Just thought I’d toss this up…

Currently
101.6 °F
Partly Cloudy
Humidity: 38%
Wind: 10.0 mph from the West
Visibility: 9.0 miles
Dew Point: 71 °F
Precipitation: 30% Chance of Rain
Pressure: 29.67 in
UV: 6.4
Updated: 3:54 PM EDT on June 22, 2009

[19:25] Jyllie Nightfire: i’m already here lol
[19:25] Mondak Slade: lol
[19:25] Jyllie Nightfire: oh mond! your items got returned by accident, i wasn’t kicking them back to you
[19:26] Mondak Slade: no worry, it was a ball i was experimenting with
[19:26] Jyllie Nightfire: oh i meant the sidewalk stuff but hey! Yay for fun with physics!
[19:27] Mondak Slade: yup physics at 500+ meters
[19:27] Jyllie Nightfire: starting to sound like argos hehe
[19:27] Mondak Slade: lol
[19:27] Argos Hawks: i just logged in to some wierd comments about physics. did i leave something running?
[19:27] Jyllie Nightfire: lmfao see he has a guilty conscience lol!
[19:28] Mondak Slade: no, Jyllie retuned my missing balls
[19:28] Argos Hawks: yikes
[19:28] Mondak Slade: lol
[19:28] Jyllie Nightfire: good thing he didn’t log in to THAT line….
[19:28] Mondak Slade: lmao
[19:31] Mondak Slade: here’s your chance to dunk me into the dunk tank Jyllie
[19:31] Jyllie Nightfire: wewt!!
[19:31] Jyllie Nightfire: can’t wait to experience that wet biker smell!
[19:31] Jyllie Nightfire: *ducks&
[19:31] Jyllie Nightfire: covers*
[19:31] Mondak Slade: lmao

Bad news is I haven’t heard from Huw in 3 weeks… it would be an understatement to say I’m an absolute wreck. His office doesn’t know where he is. None of the Adelaide (or surrounding) hospitals have him. I have no idea what’s going on. I’m every bit dealing with a huge loss right now. 3 weeks with no contact is not normal at all with him. I can’t sleep, can’t concentrate, and I’ve lost weight.

That’s the only good news. I’ve lost 8 pounds in the last 10 days. Granted not the best way – stress is taking a toll on my health too. But, I needed to lose the weight, just not this way.

The Well: Earlier this week, I got a call from the water company telling me something didn’t seem right.  I’d noticed something awry as well, but I did not know what.  My normal water bill is $20.90, never higher, as I never use over 3,000 gallons a month, and it’s a flat rate up to that point.  A few months ago, my bill went to $40.  I thought I’d missed a payment somewhere, so I didn’t think anything of it and I paid it.  Then I get a bill for $80.  Ok, something is not right at all.  I paid my usual $20.90 and called the water company.  They saw nothing out of the ordinary, only stating that my water usage had “increased slightly.  Slightly, hell.  But, I started watching things a lot more closely.  The next bill I got, for May, was an incredible $121.00.  Right around that time, the water company called me to say, “ok, something is really wrong.”  They suggested  I had a leak somewhere, but there were no leaks inside my apartment, no soggy ground indicating a pipe leak.  When they told me the meter-read for that billing period was 27,000 gallons and the next apartment was reading ZERO since the beginning of the year, I told them to have someone come out right away and check things out.  Alyn suggested that the next door neighbors may be using my water, and that seemed more a possibility since they’ve been watering twice a day, front and back, all their new landscaping.  I called my landlord and they had a maintenance guy come out who confirmed that my neighbors had indeed been using my water – everything for the duplex was going through my meter.  I got copies of all the bills, all the readings, and sent them over to the landlord’s office and will somehow be receiving credit for all the overages that I have already paid (not knowing so at the time) for the neighbor’s usage, $158.99 to be exact.  Plus once the bill for the June 1 reading of 28,000 gallons hits – the landlord will have to pay that too because it was THEIR error.  What happened was this building used to have a well that fed both units, so there was a switch pipe installed.  When they had city water installed, they never split up the feeder pipe, so everything ran through my apartment still.  With a little collaboration between me, the landlord, the neighbors and the water company, this is all getting sorted out rather painlessly.

