here is a photo of the Superman package, along with some items that arrived around the same time in other boxes...



While I'm at it, here's are shots of me walking into the room and standing by my desk. My stateroom is rectangular, with the door at one end and two bunk-bed racks at the other end. On one side are two side-by-side panels of drawers and a flip-down desk (I'm sitting at my desk in the photo on the right margin). Our TV us up on top of my desk cabinet, reaching almost the ceiling. To watch TV, I scoot my chair to the other side of the room (I have about 2 feet to scoot back) and slouch down in my chair, so that I'm looking almost straight up at the TV. On the other side of the room is a sink/mirror cabinet, and a wardrobe cabinet for my roommate. My wardrobe cabinet is between the desks.


Here's a shot of the racks. I have the top one. With the lights off and curtains pulled, it's pretty dark. Those pipes over my head are drain pipes from the head that is directly over our room. I try not to think about that too much.