Welcome aboard. Here's Your Blanket.

This young lady was asked to change her clothes before she could fly on Southwest to Tuscon. She didn't have any other clothes with her as she was only intending to stay a few hours. So she got to wear a blanket in her lap instead.

Here's the whole story.

Humph. It's my experience that they usually make you take things off...such as your shoes! I didn't realize the fashion police also had power over passengers these days! Wow!

Now my own personal gripe is gals that wear stuff like that, but not from the hubba-hubba aspect....hell, sugar, if you got it, flaunt it!....but from the safety standpoint. We have to watch the what-to-do-if videos on every flight and I sit there and think can that gal effect her own rescue with THOSE shoes on? 'Course THAT gal would have men lying down so she could walk on 'em or they'd tenderly carry her out by her....hooters, for sure, but I see women and children wearing inappropriate clothes and shoes all the time and just shake my head. I guess it's just part and parcel when you get old to sit around going tsk-tsk.

BTW this little gal works for Hooters and I'm predicting that this little episode will probably get her enough ink to be in Playboy and then who knows. She might end up having her own plane and then she could fly butt nekkid if she wanted to! Ain't 'Merica great, tho!

Part 2 of My Weekend Peak Experiences

I got this in feedback....

jonxblaze has left a new comment on your post "My Weekend Peak Experiences!":

Those are great pictures, how was the weather? Wasn't it too hot for hiking?

- Jon @ Houston Website Design

And I just have to answer him here...

If you look at my picture you'll see I was dressed for Halloween as the female version of the Michelin man! Because it was sooooo cold on Mt. Rushmore the night before and the weather wizards said it would be in the 30's the day of our hike, we dressed warmly. I had on underpants, silk long john bottoms, a cotton plus pair of long john bottoms and my spanky new wind proof pants with tons of cool pockets! On top I had a sports bra, the matching cotton plus top, and a borrowed fleece shirt. Topping it all off was The Jacket that I'd bought to go to Alaska many years ago and it used to fit me! I also packed gloves and a muffler! I wore my Harris County Citizen Police Academy Alum. hat too. I wore mostly wool blend socks and my hiking boots would of withstood Arctic winds! I was ready for action!

I was overdressed! Gals in SHORTS passed me on the trail! I thought to myself 'ha! they'll freeze their little buns off when they get to the top and the wind hits them'...rong! Really rong! So rong it deserves a "w"! Make that WRONG, WRONG nearly had heat stroke wrong!

The later pictures had me slumped on a rock sans jacket and displaying the top set of long johns for all the world to see with nary a concern that I was showing what is in effect UNDERWEAR! By then it was who gives a hairy rat's ass what I look like, just get me home alive and I'll deal with the shame of it all later! The fleece shirt got tossed within the 1st mile up the 'hill'.

Being an old Girl Scout, (and I do mean OLD!), I like to be prepared for anything and the theory being you can always shuck the excess, but if you don't have the necessary you are up the creek without an oar!

NOW let me tell you about the plane ride home!

While waiting to board the plane I observed these little kids pretty much running amok among the other passengers. I KNEW they'd be near me on the plane. Call it a gift, call it a curse, I just KNEW. It's considered Goodwin's Law of Averages. I attract irritating little kids like a fireplace attracts soot!

Sure enough, they are in the row right ahead of me. On the left is Grandma, little boy of perhaps 3, aunt, probably sister to mom, then across the isle and right in front of me is mom, little girl of 2 or so and good old dad. Up the way a bit is another little girl who started screaming before we even taxied. Now I raised three critters of my own. I did a fair job of it too, but I apologize to them at least every 6 months for being too hard and too strict and bordering on abusive. It is to my everlasting shame that I hit first and sorted it out later.

But these new fangled parents are well meaning spineless idiots who are, I fear, raising herds of serial killers in training! WTF, who asks a 3 year old if they want to ride on the airplane? Well, we can't very well WALK, dear, so think real hard, don't you want to ride on the airplane? You do, good, now would you like to put on the seatbelt or just run up and down the isle? We don't need to use our outside voice in the plane. Use your nice hands when you touch your sister, please, remember we talked about that. EVERY time the kid(s) emitted a high pitched objection in the scream octave they got their way. EVERY TIME. I considered screaming and crying to see if it'd work for me!

Now the best part (I'm being so factitious here I'm ready to hurl!) was the presentation of The Presents. Auntie, in an effort to quiet the melee climbed up on the armrest of the seat her sister was sitting in, threw open the overhead and proceeded to dig around like a gerbil making a nest for its young until she unearthed two wrapped presents sans bows. That's smart I thought. These new fangled folks aren't as dumb as they look. Well she carefully helped the boy-tot open one end and he tore into the rest of it and pulled out the prize! It was a box of Phonetic flashcards!! I'm not kidding! For a toddler, on a plane, who's not a happy camper and spoiled rotten to boot! The flight attendant nearly tripped over my jaw that was resting somewhere near where they claim to keep the flotation devices!

Auntie had toted her Apple laptop on board and she tried vainly to access some pictures files and take her mind off the din. As a last resort she whipped out a DVD, slammed it into the Apple innards and handed the whole ball of wax over to Sis-Mom. I thought again 'cool, now that's the ticket'! Rong. The DVD was something like 'kids tour egypt' not spongeman or even dora does dixie! What's with all the educational crap? When did kids stop being entertained just for the joy of it? What's wrong with cartoons? Disney, anyone? By then I was resigned to our collective fates.