The Watcher: Huw… my soulmate, my best friend, my guide and guard, keeper of my heart, mind and spirit… has gone missing again.  It has been over 2 weeks since I’ve heard from him, and I have no way of reaching him, short of picking up and flying my butt to Adelaide which isn’t at all possible.  For 3 weeks in April he was hospitalized with DVT and a mini stroke, which took 2 surgeries to clear two major clots in his legs, then he was home for a few days and back in the hospital with adult chicken pox which left him paralyzed until they started to subside.  The last I heard from him was on May 20th, telling me that nothing would stop him from coming to me.  He told me how much he loved me, and that was the last I heard from him.  I have no idea what is happening with his health, his divorce, his other issue, his job, his apartment, anything.  He would always talk to me from work as it was already late evening for me at that time and we had hours to talk.  I’m honestly scared for him because I know what he was going through the last we spoke.  I need to hear from him to settle my mind that he is making it through all the obstacles being thrown at him and that the stress hasn’t consumed him.  I need my soulmate back

The Wife: My ex’s new wife called me up this afternoon nearly in tears.  He started doing the same shit to her that he did to me, only this time it only took him a year of marriage to be “done.”  The neglect, the borderline abuse, the sociopathic episodes, all came out and they started splitting up a month ago, with him finally moving out of her place last weekend.  She just now got up the nerve to call me and vent — we had not been close before.  All the things she was telling me was an echo of all the things he’d done to me.  During one of their fights a few weeks ago, she told him he needed to go out, go take a walk, whatever.  He said, “If I leave, will you cry?”  She said, “What?” He repeated, “If I leave, will you cry?”  She said, “Well I’m not gonna throw a party, but I won’t be happy about it either, why would you ask me something like that?”  His response, perfectly emotionless, “It’s just for informational purposes.”  She asked me what the hell that was supposed to mean.  I had no answer other than that’s the way he’s always been, I tried to warn her in the beginning, he’s a clinical sociopath, he is mentally and emotionally unbalanced.  She wouldn’t believe me, I didn’t expect her to, I was the ex and she was in love.  But now he’s taken off with my daughter and though she is still in the same school, I do not know what address she is staying at.  And THAT is a direct violation of court order.  He is supposed to inform me any time there is an address change, and his (now) ex informed me, but also did not know his address.  Shit is going to fly the next time I speak with him, and I will no doubt be doing some counseling with my daughter this weekend.  He is such a bastard.  His family is no different.  I found out the hard way, and now so has she.  He will be going through two divorces at once now – both brought on by himself.  But, as his new ex wife put it, she supported him these past few years, his mommy is out of money to fund any more attorneys for him, he can pay for this one his own damn self.

The Wacko: Ladies Beware.  There is a sexual stalker lurking in the text-friend communities named Sean.  He texts from caller ID #760-401-4680 and incessantly demands nude pictures.  When you deny him, he pushes harder, telling you you’re twisted then tries saying you’re harassing him, threatening you, and starts texting you “I warned you…” and other such bullshit when all you have told him is “No, not interested, stop texting me.”  He does not take no for an answer.  If you’re in any texting communities, DO NOT give this person your number.  He says he is married and a professional, he looks to be in his late 20’s to early 30’s.  His cell traces back to AT&T in Twentynine Palms, San Bernardino County, CA.  His sexual harassment via text to my phone became so severe that my fiancee notified the authorities in his area.

