Mr T's rants and ravings

I saw this post on the Delta Airlines blog and it brought back memories. Back in the early days of flying (I may have taken my first flight in the late 1950’s) boys were given pilot wings and girls were given stewardess wings. Of course today we call stewardesses flight attendants and there are a lot more male ones then their used to me.

It’s more than a PC name change though. There was a connotation about stewardesses back then. They were mostly young and frequently good looking. And they were taking care of a heavily male clientele. And if they were not explicitly valued for their sex appeal there was always a hint of that. Southwest went so far as to dress their stewardesses in hot pants. OK maybe that was fairly explicit. But the fact was that there was something of an idea that women on airplanes were servants. Pilots on the other hand were important – they ran things. Also that being a pilot was a man’s job.

Today it’s different. I have flown a number of commercial flights with women pilots and co-pilots. Most flights have at least one male flight attendant. And in general I think that flight attendants are taken more seriously. And well they should be. I think that on most flights the flight attendants are a lot more important to the comfort and experience of the trip than the pilots. And having to deal with all sorts of people on  a crowded airplane is often quite a chore.

We don’t think about “men’s jobs” and “women’s jobs” so much any more. It’s not gone away – just try and be an elementary school teacher and a man some time. But I think we are making progress.

Oh and if you think that all flight attendants are middle aged women – not that there is anything wrong with that as some of them look pretty good too – fly IcelandAir sometime. From what I read Singapore Airlines works hard to have attractive flight attendants. But honestly I have no complaints and cute young flight attendants are not what I look for. I have been well taken care of on Delta for years and years. They are and have long been my airline of choice. I’ll take the experience and quality of their flight attendants any day.

I think I am a defective OCD person. That is to say that I am somewhat obsessive in that I really like things neat, organized, clean and very “ship shape.” But unfortunately I’m not compulsive about getting things that way. So if the mess gets too big it bothers me a lot but I’m not motivated to clean it up. Rather I am motivated to leave it behind.

Take my office for example. When I get in the midst of a lot of travel the office quickly becomes a mess. Now you are wondering if I am away so much how could it become a mess? Well the way it works is that when I come back from a trip I empty out all the things I picked up so that I have a clean backpack for the next  trip. But I don’t really have time to organize it well. I think “I’ll get to it later” but of course I don’t. The next time it is even harder to organize and I don’t have time to fix things so it gets worse. Until finally I take my laptop and I work in the dinning room or the family room or some other place.

This cannot last though. In fact soon it will be over because Mrs. T will be on summer break. It is much to distracting to try to work outside of my office when she is in the house. We’ll not go into the details but it is enough to say that soon I will clean out my office – it will likely take about two days – so that I can work comfortably there again. That has been the pattern for the last four or five years now. Some how I really need to find an easy way to keep the office neat and tidy.

I figured it out for clothing. About two years ago I “outsourced” cleaning of my shirts and dress pants. Rather than trying to wash them with everything else and iron them myself (or try to talk Mrs. T into doing the ironing) I started taking them to the dry cleaners. They come back clean and very pressed. I ask for starch so they really feel neat and clean all day long. It’s a reasonable trade for my money. The office is not so easy though. Sigh. Maybe I need a fully functional OCD office mate. 🙂

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. People never keep them anyway and I’m not that different from most people. I do set goals but they are not tied to the fact that there is a year change on the calendar.

January is typically the start of my annual self-evaluation phase though. For the last 14 years or so I have spent January and February evaluating my job and trying to decide if it is time to actively look for a new one, stay where I am at or just be open in case a new one pops up. This last year I decided to do the same thing during the summer as well. Twice a year seems like enough times to do serious soul searching, thinking and praying about ones career.

I start with an open mind. It helps that I start after a short vacation (I’ve been on vacation since the Friday before Christmas) so my mind is cleared of stress (well work related stress) and related activities. So I have no idea what I’ll decide. Though honestly I am far from unhappy with my present job or company.

I am trying to lose weight but that has been ongoing. I put on some weight over the summer and early fall. It has been tough losing it but it has to be done (doctor’s orders). Obviously I’m still working on that but you can’t call that a New Year’s resolution. As part of that I am trying to exercise more and get into better physical shape beyond just being thinner.

My third goal these days is to some up with more goals. I just don’t feel like I have enough on my plate to really make my life interesting. We’ll see how it goes.

So Mrs T is out shopping with our son. Apparently they have already got him a suit for an amazing price. They are having fun. Shopping on one of the busiest shopping days of the year is not my idea of fun though so I am glad I got to stay home.

In theory I am cleaning up from Christmas. In practice I slept very late, fixed some leftovers and have gotten very little done. I hope to get some things done before they come home though. At the very least I will put away my Christmas presents and break up all the cardboard boxes for the recycle bin. But I get distracted.

One of the first gifts I moved out of the family room was a special "day light" light that is supposed to help with seasonable affective disorder.  I don’t know that I have it for sure but I do know that I really crave the sunlight when I don’t get any for a while. I set up the light in my office which has no windows and there for no natural light. I like the way it feels so I decided to blog a bit for a while. It’s medical – that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

I have a number of things that I have to put together. Why is it that I always get stuff like that? One or two I will try to do today but that garden wagon can wait I think. There is too much snow outside to use it anyway. So I will move it down to the cellar and put it together there one night when TV is boring. Given the writer’s strike there will probably be a lot of boring TV nights real soon.

Besides things that have to be put together I seem to get organization tools. This year I got some sort of box with 31 slots (one for each day of the month?) and some drawers. It’s nice but will it help? History suggests no but I’ll try. I think the only thing that would really get me organized is a professional assistant. Though to be fair Outlook has been a huge help and goes a long way towards keeping me on track and sane.

No clothing this year. Thank goodness. I have more clothing then I know what to do with already. A few gadgets though and those are always good. A handheld Sududo game which I expect to enjoy on some flights. And the best gift of all is a new Magellan GPS. That will get lots of use.

Well I have another week off now. This is the only time of the year when I take a vacation that doesn’t involve traveling somewhere and doing something.  It sort of feels like a waste but I can really use the mental and physical down time. I hope you are all getting and enjoying some down time of your own.

I miss teaching. I don’t miss the paycheck and I could do without grading for the most part. But in general I miss being in the classroom. I taught a class today – sort of. I was a guest speaker at a management class at Bentley today. (Sorry I didn’t warn anyone but it was of those get there just in time to talk, have lunch with the professor and leave sort of days.)

It’s not exactly like being the regular teacher of course. And frankly the class was not as responsive as I’d like. But they had almost an hour of class that included a lot of math, numbers and I gather not exciting things before I started. And it was lunch time – people were eating when I started. It just felt good to be teaching though. The professor said I did a good job and a second professor who was sitting in asked me to talk to her class later this month. Always a good sign.

While eating lunch with the professor I told him that I missed the classroom and he asked me where I had my resume in. Well I don’t have any out. I’m thinking that I may send some out though. Not for full-time employement though. Without a PhD there is no way I could get the kind of paycheck I am getting now teaching full-time. And I do like my current job. What I am thinking is that a night course or perhaps a Saturday course might fit into my schedule. I’d have to be careful with my travel but it could work. I just have to find someone who is looking for someone with my background. Who knows – it could be fun.