Thank God for earphones and wine! When the kids dialed it up a notch I'd do the same on my on board radio set to Country! I tried Classical, but it didn't drown them out like Big and Rich!

I guess I'm just getting old and cranky, but I'm not going to apologize to any that happen upon this bit-o-vent and take offense. Take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror and ask who is the parent? Kids need structure and boundaries. They need the security of knowing they have parent(s) that are smarter than them and capable of making decisions affecting their ultimate choices. Okay, big deal, ask a kid if he wants milk or water to drink, but don't allow him/her to decide on the big ticket items like ARE WE GETTING ON THE PLANE or DO YOU WANT TO PUT A SEATBELT ON NOW... geeusHchrist...

Is This Any Way To Run An Airline?

As I mentioned in my post If This Is February, It Must Be Vegas, it's not uncommon for planes to have to circle and/or taxi before allowing passengers to de-plane. But this one takes the cake and the frosting on top!

Seems a JetBlue Airways (who I've never heard of) airplane up Nawth held passengers prisoner on one of their birds for NINE HOURS! This is what one of the passenger prisoners had to say about the experience:

"You gotta realize the frustration - you can look out the window and you can see, there's the gate, and if you let us off the plane, we can walk there,'' said Farrell, 48, of Brooklyn.

Onboard the planes, snack foods wore out their welcome, bathrooms became unpleasant and cabins sweltered, passengers said.

"They had to open the door every 20 minutes just so we could get air,'' said Sean Corrinet, 29, who was on a flight bound for Cancun, Mexico. It was delayed for at least eight hours, Baldwin said.

I'm thinking that maybe JetBlue would want to change their name to JetPhew! Or JetEuuu! Or JetBooHooLookOutForTheLawsuits!

If This Is February, It Must Be Vegas!

I've been in Las Vegas for our annual Vegas-Birthday bash. My best friend Paula's birthday is the 5th and we couldn't go then because it was Super Bowl weekend and Vegas is even more of a traffic jam that weekend than usual, so we picked the weekend of the 9th instead. We left on the 8th and got back on the 12th. I'm still trying to recover.

I thought we'd never get off the airplane last night. We had to circle about 15-20 minutes out and then when we finally got the okay to land, in theory, we had to circle some more and then on the ground we had to TAXI while the plane that was at our assigned gate was still there. They ended up changing our gate to another and we were way late by then. Not that it mattered to us, but many on the flight were trying to get on connecting flights and they were seriously miffed to say the least. The funny part was when we left Vegas the pilot was bragging that we had clear skies and a good tail wind and would most likely be home 20 or 30 minutes BEFORE schedule. Don't you just love it when pilots drink and drive!!

While in Vegas I went to see the Bodies exhibition at the Tropicana! It was AWE-SUM! I'm not kidding! I love that stuff! Everyone who can should go and see it ...... or at least every kid in school! To see a human heart that is perfectly preserved and NOT just a model left me speechless. The way they "splay" something like the muscles and ligaments made it all so much more clear than looking at pictures in books. The blood vessel and veins displays are almost like works of art. In fact, the bodies themselves are ALL like artwork. Leonardo da Vinci would of had a ball!



Just look at that picture! That's a real human body! Can you imagine how being able to see inside the body they way they do would of meant to medical students and such for the past several hundred years? Would anyone EVER start smoking if they could see an actual "black lung"? Not just pictures, but the real deal.....amazing! 'Course that's just me, going off on what a swell exhibit it was ...... the folks I was with all said "euuuuu" and wouldn't of been caught dead there......every pun intended.

We stayed downtown again. I really like Freemont Street for accommodations. You can hit plenty of casinos and spend not one red cent on taxi fares. You can walk back and forth and still not put out as much energy or shoe leather that you would just to walk from the front door at the Flamingo to the front door at Cesar's Palace. The food is okay and the gambling was good because you can still find some of the older style slot machines downtown. I liked the newest ones too.....the giant Wheel Of Fortune that nine people can sit around and when you hit the SPIN the whole wheel in the center revolves. My newest favorite though was something called "Gold Fish". I was winning, or at least not losing badly, until Saturday....then I went nuts and started selecting my machines unwisely and not getting out when I hit something. Sigh. I had a good time though and I take what I can afford to lose and never, ever even think about writing checks or using the ATM machines.

Oh, I forgot to mention, we stayed in the North tower of the Four Queens and it was very nice. I'd love to stay at the Golden Nugget, but it's gotten too pricey since the Landry folks took over. They manage to do that with most of the stuff they touch.....they pretty much ruined Luby's cafeteria with their high prices and changing the way things were done. They don't give old folks a break anymore and they cook with even more grease than the last owners did. Their motto must be "Lots and Lots Of Grease And Salt" means you can sell more expensive iced tea!

I love going to Vegas and I love coming back home. It's a great vacation, but I don't see how anyone would want to live there full time. If you did live there you'd get used to the unrelenting glitz and then what would you do for fun?

On one final note - if it's February, it's also time to wish Happy Birthdays to my baby girl Elaine, my son-in-law Bert and my bud Don! Happy Birthday, y'all!