That is my update for the week… I neglected to include our new kitten in this post because he deserves his own, happy post

We welcomed a new family member this week, 6 week old Spirit, a kitten found at the school in West Palm Beach where Geri teaches. He appears to be a short-hair Persian/Himalayan type kitten. We’ll be more able to tell once he’s a little older, if he keeps his blue eyes and sweet round doll face. He has the chocolate points at the ears, tail and nose, and white slippers atop chocolate paw pads. Spirit is absolutely loving, wonderfully social and was litter-trained in literally just a day. He is a dream!

Silverthorn, mascot of the Spiral and the kitten Dan abandoned along with the rest of us, is two years old now and has taken the big brother role with Spirit. They bash and banter then snuzzle and have a stop at the food bowls together. Spirit has also given Silverthorn something other than Midnight to torment. Midnight is 15 years old (16 in 6 months) and did not take kindly to Silverthorn’s playful ways. He doesn’t care much for Spirit either, but simply grumbles and walks away from his pouncing. Midnight is quite content just being a mamma’s boy and would rather curl up behind me, ignoring all the other goings-on in the house. So long as Spirit is perched on my shoulder, Midnight is happy ^_^

But, all in all a super sweet addition to the happy cat family!

A busy week led into a busy weekend as the office prepared for the boss to go on his yearly birthday cruise. Friday was especially crazy, as the moment he took off the phones started ringing off the hook with Clients, new placements, even the bossman himself calling to say he’d left his wallet behind. He ended up having to send his wife up to get it since I can only answer so many lines at once! We got out of there by 3:30 (even though we close at 3 on Fridays), and managed to get to the rental office, the bank, school, the grocery store and back home all before Dana and Gary showed up 10 minutes afterward to hang out for a couple hours before they took off for Orlando.

We had to forego meeting Alyn for breakfast on the water this morning because funds are going to be very tight the next 10 days, and every penny will count and be squeezed the life out of. With Terry out of town til the 18th, paydays this month are running a few days late. Living paycheck to paycheck, that makes things quite tight.

This afternoon, we all went to Dyrine’s 7th birthday party. The adults beat the 94 degree heat with lots of snow cones and a snowball fight (care of excess ice in the snow cone machine). The kids sought the shade of the bounce house, then engaged in a water balloon war before just filling their water bottles up in the bathroom and coolers and chasing each other around with water flying.

I had to crash for a bit when we got home, so Dylan kept an eye on Kari while she watched Miley and Me. Then when the movie was done, they both came and pounced me while at the same time, my Good King Edward started texting me. He’s up in the Carolinas now, don’t know when he will be back down this way. He’s been running between Florida and Maine for work, and his wife and kids are up in Maine since last Fall. I miss him terribly… have known him since the early 90’s and dated for a couple years, but always remained the best of friends.

Tomorrow we’ve got to get up early and go take care of the boss’s dogs (and every morning until the 18th), then get some laundry done before we go spend the day with Angel. Clyde had to undergo a quadruple bypass last week and was home Friday, but Angel’s got her own health issues and needs some help around the house. Since nothing is happening for me for Mother’s Day, at least I can do something for my Angel. SOMEBODY may as well enjoy the day.

Speaking of Mother’s Day — my ex has even tried to steal that away from me. Kari had a MD project to do last week at school and needed two baby pictures. I rooted through my photo albums and gave her one from her first Halloween in the pumpkin patch and one from her 2nd birthday looking all pretty in her birthday dress. She brought them to school and came home after the project empty-handed. Turns out, her father had kept the pictures, not letting her do the little project. The bastard kept my daughter from participating in a school project for Mother’s Day. I knew he was low but his crap is really getting ridiculous. I had to rant to LF over that one… he told me quite pointedly – do not let him ruin one more moment of your life. Hard to do, considering I have to deal with him for at least the next 11 years

Well, going to end here for now. Just wanted to give everyone an update on how the week’s been. Trying to enjoy the little things and meditate through the stress with my clan on the “other side” staying close by.

