Lone Star Thoughts

So I recently returned from a week of training in College Station,Texas. It was really good training on incident management. I won't bore you with the details, but incident management is basically the system used since the 70's to control wildland fires in California. So when you visit Southern California and its not a pile of embers, you should thank the Incident Command System. If you want to bore the hell out of yourself, you can go here for more info.

Some thoughts:

• As I was driving to Logan Airport, I drove passed a billboard that I couldn't understand. WHOCANISUE? I didn't quite get it. Until I went to the website. WhoCanISue.com. How repelling is this concept? The website will allow you to plug in things that have happened and will then allow lawyers to call you who will offer to sue the crap out of anyone. Because remember, nothing is your fault. It's all the responsibility of someone else. And you can get money from them.
• The flight down was pretty uneventful. Except for the fact that I got to ride in one of these. This my friends is a Continental Saab 340. A 2 turboprop beauty that seats around 40 people. Quite uncomfortable and super loud.
• My first night down there I ate dinner at a place called Cheddar's. They had a chicken alfredo dish that was the size of my head for $5 bucks. Texas might be the only place where my salary is actually a living wage.
  
• As usual, the people I got meet down there were the best part of the trip. A fire chief from suburban Chicago, some awesome firefighters from Burbank, CA and a sheriff's deputy from a county in Ohio. Good times and good laughs, and a bunch of stand-up guys.
  
• We went out our final night to a bar called Dixie Chicken for food. Pitchers of beer were $5 and bottles were $2. It was the kind of place that had a sign proclaiming that fighting was punishable by a $300 fine. Oh yeah. We followed that with a trip to Hurricane Harry's, a country bar/club. This is where I saw the 2-step in full force. Hundreds of couples, in costume, dancing the 2-step. It was very different. Much slower than I'm used to.
  
• I met a woman whose leanings were so far right that she was almost left. Her husband was dressed as Obama Hood (Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.) I enjoyed that were were different and could talk. Until she mentioned that she hated Fox News because it was too liberal. She wished it was 100% conservative as opposed to 97.5% I guess. I was pretty sure we had nothing to talk about after those words left her lips.
  

And now I'm back home in Beantown. Currently watching an awful movie called P2, which apparently exclusively takes place on the second level of a NYC office building parking garage. It immediately opened up with more plot holes than Howard the Duck. It pains me even to keep watching. This movie is awful.