Chrystine Dimitry:  

ns as a temporary measure. The "thing" with the VW mechanic didn't work out, but I will always be grateful to him for giving my my self-esteen back and for giving me the courage to end a bad marriage. I can still hear my mother saying "I told you so." I met my 2nd (and current) husband, Nile, later that year, and what an adventure my life has been since then! We lived in the Antelope Valley until 1982. He already worked for Lockheed, and I finally got hired on after taking a structures course, learning how to shoot rivets =8^O I quickly moved on to assembly status, taking care of paperwork, and ended up working in the commercial division as a graphic artist. Nile worked on the "black" side, called the Skunk Works, where the top secret spy planes were made. For a couple of years he worked "away" at a secret installation during the week, and came home only on weekends. I sure didn't like that much! In 1982 I took a leave of absence from my job and we moved to eastern England. I got to travel, travel, shop and travel, while my poor husband slogged away, working on the SR-71 Blackbird, one of Lockheed's black aircraft. We stayed in England for 4 years and formed many lasting friendships. We returned to the States when my father died in 1986, following the death of my mother the year before. After clearing up my parents' estate, we moved to Phoenix, AZ, where I opened an antiques store on Main Street in prestigious Scottsdale, using contacts I had made in England to import English and European furniture. I really enjoyed it, as you can imagine, and kept it going for six years. After six years, I closed the shop and went to work for America West Airlines. Boy, did I ever take advantage of the free flight benefits! For one thing, I traveled all over the country seeing plays, most notably "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat" with Donny Osmond. I saw it every month for almost 5 years, and became known to the cast as a source for "Buddy Passes", discount travel vouchers. I went so often that even Donny recognized me at the stage door. Those flight benefits also gave us the opportunity to scout out a place where we could build the home of our dreams, and in 1998 we moved up here to the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest. We have a 42 acres on a hillside overlooking the beautiful Umpqua RIver, where my hardworking spouse single-handedly built our home. While we worked on it, we lived in a travel trailer (yup, trailer trash!). It was slow going, but in the end it was all worth it! " From 1998 to 2002, I commuted weekly from Oregon to Phoenix for work. I rented a room from a friend and flew home for weekends, but I finally left America West in August of 2002, when my mentor, Larry LeSueur, was promoted to VP. The management went straight down-hill when he left. I went to work at the Eugene, OR, airport for Mesa Airlines, who operated America West Express. I was a "fully cross-utilized CSR", which meant I did EVERYTHING, from selling tickets to dumping the lav to marshaling the planes in and out, and I quite enjoyed it, except for the baggage loading and lav dumping. In the end, though, even though the 85 mile drive (one way) was a bit better than going to Phoenix every week, the cost of gasoline soon made even that commute difficult, and I left the airlines altogether in the spring of 2004. I worked part-time at three jobs for awhile: as an On-Call library assistant for the Douglas County Library System, as a Chiropractic Assistant in a truly wonderful office, and as a clerk at a local auction. I now work at the Chiropractic off exclusively. I also keep busy raising rare Cuckoo Marans chickens and selling their eggs on eBay to people who want to hatch their own chicks. And that's my work life so far .... too long to fit on a resume, though.