Allaire Airport is a small airport in central New Jersey that caters to corporate jets and banner-dragging small aircraft, as well as a few flight schools and collectors of old planes.  The variety of businesses housed on the airport is vast, from a motorcycle shop to a sign maker to a sunroof installer.  Somehow an avant-garde soda company fits right in.  I live and work on airport grounds. 
    Dry & Thirsty is that aforementioned soda company, the one that is standing the industry on its ear by tripping all over itself to provide unprecedented service. 
    Moomie, aka Darth Vader is my older boy.  He is five going on ten and soaks up knowledge like a sponge.  He is the sensitive one, and sometimes reserved.  "Still waters run deep" is an expression that comes to mind.  He is full of questions though, and opens up immediately to anyone who talks to him like an adult.  He wants to be a blacksmith when he grows up. 
    Boober, aka C3PO is my younger one, three.  He is as brilliant as his brother, but a bit more unsettling, as he has a fondness for knives and immense curiosity about the inner workings of the human body.  Maybe I shouldn't be uneasy; he may want to be a surgeon.  He is confident and affectionate, but easy to anger. 
    My Swedish sweetface is wlofie.  He's a virtuoso at improvised cuisine and always full of hugs when I most need them.  You can often find him teaching building in an AW world called AWSchool.  This is an endeavor he finds rewarding and at the same time infuriatingly challenging.  Let's just say that some folks are more interested in destruction than construction. 
    The HuzBend is my spouse, still in Maryland.  He's becoming a friend again, which is quite good.  I am beginning to like him as I used to.  We are just too damn incompatible to live together.  We jockey about between New Jersey and Maryland with the kiddos and visitation. 
    El Presidente is the president of our company, obviously.  He's the guy who got the backer on board to start this company, and he's capable of almost anything.  I've seen this guy pull off the impossible.  He's a short jolly bearded ball of energy, but don't piss him off.  And especially don't screw him over; he's from Brooklyn. 
    My assistant wound up with the unfortunate alias of Droid, because we were looking for a droid when we hired her, but she turned out to be so much more.  That's a good thing.  She has a very high standard of quality, a very bubbly personality, a generous helping of brains as well as wisdom, and a lot of character, not to mention a lovely face. 
    The Condiman has a thing for condiments, be it dressings, sauces, or dips.  He's swaggeringly confident, and with good right.  He knows his stuff, having worked at beverage sales for some time now.  He's sturdily built and tanned. Condi is one of our top salespeople.  He held the title of best until we hired his dad.  Heh, guess the fruit don't fall far from the tree. 
    Dearheart is the Condiman's fiancee.  She is lovely and kind and extremely systematic.  I love working with her on soda tastings cuz she has it down to a science. 
    Sly reminds me of Sylvester Stallone, when he was younger.  His voice has that same pitch and timbre, as well as accent, and it's rather charming on him.  He is another of the New York guys, a bit newer than the others.  I haven't found his quirk yet, but wait.  I do know that he comes from one of these very enviable large families where the appreciation of good food is a high art, and his mom is one helluvan artist, to hear him tell it. 
    Joy is our Public Relations and Marketing person.  She is a very interesting blend of princess and feminist that I find intriguing and rather attractive.  She now has an office at home, because it turned out she was allergic to our building.  Not surprising, it's crumbling. 
    Bubbly is one of our new salespeople.  She knows everybody.  Everybody.  You tell her about a hot dog stand, she knows the owner.  You mention buying a book at a certain store, she knows somebody who used to work there.  You mention a certain charity, she knows the chairperson.  It's creepy sometimes, but it's enabling her to make some fine inroads into some great accounts. 
    Hound has those puppy eyes.  He's a sales newbie, too, but also has a lot of good connections.  His experience is eclectic, with backgrounds in stocks and aromatherapy.  Don't be mislead, he ain't no fufu boy.  I could eat him whole. 
    Kitty takes sales on the west side of the state.  She used to own and operate her own ale company.  That takes guts.  She still has quite a network from those days.  She takes her time and is very engaging. 
    Chatty or Slim is our first NJ delivery driver.  He is not chatty, but he is slim, and he seldom smiles or laughs, but does his job very well.  It was he who brought Hound to us, as well as a new driver who'll begin next month or so. 
    Our other current delivery driver is Reggie.  He's got band experience and relationship stories that'll knock you over.  He's funny and cool. 
    There are some sales guys and delivery guys in New York, too, but now they are an official branch of D&T and have their own meetings and things, so their lives seldom intersect ours.  We finally have a big enough company that there are people working for us I haven't even met yet.  The exception is Sammy, the sales manager, who calls us so often, and vice versa, we had to get long range radios to cut down phone costs and keep communications portable.  He's funny and smart.  Seems to run a tight ship. 
