All,

Sorry of not posting the last couple of months. The only time I get to read BoB is a work, and the Air Force in it’s wisdom had blocked all Blog pages from our view.

Its been two whole years since I retired and moved to sunny Californica. Northrop has been a fine place to work with allot of interesting folks to work with. Most have worked with this company for many many years. I had forgotten that outside the military people stay in one place and work at one job as long as they can. Some of these folks have near forty years at the same place doing the same
job. Job security is nice but variety does add to life.

Not allot is going on is our personnel lives that’s much to report. I’m still flying out at Edwards. I got to land on the lake bed last Friday just for grins. Was pretty cool. They look allot smaller from the air, once on he ground they are immense.

The lines that make up the runway edges are foot wide. I was on a check ride so I didn’t get to fool around much. Would have liked to do a couple of touch and go’s and such but an out of time.

It’s tax time again and of course the tax man was cruel and unusual. I’m still not settled in on the number of withholdings and such to get the right amount held from my paycheck. Seems like the more I make the more money they take. We are making more money then I have ever made before (including pilot bonus) yet I feel like our standard of living is below what we enjoyed in the military. I hope all those folks who get my tax money are enjoying it.

We have made a few trips to my dad’s place on the coast. The recent rains have made everything green and pretty so the drive is pleasant. We will have to back off the trips though as the price of gas is horrible. We are paying 3.70 a gallon and it is still going up. I don’t know what folks are going to do to keep living.

The price of food has shot up along with everything else. The paper this week end said the number of folks losing their houses in this area is over 1000 a month. There are five abandoned homes on our street alone. Part of me feels sorry for the people going though this but part of me feels like they are getting what they deserve for being greedy. A lot of they folks bought thinking they would flip the house for big cash. Many bought in on the whole “get rich quick” off of real estate idea that was nothing more then a pyramid scam. Unfortunately many innocent types got ripped in the process. Now there is a growing problem with abandoned houses that will fill up with undesirable types.

Do you think that the church lecture on “greed” has some merit to the subject?

Later

Ponch