The Daily Brief

A new report from Bloomberg says Iraq will increase capacity from 2.8m to 3.25m bl/day next year.

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) — Iraq, the fifth-largest oil producer in the Middle East, will spend more than $1 billion next year to increase oil production capacity by about 15 percent to 3.25 million barrels a day, an Iraqi official said.

“The budget is fixed for priority projects to build new export pipelines and complete modifications to our refineries,” Abdulilah al-Amir, a foreign relations adviser to Iraqi Oil Minister Thamir al-Ghadhban, said in a telephone interview.

Iraq, which holds oil reserves estimated to be the third largest in the Middle East at about 112.5 billion barrels by the Arab Oil & Gas Directory, can produce as many as 2.8 million barrels a day of oil at full capacity, al-Amir said from Baghdad.

Iraq’s plans to increase capacity to 3 million barrels a day this year were curtailed by persistent attacks by militants against foreign contractors and pipelines. The U.S.-government funded Restore Iraqi Oil program, called RIO, returned output to pre-war levels of more than 2 million barrels a day this year after last year’s invasion led to a production collapse.

Some of the world’s largest international oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp., the Royal Dutch/Shell Group and ChevronTexaco Corp., are intent on bidding to develop Iraq’s oil resources should the government decide to open up the industry to foreign investment following elections next year.

Good reading, for those so interested. I might also add that Iraq is believed to have the largest unproven reserves in the middle east at about 220 billon barrels.

Pat Tillman is up for Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the year. I didn’t hear bout Pat Tillman until after he had died in the line of duty. An NFL player who “had it all” and gave “it” up to serve his country after 9/11.

So go vote.

Via Blackfive.

Thanksgiving was a nice break from the routine, and I found much for which to be thankful. My heart went out to our Marines, soldiers, airmen, sailors, and all the others who had to spend this day away from home and family. All day long, my thoughts and prayers kept going back to those very special people.

Today I went back to Timmer’s post of 11/22, concerning the Constitution and the very difficult situation regarding the Marine who was taped by Kevin Sites last Saturday shooting the insurgent in Fallujah. As of this post, there were 44 comments on that thread, and it proved to be a really interesting subject with a broad variety of opinions.

Time has moved on and this is no longer the breaking front page story, but that doesn’t diminish the importance of the subject. Al Jazeera, of course, has jumped on the story, as has the anti-American UN. The ICRC is also wringing their hands over the possibility of civilian casualties, again accusing the US of war crimes while ignoring the enemy who saws heads off innocent civilians. Something here smells worse than a dead fish under the hood, just a little off kilter! Our fighting forces are in harm’s way in order to free civilians from the brutal regime that had taken root in Fallujah, and from all appearances, they have leaned over backwards to keep civilian casualties at a minimum. Yet, our guys are expected to be the “gentlemen” of this war, not just in Fallujah, but in all of this war. I refer you to the comments by LTCOL Willy Buhl, referenced in Kevin Sites’ letter to the Devil Dogs.

So, where do we go from here in this debate? Is it really about the Constitution and the First Amendment, or is it about OPSEC, or the need to get the enemy before he gets you, or just what? Go back and read Timmer’s post, and read all those comments, and let me know:

What do YOU think?

Today I’m thankful for:

God.
My Beautiful Wife for loving me no matter what.
Boyo for keeping me young and my eyes open.
Friends of Bill.
My Mom, Sister, Aunts and Uncles for reminding me where I come from.
The folks I work with for being good people even if they are mostly a bunch of bottom-feeding-scum-sucking contractors…and I mean that in the best way.
Every man and woman who now wears or who has ever worn a uniform in service to their country, their state, or their city.
The gang here at The Daily Brief and Digital Warfighter.
(Wayne’s World Dream effect…doodoodoodooderloop)
Butterball.
Karo Syrup.
Poppin Fresh.

Oreo Pie Shells.
Green Bean Casserole.
(POP)
Okay…lost my focus.

To one and all, may you have a bountiful and blessed Thanksgiving Day.

