Tag Archives: california

It Never Rains in Southern California: Padre Steve Heads Home to Visit Family and Attend His 35th High School Reunion

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Got on board a westbound seven forty-seven

Didn’t think before deciding what to do

Ooh, that talk of opportunities, TV breaks and movies

Rang true, sure rang true …

It Never Rains in Southern California, Albert Hammond EMI Music

I am heading off to California in morning. It is Northern California and not Southern California but like the classic Albert Hammond Song says “it never rains in California” so I hope this will be the case this week. The weather channel says so maybe it won’t be too bad.

As far as the trip I have to be up pretty early since I have an early flight. So tonight after doing another full day of work around the house I went out with Judy for dinner. Since then I have been getting packed and ready to go.

It has been since my dad died in June of 2010 that I have been home. My last few trips out in 2008 and 2009 happened after Iraq when my dad was dying and I was to put it mildly bat shit crazy in the midst of my post-Iraq PTSD meltdown. Thankfully I am doing a lot better than I was back then.

The costs of the three year geographic bachelor assignment at Camp LeJeune and the need to use leave to go home to Virginia made a heck of an impact on normal travel and vacation plans. We haven’t done much traveling at all the past three years. Apart from a couple of official travel trips to Washington DC or Houston and another to testify at a Court Martial in Germany I have not been out of Virginia and North Carolina. It will be good to see my mom, my brother and his family while I am there as well as my classmates whom I have maintained contact with over all of these years. Our class was special and I really do look forward to seeing my friends again.

My trip is now set except for checking in at the airport in the morning. I have my flight, car and hotel reservations. Thankfully the flight was all but free thanks to a the need of United Airlines to get a flight crew to Washington Dulles on my last trip, netting me a $500 flight voucher which I applied to this trip meaning that my rental car and hotel were the only up front expenses. Since Judy had foot surgery Monday and is on crutches for a few days I will be taking a cab to save her the hassle of trying to get me to the airport so early.

Now I have to admit ever since Iraq I am not a fan of air travel or airports. So once I get to the airport I will probably have breakfast with a cup of black coffee and a pint of Sam Adams at the Sports Bar in the terminal. Flying the friendly skies with a heft case of PTSD requires some adjustments. Since my flight is basically free I will probably try to upgrade my seating for at least the Chicago to San Francisco portion of my trip to avoid being stuck in steerage.

I can’t help but think that while I am on leave between assignments and traveling to California that the United States and much of the world sits on the precipice of war in Syria which could very well have regional and possibly world wide effects. I check in to my new assignment at the Joint Forces Staff College on Tuesday of next week, the morning following my return. I wonder if as Barbara Tuchman wrote about in The Guns of August that the world that I return to on Monday evening or Tuesday morning will be quite different than it is today.

“The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under Loose thoughts and musings, middle east, Military, music, PTSD

Fires Earthquakes and Hurricanes Oh My! I thought God loved Red States more than Blue States

Denny Crane Alert! Over the top prose and satire contained in this post. Read with caution! 

Massachusetts is a Blue state. God has no place here” Denny Crane

Well it seems that things are getting a bit sporting back here on the East Coast, even the Red States those favored by God and Fox News are being afflicted with plagues that are more common in Godless Blue States like California and Massachusetts.  After all everyone knows that God loves the Red States more because they like God more than the Godless Commies and Socialists in the Blue States.

There has been a spate of events lately that are making me wonder about God’s love for his chosen people in the Red States.  There were earthquakes in Colorado and Virginia, fires in North Carolina, floods in the Midwest, drought in Texas and the Deep South and most of these places are Red States where God’s real people live.  I could understand if they were Blue States since God isn’t allowed in them.

I grew up on the West Coast, mostly in California where I also did my undergraduate work before I was commissioned as an Army Officer. That was back back in the good old days of the Cold War when the United States and Soviet Union held back chaos by dividing the world into us and them.  Saint Ronald was President and 80s power ballads were hot. But I digress….

