Another week down - ordinarily that would be
worth a "woo-hoo!" if not a
"yabba-dabba-do."
But now each passing
week brings me and my hardy crew closer to a
very
busy fall schedule. Oh, it isn't like we're going to be strapping on body armor
and shouldering rifles in the blazing summer heat - but we will be gone a lot.
And, we've just received a heroic injection of uncertainty and confusion, just
when my ops planners had finished placing the last card upon the precarious
house we were building of them.
Plan
early, plan twice. Needs of the service.
Good news! SNO got to come home for the
weekend, after his first week away. He had a great time, telling me that he'd
never packed so much into such a short period of time. Sounds like he did a
great job all the way around, and he was very proud of his accomplishments. The
butterflies are gone now - and he's got his own sea stories to
tell.
I sat back gratefully, and let
him spill it all out - it came out in a tumble, each story reminding him of the
next, which in turn reminded him of another. My temptation was to add to the
narrative, to compare stories, but I resisted - this is his own time to speak,
and mine to listen.
And now there
are two of us in the service - I hardly know what to think.
Could eighteen years have passed so
fast?
Ah,
look at him
now...
Taller
than I am, fitter than I was and a whole lot better looking than I ever hoped to
be. Evolution, I suppose.
You're maybe
wondering about the mustache? That started to turn gray too.
There was a picnic for the parents who
could come by, the Biscuit came with her friend - the Biscuit received far more
attention from the assembled midshipmen and Marines than a father would have
thought entirely appropriate. She didn't seem to mind the attention.
Meh.
Supercharged
from her experience, she decided that the only thing for it was to go to the
mall.
Dunno about you, but I'm really
looking forward to the time that the stores start selling jeans that go all the
way up to the wearer's t-shirt
again.
-----------------------
I've
got a bone to pick with the newspaper delivery guy - I don't know what we did to
earn his enmity, but every morning I find our combined Union- Tribune and WJS
subscriptions in the driveway gutter. Oh, they're wrapped in plastic against
those sudden summer showers (what?), so the actual paper doesn't get wet. But
still, folks have their automatic lawn sprinklers set for 0600 every day, so the
package is always just a little wet and dirty.
It's a ridiculous complaint, I know -
but I also know that PSYOPS must be continuous to be effective, and that no one
else on the street ever seems to have their news in the gutter every morning.
Don't know what he's driving
at.
-----------------------
Driving.
The
closest land-based TIAD I ever had (that didn't involve flipping a Jaguar XKE)
was in Kuwait, commuting between Camp Doha and Al-Jabber base on the Dead Sheep
Highway. Well, that probably wasn't it's real name, but it was as aptly
descriptive as whatever you might find in the native tongue.
Turns out that the sheepherders there
are required to bring sheep that die for whatever reason to the road edge, in
order to be accounted for by the flock owners. In the viciously overheated
summer months, the sight can be pretty appalling. You don't want to know about
the smell.
DSH is essentially a two and
a half lane road with no markings. East bound traffic is supposed to hug the
right shoulder, while the westbound traffic hews to the opposite side. Passing
traffic splits the difference.
So I'm
in a mad haste to get from Jabber back to Doha (it seems that I'm always in a
mad haste to get somewhere, when I'm driving) and coming up on a lolly-gagging
semi. Talking on the phone to an Air Force officer at the embassy, I decide that
it's safe to pass the semi, even though another is coming in the opposite
direction. Plenty of room for all three of us.
Pretty much abeam the same direction
semi, and committed to passing him at this point, the USAF officer delivers some
mildly disappointing news about some issue that was not significant enough to
remember, when I startle him by screaming, "Frap!" Or anyway, words to that
effect.
A sedan trailing the oncoming
semi decide it was time to pass his man as well. The road is plenty wide enough
for three of us, but it was categorically
not
wide enough for four of us. I tucked as close as I could into "my" semi and
essentially closed my eyes. I've no idea how I didn't hit the sedan, only that
when I opened them again, I was past my man and the other semi and sedan were
receding into the distance in my rear-view
mirror.
And the USAF officer wondered
whether I knew something he didn't, or if I was just reacting poorly to his
news.
My passenger was a stalwart
young man - a combat wingman of mine, in fact. He never said a word.
That's a good
wingman.
-------------------------------
Under
what should have been the caption, "Not Clear on the Concept," the NYT reports
that anarchists are set to disrupt the RNC
convention in New York. The were conspicuously absent from Boston, as I recall,
a fact which no doubt brought great pleasure to Bryan
Strawser.
I'm no classical scholar, but
know enough Greek to understand that "anarchists" should be opposed to all forms
of government, not just the kind led by one or another political party under the
same constitution. These guys need to go re-read their source documents. Or else
change their
label.
Whatevah.
-------------------------------
As
a midshipman at a fencing tournament in NYC a couple of years
decades ago, I was standing on a street corner wondering what to do (in New
York!) with two teammates when an alarm went off at the laundromat next door.
From out of nowhere, five or six beefy representatives of New York's finest came
barreling out of the gloom and caught some poor unfortunate who had hoped to
walk off with what must have been seven or eight dollars worth of quarters.
But on the way in, one of them had
brushed against a young tough in a leather jacket who had been drinking beer
from a paper bag on the street, together with several of his friends. As the
cops, having bundled the thief into a waiting patrol car, stood around talking,
their breaths jetting out in gusts of fog in the crystal clear, bitter cold,
winter night, the aforementioned tough guy thought it fit to lodge a civil
complaint, right there and
then.
"Yo!
You guys made me drop my beer!" the young man
said, to the clearly astonished, momentarily speechless group of police
officers.
"What did you say?" one of
the cops finally asked, as all turned to look at
him.
"When you was running in there,
you knocked into me and made me drop my beer!" the young man said, his body
language going from confrontational to defensive as four of the cops slowly
surrounded him, clearly enjoying the moment. His friends, meanwhile, all did
their best Claude Rains imitations.
My teammates and I, children of a
gentler world, watched raptly as this theater played out before
us.
The cop that had brushed into him
suddenly, almost gracefully, grabbed a fistful of hair and gave the tough guy a
couple of quick slaps across the face - nothing really hard, but certain to
sting his pride, if not his cheeks, and said, "Well, you wasn't supposed to be
drinking it out here on the street, was
you?"
The other two mids and I
exchanged glances. Life in the big city, our eyes agreed. Move
along.
So, yeah. Anarchy. In a
post-9/11 New York City.
They should
make sure their dental plans are paid up.
I'm not endorsing police brutality.
I'm just
saying.
---------------------------
Have
recently bought a new digital camera, nicest one I could afford. Frankly maybe a
little nicer than I could afford. It came with a bundle of software from Nikon,
which appears to do much the same thing as does Apple's iPhoto. Comes with it's
own free webspace for publishing, too.
I can't really tell if the Nikon
Picture Project software (now there's an inspiring bit of marketing: "What
should we call it? I know!") has any advantages over iPhoto (and in any case I
end up tweaking my work in Adobe's Photoshop Elements) so I'm reduced to copying
the photos into both application
sets.
Which can't be the way to
go.
Thanks for bearing with that. I
know it wasn't
easy.
---------------------------
Is
it just me, or does anyone else think this story is kind of
funny?
Oh, I know it doesn't
particularly tend to cast the TSA in the most favorable light, but still.
Think if he'd been on a no-drive list
35 years ago...
Yeah, that was a cheap
shot.
But still.
-------------------------
Y'all
had enough? I have.
Have a great
weekend!
Posted @
05:53 PM
|
Posted in
""
|
Sendit
|
Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
