Dunno WHAT is going on with Denver, but they are sure stinking the place up…
And most of the commercials? Meh…
Glad I have ‘other’ things keeping me busy…
Is it just me, or did the guy just bringing the Lombardi Trophy out look suspiciously like Lurch???
Jay G had a blog meet…
And the usual suspects showed up. About 27 1/2 of us…
The youngest was 8 (going on 32) and the oldest was mumble… 🙂
This is just the folks in one of the two rooms!!!
And pretty much overwhelmed the restaurant! It’s a little place out in Leesburg, VA. Good food, but I don’t think the counted on that many of us… Just sayin…
And I FINALLY got to meet two folks I’ve been missing at meets for a long time…
Turk Turon, a truly nice guy, and quite the character, and the other was PA State Cop. HE is truly a character…LOL
Good food, good friends and conversations that ran the gamut, so a typical blog meet.
And I decided to wear the BBQ rig… Don’t get the chance often, and decided what the hell!
And Jay G and PA State Cop were at least two others that went old school with revolvers last night…
And I think Jay actually got a real head count and has all the links…
My back had finally had enough last night and decided to spasm on me…
It was bad enough that even after taking the cheep stuff I had at home, I decided to go to the ER, because I was hurting that badly.
Drug my ass out to the truck, and away I went. Got there, stood (well, stooped) patiently in line, finally got up to the admissions window and the lady behind the window asked what was wrong.
I told her back pain, and handed her my ID and insurance card (company one, not O-care). About that time a nurse came walking by, looked at me and asked what was wrong. I told her BACK pain, she asked if there was an radiating pain, and I made the mistake of saying yes…
Two minutes later, I’m in a cube with a gown on the wrong way, ass hanging out and getting hooked up to a 12 lead and being told to ‘relax’…
Yeah, right… Back is killing me, I’m trying to twist and get some relief, and the cute little nurse is asking me something…
High pitched voice, which I can’t hear real well, and apparently every time I twist, I’m partially pulling the connection to the leads loose which is making the monitor go bat nuts…
Another administrator comes in and wants to verify all my info, so everything stopped until I’d made him happy. And he was happy I had ‘real’ insurance…
The cute nurse leaves and a couple of minutes later this older male nurse comes in, does a blood draw, sets up an IV and comments, “Retired Navy huh?”
I tell him yeah, tell him my back is the problem, not anything else, and he just looks at me. I twist again and popped the whole connection loose, and he fixes it, suddenly is nice and quiet in the cube, and he just looks at me…
Doc comes in about ten minutes later, asks what’s going on; I tell him my BACK is killing me, I’ve got herniated discs and am in therapy, which I haven’t had in two weeks; and yes I do get radiating pain from the herniated disc in the neck. He nods and asks if I’ve been flying anywhere lately…
After I get through laughing, he looks at me and I say well, THIS week or the last two weeks. He says humor him, last two weeks. I tell him and he just shakes his head…
Next thing I know, I’m in Xray, and DAMN that plate was COLD!!!
The male nurse comes back in, says he’s a retired Corpsman, working on his PA and doing this for extra money on the weekend. Says he’s going to give me some morphine for my back to see if it will knock the pain down. Morphine? WTF???
He says it normally works, and I don’t look like a druggie…
Doc comes back in about fifteen minutes later, says no blood clots (reason I went to Xray apparently), and yep, back is screwed up. And blood work looks good, and do you normally throw PVCs? I told him I did occasionally, and he said that and the partial connection on the 12 lead had the first nurse scared…
BUT, that at ‘my’ age, they weren’t going to take a chance, hence the full monte and all the checks.
He gives me some Motrin, and says I can go, and somebody can pick me up outside the entrance…
I didn’t tell him I drove myself… So I go sit in the truck for a bit, and eased on home.
Of course tried to go to bed, and that wasn’t working, so I end up flat on my back in the living room with my feet up on the couch. Woke up this morning in the same position, stiff as a board, but at least the back feels better…
And I think an elephant took a dump in my mouth… Turns out it’s a side effect of the Morphine…
So apparently if you’re an old fart, regardless of what you go in for, if it’s ANYTHING in the thoracic region and you indicate pain, stand by…
People talk about the $15/hr pay rate like it’s some magic number…
I know I’m an old fart, but ‘my’ starting pay rate was $1.25/hr in 1965…
Now before you say this is all bullshit…
The link for current pay is HERE.
Edit- Apparently this didn’t go up on time this morning. Sorry!
