San Antonio

So, Tuesday night I flew to San Antonio, TX, for a business trip. First of all, I saw more military people in the 24 hours of my trip than I see in a month around O'Fallon and Fairview Heights. At Lambert, before I even boarded my plane I sat and talked with three Army guys. They were coming home from Iraq for some time off. I thanked them for their service and told them about my dad being retired Air Force and my brother being Army. They seemed to appreciate the fact that I may not have lived "the life," but that I had an understanding of it. They were really nice guys.

Then, the gal sitting in front of me on the plane (I'll get to THAT in a minute) was on her way to San Antonio for AF Basic Training. She is straight out of high school, trying to get money to pay for college. She'll be training for Security Forces. I got the impression that she believes she'll be headed to Iraq/Afghanistan soon after her training is complete. She was a very sweet girl. I tried to give her my US Weekly for her to read during Basic, but she said she wasn't allowed to have stuff like that.

Now, onto the plane. This plane could have been Ben's left shoe. It was freaking tiny! I was in seat 2A for both flights. Just to give you an idea of how little room I had, I made a trek to the onboard bathroom on both flights just so I had some room to stretch out!! Other than that, though, both flights were fairly uneventful. On the flight home, I got to see some thunderstorms southwest of St. Louis. Most people would be freaked out seeing lightning while flying, but it was far enough away that I just enjoyed the beauty of nature.

My trip itself was good. The staff at the San Antonio Challenger Learning Center were very nice. I truly enjoyed their presentations and program. They were very kind and gave me all kinds of stuff (a patch with their logo and a CD of space music and parodies made by one of their more creative staff members). They also shared a lot of cool lessons that I can (and will) use in the future here at our Center.

Well, back to work I go. I've got a lot of prep work to do for Monday. Laters!