My post concerning brine-soaked turkey seems to have been lost. But here’s another one appropriate to the season: What is better, butter or margarine? Most comparisons focus on the matter of nutrition – the issue of natural fat vs. trans fat. But I think the leading factor should be one of taste. Let’s face it; would you take a dollop of margarine on your fingertip and eat it plain? How about butter?

And the matter of taste places a major, and often disregarded, vector on the matter of nutrition. I don’t know about you, but for me, as a spread (the way most of us use the majority of our butter or margarine), I will use about half as much butter, for the same application, as I would margarine. Real butter just delivers more satisfaction.

Then it comes down to a matter of value. And frankly, at the price most supermarkets normally charge for real butter (about $4/lb. in this area), the value scale tilts badly against butter. But I just went to Costco, and paid $7.71 for 4 lbs. of Kirkland brand butter. At that price, the scale tilts strongly the other way.

I have changed my profile to put my name on my blog posts, but wanted to explain how I got “herkybirdman” for the benefit of those who may not understand how I got it.

The last eight years in the AF were spent on C-130’s, known affectionately as “Herky Birds.” This airplane was and is really special to those of us who flew and worked on them, much unlike my previous birds, KC-135’s. I spent nearly eight years on those hogs, and was so disgusted with them I never wanted to see the inside of one again. There’s no comparison, I know the herky is slow, but it’s a really sweet flying machine, and ours at the 302nd AW were in the best shape, for a 30-year old airplane. Thus, my choice of a blogname was meant as a tribute to a fine piece of work.

Joe

Just received this link from a friend who forgot to warn me to grab tissues first.

http://www.reoutfitters.com/WeSupportU/WeSupportU.htm

God Bless our Troops!

UPDATE: The above link no longer works. I found a couple more out there:

At 0315 (really early in the morning) Conner Louis McFarland was born.
7.3 pounds with a head of dark hair and an expresive face.
His Parents Courtney and T.J. are fine and basking in the joy of one so precious.
He is the future…Marine, Teacher, Artist, Actor, Doctor, or Lawyer.
Whatever life he leads, may it be filled with joy and laughter.

A private jet that was chartered to fly former President George HW Bush to Ecuador crashed this morning on approach to Houston Hobby Airport, in dense fog. Three crew members on board were killed in the crash. A complete story can be found here.

In a post last month, I wrote concerning the crash of a Beech Baron in Atlanta. The NTSB has released the preliminary accident report, which reads in part:

“….The personal flight operated under 14CFR Part 91. Instrument meterological Conditions existed at the time of the accident and a flight plan was filed. The airplane was substantially damaged and the instrument rated pilot and passenger were fatally injured. The …flight departed DeKalb-Peachtree (PDK) Airport in Chamblee, GA, on Oct. 19, at 1045L.

According to the FAA, the pilot was issued departure information for a south departure to Venice, FL. About 7 miles south of PDK, the pilot reported that he was in trouble. The departure controller immediately issued the pilot radar vectors for an eastbound heading, but the pilot never responded to the radar vector information. Shortly afterward, radio and radar contact was lost. Witnesses in the vicinity of the accident site reported seeing the airplane spinning out of the clouds in a flat attitude. A review of weather data and witness reports reveals that low clouds, fog, heavy rain and thunderstorm activity were in the area at the time of the accident. Examination of the accident site revealed that the airplane wreckage was scattered over an area 40 feet long and 38 feet wide. The airplane wreckage was adjacent to an automotive repair shop with debris from the right wing resting on the roof. Both the airplane and the building sustained fire damage. The airplane rested in the upright position. The cockpit and cabin areas of the airframe were badly fire damaged.”

It appears possible that the pilot lost an engine shortly after takeoff, and with the plane in the clouds, became disoriented and failed to properly correct for the torque being produced by the operating engine. This is deduced from the witness report that the airplane was in a flat spin. Other factors, such as the presence of thunderstorms in the area, most likely contributed to the crash. Any pilot would heartily agree that one does not mess with thunderstorms. The pilot always loses, and the thunderstorm always wins. The entire truth of this accident will probably never be known, but this report should serve as a reminder to all of us who sit in the left seat of an aircraft that things can go wrong, and the whole situation can go to hell in a handbasket real fast. We pilots are behooved to read and learn, and always, as the Boy Scouts tell us, Be Prepared!