Love y’all…

Went in to work an hour early this morning to get my affairs in order in case I did lose my job, and the boss walked in, shot me a hateful look, threw the morning’s mail at me and slammed the door behind him. Didn’t say much to me all day, which I was thankful for. I was expecting his usual 3 hours worth of screaming, berating and threatening. Honestly, that is no exaggeration. He’s had me physically cornered and in tears before, screaming inches from my face.

So, will be walking on eggshells for some time around there I suppose, afraid of accidentally doing anything that may set him off. I heard from a coworker that when I was out Friday, the screaming in the office was “phenomenal.”

In other news, Huw has had a second operation on his leg to remove the last of the DVT that he was hospitalized with more than 2 weeks ago. We are still keeping in touch via e-mail on his PDA while he’s laid up in there. He came back with some encouraging words today though:

Soul Free
to me

show details 11:04 PM (20 hours ago)

“theyre very sure theyve got it all now. keeping me a few more days to be sure, but i should be out by friday, hopefuly a little sooner. they just want to run a couple more tests so i can have an all clear.

as for flying, this wont stop me hon. shit, its part of my job to go around australia for clients, so if i cant do that im up shit creek without a paddle.”

He’s determined, that’s for sure. Determined to get back here as well…

“ill still be flying to you, dont fear that hon. good things come to those who wait and it’s been a long wait…”

It certainly has.

It’s still going to be a few months yet, but just to think soon one of my dearest friends will be here is amazing. He’s likely going to be renting an apartment across the street from us too, there are a bunch open. That’ll be more than enough to get me off the computer hehe. I’ll be like… I need to stretch… walk across the street and plop down in front of his computer while he makes music

Gods I can’t wait…

I do collections for a living… have since 1990. It’s always an honour, especially (and I hate to use this much-overused phrase, but) “in this economy,” where nearly everyone is struggling just to make ends meet. This is why I’m good at my work — I’ve been there, and I’m there now, on both sides of the call. This, I think, is a perfect reflection of my work ethic, and why I have been able to do this job and do it well for almost 20 years.

Names have been removed for privacy. Check this out…

From: (private)
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2009 10:17 AM
To: ‘(myself)’
Subject: RE: (private)

Hey thanks a lot (collector)! Back to you as soon as I can get the payment or remind me in a week or so if I dont get back to you first. Right now I can’t even pay the mortgage. I’m so sick of this economy. My main hope is to approach this one customer for the classic cars and see if I can get him to put me on a monthly salary since he keeps sending me new car galleries to put up. So I’m hoping he’ll agree but I need to think up a good proposal to make it a no brainer for him to say yes. I’m hestitant to send it just yet because I can’t think of how to approach it just yet.

Hey btw, there was a show on HBO called Maxed Out about people today with credit cards and how the collectors seem to almost enjoy pushing them over the edge many time to the point of suicide. They seemed to relish in the fact at how they make the people walk the plank to the edge so they can make lots of money off it for trips, vacations, etc with zero regard if the person kills themselves or not over it. I’m grateful that you’ve been so nice to me along the way and that’s why I try so hard to make the payment. If you were one of them I’d probably have just said screw it and blocked your calls. I just wish more collectors were like you because it’s a job that does have to be done because they do owe the money but if they’d do it more like how you do it the collection agencies woud have a much higher return. People could roll their blinds up and let the sun in and try to get the money together instead of hiding under their blankets while the phone rings off the wall and those collectors harrass them to the edge of their sanity and it doesn’t get paid. You definitely are the most professional and caring collector I’ve ever met and I really appreciate how you handled me. God Bless you.

Hoepfully, I can get the rest paid off soon.

Regs,

(private)

Infinitely cynical as I am, I refuse to take any information as complete truth until I have dissected it, compared it, and taken from many other sources to compile and compare again.  I look for incongruencies, similarities, hard evidence.

