Friday safety day

And we're out for the weekend until Tuesday! Woohoo, what a good long break! But must study as well...Ryan's parents are getting in sometime this evening and they'll be with us through Saturday and leave sometime Sunday morning. I think they're shacking up in the living room or something on an inflatable mattress. Then they'll be taking poor Oreo away from us. It's probably for the best, though, we just can't give her the attention she needs and she's still leaving a present by the door almost every day since we've been gone 12 hours at a time.

This morning we gave our peace offering to the flight IPs which consists of just a ton of higher quality beer and liquor. I guess it's a tradition that the classes usually do at the beginning. It is very clear that it's not 'mandatory', but it's one of those things that we need to do for the sake of not looking like jerks. And, anything that makes our IPs happier to work with us seems like a decent idea to me! So, I'm a conscientious objector, but we seemed to definately impress them today, so that bodes well.

We had a briefing from the squadron commander this morning at 0830 followed by a safety briefing at the base theatre at 1030. It was actually one of the best I've seen! Usually it's a 'crusty old dude' up front with a powerpoint presentation and some videos telling you to be safe, don't drink, etc. But, they had comedian Bernie McGrenahan who made Happy Hour Comedy (http://www.happyhourcomedy.com) giving his presentation of about 30 minutes of comedy followed by a more serious discussion on alcohol and especially alcohol abuse and the problems that come from that. Was a very good presentation, very funny and with a very serious message from his own life that I think most people would take more seriously than the 'crusty old dude's' message. Bernie does a LOT of shows for the military as well as school's across the country, and it's a message that needs to be heard. Alcohol has such a bad influence on so many people, and very rarely does anything good come out of heavy drinking. While there are those who can control themselves and have the discipline to keep it 'under control', there are so many more who can't, and that has caused so much hurt across this nation from abuse, to murders, assaults, and killers behind the wheel. It's running rampant in the US, especially with the youth, and people need to start standing up and being the 'different' ones to deny the draw of the poison that has destroyed so many lives. To those of you who do drink, I'm not condemning your actions, it's your right to do so, but just remember that others are watching you and while you may be able to control yourself, maybe they can't. Anyways, didn't mean to get on that topic, but it was a good briefing.

Let the studying begin. Going to get some in today focusing on the patterns here and our auxiliary field, and then relax tonight and tomorrow morning followed by more study in the afternoon. Have a great 3-day weekend all, and be safe!