About a week ago there was an article in the local paper outlining a county councilman's idea that the airport in our town should be closed down because a small plane had crashed in a local neighborhood.

He said that the area around it was "too developed".

The Grand Strand Airport was here long before the "Development". It was built in WWII and turned over to the county to operate shortly after. There are about 130 operations (takeoffs,landings) each day. Other than a few banner planes ditching in the ocean, there are only 2 crashes (both small planes ) that I can remember in the last 15 years and only one resulted in fatality of people on the ground. In neither one was the airport implicated in any way.

So why would a councilman, on his own - not speaking for the council - make such a rash decision? And make it so publicly, before the victims were even laid to rest? Sixty years of service to our community should be forgotten and thousands of pilots and passengers each year be denied entry because of a single mishap?

In his regular job this councilman is an urban design engineer. He makes his living planning developments in places like old airports that have been closed by the county.

I felt i had to respond to his ridiculous statement.

My response was:

Some people spend more time considering how government should structure our society rather than serve it.
That airport runway is in better shape than 90% of the roads in this county. How about you plan on paving the roads instead of stifling businesses, for whatever reason?

This Monday county trucks invaded our neighborhood and started paving our roads...

So the wife was out at Marshall's and to assuage her guilt of spending over $25 on herself she called me over and said, "Try these skippys on."

Now understand this - When we met I only had three pair of shoes: Tevas, Boots and Deck shoes. I still have the same Topsiders because I don't dress up that much. She has forced me into this extravagant lifestyle which now forces me to have a pair of adidas and also these cap toe deals which I haven't seen in a couple years (thank goodness).

So her telling me she was going to waste money on shoes really didn't set well. Then she showed me these bedroom slipper looking deals with a $60 price tag on them.

"Dadgum Woman - do I look like I need to slough around in slippers? I ain't that feeble yet!"

"Just try 'em on, Dude - they're sandals."

"Them is bedroom slippers, ChickyBabe. Now let's get outta this joint before my wallet catches fire!"

"But they're on sale - Look!"

As she chunked the things at me I noticed the sale pricetag:
"$12"

Then I noticed something else - Ripstop. They were made of Ripstop. And they had tons of drainholes for water to go out. But they weren't sandals.

"I'm a sandal"

"What?"

There was a tag right on the thing that said, "I'm a sandal."

Then it went on to 'splain that these surfers wanted to go to the beaches that you had to walk through the jungle to reach and they kept cutting their feet up in vines and such while wearing flip flops. Trekking back after surfin all day in wet boots wasn't much fun either so they made some shoes that were tough and still would dry easy and all.

So ok now I have another pair of shoes: