I feel old

Episode 1:

Watching my boys pulling the vitamins out of the bottle of Flintstones and asking, "Who is this one Mommy?" My boys don't know who the characters are in the Flintstones???

Episode 2:

We have an old FM radio in our office to provide some background noise. Today I was walking through the office and heard "Stand" by R.E.M. on the radio. It'd been a while since I had heard the song, and I started enthusiastically singing along. When it dawned on me that I was the only one in the office singing along with the radio, a sudden horrible thought occurred to me. I have a young lieutenant who works for me (he's been in the Navy a little over 2 years, so he's probably about 23 years old, so he was probably born about 1985).

I turned and asked him, "Do you know who sang this song?"

LTJG: "Uhhhh... wasn't this like some one-hit-wonder band?"

Me: "AAAAARRRRRRRRGH!!!!"

Dude...

It's

R

E

M

for cryin' out loud!

Pfft! One hit wonder...

It's the End of the World (as We Know It)?

Losing My Religion?

Orange Crush?

I am Superman?

The One I Love?

Harborcoat?

Pretty Persuasion?

Radio Free Europe?

Driver 8?

Man on the Moon?

Everybody Hurts?

Then again... I was just browsing the REM videos on YouTube. Between the fact that there is an REM performance on the Johnny Carson show and seeing the clothes people in the audience were wearing in some of the other videos, it quickly became apparent that this is probably just a generational difference and I shouldn't hold it against my young lieutenant.

Water Water Everywhere

First, I want to take a moment to say THIS is really cool. I hadn't heard about it before I read it on the Sub Report. Man, I feel old. That kid getting his dolphins looks SO YOUNG!!! He has some big shoes to fill following in his dad's footsteps - scuttlebutt I hear on the waterfront is that his dad is a superb naval officer.

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Second, congratulations to the new mommy that lives on our front porch. There's a bird's nest in one of LW's hanging plant baskets. Tonight as I was cleaning up the front porch, I heard a little peep-peep-peep noise from the basket and could see a little bit of motion just over the edge of the basket. I went and grabbed the camera, and this was what I found:


LW wants me to be sure to explain that the plant died while we were on vacation in Maui, and she didn't want to disturb the bird's nest when we got back, so it stayed as is. The other two hanging baskets have some lovely flowers in them.

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Okay, so getting back to supporting the local Hawaiian tourist industry...

After church today, we put on our bathing suits, grabbed some lunch, and headed to Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park. I wrote about my previous trip to Hawaiian Waters in this post. Like Waimea Falls, we also bought annual passes to Hawaiian Waters. LW and the boys need to go one more time in order to get our money's worth on the annual passes, I need to go two more times because LW went once without me while I was on shiftwork.

Immediately after arriving, we were very disappointed that the section called Waterworld was closed for cleaning or renovations. Waterworld was the boys' favorite area and where they spent most of their time on previous visits. It has some medium-sized water slides and obstacles like that floating log with the cargo net. Not only did that put a big damper on our activities, it severely cut the amount of water-side recliners and chairs for us to set up camp. Plus, it's right smack in the middle of the park, so it made getting to things around the park a longer walk to go around the closed section. The Keiki Kove was open, and we managed to grab the last few open chairs in the back row there.

YB had a pretty good time playing in the Keiki Kove.

YB on the blue and orange Keiki water slides.

Then again, as long as you have Daddy's legs to swim through, who needs fancy water playground stuff? Both boys entertained themselves for a while swimming back and forth between my legs, with me periodically closing my legs to catch them writhing and wiggling and giggling.

Traditional Blunoz Self Portrait in Keiki Kove

While LW and Grammy stayed with YB at the Keiki Kove, I took ES around the park to the bigger waterslides like the Waianae Coaster and the Big Kahuna. This was the first time I got ES to try the big waterslides with me, and I was a little worried he'd be scared by it and just want to go back to Keiki Kove.

Prepare for Launch

If you click on the image above and look at the hi-res version, you can see Diamond Head on the horizon in the distance, just to the right of my foot.

WHOOOOOAAAAAA!
Check out that angle!

But did he LIKE it??? Was he having FUN??? Check out THIS Blunoz Self-Portrait:

Not-so-traditional Blunoz Self Portrait
taken as we FLEW down the Waianae Coaster

The still photos are cool, but we decided to try taking some video, too. We actually had a lot of fun doing runs on the waterslide and then watching the video after each run to see how it turned out. When we got to the pool at the end, ES liked "disappearing" through the innertube by putting his hands out straight over his head and sliding into the water.

