An Early Birthday Present

~Wednesday, October 28, 2020~

Day 136

A blustery morning and a bit overcast, with no snow in the forecast. Temps are improving everyday. And it’s a great day for a new hairdo.

Hair has been getting a little too long and a little too many gray hairs to my liking (at least at this point in my life). I haven’t quite given in to that yet.

Jeff had a few errands to run, so dropped me off at Prodigy Salon (an early birthday present for me) for an afternoon of pampering. After 3 hours of being in the chair, Tiffany did a wonderful job with working in some highlights and a new haircut. I love it! Way overdue.

While I set up Fall decorations,

Jeff and Sadie took a hike up towards the mountain behind us (Cheyenne Mountain), and found out we were camping at THE Cheyenne Mountain where NORAD is centrally located in the U.S. NORAD is a giant bunker complex situated 2,000 feet underground in Colorado Springs built in the 50’s as an air command center for anything that was feared aggressive. In the 50’s when tensions were great between North America and the Soviet Union, during the Cold War, this was THE command center built for fear of attack by the Soviets. The Cold War ended around 1991 with the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the falling of the Berlin wall. Subsequently, it remained the main headquarters until 2006, when the command center moved to nearby Peterson Air Force Base, and the Cheyenne Mountain complex became a backup command center. During the 9/11 attacks, NORAD responded to 2,100 potential threats by June 2006 and flew 42,000 military aircraft in defense mode. Pretty fascinating. No wonder we’re hearing a lot of military helicopters and fighter jets go by.

With NORAD currently in our backyard, we thought in honor of that, we’d watch an oldie but goodie movie called War Games with Matthew Broderick. The movie was made in the 80’s which I had never seen when it originally came out. It was one of Jeff’s favorites post high school graduation. The movie goes like this….high school student, David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) unwittingly hacks into a military supercomputer based at NORAD, while searching for new video games. After starting a game of Global Thermonuclear War, Lightman leads the supercomputer to activate the nation’s nuclear arsenal in response to his simulated threat as the Soviet Union. Once the clueless hacker comes to his senses, he must find a way to alert the authorities to stop the onset of World War III. In its day, this movie depicted what was actually really feared at the time, so it really hit home.