Hey Gundriver - I'm 39. Not sure about the terminology in the guard, so maybe I misspoke. My buddies in the unit I'm thinking about tell me there is enough funding to be on almost full-time and continue working towards an active-duty retirement. This is no guarantee of course, but it looks very do-able, and there seem to be lots of folks in DC on active-duty orders through the Guard Bureau (at least there were when I was at the Pentagon), so I'm thinking that could be an option as well.