E-mail from a Southern border friend, update on the passport, radioactivity, stress testing

[UTUSN]

**********QUOTE********

Here I am, the most compliant sheeple around, who promptly jumped the hoops to get a passport, waited 17 weeks for it to arrive--------and what happened?

Today when I was crossing back from Mexico with gout medication, our crack Homeland Security personnel hopped to a frenzy passing up and down the pedestrian line but focusing on me with two little black boxes with red lights.

They immediately asked, "Have you had a stress test recently?" Umm, yes, yesterday. So, complete with my new passport I was ticketed to the inspection lane, where, in front of hundreds of Snowbirds, I was scanned with a bigger black box, then another smaller one, then had my name, passport #, and DOB written down for being entered into who-knows-what-database.

I've got to say they were polite, but this was ridiculous, embarrassing, and scary as to the tentacles of Big Brotherism. And, no, I'm not in the mood to hear that it's "necessary."

I had no idea I was radioactive. I called the heart clinic nurses and asked, "Umm, is there something you forgot to tell me? I went to Mexico..." And she said, "OMG, and they pulled you out of line!" In response to my questions she said the radioactivity should last 48 to 72 hours, that drinking liquids more would help, that beer was O.K., that I might stay away from pregnant women and children, that my dogs should be O.K. So an O.K. for beer: Finally a medical person giving me a palatable message, at any rate.

***********UNQUOTE***********

[redwitch]

1. Happened to a friend of mine recently.

At the Canadian border. She had thyroid cancer and at the time of the crossing had taken a radioactive drug two weeks? previous and never thought a thing about it until getting pulled out of line coming back in to the states. Canadians let her in with no fanfare, getting home was a different story.

[UTUSN]

2. What's weird is that (sensors?) seem to have been quite away from the line.

Also, the new passports with the chips can be read by somebody/anybody with "readers" or whatever they're called, the better for more ID theft.

[redwitch]

3. Jeez, something else to worry about.

:scared: