Caught up in life

Been meaning to update, but just got busy and then very sick, but it's all better now.

All this "alone time" has actually become very boring. My friends are either out of town or out of commission and I'm left with not a lot to keep me occupied. I'm so used to having my constant companion, Kidzilla, that it feels weird to do stuff by myself. But I'm making the effort. Tomorrow is my big splurge, some time at a spa after work.

A finally really finished his IOE and is already out in CA, miserable. Through some fluke and a friend's bad advice, he missed his chance to bid for a base closer to home so now he's stuck out there for a while. His aug schedule is all 2 day breaks, ie not really long enough to come home (I have a fear that we'll end up having to plan a rondevue in the handicapped bathroom on concourse C of random airport X if we want this baby thing to happen). He says it's smoggy, smells like a dairy and just generally sucks. And once we sat down and did the math, we found that it was only saving like $400 over the course of 4 months for him to stay for free with a friend out there. Neither of us feels that it's really worth it. He got out there too late to be able to get a line after only 1 month of reserve, so really there's no reason for him to be out there.

We've made the decision to move to IAH and live in base. It's not a base that is likely to change any time soon, so we feel safe going there. Now the only decision is when. Should we go now and leave me to find a new job that I hope to leave once we have another child? Should we wait it out and try to move after a new baby when I won't have to worry about a job? If we move to IAH soon, we can take advantage of his being home during reserve and enjoy our time together vs. him being in a crashpad and only home during breaks. Decisions, decisions...

Even though I'm not a pilot myself, I spend a lot of time reading posts on forums, trying to understand the industry, union and management roles and just general stuff. For fear of being flamed, I rarely post. One topic that seems to come up frequently is salary. It's always about the salary and how much pilots *should* be paid vs. how much they are. Yeah, pilots used to make a lot more but really, right now they aren't and people just need to deal with it already. Really, if you can't live off off $100K, then you need to reconsider your lifestyle. Maybe you can't be the highest roller on the block, but it's a pretty respectable income. And for someone with only an AS degree (ie someone who topped out at Regional CA) that's a pretty darn good salary. I have a BS degree and I'll never make close to that. And that is certainly higher than the average American income. I was living in one of the most expensive places in the US and doing fine on less than 1/2 that. Heck, we've been living on less than 1/3 of that for the last 1.5 years and we are fine. If you were making $2-300K and didn't put any away for a rainy day, then that's your own damn fault. I bet all those auto workers in Flint, MI thought that their well paid gig's would also last forever. Would I like the pilot salaries to go up? Absolutely. Do I think they will? I have no idea. But you sure won't see me crying poor about the salaries they are making now.