Having Connections

My dad is retired Air Force and this weekend Luke AFB had their biannual Luke Days Air Show.  He suggested my husband and I go with him and his wife.  My husband was planning on going anyway so I said sure.  As we sat in traffic on a single lane road miles from the public parking lot, he basically said "screw this" and headed towards the Glendale Air Park thinking we could take a shuttle from there.  We were driving towards a different parking lot and spied a sign "Base housing use Kachina, Military ID required".  Holy crap why didn't this occur to us before - my dad and his wife have base privileges and military IDs.  So simple, no parking fees, no large crowds, no having to sit on school buses.  We were able it catch the base housing shuttle and were dropped off right in front of the flight line.

We wandered around and looked at some of the plans they had on display.  They had the new F-22 doing a flying demonstrations - man that is an awesome plane. It almost seemed to hover at time and then would go super fast over us.  There were some other flying demos, stunt planes and a group of 4 planes flying together, one from WWII, Korea, Vietnam and current.  The WWII plane was probable going as fast as it could and the F-4 was going as slow as it could, but they all stayed in formation.

My dad and his wife stood in line to go into the C-5 and got to see inside th cock pit.  It took them like an hour.  My husband and I met up with a couple of his friends and looked at the B-52. About 3:20 the Thunderbirds http://thunderbirds.airforce.com/ took off for their show.  All I can say about them is OMG talk about flying skills.


When we left, we just had to walk about a mile to where the car was parked (the shuttle was full and we figured it would be faster to walk). Coming over the bridge where the car was parked was an MP asking for military IDs from everyone - just doing their job.

When Luke Days comes again in 2013, I am going to see if my dad will take my son, he always wanted to go.  We would just start earlier in the day so we can see all the shows.

2011 Cookie Sales done

My troop of older girls (7th grade - 10th grade) has wrapped up our cookies sales.  We only had 3 girls selling cookies this year and did 4 cookie booths at the local Fry's grocery stores and ended up selling 949 boxes of cookies.  Not too bad.

Next weekend, I am in charge of an encampment in Prescott, AZ.  We have 182 people coming.  It is going to be a great weekend.  Then I am taking a weeks vacations.  Boy am I tired.

Girl Scout Cookies

Yesterday bright and early I, along with a team of volunteer, took delivery of 67,260 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies for the 54 troops in my area.  We sold 14% more in our presales this year.

5,605 Cases of Cookies

Sorting into Troops

Next weekend, if you are in Arizona, look for Girl Scouts going door to door through neighborhoods with cookies in wagons.  Cookies are still $4 per box and most of the money stay in Arizona.  The troop gets a percent of each box and Council gets some.  This money helps with the upkeep of our camps and pays for program.  

Cookies booths at the grocery stores start on Friday 2/25 and run each Friday, Saturday and Sunday until March 20th.

Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?

White Tail

I was at the Girl Scout camp Willow Springs in Prescott last weekend.  After dinner on Saturday, when we got back to our cabin unit, K & E told us to be quiet. When we looked between the two cabins we saw a herd of white tailed deer grazing about 100 feet away - maybe closer.  It was about 5:30 or so and getting dark.  I was amazed on how the really do blend in with their background.  Here is a shot of them watching us watching them.

Old Pictures

My Junior/Cadette Girl Scout troop is participating in our council's World Friendship Day event by learning and presenting information about Panama.  This event has between 800 & 900 people attending. Between December 1968 & sometime in 1972 (I don't recall when we left) I lived in the Panama Canal Zone on Howard AFB.  I was even a Girl Scout during that time.  Because of this event I vent to my mom's and scanned all the photos she had from when I was in Panama.

While I was going through my mom's box of photos, I came across some great pictures of my parents and my youth.

My mom & dad in high school

My mom & dad before kids

Me and my sister 1963 or 1964

Me and dad 1960

When I look a the amount of pictures my mom has it makes me kind of sad compared to the amount of pictures my husband has from his youth.  Even though I don't have as many pictures, I just love these.

