Have had a fun month so far meeting some noteable musicians on some of my flights. There were a couple I won't name who didn't give me the time of day, but let me tell you about the ones who did!

First, there was Marty Magehee from the Christian group "4Him". Although I haven't closely followed the group in the last few years, I did in their early years and knew that they are currently on their farewell tour after 15 years together. Hard to believe it's been 15 years and that they were the headlining group at "Footloose" in Euless the night I participated in a vocal talent contest sponsored by KLTY.

Anyway, Marty was really cool to talk to--just like talking to a colleague. He was completely exhausted because he and his family have been moving to a new house in between his performing with "4Him" on the weekends. And his movers finked out on Memorial Day weekend leaving a lot of the labor to him and his brother-in-law.

I wish we could've talked longer, but the flight from Nashville to Dallas isn't all that long. Nevertheless, Marty gave me a big hug before deplaning which did worlds for my self-esteem.

Then, this past Monday, I had a man named Chuck Cannon on my flight from LAX to Nashville. His name was not familiar to me and he slept most of the flight, but whenever we had to interact, he always called me by name and said "please" and "thank you" and just generally seemed to be a good-natured sort. I would've try to engage him in conversation if he hadn't been at the window seat and if he hadn't been asleep for most of the flight. I finally got an opportunity after the flight to speak to him a little more, however, when the other flight attendants and I had just left the secured side of the terminal and I heard my name. It was Chuck Cannon telling me he'd left his favorite pillow on the plane and wondering how he could go about getting it back now that he was also on the unsecured side and no longer had a ticket. I called over a TSA worker and found out what he needed to do, but also took the time to ask Chuck who he played for. He said he played for himself and wrote songs that other people sang. I was rather chagrined that his name still didn't mean anything to me, but being an avid Googler, I looked him up as soon as I got home from trip. Oh, okay, he only co-wrote "How Do You Like Me Now?" and "American Soldier" with Toby Keith as well as writing "I Love The Way You Love Me" which John Michael Montgomery made a hit.

On his website, there was a contact email address and on a whim, I dropped him a quick email telling him he was one of the most polite and personable performers I'd met in my career and that I'd enjoyed meeting him. Since I'd also found out from his website that he is married to Lari White and that they sometimes perform together, I said that I'd have to come out and see them if they were ever in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Well, imagine my surprise when I received a personal email back from him the next day! Apparently, he's never received an email from a flight attendant either and I think my admiration of his character made him feel good. Anyway, it's always refreshing to meet successful musicians who are still such normal people.

I also got to meet Lassie on the same flight. This is the ninth Lassie, but they've all been from the same bloodline and they've all been male dogs! Lassie is about to embark on a new dogfood campaign.

Just starting reading Kristin Espinasse's "Words in a French Life" and it is darling! It is much like her blogs. Love it.

Also, just found out about a new Francophone chanteuse. Her name is Sandrine Kiberlain and she's a French actress. She released the album "Manque plus qu'ça" last year. It's very pleasant and her style kind of reminds me of Françoise Hardy.

So many books, so little time....On my list of current books to be read are: His Lovely Wife by Elizabeth Dewberry, Birds in Fall by Brad Kessler, Jane Austen in Scarsdale by Paula Marantz Cohen, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan, My Life in France by Julia Child, Blue Water by A. Manette Ansay, Color of Law by Mark Giminez (who lives here in Bedford), The Novelist by Angela Hunt, Anybody Out There by Marian Keyes, Water Like a Stone by Deborah Crombie, The Woman I Am by Helen Reddy, and Words in a French Life by Kristin Espinasse...

Does anyone know whatever happened to Colgate Herbal White toothpaste? It was my favorite toothpaste and now it's nowhere to be found. I did find some on eBay, but the person who's selling it wants too much for the product and for postage.

I found lavender honey on eBay last week and it should be arriving any day. I bought my first jar of it when I went to Provence several years ago with my mother and I've had a hankering for it ever since.