So you get pics I hope… and maybe the video if it links…
I like this one… And I first heard that story from a Chaplain who was an amateur magician.
And this looks a LOT like where I grew up, a creek like this ran through the back pasture and I grew up roaming that creek for the four miles between my house and the highway…
This is NOT where I grew up, but I love the paint job…
MSgt B is reaching out for anyone that might can help his best friends in Indiana find the killers of their son.
Go read HERE, and get the word out.
Some of our readers might be able to help…
Thanks in advance,
Old NFO
So I’m sitting at a stop light in San Diego yesterday and a rattletrap old Toyota Land Cruiser pulls up beside me…
I look over and think somebody had way too much time on their hands, and were playing with those fake bullet holes; then I look again and they are REAL bullet holes!
Seven rounds down the left side of the truck, including one that went through the front door right about where the driver would be sitting, then arcing up and to the rear…
Now I’m wondering WTF, so I let him pull off first, sure enough, Mexican plate on the truck. Now I’m wondering if he’s the 2nd, 3rd or Xth owner… Don’t think he’s the first owner based on that bullet placement…
And I’m in a meeting when a very nice looking lady walks in and sits behind me with a rather interesting lanyard holding her badge…
I glance around and swear that looks like AR patterned rifle on that lanyard…
So she gets up and gives her presentation, turns out she’s a practicing nuclear physicist!!!
On the break, I ‘casually’ slide over and ask her about the lanyard, and yep it DOES have AR pattern rifles on it! She says, “Oh I got this when I was doing some work down at SOCOM.”
Of course I ask if she shoots, and she does!!!
And proceeds to bemoan the fact that her previous boss retired, since he was a shooter and they used to take a ‘variety’ of weapons on tests out west and shoot 3-4000 (thousand) rounds during down time on tests!!!
I asked how they got away with that, and she kinda laughed, saying something to the effect that nobody wanted to check ANY of their equipment, much less be around when they were testing! 🙂
Sigh… must be nice! And she’s a really nice lady too!!!
But a damn good one, if you’re into history and Zepplins…
It’s an hour long special on the German Zepplins in WWI and the Brits counter to them.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/zeppelin-terror-attack.html
I don’t care WHICH side you were on, those were iron men!!! Thankfully the Brits managed to stop the Zeps, but as they said, it was the start of unrestricted warfare…
h/t JP
Currently reading Reach for the Sky by Paul Brickhill, a bio of Douglas Bader. He was a British aviator, best known for losing both legs before, and coming back to be an ace. Definitely a guy with the right stuff!!!
A chilling article from Business Insider…
One of the guests, an influential Chinese professional, talked about the simmering conflict between China and Japan over a group of tiny islands in the Pacific.
Read the whole article HERE.
This mirrors what the ‘real’ intel folks are saying, and the administration is blithely ignoring them…
As the cuts to the military continue, the US military is truly becoming a hollow force, and nobody seems to care. I can’t help but remember a statement back in 2003/4 to the effect that America was at war, and Americans were at the mall.
There has been really NO impact on John Q. Public by the 10 years of fighting, other than the losses the families of the dead have experienced and the traumatic injuries experienced by those who’ve served. And since BO was elected, this has pretty much been ignored by both this administration and the MSM…
I believe what this administration has NOT done in response to the Chinese aggression in the Senkaku incident has given China a tacit hint they will not be opposed…
However, we DO have a joint defense treaty with Japan, which mandates we respond if the Japanese respond to any ‘incursions’…
If it comes down to it, words will not work, only actions… And we are sadly outnumbered…
And then there is this…
“We would trade away size for high-end capability,” Hagel said July 31. “This would … reduce the number of carrier strike groups from 11 to eight or nine.”
Read the whole article HERE.
I sat through the SOTU speech, and not a word one was said about the cuts to the military that are ongoing… NOT A @#$% WORD… But he’s going to sign an EO giving all federal contractors a ‘living’ minimum wage of $10.10 an hour. Reality is all of the government contractors ‘I’ know make a lot more that $10.10 an hour…
But he was ALL about ‘diplomacy’… Give diplomacy a chance… And he wants to build trust???
Yeah, right…
Sigh…
Marco Kloos new book is out now!
You can get it HERE! Marco also has a re-release of Terms of Enlistment out there too. Good guy, great writer and also a long time blogger, so please go support him!
Marco does an outstanding job of ‘humanizing’ the vagaries of the military, and his novels are a good read! I’ll be reading this one on the airplane home Thursday!!!