The important thing to remember is that they’ve only furloughed a portion of those they intend to furlough. If I get furloughed, I’ll be one of the last ones to go because I’m at the top of the portion they may or may not furlough.

The good news is that I’m not furloughed yet. The displacement award is now anticipated for early next week, and I fully expect that I’ll get the Dash in Denver, simply because it’s a very junior aircraft and base. Whether that award makes me more or less likely to be furloughed in the future, I don’t know. If I don’t get the Dash in Denver, I’m going to be flabbergasted, annoyed and frustrated. Anything’s possible. I could, theoretically, be assigned to the ERJ in CVG, but that seems unlikely.

With the award should come some kind of class date, so maybe I’ll have vague idea about the near future.

I haven’t flown in a very long time. I spend $15/day getting to and from the airport, every day. I ride the AirTrain to the LIRR and then walk a mile. I haven’t driven a car in so long, I wonder if mine is rotted in Denver, or if I’ll even remember how.

I still don’t have a working MacBook, which is a constant source of frustration for me. I’m hoping that the parts sitting at home will allow me to fix it soon.

Rough schedule update until I get around to updating google calendar and facebook: I’ve got a 5-day trip starting on the 17th. I’ll stay on reserve until the 25th, when I go home. I have that Saturday and Sunday and Monday off. I’m then on Reserve again until Nov 2nd, and in training the morning of the 3rd. The plan is to be in Dallas for a Magnetic Fields concert on this Monday night. It doesn’t look like I’m going to get home until October 25th, which means I’ll have been away from home for an entire Month.

I found a great little book store a few blocks from Syd’s new apartment. It’s now called “Unnameable Books.” As far as I can tell, it’s the store that’s unnameable, not the books. The place used to be called Adam’s Books, but apparently someone threatened legal action, and so they gave up.

They sell both new and used books, and have a nice varied collection. They don’t have so much of the pop crap that you’re likely to find in places like an airport bookstore, and have a fairly high quality selection. Like every store in New York, it’s small. When I walked in at about 8:30pm, the door was wide open and there was no one in sight. I winced as I walked in, expecting some sort of annoying laser-tripped alarm that would alert the owner to my presence and cause him to pounce on me. No such thing happened. There is a sign in the front of the store that says, “Please don’t steal the books.” I browsed around the front of the book store for a good 20 minutes before I ever caught sight of the owner in the back, tinkering with his computer, behind a veritable fortress of used books. I eventually bought a copy of Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age and Richard Power’s Three Farmers. Both used, a grand total of about $13. A bit pricey for used books, but I didn’t have to pay shipping, and this is New York, after all.

The only other thing of note is that I somehow lost my Mesa ID badge. It was hanging off my shirt Tuesday morning when I went through security. It was not hanging off my shirt on Wednesday morning. I have no idea what happened to it. So I spent yesterday in Sydney’s apartment, doing exactly the same thing I do at work: reading and surfing the internet. FedEx brought me a new badge this morning just before Noon. It looks like I owe Mesa $25, now. Which I suppose is fair, but I really don’t know what I could have done to prevent this, short of tying the badge around my neck, which I simply refuse to do.