I'm back. In Michigan. And I'm not terribly excited, since it's raining and 49 degrees (yes, I know it's a heat wave for us in March but it's still not 79 and sunny). I had a pretty uneventful trip home yesterday, we were about 30 minutes late leaving Phoneix but it was fine. I read some Newsweeks and the time passed quickly.
So as promised, here's another story from the trip. I'll try to get a bunch up this weekend while I'm at my parents. I have so many stories to tell so I'll just go chronologically. Here's Friday night.
So after Angela and I waited at UPS for almost an hour (there is no such thing as customer service in Yuma, you'll learn this quickly) for her package (which contained 2 red t-shirts, one for each of us, bearing the word "Seriously." on the front in white - a gold star to the first person who tells me why this word is so great (and what it's from) - seriously!) we headed to base. Specifically, the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma. There's a checkpoint at the entrance and we had to pull off to the side with Donna (our sponsor on base, you can't just drive on for fun and Donna lives there - her husband Jamie is in intelligence and on his third tour in Iraq) and a Marine came over to get our ids. Identification is very important in Yuma in general, it seemed I needed it everywhere, particularly when going on base and when trying to get back in the country - leaving, no problem, they could care less, but coming back's another story (and another blog).
So we gave over our ids and they didn't check our registration (which ticked Ang off as she had paid $4 for it because last time she was on base they were not happy she didn't have a copy - murphy's law at it's finest!) and off we went. Base looked like a tiny town to me. There were some fast food restaurants, some stores and a lot of very plain looking buildings. We went to the club, which is split into 2 sides. Side A was for officers and Side B was for everyone else, including us (Jamie is not an officer so Donna's not allowed in there without an invite). We hung out there for a while and watched some of the older Marines chatting (come to find out another unit had deployed this week so it's pretty quiet around base) then we went to bingo. What an experience. Apparently this was a big night out for the women involved. They'd dressed up, gotten babysitters, and were enjoying the bar. And we played bingo for a few hours. And won nothing. We held our breath as they drew raffles numbers. And we won nothing. So we ate candy and some snacks and basically starved and drank and won nothing:-) But it was an interesting peek into how the military wives enjoy a night out. Also, because Donna's husband's C.O.'s wife was hosting the event, we got free drinks on him, from Side A - the Officer's Club. It didn't look all that different than Side B but it felt different:-) The most interesting thing to me was that although the place was packed, there was one bartender who was an Asian woman who seemed to scream in her tiny tiny voice, especially when we kept putting drinks on the C.O.'s tab and then that there was a whole display of beer steins with names on them. And Ang assures me that when the Marines come in to drink, they drink from their own stein. Interesting. Also, drinks were really cheap there (not that we paid but just fyi).
So that was bingo. And as soon as the last number was called we shot out of there and headed for the Paradise Casino where we got $3 hamburgers and I won $52.25 from $10 on the quarter slots. And cashed out:-)
More later folks - oh yeah, 'Dream' was MIA but if I were him, I would have been too. You've never seen so many pregnant women or women who have small children and that's all they talk about in one room in your life:-)
Oh yes - and one more thing. They give you this certificate thingy to put in your car window to show that you've been cleared to be on base. And as we left, I was reading it and it says to return it to the post when you exit and check out. Which we didn't do. Isn't that the story of our lives? We decided that if they wanted the paper back, they should have said so in big letters on the front of the paper, not in little letters on the back. That's the government for ya!