A lot has happened....it's a LONG one......

 Well..., let's see.  I forgot last week to talk about Kristen dog sitting a fellow classmates dog for two days.  My classmate found a lump on his dogs side.  So they went to have it removed.  They usually leave "Blitz" home alone during the day while they are at work.  They didn't want him to mess with his stitches so they asked Kristen to dog sit.  He is a BIG Weimeranger! Haha.  Dallas tried to play with Blitz for a little while but just kind of gave up after she found out that he wasn't interested.

To say thank you to Kristen they took us out last weekend to a local comedy show.  It was Kristen and my first time to a comedy show.  It was a great experience.  The theater was packed with local military folks...., and only a few locals.  I guess we're all looking for anything at all to do around here.  Haha.  One of the comedians was Jose Sarduy.  He is a reservist pilot here on the base.  I heard that he was funny....., but he really was.  He was probably the best comedian there that night.  He has two Cuban parents and was raised in Miami.  He has a catch phrase of "DAS WAD EIN TOHKIN ABOW" (That's what I'm talking about with a heavy Cuban accent).  It's going to catch on like Larry The Cable Guy's "Git R Done"  I'm sure of it.  Haha.  Anyway.  It's cool because he's a pilot and he's funny.  Click on this sentence to link to his site if you're interested.  Of course I had to buy his coozie.  I'm an avid coozie collector for anyone that doesn't know........Seriously.

This past week I had my T-1 cross country.  Ok.  The T-1 does have long legs and can go cool places.  But not only do I have to practice cruising at high altitudes (easy), I have to practice my instrument approaches to land (hard).  So I only have two hours, and I can do whatever I want to do with my time.  I would love to go far away from Laughlin AFB, but then I wouldn't get enough practice at my approaches.  So that pretty much takes all the fun out of my "cross-country".  And if that wasn't enough.  Military aircraft can only land at airfields where we have fuel contracts with (we get a special lower rate).  And what makes it even less fun is that my squadron only allows us to RON (Remain Over Night) at military airfields.  So....... It ended up being a planning nightmare last week with all of these things kept in mind.  We tried 11 bases till we finally found one that worked.  There were so many reasons that the first 11 didn't work from no rooms on base, to the tower closes at 8pm (and we'd be arriving at 11pm).  So our final selection was Davis Monthan AFB in Arizona.  Really cool!  Everyone that we told we were going there was jealous of us.  We were actually pumped! Well...., there were two planes going there together.  Us and two more students in the other plane.  They took off six minutes before us.  Our plan was to fly to El Paso, TX.  eat dinner, relax, plan and wait till nighttime for our next leg to davis Monthan AFB.  When the first plane got to El Paso they saw really bad storms and even dust storms!  So they diverted to Roswell, NM.  We heard them over the radio and decided to do the same.

 Roswell was alright.  We got a rental car and went eat at a resteraunt.  Its always fun to be in uniform in a city where there is no military base.  Everyone just looks at you like...., "What are they doing here?".  It's funny.

 Our plan had to change drastically because of the storms to the West. We decided to go to Ellington Field in Houston, TX.  It's a joing use field with the Texas Air National Guard, NASA, and civilian traffic.  We kinda bent the "staying at a military base" thing because there really is no "base" there, its just a squadron of F-16's.  We slept at the civilian FBO (Fixed Base Operator).  It was waaayyyyyyy better than expected.  They had nice clean rooms, and all you can eat snacks, beer and drinks! We landed at 12:30am

The next morning we woke up (11:00am) and went to Cracker Barrel for "breakfast".  Then we came back to the airport to plan and depart.

As we were starting our jet the other crew's IP was flagging to us to tell us he had a problem.  Their jet had an oxygen leak.  That sucks because it was out of tolerances for them to take off.  You need oxygen in case of an in flight emergency where you have to don your oxygen masks.  You could pass out and crash into the ground if not.  Bad news.

 Anyway, we decided to be nice to them and let them take our jet and we'll wait with their broken jet.  The other IP outranked our IP and the other IP had a wife and kids to go home to......so long story short...., he got the good jet.  Which to us was kinda cool.  We let our home base know of the problem.  Then we just sat around and waited to see what they wanted to do.  It was cool just hanging out and playing the waiting game.  We were really starting to hope that we'd be stuck there over night again.  But it didn't happen.

The guy with the oxygen showed up. darn.  He asked how we were going to pay for it and we showed him our military credit card.  he said that he didn't take those.  YES!  Awesome..., maybe we will stay another night after all.  But then he called his boss, and his boss said since it's military he'd do it for free.  Thanks a lot!  Haha.  Actually, it was really a good feeling to know that some small business owner sucked up his profits to help us out.  Go USA!

This weekend my mom and a good family friend (Mama Oddo) came over for a visit.  They got here on Friday afternoon.  Friday night we went to eat at the Herald downtown.  The Herald is just about the coolest/hip place to eat here in Del Rio.  It was fun.  then we came back to our place and talked for hours.  It was good catching up.

Saturday was a FULL day.  We went on a two hour walk all over base with a stop over for free breakfast at the community center, then we went to eat at our favorite local Mexican restaurant, Poncho's, then we went out to the lake to show them the Mexican border, then Wal- Mart, then church, then dairy Queen for ice cream, then finally home to chat and relax.  It was a long 36 hour visit!  Haha.  It was great to see Mama Oddo and my mom.  I'll see ya' next time at graduation mom!

This is Dallas with her two new toys from Mama Oddo.