I'm on the last four day trip prior to my 2-week vacation. Plans are slowly solidifying, but as we all know, my standby pass is only good when I'm on the plane, seated, and the door is closed. Till, then, we won't know where I'm going to end up. This is also the last vacation period that I have for 2008. I'm going to have to bid around and move pairings around on my lines for the next few months in order to block together some good days off.

Flying has been going well lately too. I'm use to just working days in a row with 1 day off in between lately. It wasn't as rough as I thought it would be with all the low time blocks we have been getting. (4-days of flying blocked to only 16 hours with one dead head) The trips all look the same with 3 legs the first day followed by 2-2-3. We have 2-hour sits in between our ATL round-trips which gives up ample time to grab some dinner too, but the days are that much longer. You can't complain much when other airlines are asking for voluntary leaves I guess. I'm just glad to be getting credits of up to 80 hours or even more.

I just bought a new backpack for my upcoming trip. Tentatively, I'm heading to the Eastern Mediterranean Shores, but with the current coup in Lebanon, it's getting me a little nervous. I'm sure it'll be okay, but we'll see what ends up happening. Back to the bag. It's a Kelty Redwing 3100 (3100 cubic inches of cargo / 50L) that was on sale at REI for $69.99. I also had a $5.00 credit so that just made this bag that much more awesome / cheaper!!! I didn't want a metal frame because I'm all about carry-on luggage only and I think that the cargo space it advertises is more than enough for some summer traveling. I'm really excited to put some miles on this bag. I still have yet to get a locking mechanism for those stays at hostels. Anyone have a good idea? I just have a Master combo lock but haven't the faintest idea on what to use to tie my bag up to the air-conditioner. I'm not going to sew on an American Flag Patch or a Canadian one, but I was thinking about a California State Flag patch. Maybe even something that has UCSD or San Diego. Who knows.