Monday, June 14, 2010

Always do what the nice man with the machine gun tells you

Lesson learned early by all Air Force brats

It would seem that two idiots have tried to invade one of my home town Air Force bases. The only reason I wasn't born on the base is that they were remodeling, so they sent mom over to St. Joseph's which used to be a nice Catholic hospital, nuns and all, but now seems to be owned by the Baptists. But I digress. Anyway, it was less than a mile from my gram's house, so I've spent LOTS of time there.

As a 23-year veteran brat, I've spent lots of time on LOTS of Air Force bases. For those of you who grew up near military bases that were NOT Air Force, you might not realize the security that the Air Force employs. I remember the first time I drove on to Fort Bragg and I couldn't understand why I didn't have to drive up to a little shack, show them my ID, and have the nice man or woman with the scary sidearm wave me through. It was the same on some Naval bases I visited. Just drive on, drive around, go home. I don't know if it's still that way, but I suspect it is.

It used to be you could get waved through the gate at an AF base during the daytime with just a base sticker on your car, but that ended for a while during the first Gulf War and then permanently after September 11.

See, the Air Force locks it down. And if you think the base is hard to get on to, you should see the flight line. That's one of those places where they shoot first and ask questions later. Ok, they wrestle you to the ground, point a machine gun at your head and then ask questions. I suspect they'd only shoot if you were dumb enough to say, not kiss the concrete.

Anyway, I'm not sure what they planned to do...show up at Central Command and THEN be gunned down? Or maybe they were just hoping to rob the commissary. They did go the day BEFORE payday, so maybe they were trying to beat the crowds? They should be happy they were stopped at the gate and just risked bodily harm from the police dogs.

That can go in the box marked "Tragic"

Tacky House

We're addicted to home shows. Not too surprising. Holmes on Homes and Clean House are my two addictions. And we do watch in horror at those new hoarding shows. But Tacky House is on after Clean House sometimes, and we occasionally watch that.

This quote came from the episode where they de-rosed a woman's "Martha's Vineyard" room. That really looked like a bunch of silk rose bushes puked everywhere. As they were cleaning out the room, the host said that something could go in this box.

I know I haven't been around much. Not to linger, but we just finished a round of IVF. It was not successful. After 10 weeks of hormones, that was REALLY great news. But, I'm getting back to normal. And here's proof.