My trip this past week wasn't so bad. Even though the one flight attendant never was in his assigned boarding position, he did manage to walk through the cabin a time or two during boarding and see how the overhead bin situation looked. And he seemed to have a better attitude overall. It's still an exhausting trip, though, and I came home last night and made myself a nice Grapefruit vodka and pink lemonade cocktail.

I'm sort of dreading going to work today as I'm working with a rather lazy crew this month. One of my crew is supposed to be at the front of the 757 during boarding but he hangs out in the back and complains about everything instead...which leaves me running my fanny off up and down the airplane by myself during boarding. And the woman I'm working with in F/C likes to serve wine in the cocktail glasses instead of wine glasses because she doesn't think she'll have to do refills as often. I think it looks tacky. She's also got personal problems in that she's bulimic so she's constantly eating and then going into the lav to purge...and then she brushes her teeth over a cup in the galley. Gross.

Believe it or not, I'm the junior one with 20 years...Also, contrary to what most passengers think, not every airline has a "lead" flight attendant on their flights, so if I want anything changed about my current situation, I'm going to have to speak up for myself and I hate confrontation.

Self-tanners--they're everywhere now and over the last few years I've used three or four different brands. They always smell nice when I'm applying them, but a few hours later, I start giving off the odor of stinky feet. Does this happen to anyone else or does my body chemistry just not agree with whatever's in these things?

I have a mystery plant coming up in one of my flower beds. It's not a bulb and I almost suspect it's the beginning of a rose bush. I pulled up a couple of rose bushes last year that just weren't faring well and planted petunias, I think, and whatever's growing now definitely isn't a petunia. Maybe there were some dormant roots of the rose bush that have come back to life.

I'm taking a Spanish conversation class at UTA. It's six-week course that meets every Saturday from 9:30-12:30. There are about twenty of us in the class, three of whom are men. We start every class playing "Lottería" or as we know it, Bingo. Last week, we then went over the Preterit tense, and then got in pairs to come up with dialogue for various conversational situations. It's hilarious listening to a bunch of adults trying to learn a new language as we stumble over new vocabularly, sentence structure and verb forms. My pronunciation is excellent and I've been told many times that I sound like a native, but when it comes to conversing, all the vocabulary I know seems to just go right out the window. Practice, practice, practice, I know.

This afternoon, I'm going over to the house of some friends of mine who just had their first child. They're having an open house for everyone to see their new little boy and they're calling it a "Sip and See" a term I've never heard before.

Tonight I'm the cantor at the 5:30 Palm Sunday service. The choir is singing and thus will begin our "Week of Fire" as we're also singing at two masses tomorrow, then Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday of next week. We'll all be exhausted when it's over.

I'm currentlly reading Frances Mayes' new book A Year in the World. It is beautifully written in the way Under the Tuscan Sun was. I still can't believe she allowed that book to be made into the movie it was. I like Diane Lane, but the movie was completely different from the book. About the only thing that was the same was that a woman went to Tuscany and bought an old farm house.

Ordered some pink freshwater pearls from overstock.com and they arrived yesterday; they are beautiful. I've really been wearing a lot of pink the last couple of years....a lot of pink and a lot of brown. I used to wear black quite frequently, but now that color just doesn't seem to look right on me.

Recently subscribed to "Netflix" which I thought I'd never do because I'm not much into watching random movies and I don't watch a lot of TV. A lot of my friends watch "Grey's Anatomy", however, so I ordered the first season on DVD from "Netflix" and now I'm hooked...to the show and to Netflix! Netflix has everything! Every foreign film I'm interested in seeing, BBC mini-series that were on "Masterpiece Theatre", even old TV shows like "Adam-12". (I had a crush on Kent McCord when I was about 7.) For me, Netflix is the answer for not subscribing to cable.

Between the Spanish class, all the books I want to read, reading various authors' blogs, "Netflix" movies, choir and cantor responsibilities and now work, there just aren't enough hours in the day.

Hi,

My name is Terry and I'm just getting into blogging. I don't know that I'll be writing so much myself, but I am interested in others' blogs.