Joe Comer

When we left our narrative before, I was on my tricycle poised to go out and conquer the world – or at the very least, to go into Lumber City, some seven miles from our old clapboard farm house in Wheeler County. The road in 1944 was a very primitive dirt road, and in fact the truck we had was a Ford Model A pickup. I used to love that old truck, especially the jiggledy-jiggledy sound the motor made. Today, the road is a nice paved road, our old house is long gone, forests have grown up there, but the beginning of the lane to where the house used to be is still visible.

I remember that I left the front yard through the gate, went down the lane and out onto the sandy dirt road, headed in the direction of town. The sand there was deep, and pedaling was hard, but I made it about a quarter mile down the road to a bridge across a little creek. The creek is pretty much dry today, but there is a culvert there, and it is still recognizable as the place where the wooden bridge was. The bridge was one of those very simple types, without side rails, just timbers crosslaid, with runners over them; we had many of those kind of bridges, even as I grew up and started driving myself. But they’re all gone today (sigh) progress……but I digress……I got to the bridge and trundled across it, and when I got to the other side I saw a car coming. Somehow, in my little brain, I knew to get out of the way, so I pulled my tricycle off to the side at the end of the bridge, a little way down the embankment.

I guess I thought the car would go on by, and maybe I’m lucky that it didn’t. As they approached, the driver slammed on brakes, and some neighbors of ours jumped out, grabbed me and my trusty ride, asked me, I believe, something like where did I think I was going, and promptly delivered me back home to my mom. Her hair stood on end, I guess, as they told her where they had found me, and I definitely remember the punishment that followed: She had this hairbrush, you see, and it had a flat back surface. That surface was applied to my little bottom forcefully a number of times, while she alternately yelled and cried. It seems she was frightened out of her gourd! One thing for sure: I never left that yard again without anyone with me. The story of this episode was legendary in my family, as were quite a few of my hare-brained schemes when I was a kid.

Oh, yes. In part one I mentioned a huge rattlesnake. Just days after my adventure, Daddy came to the house, got us in the truck, and took us down to the bridge where I had stopped for the neighbors’ car. There, right where I had pulled off the embankment, lay a dead snake. A really BIG dead snake! It was something over 6 feet long; not the biggest I’ve seen around there – that one was around 8 feet. But big enough that it made a serious impression on all of us. It sends shivers down my spine to think what would have happened had that thing been there when I was off on my little adventure! Rattlesnakes are territorial, too, and that was most likely his back yard. Yikes, it still raises the hair on my neck!

Oh, and the alligator? He probably wasn’t around right then, but a few hundred yards past the bridge was a place in the road that was prone to developing a really big mudhole when it rained much. The mudhole was so big and so deep that people had forged trails through the woods to get around it, and many are the times I remember us going out and around that spot. Naturally, it’s gone today, but I can still point out just where it was. One day sone time after the road trip, Daddy took me with him, took his rifle, and we went down to the mudhole. There, in the road, or in the water over the road, was a big alligator. Daddy went over and climbed a tree with his rifle and shot the gator. This was, mind you, a long time ago, and I don’t believe there were such restrictions on killing them as there are today. I don’t remember how many times he shot it, but it was more than once. I do know that he showed me the gator when we got there, and warned me to stay in the truck. This time I did as I was told!

As I remember, he took me back to the house before he disposed of the alligator, so I don’t know what became of it. I regret never asking him about it; there are so many things I wish he had told me, but he had a stroke in 1987, and never regained his speech. He lived in California the last 20 or so years of his life, and I was able, thanks to an Air Force TDY that took me to NAS Miramar for six weeks, to go and visit with him at his home in Newark, California, just out of San Francisco, over a weekend soon after his stroke. I called him many times after that, where I did the talking and Dad just grunted, but was never able to get back out to see him. Dad passed away in 1997, having survived lung cancer some 20 years before, and having lived for 10 years after suffering the stroke. I loved my Daddy, he was ten feet tall in my eyes. He made his mistakes of course, but he was my Daddy. He and mom were divorced years later, and he went to California then.