I grew up in California, up and down the state, Oakland where I was born, San Diego, Long Beach, Stockton, and the good old San Fernando Valley.  Back in those days I got used to plagues, we had droughts, the Medfly, Jerry Brown, riots, Earthquakes and massive fires and mudslides.  It was good living.  Plagues build character ask the Egyptians and you never forget them.

I mean I have survived big earthquakes the 1970 Los Angeles quake, the 1980 Mammoth Lakes Quake while I was at a Christian retreat.  That weekend was strange there was nice weather, then snow, then hail and finally a thunderstorm before the skies cleared only to have a 6.8 on the Andy Richter Scale earthquake interrupt a class.  Now this was a Presbyterian Charismatic Communion retreat and if you didn’t know that some Presbyterians have this in them you needed to be there.  The building started shaking like a perverted Rock Star gyrating his hips and all of a sudden everyone around me was speaking in tongues, shouting and rebuking the Devil and some even rolling on the floor. I moved underneath a door frame as I was taught in school to do and wondered what was going one.  I survived as did they.  Well I’ve been through other earthquakes of varying intensities, most bigger that the wimpy 5.8 Virginia quake, I’m sorry that’s namby pamby, or even worse namsy pansy. I can’t imagine a namby pamby quake striking a Red State.

The problem is that instead of the Blue States getting these plagues of late as they rightfully should being that there are Godless Communists that love those ho-mo-sexual wedding planners, or weddings or whatever.  Just know that God doesn’t like it but for some reason it seems that all the plagues are afflicting the Red States now days.

Rick Perry’s Texas and Tom Coburn’s Oklahoma are going through a drought like the Dust Bowl days, except to escape it they don’t dare to go to California like people did in the 1930s and risk becoming ho-mo-sexual and having God send them to Hell.  Of course the drought has been going on for some time now but for goodness sakes a couple of days ago there was an earthquake in Colorado home of  James Dobson, Focus on the Family and the Coors Empire.  Red to the core, even the Birkenstock wearing tree huggers are red in their hearts.  Big church ministries move to Colorado from California and even more to Texas. But Colorado had an earthquake and Texas has a drought. North Carolina and Virginia have been fighting fires in the Great Dismal Swamp that won’t go out because of the richness of the peat soil and layers of American made pine needles. Now Virginia which is definitely back in the Red column after crushing a brief  Blue uprising has a really big earthquake by namby pamby East Coast standards.  My goodness the government of Virginia is in church more often than they are in session and are giving a new meaning to the Old Dominionists, but they had an earthquake strike near a nuclear power reactor; shut the place down for a while.  I wonder are they not praying hard enough or are there still enough of those Blue people hanging around to garner the wrath of God? And now there is a bitch of a hurricane named Irene that is threatening the good Red people of North Carolina and Virginia with devastation of Biblical proportions and since I live where the big “hit me sign” is, I am concerned.

This can’t be just.  The Virginians and North Carolinians have been throwing the leftist Democrats out of office at a cyclic rate of late, for goodness sakes they’re doing the work of God and this shouldn’t happen to them.  If God was just this would happen inNew York or Massachusetts where they do all sorts of Godless things and put Democrats in office and let ho-mo-sexuals be wedding planners and even get married to other ho-mo-sexuals.  This should be happening inMartha’s Vineyardwhen Obama is on the golf course with all his liberal commie pinko fellow travelers.

I think that Pat Robertson needs to get out his knee pads and flying carpet to pray this on away like the one he did back in the 1960s.  His place is in the path of Irene and they felt the earthquake down inVirginia Beach too.

That’s all I’ve got to say.

Remember where you heard it.

Padre Steve+

Back to reality, if anyone is taking this seriously they need to get a life. Yes it’s serious, but the seriousness is in the satire. If you don’t understand read my other “serious” posts. However mark my word there are already a lot of preachers out there claiming that this is all the judgement of God against America. But even so Pat Robertson should still be praying as probably all of us should. Besides I am not Red or Blue, I’m a Red White and Blue American Moderate and proud of it. Padre Steve. 

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Filed under Just for fun, purely humorous