Week in review

Here's a smattering of random observations from this last week:

PRT - Considering I had a deep chest-cough, nasty boat-crud cold for the past two weeks, I was pretty pleased with my results on the Physical Readiness Test (PRT) this week. I was still coughing a bit the morning of the PRT, but I managed to crank out 85 situps, 65 pushups, and did the 1.5 mile run in 13:22 (just a smidge under a 9-minute per mile pace). That's pretty good for me. (For my age group, I have to do 40 situps, 33 pushups, and finish the run in 14:45 to pass).

My Disappointment with McD's: To celebrate the completion of the PRT, I felt the urge to go to Micky-D's for breakfast and get something really bad for me. I suddenly had a craving and zoomed on over to the McD's drive through and ordered a chicken biscuit. The lady on the drive-through microphone said, "A what?" A chicken biscuit. "Uhhh, I'm sorry, but we don't have those here." You WHAT?!?!?!?! What sort of anti-American pinko-commie type of establishment are they running on this base?!?! My LW reminded me that we're not in Virginia anymore. I guess the chicken biscuits are a "southern" thing? Well, at least they have haupia pie here.

The Wise Old O-6 in Action: I had the opportunity to attend my second meeting with the Wise Old O-6. Man, that was like watching a bull in a china shop. He's very different than what I expected from the rumor mill. I expected a screamer, and he's not (at least I haven't seen it in my two meetings with him so far). He's actually very calm, very polite, and extremely professional, and I've gained a great deal of respect for him. He just does not accept any non-commital or open-ended answers and asks very good, laser-guided questions. I have to thank my first CO on my DH tour for training me to never accept the proverbial "they said..." or "they're working on it" without knowing exactly who "they" were and exactly WHEN they promised it would be done. I put those management techniques to use during SRA in San Diego dealing with multiple contractor organizations ripping out our radio room and installing the HDR mast (there's a handful of future blog posts to come right there).

The Barge: LW and the Boys came down to check out the barge. I figured they'd like to see it while we're on the sub base side of the harbor. Once they move us over to the shipyard side, then I won't be able to bring them inside the Controlled Industrial Area (CIA). Before EP reports me for a security violation, don't worry - the screen saver on the computer was locked, so ES is staring intently at a locked computer. I took a great picture of LW laying on the couch in my stateroom on the barge, but she won't let me post it.

Get Sirius: Have I mentioned how glad I am to have Dish Network back? I think I might have mentioned that once or twice. One of the reasons I'm glad to have it back is to have Sirius satellite radio back. I never even thought twice about XM or Sirius at first. Then one day, Sirius partnered up with Dish Network, and all of a sudden, the Sirius music channels were available on my Dish Network receivers. I found that I really liked channel 22 (First Wave). Their Contemporary Christian channel 66 (Spirit) is good, too, but not as good as KLOVE. For Father's Day a couple of years ago, LW got me these awesome wireless outdoor speakers that I mounted on our back deck. They got their signal from the Dish Network receiver, so I could tune it in to First Wave and listen to music out on our back deck while we were barbecuing or eating dinner. A few nights ago, I went to bed early in preparation for getting up for the PRT, and I was able to turn on First Wave in our bedroom. The very first song that came on was one of my old favorites from The Cure, and it was really nice to go to sleep with Sirius.

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World: I finished watching the last episode of Heroes Season One last night. What a great show! I really like Hiro Nakamura. Last weekend, I did a mad rush to record all of this season's HIMYM and Heroes onto DVD before the local cable company came to retrieve their lame DVR cable boxes. I think I successfully transfered them all to DVD. I look forward to seeing what happens to Hiro in Kyoto.