Tales From the Front

Yesterday was about as close to a “computer-free” day as it gets around El Casa Móvil De Pennington. I wrote yesterday’s post the night before and used Blogger’s new scheduling feature to publish the post at oh-dark-thirty, or long before those visions of sugar plums had ceased dancing in my head (“Sugar plums” being a euphemism for this sort of thing, of course). Scheduling is pretty cool; I plan to make use of it more often.

So… once I was up and about I fired off the coffee, got cleaned up, had one cup here in the house, loaded up the travel mug, and made the short journey over to The Big(ger) City^TM where Baby got her nu shooz mounted (finally!) and I got a late breakfast at IHOP.

About IHOP… I was seated, scanned the menu quickly, and gave my order to the waitress, who, in turn, brought me coffee as I requested. “Do you take cream” she asks? “Yes, please,” sez I. “I’ll be back in a moment…” sez she. Well, a moment came and went, along with several other moments, until I noticed there was half and half on the table next to mine, so I just grabbed that and forgot about the waitress NOT bringing me my cream.

Fifteen minutes pass by, punctuated by two clue-free wait people trying to foist a burger plate and an order of chocolate chip pancakes off on me. “That’s not me,” sez I, on both occasions. Another ten minutes pass by and my order… a simple order: two eggs, two pancakes, bacon… finally arrives. My waitress informs me she’s gonna give me a ten percent discount coz my order took so long, and would there be anything else? “Yes. I’d like some more butter, please.” “OK. I’ll be right back.” She never returned, for the second time.

Note to IHOP waitress: your tip is with my cream and butter. Or somewhere near there.

Service: The Final Frontier.

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Since I happened to be in The Big(ger) City^TM I took the opportunity to get my cell phone reprogrammed. We’ve had an area code change here in New Mexico…our heretofore single, state-wide area code (505) being insufficient to support the explosive growth in cell phones. ABQ and Santa Fe get to keep their 505 numbers, but us country bumpkins must change to area code 575. And so we have. I sent out an “all-points” e-mail yesterday asking my telephone correspondents to update their speed-dial entries with my new number. This blog entry is just re-enforcement…

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I swung by the base on my way back to P-Ville with two objectives in mind: (a) get those scrips for the drugs I have to take prior to my surgery filled at the hospital clinic and (b) make my weekly visit to the commissary. I was half-successful… the commissary was open, the clinic was not.

I was shocked…and that is NOT too strong a word… to find the clinic closed for a “training day.” How, or why, is it the Air Force thinks it appropriate to close an entire facility, and most especially the clinic (!), for a training day? Can you not train half the folks one day and half the next? I think that’s the way we used to do these sorts of things, but I’m old and my memory just might be failing me. But I think not.

Bottom line: I have to return to the base today. I am NOT a Happy Camper about this. Yeah, it’s small stuff and I suppose I shouldn’t be pissed. But I am, Gentle Reader… I AM.

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A brief hockey update… Last night’s game was too easy for the Beloved Red Wings; they systematically dismantled Dallas and won by the lopsided score of 4-1. Dallas played a very undisciplined game for the first one and a half periods, and paid the price by surrendering three power-play goals... which is more than they gave up during their entire six-game series with the Sharks. Marty Turco is now 0-8-2 at The Joe. Chris Osgood, OTOH, played brilliantly and was in no small part responsible for the Wings’ win. Ozzie made some awesome saves last evening and is now 7-0 in the playoffs. Video highlights here.

This could be a very short series if the Stars continue to play as they did last night. Everyone in Dallas (and their Moms!) will point to Sunday night/Monday morning’s game as an excuse for the Stars dismal performance and there may be an ever-so-small grain of truth in that. The Stars did look lethargic and did an awful lot of standing around. We’ll see if there’s improvement in Dallas’ game this Saturday night.

You can get out the brooms if there isn’t.