What follows is difficult to write.  I can see both sides of the dynamic, and have a ring-side seat to watching part of it play out ( Read more... )

Ahem.

Yesterday, I completed the work necessary to get my "Welcome to your 50's" merit badge, having been subjected to the ritual inspection of select portions of my lower GI tract.  AARP damn-well better have my membership card in the mail.

I will spare you, the Gentle Reader, the horror and indignities of the prep necessary; suffice it to say I've ( Read more... )

I alluded to a bus accident in a previous post.  Just for grins I thought I'd expand slightly.  It was summer 1989, I was assigned to Zweibrucken Air Base in Germany.  We had taken a 29-pax to a nearby Army range to qualify on our firearms.  The passengers were about evenly split between my Civil Engineering squadron and a tactical radar squadron ( Read more... )

I have always counted myself lucky. Other than a minor concussion and a *seriously* bruised ribcage from the Air Force dropping a bus on me (technically speaking, they didn't actually drop it on me; a bunch of us got to go break dancing inside it as it spun on its side down the Autobahn...another story for another time); I got through my military ( Read more... )

I've started to dread this event as I'm getting a bit tired of the shrill, increasingly self-righteous, and increasingly hate-filled (there, I said it) pressures of non-smokers to "save" those who have not yet quit.   I'll also provide you my blunt opinion:  If you've never smoked and quit; you're as qualified to lecture a smoker about it as I am ( Read more... )