the coasties

I'm in nowhere West Virginia this week working with the coast guard. Don't ask me why they have an office that is so far away from any body of water, I don't know.

The class has been interesting, starting with the second day when I discovered a workbook that has all the student exercises in it wasn't shipped. I had to tap dance through the next hour while the customer printed the books (customer being NOT happy about that). It was even more fun than the first day of class when everyone's laptops were crashing due to a bad software image and me having a different set of slides than what was delivered to the students.

This is one of those weird dry counties and there are signs all over the hotel (not a chain) that I'm staying in saying you can't have alcohol in the hotel. So the coasties who came in for the training hang out right outside the door of the hotel with their alcohol. At any point in the day, starting around 4 pm, there are at least 5 guys outside smoking and drinking.

Yesterday, while I was trying to make calls to figure out what the hell happened to my training material, a bunch of coasties showed up from dinner. The guy who drove was so drunk he had vomit on the sleeve of his shirt, where he had, he told me, wiped his mouth after puking out the car window. He said this as he was downing a long island iced tea. I asked him if he thought it was a good idea to keep drinking at which point his friend defended him with the statement "Well, he's eating peanuts too!" Apparently vomit head dumped a bucket of peanuts in the bar they were at (I suspect Divas, a topless joint 30 minutes from the hotel) into his pants pocket. The friend then yelled at vomit head for not offering me a peanut.

He offered me a peanut.

Living in a small town makes people crazy like that. The guard at the base gate decided to give me a hard time yesterday when I was entering the base. He wanted to see my ID, class roster, black berry, and probably my tits. When I pointed out to him that I had a base pass, which he had given me the previous day, and which had his handwriting on it, he said "That pass don't mean shit. I'm not talking about yesterday, I'm talking about today." I was told by my customer that the "threat level" of the base had been elevated due to the Yemen embassy incident. Elevated to what I wonder? Bringing out the rednecks and their trailers so they can shoot people in rental cars? I mean, how could someone attack this little base that isn't even on a map and is hard to find with directions from the customer? And why would the base get attacked?

Unless vomit head stole his peanuts from a terrorist...