RUNNING AWAY... AGAIN

I like vacations, but not like most people enjoy vacations.

At least to me, most vacations seem to be packing up a lot of your own stuff, dragging this stuff to a hotel or resort or cruise liner or someplace near a body of water.


You then unpack all of it, become involved with complete strangers over games of chance, stand in long lines waiting for entertainment, purchase expensive tokens, souvenirs, and fast food.


Then you pack everything back up and return home to unload your dirty laundry plus a whole lot of sand from the beach.

My main considerations for a vacation?

Where am I going to sleep, and how comfortable is the bed, and what books am I going to read as I lounge in aforementioned resting place.

Forget going anywhere; I'm just happy to hang.

Of course, everything about this upcoming vacation is (fortunately) turning into somewhat of a normal-what-everyone-else-does vacation.

I am planning on going to Disneyland.

I am going to insist I get my toes at least wet in the Pacific Ocean - I have been landlocked too many years now in Arizona.



And I am going to stand in as long a line as necessary for as long as necessary to see the "Star Trek: Into Darkness" premier (and yes, it is to see Benedict Cumberbatch).



But hopefully the rest of it will simply be hanging with my daughter and grand-kids at home.

ARIZONA BORDERS

Imagine a short-order cook, a guy from your local greasy spoon, dirty apron, baseball cap on backward, telling Gordon Ramsey from Hell's Kitchen how to properly chiffonad the vegetables.



Or the coffee person at the doughnut shop on the corner inform the head of Starbucks that "dude, you're doing that whole coffee-thing wrong!"

That's how I feel when people post/talk/gripe about the Arizona border issues.

And allow me to explain why.

I have lived in my house now for twelve years. I can look out of my bedroom window in southern Arizona and see Mexico, three miles away. I can see the new border fence. I have the Naco station border patrol station on speed-dial because I contact them so often (this afternoon, as a matter of fact)

So when someone (actually Rush Limbaugh - gag) posts something like "Obama was not interested in enforcing the border. "What border?" He probably thinks there shouldn't even be a border!... this is resulting in a state of chaos in the state of Arizona -- economically, politically, criminally." I really do want to stand up on a chair and shout out over the crowd of people listening to him WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!?!

When people demand a reason why they "haven't simply CLOSED to border", I want them to come down and walk the entire 2,000 miles of open land between Mexico and the U.S.

And experience first hand that the HUGE majority of that land is open federal or grazing land.

And realize it's not like someone just needs to shut the gate.

Okay, I'll shut up.

For now.