Fly Me to the Moon...

If Sinatra were alive, he could definitely afford a trip around the moon. For $100 million, you can buy your very own lunar mission. Read this.

No thank you! I have no desire to be all claustrophobic and weighless and scared for my life just to see the moon a little closer. It's cool, but what's the point? Is Earth not good enough for some people? I admit it's getting a little small, but it we need to start voting people off the island then I'm not paying a ton of money to go look at a cold atmosphereless dustball. My little Voyage to Mars earlier this week was more than enough.

Yes, I went to Mars with a bunch of my dear classmates. It only costs $1000 per voyage, and we fit about 20 people comfortably, so that's a mere $50 per person of wasted taxpayer money spent to treat us like sixth graders. Although we haven't yet earmarked the time, there's a spot in the lobby for our own collage of Crayolaed "Thank You" cards. The really cool thing about the Voyage to Mars is that I did it back at Space Camp. In sixth grade. The exact same one, I'm pretty sure. The only difference, I guess, would be the addition of jokes such as "Mars Control, please set the probe for Uranus." Also, we got to name the spacecraft anything we wanted (the sole source of autonomy in the entire flight). We chose the SS Feldt, because our classmate Brent Feldt was down with the flu and cough cough couldn't make it to Mars. It made for one good joke that we didn't get tired of: "Mars control, we have gotten Feldt up." "Roger that, it's great to see you get Feldt up."

More San Antonio

Last night a thunderstorm threatened San Antonio just after sunset, at around 8:30 pm. The clouds were the strangest, most beautiful color of navy blue, and I instinctively looked up to where my sunroof would be to get a better look. Too bad my rental car doesn't have a sunroof; I ended up craning my neck out of the side window to better appreciate the sky. Not a great compromise. At that moment, I realized that I really miss not only the sunroof in my little car, but also my entire life back home. I miss waking up in my bed, walking down my street, and driving my car to do the stuff that I want to do. Maybe if I had grown up the youngest in a big brood of children I'd be better at going with the flow, but as it is I was an only child for eight long years of spoilage, and I want things my way, damnit! I usually try to make the best of things, but that gets old after an entire summer of compromise and adaptation.

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I golfed for the first time ever today! I wasn't that bad, I guess, and the guys I played with did a lot to boost my ego, so it was a good day overall. We played scramble, which meant that my suckiness didn't slow everyone else down. Two cool things happened:

1. I made up a song for when your coplayers screw up:
"Twinkle twinkle, over par,
get inside the fucking car."

2. We couldn't find Ramsey's drive, which would have been the best of our four, and so we played off of Kipp's. Coincidentally, his second landed right where Ramsey's first had, so after finding Ramsey's ball we just played off of that and counted it one stroke. Kipp was really proud of himself for showing the way to Ramsey's ball and asked for a little gratitude. And gratitude Kipp got, in the form of a train...

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If there's one thing I know for sure about Texans, it's that they love their AC. Maybe it's the desire to burn up as much oil as possible before distributing it to the rest of the country. Anyway, my body is still confused when I walk from 90 degree heat with humidity into a 62 degree room. I actually buy hot espresso drinks when in Target because the place is a damn freezer.
So there's this AC unit in the stairwell at Best Western that is always on the coldest setting, full blast. Walking into the stairwell is a shocking experience, and the control knobs have been removed (probably because warm blooded people like me tried adjusting it in the past). It's the same wall unit as the ones in our rooms, though, so I know which way to turn the little stick that the knob would go on. I turned that sucker up to high heat yesterday morning and when I came home, the stairway was a comfortable temperature for the first time since I've been here. Aah.

Then some wily, sneaky maid must have discovered what I did because it was cold as butt this morning when I went down to get my coffee. Curses! I can see that this will be a battle not easily won-- hopefully not involving superglue, but I reserve the right to employ whatever force is necessary to complete the mission.

San Antonio, Part 1

Death by PowerPoint has inspired me to sink to new depths in classroom misbehavior: the lecture bingo game. It only took one and a half lectures to win; how pathetic is that? Must very lecture we get here at USAFSAM be nothing more than a string of buzzwords?

Anyway, when you get five in a row, you have to raise your hand and ask a question with "Bingo" in it to win. I asked the following question: "Where have the resupply flights been going in the current theater?" See? Been going? Bingo-ing? It's a stretch, but I'm the biggest giggle box in the world, and the guy giving the talk was a retired colonel. If I'd actually said the word "bingo" I'd have dissolved into laughter and gotten myself an LOR. Man, it was a glorious moment. I heard a few snickers behind me, and Stefan just turned around and shook his head (he wanted the whole Bingo effect).