Video 1: Forward view going down the Waianae Coaster.


Video 2: Self-Portrait view of ES and me going down the Waianae Coaster.


Video 3: Forward view going down the Big Kahuna.


We spent most of our time going down the Waianae Coaster. Toward the end, I finally convinced ES to TRY the Big Kahuna. The main differences I found were the Waianae Coaster is faster and you don't climb the walls as high in the turns. On the Big Kahuna, it's slower, and you go up on the walls a lot farther, plus there was a big dip at the end that shot you out into the pool. ES didn't want to leave. He kept saying, "PLEASE just ONE more time!"

Aside: We were pretty annoyed by the Waterworld section being closed because we had just checked the Hawaiian Waters website before we went, and they didn't mention ANYTHING about it on the website (and it's closed until May 1st). If it had warned us our favorite section was closed, we probably wouldn't have gone. Then again, we still had a lot of fun, so I guess it ended up being a good thing they didn't warn us on the website.

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Dinner at Bravo's

We went home to get cleaned up and changed out of our bathing suits and went to Bravo's for dinner. Ever since I discovered Plantation Iced Tea at Zia's, I've been trying it everywhere I go on the island. Some places have better P.I.T. than others.

Tonight I tired the P.I.T. at Bravo's for the first time. The good news is their P.I.T. is actually really good. The bad news is, I'm discovering it is a common thing for waiters and waitresses to forget you had PLANTATION iced tea and refill your glass with plain old icky dry unsweetened iced tea when you still had a decent half-glass-full of the good stuff left to drink. In other restaurants, I've complained and they've apologized and brought me a new glass of P.I.T. I just didn't bother tonight. I didn't want an entire 'nother glass of it that late in our meal, and our waitress was so infrequent in visiting our table, it would have delayed our departure by half an hour or more. I also thought about asking for 50% off my P.I.T. since I didn't get to finish it before she ruined it, but I dismissed that course of action for the same reason as previously mentioned.

Overall, we still love Bravo's. We were just disappointed with the service tonight. To make up for it, we went to Cold Stone to get some ice cream. :-)

Weekend Recap

Oh so much to write about, where to begin?

Chapter 1. If offending babysitters were an Olympic sport, we'd be GOLD MEDALISTS.

It's been an expensive weekend with two babysitter nights in a row. Friday night, LW and I went to a social for the Dolphin Scholarship Foundation. We invited back the same babysitter I wrote about last time with my open-mouth-insert-foot maneuver on gaudy Christmas lights. She didn't seem to hold it against me, so that was good. She said at least the boys didn't handcuff her this time. ...Um... I'm sorry, they did WHAT???

Saturday night, we had our boat Christmas Party. Tangent: I know, it's a little late for a Christmas party. It's a bit of a challenge figuring out logistics of something like that when you've just arrived on the island, but the families are still working on moving to Hawaii through the course of the fall. Most places were already booked by the time we got here, and it just worked out better to make it a "Happy New Year" Boat Party instead. Besides, this way, we were able to present a bunch of end of year awards like Sailor of the Year, Junior Sailor of the Year, Blue Jacket of the Year, and Junior Officer of the Year. Plus we got to pin on one guys' dolphins and CAP another sailor to E-5. [Aside: The Command Advancement Program (CAP) gives Commanding Officers the ability to hand pick a very small number of sailors each year and promote them one rank.] It seemed like everyone had a great time. There were a lot of cool door prizes, and a lot of guys were getting up on the microphone singing karaoke. I'll be interested to see what videos end up on YouTube later.

Anyway, back to the babysitter story. The babysitter we used Friday night was busy Saturday night, but she told us she has a German exchange student staying with them and she would be willing to babysit for us.

Now, ES has been rather obsessed with military history, and WWII history in particular since we're surrounded by WWII history in Pearl Harbor. We keep having discussions with ES about the fact that yes, Japan and Germany WERE our enemies back during WWII, but that was a LONG time ago and they are both our FRIENDS now.