There are a lot of stories I remember from that house in the woods of south Georgia, like the time a bird nest fell to the bottom of a chimney, the fireplace being covered for the summer, and the sound the baby birds made was just like a rattlesnake. It scared the bejesus out of everybody, we evacuated the house pretty quick, and Daddy went back in with his gun to kill the “snake”, only to come out a few minutes later grinning sheepishly as he carried out a bird nest full of baby birds!

We had no electricity, but we had running water, if you count the water as running while you hand pump it. The pump was at the edge of the back porch, and they kept a bucket there with a dipper in it to drink out of. Mama cooked on a big old wood stove, and I have never tasted food so good since then! Man alive, those biscuits! We had an outhouse, too. It was out back, past the garden, and I was always scared to go out there. Oh. You’ve heard the tales of using the Sears & Roebuck catalog? True. Yep, absolutely true! Those slick pages don’t work too well. Moving along swiftly, now…..We never knew we were poor; to tell the truth, I don’t believe for a moment that we WERE poor! Life was good, especially for a kid. No electricity? No problem. Didn’t need it. We had kerosene lamps, and Daddy had a battery radio that we listened to Grand Ole Opry on every Saturday night. No need for a refrigerator. All the food was either in the garden or running around on the hoof. We had a smokehouse where meat was smoked for preservation, so nothing was lost there. It’s sad, to me, in a way, that I’m of the last generation to experience life like that in America. It still exists in some parts of the world, but it’s not likely that our children or grandchildren will ever know what that life was like.

The lights did go on in Georgia, around 1950, when we gave up the farm and moved to Lumber City. We were city folks now. Electricity, indoor bathroom, and eventually a phone. We still didn’t have TV, though, not even when I joined the Air Force in 1961. It was somewhere around 1964, the year that Nurse Jen and I got married, that Mama bought a TV for Daddy. Even though we moved to town Daddy didn’t stop farming. He had garden plots all over town, and guess who had to do hoeing, plowing, and harvesting? You got it, me. The kid. Or all us kids, really. Daddy got something when we moved to town that he never had when we lived in the country. A tractor. A garden tractor, that is. I’ll never forget it. A David Bradley walk-behind from Sears!

The house we bought was an old general store with a house attached. I remember that there were old hand pumped gas pumps out front, and there was one of those old insulated rooms where they stored ice that they sold. The gas pumps were removed, and later on, Daddy made a bedroom for him and Mama out of the old ice house. Mama opened a boarding house and later a restaurant. She could have made a killing, but she never charged what the food was worth. She gave most of it away, anyhow. It was just her big heart and generous spirit. No one ever went away hungry, money or not.

So, the lights went on in Georgia, at least in my little world, in 1950, and they DID go off again some years later – when I went out in the country to live for a time with my Aunt Lollie. She was old and needed someone to stay with her and help her with chores…..but that’s another story!

All day I have wanted to login so I could get folks looking out for some strange goings-on in DPRK (North Korea.) There are rumors going around that pictures of Kim Jong Il have been removed from their normal place next to Kim Il Sung’s pix. I googled this and it seems to be true. Speculation abounds as to the reason, ranging from death of Kim, to a coup, to simply his request to remove the pictures. Now, this seems strange to us, but it is required that pictures of both Kims be displayed in every room of every home, every office, school, hotel, etc. The literally worship KIS and KJI as gods, calling KIS “Great Leader”, and KJI “Dear Leader.”

Another thing noticed lately is that the TV and Radio ministries (State owned, of course, ) are now just calling KJI, “president,” instead of “dear Leader”.

If you have a chance to watch Discovery Times channel, there are two very worthwhile programs that they air about N.K. One is “Children of the Secret State,” very heart-rending, and the other is “Access to Evil,” which is pretty eye-opening as well.