Listening to Music

My husband work for Tower Records for 13 years in the 80's and early 90's.  Because of this we have an extensive vinyl and CD collection.  Since we moved in 2004 our vinyl has been in boxes waiting for a record rack to be built.  In our old house the records were on shelves 6 feet wide by 6 feet high and it was full.  We have 42 feet of CDs in the open now but still have boxes that have not been unpacked.

Last weekend I decided to clean the house and listen to music.  I did this the weekend before, but didn't write down everything I was listening to. Some of it was: Toto, Genesis, Kayak, Mike Oldfield & Neil Young. I thought it would fun to write down everything I was listening to so here is my list: 


Saturday 1/15/11 Round 1: 

• The Roches-A Dove
• Concrete Blond-Boodletting 
• Camel- Nude
• World Trade - Euphoria
• Shawn Philips- Second Contribution.

Round 2: 

• Simple Minds-Life in a Day
• The Bears-Rise and Shine
• Klaatu-Klaatu
• King Crimson-Lizard
• Crash Test Dummies-The Ghosts that Haunt Me.

Round 3:

• Porcupine Tree - Up The Downstair
• Tangerine Dream- One Times One
• Tim Finn
• Icehouse-Icehouse
• William Tell-You Can Hold Me Down.

Round 4:

• Steve Hackett - Defector
• Porcupine Tree - On The Sunday of Life
• Ian Brown - The World is Yours
• Chris de Burgh - Into the Light
• Robin Trower - Victims of the Fury

Sunday 1/16/11 Round1:

• Kate Bush - Hounds of Love
• Hot Tuna - Pair A Dice Found
• Jakko M. Jakszyk - The Road to Ballina
• Crack The Sky - From The Greenhouse
• Crosby, Stills & Nash - Live it Up

Round 2:

• Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire
• John Martyn - Sapphire
• Yes - Chase to the Edge
• Rush - Dreamline
• Jethro Tull - Crest of a Knave

Round 3:

• Marillion - Misplaced Childhood (this album has the song my youngest daughter is named from - Kayleigh)
• Mike Oldfield - Ommadawn
• ELO - Time
• Fanita Tikaram - Everybody's Angel
• Moody Blues - Octive

Round 4: 

• Evanescense - Origin
• Kayak - Night Vision
• Dan Fogelberg - Netherlands
• Eric Clapton - Journeyman
• Blood Sweat & Tears - 3

Round 5:

• Rodger Waters - Amused to Death
• Nicky Skopelitis - Ekstasis
• Simple Minds - Life in a Day
• Adrian Legg - Guitar for Mortals
• Sally Oldfield - Playing in the Flame

It has been great exploring all this music.

My Color Nook

For Christmas I purchased a Barnes & Noble Color Nook for my youngest daughter who is an avid reader.  I went with the Nook, because we can check out library books for 14 days without a charge.  I had it delivered to my office so I could set it up before Christmas and would not need to do anything after she opened it.  I even downloaded some free books from Google eBooks.  After messing with it for a while, I added a Color Nook to my wish list and gave it to my husband. Guess what he gave me - a Color Nook.

Right now I am reading James Clavell's Gai-Jin.  I found Shogun & Tia-pan in a box of books at my house and re-read them.  The text is clear and I can adjust the brightness so I can even read it outside in full sun.  I can also increase (or decrease) the font size and spacing on the page.  I have also created a Pandora radio station - the Color Nook has built in Wi-Fi, so I can listen to what I like while I am reading.  I created a station based on the artist Marillion and one for Mozart.

The Nook, comes with extras like crossword, chess and sudoku.  You can also load photos and Word documents onto it, as well as your own music. I can also get to the internet and can read the blogs I follow through Google Reader.  I can see and update my Facebook page.  Talk about another way to stay connected.

I love science fiction so I am trying out a subscription to the magazine "Asimov's".  I have 14 days to figure out if it worth subscribing to.

I am going to take my daughter out later today to B&N so we can both get cover/cases for our Nooks.