Disaster

Holy smokes, people! I have been on such a trip, you would not even believe it. See the helicopter? Oh yes, I got the bird's eye view of the beautiful state of Maryland from a military helicopter. There was a hurricane, you know. Maybe you heard about it. As result, my office sent me on an epic cross-country adventure. I was working in the state EOC (emergency operations center) one day, minding my own beeswax (my beeswax consists primarily of filling out forms and reports on a pre-determined schedule and "coordinating" with a bunch of people that possess varying degrees of charm and competence, and is mostly a better-left-unblogged story for another day) when the boss lady practically wrenched my arm off dragging me out to the landing pad. On the way, she said, "You can go in a helicopter, right?" Ummm, yes? I mean, it's not as if she was wanting me to fly the thing. I was a little concerned when they started asking about my next of kin and making me sign forms so that after I died in a fiery crash they could use my charred corpse for the chow hall, but whatever. I've always been a girl that's happy to take one for the team. So I hopped on, the crew chief slapped a truly terrifying and complicated harness arrangement and some headphones on me, and off we went into the wild blue yonder.

You guys all know how readily I get motion sickness, right? And in the interest of full disclosure, I was also working off one too many glasses of hootch from the night before. It's not as if I was planning on going on a nauseating spin through the Maryland sky, after all. Lucky for me I was wearing my friend Gretchen's coat. I had borrowed it earlier because the EOC was FREEZING and I had dumped coffee all over my own coat. The helicopter was plenty warm, but I definitely felt I needed to be prepared to hurl in something. As it turns out, my seatmate was in a similar condition, so I spread out the sleeves, one for each of us. It was touch and go for a while, but everything stayed inside where it belonged. You're welcome, Gretchen!

On the way home, I took a little extra time to see a couple of my sweet friends that I hadn't seen in much too long. Love you guys! Unfortunately, I have a bunch more just-as-sweet friends that I didn't get to see but I will definitely try to catch everyone else next time. Love you guys, too! This is a picture of Helen's new dog, Sherlock. He is a 5.5 month old lab and he acts EXACTLY as you'd expect from looking at the picture.

On another note, it's Labor Day. I feel strongly about labor, social and consumer issues but I'm also very lazy. It's sort of a bad combination, so to assuage my guilt, I am sharing this post I wrote two years ago for Labor Day. To keep up on all the latest on labor and the shenanigans of corporate America, check out Mother Jones. You won't be sorry! And if you don't know who Mother Jones was, you can read about her here. She is definitely one of my heroes: I'm a great admirer of courage. I hope you are all having a fabulous long weekend!