Ever since I stood at PanMunJom in 1962 and looked out over that mysterious land, I’ve wanted to go there and see for myself just what it is like, and if their current state were to crumble, I might get that chance. Maybe I should get my language texts out, and bone up on my vocabulary, just in case. The most use I get out of Korean lately is an occasional visit to our favorite Korean restaurant where Nurse Jen and I have been going for years, where we get to practice our language skills in conversation with the staff.

Tonight’s “War Stories” is about the Korean War. It wasn’t too long after that when I first went there, and the country was still in pretty much disarray. A whole different story today, though!

We’ll keep an eye on this one.

The NBA has just suspended the Pacers’ Ron Artest for the rest of the season – great! I hope the Pacers dock his pay for it too.

This offense was inexcusable. Whatever the fans are yelling or throwing, you don’t go into the stands.

Our other major professional sports, particularly basketball, should really take a lesson from NASCAR. of course, it’s a different situation with auto racing (at least in the US, those F1 guys are another story). Do you think a big corporation like Lowe’s, Kellogg’s, or Procter and Gamble is going to put out millions in sponsorship money if the driver doesn’t have a squeaky-clean image?

As I have this slot to fill up after my double post snafu, and I just watched The Wizard of Oz for about the hundredth time, I just thought I’d through some Judy Garland trivia in here. Our regular readers know I consider her the greatest female singer ever recorded. But did you know that, while she was 17 when Oz was released, she was only 16 when she recorded Over The Rainbow. In fact, MGM had actually put her on contract at 13, in 1935. But they were hesitant to put her in a feature film, for fear that no-one would believe her singing voice wasn’t dubbed! For this they were lambasted by the Hollywood Reporter, which called her “the greatest individual talent in Hollywood.”

I can’t believe the lawsuit trying to force Warne Bros. to put a disclaimer in the opening credits of the new movie Alexander, due to references to his sexuality. I thought it was common knowledge to even a casual student of history, such as myself, that Alexander was at least bisexual, if not gay. But for the real lowdown, there’s this from Marc Millner, a grad student in Greek Classical Studies at the University of Washington:

So was he gay? The consensus among scholars is clear: Although Alexander occasionally slept with women, he preferred men.

And the man he preferred most was his boyfriend Hephaestion. They met when they were teens and remained lovers until Hephaestion died nineteen years later. The most respected scholars are not reticent about Alexander’s sexual appetites. For example, earlier this month Peter Green, author of the widely respected Alexander of Macedon: A Historical Biography recently appeared in The History Channel’s documentary on Alexander and was quite blunt about Hephaestion being the love of Alexander’s life. In a recent article for the New Republic, Green went even further quoting an anecdote the ancient philosopher Theophrastus attributes to his teacher Aristotle, who was also Alexander’s tutor: “Both Philip and Olympias [Alexander’s parents] were scared that their adolescent son was showing signs of becoming a gynnis, a ‘femme’ invert, and actually imported a high-class courtesan [hooker] to straighten out his sexual drive.”

And certainly the consensus among the academics who exchange ideas on Pothos.org, the most widely respected and renowned international site for serious Alexander scholars, is that Alexander was in love with Hephaestion and had an affair with the Persian eunuch, Bagoas.

Oddly enough, the most interesting take on Alexander’s sexuality comes from two non-academics–Michael Alvear and his sister Vicky Alvear Shecter. They co-wrote the first historically accurate comic biography on antiquity’s greatest warrior, Alexander the Fabulous: The Man Who Brought the World to Its Knees.

An interesting article, if you care to read the whole thing.

What also amazes me is that this lawsuit is being filed by an actual group of Greek (not Greek-Ameican) lawyers, as we always hear from those in Europe that we are entirely too Victorian about such things.

I ust rolled out of bed to Goldie Hawn’s lovely blue eyes. Then I saw Chevy Chase, Charles Grodin: Hey this looks promising. I click the info button – “Seems Like Old Times” – REJECT – Off to “Making Marines, Parris Island: Phase Two” on the Discovery Times channel.

4 periods a year – is this a good thing? I’m thinking, “don’t fool with Mother Nature.”

