Almost Done With Academics

First, congrats to the Broncos for making the "dance." I am sure the majority of the team reads this blog, so way to go boys. Georgia had a more difficult road, but they are in as well, which should make Peaches happy. Neither team look to have very high odds in Vegas of winning the tournament, but if you like long shots and are into gambling...

This week saw the end of the NVG (night vision goggles) training and on to SKE (station keeping equipment). As I mentioned earlier, SKE is basically allowing us to fly in a formation without being able to see each other. It is not ideal, but the Army guys don't always want to wait until nice weather to get their bullets and food. It is a lot more work, both to fly and to prepare for because so much of it is procedure. But, if you have another Herc next to you that neither of you can see, you want them to do everything procedurally and not just "winging it!" This upcoming week we will have our final three sims (that will be focusing on SKE) and our end of course test. After that, it is on to the flight line for the final 18 flights before being done with the whole thing...I'm so excited!

Now to those who I offended last week. If you haven't guessed, I like to have fun and joke around. I was only joking when I said that you are an inbred, no good for nothing, perv if you have a lip beard. I apologize to those who felt like I was a bit harsh...but seriously, don't you have thick skin? You have made it through life with a caterpillar on your lip and you didn't get slack for it before now? Anyway, I am sorry and to show my sympathy, here is my attempt to gain acceptance...

...and Candi doesn't think it helps my looks! I thought the more I covered up, the better I looked!

Candi and I are trying to take advantage of our geographic location before it changes again by experiencing the sites of the South. We visited Branson, Missouri this weekend and got in touch with our hillbilly roots...literally! The oldest show in Branson is the Presleys' Country Jubilee.

For those of you not familiar with Branson, just think of it as Las Vegas and substitute the sound of slot machines for banjos and guitars. It has the shows of Vegas with the family environment of Chucky Cheese. It was a good time and we got to see several shows that were really good. We also got to see the biggest Titanic museum in the world! I was thrilled to go to this one...

Not to mention we got to hear some ho-down country and hillbilly music along side a bunch of senior citizens. The demographic was quite a bit older than us, but then again it isn't the peak of the tourism season yet. One of the highlights (at least for me) was Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede. It was like the Tournament of Kings (Las Vegas) show where you are served food that you have to eat with your hands while you are entertained by people on animals inside a large arena. It was a "Wild West" theme and had lots of horse riding and equestrian tricks (big word for me). They also had pig races, ostrich races with people riding them, and chicken chasing. But, back to the horse riding. Candi and I were selected out of the crowd to ride horses in a race...the joke (which we were told of before hand) was that instead of real horses, they gave us stick horses. Well, if you will look at my blog profile...I am a veteran jockey. It paid off and we won medals for our side of the stadium by finishing first in running around barrels in the arena. Candi nearly lost her slip-on shoes in the dirt, but she managed to keep them on and keep up with me...of course, if they would have fallen off I would have drug her across the finish line to keep from losing to the other team. Here is the hardware:

While in Branson, we visited the outlet malls, where, of couse, I bought another pair of shoes. These I actually needed though (softball cleats). Even though I am not playing now, I plan on playing when I get home to Boise. Once again, I outshopped Candi:)

Well, I have to finally clean the house, kick out the girlfriends, and quit doing the drugs for a while because my mother is coming to visit. She was planning on Cabo with the college party crowd for spring break, but I think I talked some sense into her and she will see us instead. We plan to show her the Little Rock sights, as well as some other AR hot spots and Memphis during her week-long stay. Should be fun...just hope I don't have too many flights to work around!