    Get-it-Doner and Faithful are the quick and capable maintenance guys.  Doner is in charge of maintenance and Faithful is one of his crew.  Both are very amicable and chatty.  I like that.  Both are older guys who are the very picture of stereotypical maintenance guys, strong and wiry. 
    Mr. Barnum is the owner of the airport.  He has some background in the carnival industry and in Naval Aviation, but he's owned this airport for over forty years.  He's my next door neighbor as well as Dry & Thirsty's landlord.  Like everyone around here seems to be, he's very friendly and accommodating.  He has funny things going on here that you wouldn't expect for a fuel-stop and advertising banner kind of airport.  There's a set of train tracks running all around the strip, and a pair of small locomotives to go with them.  One appears to be a diesel and one a steam train, though it's likely both run on electricity.  These are stored for now in the train station by the tiny terminal building, as I understand they need some repair before being pressed back into service.  In that same area, the Terminal Zone, is a glassed-in gazebo being used as storage for a wide array of odd items and a playground that needed a bit of yard work before it could be re-opened last fall. 
    The Java Hut is a coffee place in Belmar that has acoustic entertainment on the weekends.  I like the look, the feel, the goods, and the people.  Mmmmmm comfy.  Making quite a few friends there. 
    Mulligan's is my other hangout, a restaurant/tavern on the opposite side of the airport from the office.  The food is exceptional yet cheap, the drink pretty good, the people nice.  The crowd is older than at Java Hut, and the overabundance of sports paraphernalia can be annoying if I pay too much attention to it, so I don't.  They book mediocre bands on the weekends, as far as I've seen. 
    Spodie is my cat., yellow on top and white on the bottom.  His stripes at the front break up into spots along his back.  Very odd.  Spodie is very affectionate and seems to be catching onto the toilet training thing. 
    Zeus is Mr. Barnum's old Great Dane.  Originally black all over, age has turned his face and paws nearly white.  He's so tall that he can put his chin on my countertop without effort.  He loves cheese and chicken dumplings, and is very gentle around the kids.  He got into the pilots' garbage and groceries rather often, though, and created quite a mess. 
    Misha is the Huz's dog, a very fluffy husky in a continual state of shed.  He thinks he's a lap dog.  His favorite phrase is "let's go".   He loves me, but I hate him.  I hate his fur the most.  I hate hating him, cuz he's lovable.  Does any of that make sense? 
    The Treehouse is what my kids named our house, although it's really perched on top of the hangar and just surrounded by trees.  The pilots' quarters is really just a shacklike structure inside the hangar with some amenities that, from what I hear, bring it up to dorm room quality. 
    The Hangar/The Warehouse/The Office are all names for our headquarters, a combination office and partial hangar space off in a corner of the airport.  The wiring is quirky, but there is room (barely) for everything, and it looks pretty good. 
    Bell Atlantic (no pseudonym there) are my nemeses, enemies, and sworn adversaries.  You want to put me in a rage, just mention them once.  This is probably one of the most frustrating phone companies I've ever had the misfortune to deal with.  Both the New York and New Jersey manifestations of it. 
 
Gone But Not Forgotten: 
    The Straight Man seemed to be just that, your regular American dad, hard working, serious, reliable.  He used to own the speedway that the SpringDew slot car did its racing at, but he was ready for a change of career.  He'd done this selling and delivery thing before, and quite well, so he took to it like home when we hired him.  He was clean cut, tall, thin and getting a bit grey, and nearly rivaled El Presidente as the sharpest dresser among us.  Unfortunately, he took on a better paying job with Nissan and we seldom hear from him anymore. 
    Fast Forward moved at about the speed of light, which was prolly good since he worked the New York beat.  He talked fast, moved fast, and radiated manic energy.  He was ever polite and sociable.  He's on an indefinite hiatus right now.  Not sure he's coming back. 
    Johnboy is what I called one of the two pilots who lived downstairs from me in the hangar under the Treehouse, simply because he had that clean fresh farmboy look made famous in "The Waltons."  He was friendly, didn't seem nervous or shy.  He got along good with my kids, which is major plus points in my reckoning.  He was gone at the end of the summer. 
    I had a hard time naming the other pilot.  He was the one too exhausted to join us for dinner the first week I was here.  He had a slick kinda frat-boy look about him, everything just a hair too right.  Ah!  Billboard Boy.  He was studying like a fiend the last few weeks of the summer, to get his instructors license.  Will I ever see or hear from either of these guys again? 
    Curly and Rocky were mentioned in only one entry.  In case you wondered, they were fired. 

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