Debunking the UFO theories is one of those truth-sought topics.  I came across this article today and thought I would share.  People have supposedly come forward before on this, and for all we know this could be yet another fictionalized interview.  However with 50 years of assumption, you be the judge

The Road to Area 51

After decades of denying the facility’s existence, five former insiders speak out by Annie Jacobsen Area 51. It’s the most famous military institution in the world that doesn’t officially exist. If it did, it would be found about 100 miles outside Las Vegas in Nevada’s high desert, tucked between an Air Force base and an abandoned nuclear testing ground. Then again, maybe not— the U.S. government refuses to say. You can’t drive anywhere close to it, and until recently, the airspace overhead was restricted—all the way to outer space. Any mention of Area 51 gets redacted from official documents, even those that have been declassified for decades. It has become the holy grail for conspiracy theorists, with UFOlogists positing that the Pentagon reverse engineers flying saucers and keeps extraterrestrial beings stored in freezers. Urban legend has it that Area 51 is connected by underground tunnels and trains to other secret facilities around the country. In 2001, Katie Couric told Today Show audiences that 7 percent of Americans doubt the moon landing happened—that it was staged in the Nevada desert. Millions of X-Files fans believe the truth may be “out there,” but more likely it’s concealed inside Area 51’s Strangelove-esque hangars—buildings that, though confirmed by Google Earth, the government refuses to acknowledge. * April 05, 2009 Issue April 05, 2009 Issue Ads by Google Artery Clearing Secret Hugh Downs reports on breakthrough from Nobel Prize Winning Doctor www.bottomlinesecrets.com Su-35 Fighter Jet First Demonstration Flight Watch this story! www.russiatoday.com NASCAR & The US Air Force Find Out How NASCAR & The Air Force Measure Up. Watch Our Videos Online www.AirForce.com/nascar The problem is the myths of Area 51 are hard to dispute if no one can speak on the record about what actually happened there. Well, now, for the first time, someone is ready to talk—in fact, five men are, and their stories rival the most outrageous of rumors. Colonel Hugh “Slip” Slater, 87, was commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s. Edward Lovick, 90, featured in “What Plane?” in LA’s March issue, spent three decades radar testing some of the world’s most famous aircraft (including the U-2, the A-12 OXCART and the F-117). Kenneth Collins, 80, a CIA experimental test pilot, was given the silver star. Thornton “T.D.” Barnes, 72, was an Area 51 special-projects engineer. And Harry Martin, 77, was one of the men in charge of the base’s half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels. Here are a few of their best stories—for the record: On May 24, 1963, Collins flew out of Area 51’s restricted airspace in a top-secret spy plane code-named OXCART, built by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. He was flying over Utah when the aircraft pitched, flipped and headed toward a crash. He ejected into a field of weeds. Almost 46 years later, in late fall of 2008, sitting in a coffee shop in the San Fernando Valley, Collins remembers that day with the kind of clarity the threat of a national security breach evokes: “Three guys came driving toward me in a pickup. I saw they had the aircraft canopy in the back. They offered to take me to my plane.” Until that moment, no civilian without a top-secret security clearance had ever laid eyes on the airplane Collins was flying. “I told them not to go near the aircraft. I said it had a nuclear weapon on-board.” The story fit right into the Cold War backdrop of the day, as many atomic tests took place in Nevada. Spooked, the men drove Collins to the local highway patrol. The CIA disguised the accident as involving a generic Air Force plane, the F-105, which is how the event is still listed in official records. As for the guys who picked him up, they were tracked down and told to sign national security nondisclosures. As part of Collins’ own debriefing, the CIA asked the decorated pilot to take truth serum. “They wanted to see if there was anything I’d for-gotten about the events leading up to the crash.” The Sodium Pento-thal experience went without a hitch—except for the reaction of his wife, Jane. “Late Sunday, three CIA agents brought me home. One drove my car; the other two carried me inside and laid me down on the couch. I