I have a personal blog, which I’ve mentioned before, that I use for a variety of things, primarily thinking out loud, dealing with Mom’s death, etc (next month will be the one year point since she left us). Sometimes I wish I had a wider audience for the stuff I write there, and that’s when it finds its way over here to be cross-posted. I try not to *just* cross-post… I like to be original when I’m writing over here, as well.

I posted something to my personal blog yesterday, because it belongs there, but as I was writing it, I was wishing I was posting it here, because I want to hear from the veterans, and the history-buffs, and my personal blog has a regular readership of 1-3 people, as far as I can tell. LOL I was writing about my dad and his time in Korea, and realized how very little I know about the Korean Conflict (we never got that far in my school history classes. Sometimes we were lucky to get as far as WWII).

My dad, who turned 74 last week, has been having flashbacks to his time as a Marine in Korea. Or so my sister tells me. Thing is, anything my sister says has to be taken with a HUGE grain of salt (or maybe a bushel of salt?). So I called my aunt last night, and she told me that Dad had told her the same thing, but she doesn’t know if it’s true, or if it’s the power of suggestion, because some guy at the AmVets told him he could get more VA money if he was having flashbacks.

Dad has never mentioned flashbacks to anyone before, and has never had them before, so far as any of us know. But he’s never lost a spouse before either, and since she died peacefully in her sleep, he was the one who found her and realized that she would never wake up again.

My sister asked what we could do if Dad really was having flashbacks, and I told her we can pray that God will give him peace. She didn’t like my answer, but there’s really not a lot you CAN do, as I understand it, unless he’s willing to go to a psyhchiatrist, and I don’t see Dad doing that, unless it gets really bad.

Dad never talked about the war when I was growing up. Last year, after the funeral, as he and I were sitting around the kitchen table sharing a beer (well he was drinking beer – I might have been drinking coffee, because I have a self-imposed one beer limit), he talked about Korea.

Dad got over there in time for the push that went clear into… .some city that he can’t remember the name of. Anyway, they got there, but then got pushed all the way back to the beach, or something like that. (Any historians around here that can help me out?)

He fought in the Chosin Reservoir, he says, and didn’t have a bath/shower for several months, from the time he landed to the time he was medevaced out. Yeah, he was injured over there.

He and his buddies were hunkered down in their foxhole, keeping an eye out for any activity in front of them. It was stooopid cold, but they were doing ok, and there was no action to speak of.

Until some idiot parked a tank near their foxhole.

Suddenly they were taking enemy fire from every which-way. The enemy eventually managed to hit the tank and destroy it, and Dad caught some shrapnel in his right wrist.

He stopped a moment, telling me this story, poured himself another beer, and took a long drink before he continued. He caught shrapnel in his wrist, but one of his buddies was hit in the hip. It entered him in one hip, just above the thigh, and exited somewhere above his hip joint on the other side of his body. Dad said his buddy was alive when they left there, but he has no idea whatever happened to him. at this point, I don’t think Dad even remembered his name. I forget what he told me about the 3rd guy that was with them. I thought he said that all 3 of them survived the tank explosion, but they were all wounded.

My aunt told me that Dad told her about seeing his buddy’s head blown off right in front of him, there in the foxhole. I know that’s not what he told me last year, but he might have been trying to spare me, ya know?

Does anyone know about combat flashbacks, and if so, can you shed some light on this for me? Is it common for them to be suppressed until over 50 years later? Should we be worried about him, do you think?

The year was 1944. War raged over Europe, and Americans were fighting not only that devastating conflict, but also a bloody Island-hopping campaign in the Pacific. It was a struggle to the death, and no one was sure at first that we would win; our way of life, our very civilization, was on the line. And there were no lights, or other modern conveniences in our house, just some 20 miles from where I now sit. But I knew nothing of all this. My world was rather small, as was I. In late 1944, I was still only around 18 months old, and my joys were primarily such things as pulling my puppy around in the bright red little wagon I had received for my birthday. One other happy pursuit was to sit in Mama’s kitchen and lick the spoon that she had used moments before to whip up a cake. Now, Mama made lots of cakes. We were a farming family and everyone worked hard, burning more calories in a day than most people burn in a week today. And everyone but me and Mama would be out in the fields during the day – with the exception of Junior, who, at the age of 16, had gotten Daddy to sign for him to join the Navy. He might could have gotten in without Daddy’s signature, he was a strapping, big farmboy who had muscles hardened by years of hauling around a plow behind a cantankerous old mule named Fred.