Ahem... So LW and I returned from the boat party and asked the babysitter how it went. She seemed a little sheepish and embarrassed. She alluded to ES asking her questions about Germany and WWII, but wouldn't tell us specifically what he said. I figure she didn't feel comfortable telling us about it because it was the first time we had met her that night and she didn't know us well. This morning, we tried interrogating ES to find out what he said that offended the babysitter, but he essentially plead the 5th and wouldn't tell us anything. YS in his 4-year-old confident innocence came right forward, proudly and cheerfully informing us that they handcuffed the new babysitter last night - as if it were a normal right of passage and an achievement ANY babysitter would be proud to share with her peers. We've told them that it's NOT OKAY to handcuff the babysitter anymore... if any babysitter ever agrees to come back to our house.

Disclaimer: Mind you, these aren't REAL handcuffs that would incapacitate her from taking action in an emergency. Our boys "handcuffs" are usually made of zoobs that are easy to pull apart. Still, if I were a 17 year old German girl being symbolically handcuffed and interrogated as if I were a WWII spy, I think I might be a little offended and might not go back to that house again.

Again... My mind is wandering back to the The Ransom of Red Chief for some strange reason.

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Chapter 2. Okay, clearly, I was gone for some vital portions of ES's upbringing during some very sensitive and impressionable years.

Saturday, we went to the Hale Koa Pool. This was offered up to ES as a bribe for going to the dentist earlier this week. Plus, I wanted to knock out the requirements for ES's Cub Scout Swimming Belt Loop. One of the requirements was to, "Play a recreational game in the water with your den, pack, or family." I googled "swimming pool games" before we left the house and had a handful of games up my sleeve to play with the boys when we got to the pool. One of them was called Categories. You can click on the link if you want an explanation of the game, but the point of my story is that we each had to choose a COLOR.

So you ask yourself, "Self, what sort of colors would you think a 6 year old would choose?" Yellow? (His favorite color is yellow.) Orange? Red? Blue? Nice, primary, simple colors? Oh, no, my friend. I guessed EVERY primary color and all I got was a SMIRK in response from ES and LW! LW assured me she did NOT help him and HE came up with the color he chose on his own. The colors that came from my dear little 6-year old SON's mouth were FUSIA (heck, I can't even SPELL fuchsia close enough for my spell checker to tell me what the CORRECT spelling is - I had to ask LW), and TURQUOISE, and CONSTRUCTION orange (not just "orange" mind you - CONSTRUCTION orange) and SCHOOL BUS yellow. When it was my turn, I pulled out the big guns and used PERIWINKLE. I only knew that one because that's one of the character's names on Blue's Clues.

Aside: I didn't even know roughly what color fuchsia was until I asked LW. She gave me an education on where the name fuchsia came from ala wikipedia. It's actually named after the flower of the fuchsia plant. Who knew??? For the rest of you manly-men out there reading this who also had no clue what color fuchsia REALLY is, wikipedia says it's "reddish purple."


Tangent: As LW scrolled down the Wikipedia page, she came upon the section "Fuchsia in Human Culture" where it states, "In the handkerchief code of the gay leather subculture, wearing a fuchsia bandana means one has a spanking fetish." Um... okay... if THAT wasn't ALREADY TMI, LW clicked on the "hankerchief code" link and started giggling and reading aloud what some of the other codes mean. OMG I did NOT need to know any of that!!!

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Chapter 3. People have to WAIT in LINE???

Shifting topics, but still at the Hale Koa pool, we observed something new at the Hale Koa this time around. We've been there several times, and almost always on weekends. This was the first time we've seen a LINE of people waiting to get in. There wasn't a line when we got there, so we went right in and went to our usual back corner of the pool. We didn't realize that they limited how many people they let in to the pool until we were leaving about 1:30 p.m. The lady at the entryway who checked our IDs on the way in asked if we were leaving for the day so she could take our arm bands, and there was a line of about six people waiting to get in. I overheard one person explaining to another at the end of the line that the pool area was full and they had to wait for someone to leave before they would be allowed in.

Oh, and in spite of my advice in my last post about the Hale Koa pool, we managed to time our arrival PERFECTLY so we got there JUST as they blew the whistle for the "adult swim period" (no kids allowed in the pool for the first fifteen minutes of every hour).

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Chapter 4. The Birthday Boy

Once again, I don't know WHY our boys are OBSESSED with all things STAR WARS. It's not like we encourage it or anything...

Darth-YS
That little box hanging from his neck plays
either some pre-recorded Darth Vader
sayings, or it will also alter your voice as
you speak through the mask. (LW found
it on sale at the NEX for like 1/10th what
it cost on Amazon).

