I got my furlough notice early in Jan 03 from NWA, to go into effect on 1 Feb. I had been bumped back to reserve on the 9 and had just moved in to what turned out to be a really bad crash pad. There was about a foot of snow on the ground (and increasing). I was in a pretty bad place mentally. I called up my AF reserve commander and explained my situation and asked him what he could do. He called me back about three hours later and jokingly told me I was AWOL, because he had activated me an hour earlier. I really enjoyed relaying that message to crew scheduling.

Thank god for the AF Reserve. The whole point of this post was to tell new hires to make sure you have a plan B. Sorry, I posted the first time before I meant to.