was loopy from the drugs. They handed Jane the car keys and left without saying a word.” The only conclusion she could draw was that her husband had gone out and gotten drunk. “Boy, was she mad,” says Collins with a chuckle. At the time of Collins’ accident, CIA pilots had been flying spy planes in and out of Area 51 for eight years, with the express mission of providing the intelligence to prevent nuclear war. Aerial reconnaissance was a major part of the CIA’s preemptive efforts, while the rest of America built bomb shelters and hoped for the best. “It wasn’t always called Area 51,” says Lovick, the physicist who developed stealth technology. His boss, legendary aircraft designer Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson, called the place Paradise Ranch to entice men to leave their families and “rough it” out in the Nevada desert in the name of science and the fight against the evil empire. “Test pilot Tony LeVier found the place by flying over it,” says Lovick. “It was a lake bed called Groom Lake, selected for testing because it was flat and far from anything. It was kept secret because the CIA tested U-2s there.” When Frances Gary Powers was shot down over Sverdlovsk, Russia, in 1960, the U-2 program lost its cover. But the CIA already had Lovick and some 200 scientists, engineers and pilots working at Area 51 on the A-12 OXCART, which would outfox Soviet radar using height, stealth and speed. Col. Slater was in the outfit of six pilots who flew OXCART missions during the Vietnam War. Over a Cuban meat and cheese sandwich at the Bahama Breeze restaurant off the Las Vegas Strip, he says, “I was recruited for the Area after working with the CIA’s classified Black Cat Squadron, which flew U-2 missions over denied territory in Mainland China. After that, I was told, ‘You should come out to Nevada and work on something interesting we’re doing out there.’ ” Even though Slater considers himself a fighter pilot at heart—he flew 84 missions in World War II—the opportunity to work at Area 51 was impossible to pass up. “When I learned about this Mach-3 aircraft called OXCART, it was completely intriguing to me—this idea of flying three times the speed of sound! No one knew a thing about the program. I asked my wife, Barbara, if she wanted to move to Las Vegas, and she said yes. And I said, ‘You won’t see me but on the weekends,’ and she said, ‘That’s fine!’ ” At this recollection, Slater laughs heartily. Barbara, dining with us, laughs as well. The two, married for 63 years, are rarely apart today. “We couldn’t have told you any of this a year ago,” Slater says. “Now we can’t tell it to you fast enough.” That is because in 2007, the CIA began declassifying the 50-year-old OXCART program. Today, there’s a scramble for eyewitnesses to fill in the information gaps. Only a few of the original players are left. Two more of them join me and the Slaters for lunch: Barnes, formerly an Area 51 special-projects engineer, with his wife, Doris; and Martin, one of those overseeing the OXCART’s specially mixed jet fuel (regular fuel explodes at extreme height, temperature and speed), with his wife, Mary. Because the men were sworn to secrecy for so many decades, their wives still get a kick out of hearing the secret tales. Barnes was married at 17 (Doris was 16). To support his wife, he became an electronics wizard, buying broken television sets, fixing them up and reselling them for five times the original price. He went from living in bitter poverty on a Texas Panhandle ranch with no electricity to buying his new bride a dream home before he was old enough to vote. As a soldier in the Korean War, Barnes demonstrated an uncanny aptitude for radar and Nike missile systems, which made him a prime target for recruitment by the CIA—which indeed happened when he was 22. By 30, he was handling nuclear secrets. “The agency located each guy at the top of a certain field and put us together for the programs at Area 51,” says Barnes. As a security precaution, he couldn’t reveal his birth name—he went by the moniker Thunder. Coworkers traveled in separate cars, helicopters and airplanes. Barnes and his group kept to themselves, even in the mess hall. “Our special-projects group was the most classified team since the Manhattan Project,” he says. Harry Martin’s specialty was fuel. Handpicked by the CIA from the Air Force, he underwent rigorous psychological and physical tests to see if he was up for the job. When he passed, the CIA moved his family to Nevada. Because OXCART had to refuel frequently, the CIA kept supplies at secret