Sunday, since it was YS's birthday, we gave him his choice where to go for lunch. (You get three guesses what he chose, and the first two don't count.) We went to his favorite McDonald's with the big playground over behind the NEX. Otherwise, we spent a good portion of the afternoon playing Lego Star Wars (despite my efforts to convince him we should go for a hike). My thumbs were actually getting sore from playing so much XBox today.

Since we satisfied YS's daily chicken nugget fix at lunchtime, LW cooked up some fajita steak, sweet potato fries, and corn on the cob for dinner - all things that YS has been known to eat as an alternative to his favorite chicken nuggets. He actually loved the dinner and gobbled it all down. He even surprised LW and me by asking for "one of those taco things" (tortilla) and proceeded to put steak, sweet potato fries, and cheese in it, roll it up, and eat it. I guess it's time to take him back to California so he can get a California Burrito, eh? (California Burrito is like a carne asada steak burrito with french fries inside).

The Birthday Boy
Playing his favorite Lego Star Wars and enjoying
one of his race-car birthday cookies from Grandma.

Thanks to the holiday tomorrow, we're off to do some box car racing with the Cub Scouts. We'll be having YS's actual birthday party next weekend - this weekend we just had too many other plans.

How can it be 4 years already???

Where has the time gone? LW and I were very truly blessed with the arrival of our second son four years ago. Here are some of my favorite pictures and memories with my youngest son over the past four years.

Balboa Naval Hospital January 20th, 2004

Check-Up Time - 3 Days Old
Balboa Naval Hospital

OBX September 2004

Christmas in Oregon 2005

This is what happens when left unsupervised
and it's TOO QUIET in the house.

Drivin' the Boat
Lake Winnipesaukee, NH
Summer 2006
(I think this is my favorite picture of YS.)

Swimmin' in Grammy's Pool
Summer 2006

Homecoming from Deployment
Norfolk, VA
April 2007

Home from Local Ops off Hawaii
September 2007
I like the shadow in this picture.

The Fish Out of Water
Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park
December 2007

Happy Birthday YS!

Happy Birthday to Me

I feel old. Today happens to be my 35th birthday, so I'm not really that old. It's all relative though, and I'm one of the oldest guys I get to deal with on a day-to-day basis. Being the XO, the only other officer older than me is the captain. In the crew, only the two master chiefs and a couple of the senior chiefs are older than me. Most of the crew is in their low twenty-somethings. That simple fact in an of itself doesn't make me feel old. It's the interactions I have with my younger crew members that drive the point home. For example:
- I first started feeling old when I made a joke in reference to the Johnny Carson show and nobody in the room knew what I was talking about.
- Recently at lunch in the wardroom, we were talking about "classic" movies, and I was alarmed to discover I was the only one who had seen either Star Wars or Back to the Future IN the movie theater.
- My taste in 80's music has become a common theme in hail-and-farewell gag-gifts (Billy Idol hair wig and collection of 80's music on CD for example).
- In May, we had 205 midshipmen rotate through spending a day at sea on a submarine. We took 24 midshipmen at a time out for 24 hours of submarine life, and the first several groups included 9 women. I sat down to lunch in the wardroom, and the girl sitting next to me looked AWFULLY familiar, but I just couldn't place where I knew her from. We had the midshipmen each tell us their name, what school they were going to and what their major was, and where they were from. We got to the girl sitting next to me, and she said she was from all over because her dad was a submariner. The Captain asked, "Oh yeah? What boat was he on?" She said he was the CO of the TOLEDO, and that's when the light went off over my head. When I was a JO (junior officer) on USS PROVIDENCE in Groton, CT, I rented a house in Mystic with two other JOs. Our next door neighbor was then the XO on the BOSTON (and later the CO on the TOLEDO), and he had a cute little girl named Katie who was like 7 years old. Yep, here was little Katie... now an adult and wearing a uniform and sitting next to me at the wardroom table.

Thankfully, someone recently gave me a bullet to put on the OTHER side of this "it's all relative" argument. Last Friday, we did a VIP cruise where we took out a couple of dozen local business and industry leaders to show them what life on a submarine is like. Shortly after they embarked and were being welcomed in the Crew's mess, I walked in and someone introduced me as the XO or "second in command" of the submarine. One of the ladies in the group gasped and said, "He's so YOUNG!"

So yeah, age IS relative, but I find with the demographics of most of the people I work with, the only evidence I normally see is from the "I'm old" perspective.