On Christmas day of that year, I received a present that was wonderful beyond my wildest dreams. A shiny new red tricycle! Now, for anyone in families like ours, the arrival of a new tricycle was a momentous event. We were, you see, sharecroppers. At least Daddy was. We would usually recieve only one present – that is, if we got ANY! The house we lived in was not ours, but the landlord’s, however we could live there as long as Daddy made crops and provided income for the man who owned our farm land. And Daddy was a good, no, a prodigious farmer. I never, as long as he lived, saw him fail to have a good harvest. Of course, sometimes we thanked God for a great crop, and then again, sometimes it was a battle against nature all the way. But we lived, we got by somehow, and here it was Christmas and I had a shiny new tricycle!

Tricycles are not meant to be stared at, so of course I learned right away how to ride the thing, and soon I had mastered all the secrets of advanced tricycle riding. By late spring of 1945, I was convinced that I was the all-time champ of pulling my little red wagon behind that tricycle, all around the neatly-swept fenced-in yard that encircled our big, old, unpainted house. Junior had been home on leave – they called it “furlough” in those days – and he had left again after only a couple of weeks, back to his mysterious Navy duties. I was outside playing as hard as I knew how, when the idea of the century struck me. I had, among other neat treasures in my pocket, three pennies, and all that money was burning a hole in that pocket. It needed to be spent, and I was just the fellow to do that! I knew then what I HAD to do. I would go to town and buy some candy for all those folks out in the fields! Moving quickly to set off on my journey, I untied the hapless wagon, it would have to stay behind for this trip: town was about 7 miles away, and I wanted to be home before dark.

This is how it came about that I left the safety and security of the yard, to go into the big city of Lumber City, a trip down a dangerous dirt road that would bring me nearly face-to-face with a huge rattlesnake, within only yards of a monstrous mudhole in the road where an old alligator had taken up residence, and thankfully, rescued by shocked neighbors who returned me home to a horrified mother. That part of the story will be continued later, in part 2 of “The Night The Lights Went ON in Georgia.”

Which is not something I do often, or well.

I have a job interview tomorrow. Actually, it’s a SECOND interview (hooray!). It’s a phone interview, as was the first, because the folks I’m talking to are in different states. If tomorrow’s interview goes well (and it should), the next interview will be face-to-face in a nearby suburb, and include a 20-30 minute teaching demonstration (it’s a client trainer position).

So if any of y’all pray, or think good thoughts, or whatever, please do so for me tomorrow. I’ve been unemployed since Lucent laid me off in Jan 2003, and underemployed (part-time/sporadic independent contractor) since last May. Student loans will only take me so far (I’m in grad school), and at this point I’ve no idea how I’m going to pay my Dec rent, because my next paycheck won’t be enough to cover it.

I would really, really, really like to get back into a good full-time position, such as this one seems to be. So I’m asking for prayer support (or whatever you prefer to call it if you don’t like that term) for tomorrow’s interview. Everything I read/hear about this company and position sounds good to me. And they keep telling me that I sound good to them, which is very nice to hear. 🙂

My first interview was with the hiring manager, and he told me I’m an attractive candidate, but he also said that they’re not in a hurry to fill the position, although he *would* like to have it filled by Christmas. I’m asking God to bring me on board there in mid-Dec, so I’ll get a paycheck before my January rent is due.

Thanks ever so much for your prayers and well-wishes (and Sgt Mom, as soon as I land this puppy, I’ll be contacting you for an autographed copy of your book – I’ve not been able to afford it yet) 🙂

(We now return you to your standard blogging fare)

UPDATE:

It went WELL. They’ll be calling me to schedule a face-to-face interview with teaching demo. Will give more updates later – need to run or I’ll be late for school tonight.

Thanks for the prayers and warm wishes. I really appreciate them. 🙂