facilities around the globe. Martin often traveled to these bases for quality-control checks. He tells of preparing for a top-secret mission from Area 51 to Thule, Greenland. “My wife took one look at me in these arctic boots and this big hooded coat, and she knew not to ask where I was going.” So, what of those urban legends—the UFOs studied in secret, the underground tunnels connecting clandestine facilities? For decades, the men at Area 51 thought they’d take their secrets to the grave. At the height of the Cold War, they cultivated anonymity while pursuing some of the country’s most covert projects. Conspiracy theories were left to popular imagination. But in talking with Collins, Lovick, Slater, Barnes and Martin, it is clear that much of the folklore was spun from threads of fact. As for the myths of reverse engineering of flying saucers, Barnes offers some insight: “We did reverse engineer a lot of foreign technology, including the Soviet MiG fighter jet out at the Area”—even though the MiG wasn’t shaped like a flying saucer. As for the underground-tunnel talk, that, too, was born of truth. Barnes worked on a nuclear-rocket program called Project NERVA, inside underground chambers at Jackass Flats, in Area 51’s backyard. “Three test-cell facilities were connected by railroad, but everything else was underground,” he says. And the quintessential Area 51 conspiracy—that the Pentagon keeps captured alien spacecraft there, which they fly around in restricted airspace? Turns out that one’s pretty easy to debunk. The shape of OXCART was unprece-dented, with its wide, disk-like fuselage designed to carry vast quantities of fuel. Commercial pilots cruising over Nevada at dusk would look up and see the bottom of OXCART whiz by at 2,000-plus mph. The aircraft’s tita-nium body, moving as fast as a bullet, would reflect the sun’s rays in a way that could make anyone think, UFO. In all, 2,850 OXCART test flights were flown out of Area 51 while Slater was in charge. “That’s a lot of UFO sightings!” Slater adds. Commercial pilots would report them to the FAA, and “when they’d land in California, they’d be met by FBI agents who’d make them sign nondisclosure forms.” But not everyone kept quiet, hence the birth of Area 51’s UFO lore. The sightings incited uproar in Nevada and the surrounding areas and forced the Air Force to open Project BLUE BOOK to log each claim. Since only a few Air Force officials were cleared for OXCART (even though it was a joint CIA/USAF project), many UFO sightings raised internal military alarms. Some generals believed the Russians might be sending stealth craft over American skies to incite paranoia and create widespread panic of alien invasion. Today, BLUE BOOK findings are housed in 37 cubic feet of case files at the National Archives—74,000 pages of reports. A keyword search brings up no mention of the top-secret OXCART or Area 51. Project BLUE BOOK was shut down in 1969—more than a year after OXCART was retired. But what continues at America’s most clandestine military facility could take another 40 years to disclose. ANNIE JACOBSEN is an investigative reporter who sat for more than 500 interviews after she broke the story on terrorists probing commercial airliners. When she isn’t digging into intelligence issues for the likes of the National Review, she’s snapping together Legos with her two boys.

Huw… one of my closest friends who happens to be in Australia til the end of summer is in the middle of a big health scare… Last Saturday he woke up and his legs were extremely swollen… he said, “That’s not right…”  Drove to the doctor, doctor looked at it and said, “That’s not right…” While the doc was in the process of sending Huw to the hospital, he ended up having a mini-stroke right there in the office.  Fast forward to today, the blood clots in his legs haven’t changed and he’s still unable to walk, so he is going in for surgery this weekend to remove the clots – an 11″ one in his left leg, and an 8″ one in his right leg.  He’s been on a slew of meds, including Warfarin stomach shots for a week.  He is keeping in contact with me through G-mail on his PDA and has been keeping me updated daily, although I imagine I won’t hear from him for a day or two when he has the surgery done.  He’s been in good spirits though… ending his e-mails with “…love you and will try get on again soon to say hello. i love you so much, and thanks so much for sending me emails brightens my day to no end.  caru chi, huw.”

Cara ‘ch baban… fy anam cara… You need to get better so you can get here in one piece!!!!