Ahh, Autumn... and Beer

Updated 29 Nov 2013

I'm so glad to be back on the East Coast an changing seasons.  My favorite season is autumn.  I love the crispness in the air, the trees changing color, and all the awesome butternut squash dishes at local restaurants.  I also love the ales of the season, and being close to Wegman's!

Back in Silverdale, if I wanted to try an assortment of new pumpkin ales, I would have to buy a six-pack of each.  Some were pretty nasty, and I poured out several bottles.

Here at Wegman's (awesomest grocery store on the planet!), you can mix-and-match your own six packs, and they have quite a wide variety of pumpkin ales to try.

Of course, if you happen to be in the Northern Virginia area, then I HIGHLY recommend going to Sweetwater Tavern both for their extraordinarily good food AND for their AWESOME pumpkin ale in the fall.  Take a growler to go! 

To help out those of you who AREN'T so conveniently located next to Sweetwater Tavern or a Wegman's, and in order to prevent you from having to buy whole six-packs of what might later get poured down the sink, here's my votes for the pumpkin ales on a thumbs-up / meh-so-so / thumbs-down rating scale.  I still have three more in the fridge to try, so I'll come back and add them to the list later, but for those of you who may be headed to the store soon and are looking for recommendations, here's what I've tried so far (listed in order from good to not-so-good):

New Holland Brewery's Ichabod - Two Thumbs-UP, still my favorite pumpkin ale.  Strong, bold and balanced flavor.  No weird initial or aftertastes.  I anxiously await its arrival on the shelves at Wegman's. 

Dogfish Head Punkin Ale - Thumb$ Up.  Quality and taste were very good - on-par with my favorite Ichabod listed above, but pricey.  It's very good if you don't mind spending the money on 4 bottles instead of a six-pack.

Sam Adams Harvest Pumpkin Ale - Thumbs-UP.  Sam Adams never disappoints with their seasonal ales.  Good flavor, not too strong, very enjoyable.








 

Red Hook Pumpkin Porter - Thumbs-UP.  Very tasty.  Didn't taste very much like pumpkin, but I still enjoyed it.  I'd buy it again.

Devil's Backbone Ichabod - Thumbs-UP.  Like the Red Hook, it didn't have a strong pumpkin flavor, but it was still very enjoyable.  I'd buy it again.

Traveler Jack-O Shandy - Thumbs-UP.  Added 13 Oct 2013, I liked this one a lot.  It was light and crisp, with a good balance between the lemon peel and pumpkin flavors.  There weren't any strong perfumy or heavy-spice flavors.  There weren't any detectable hops flavors either.  I bought this one as a mixed-up six-pack from Wegmans, but I enjoyed it enough that I went back and bought another full six-pack of this.

Saranac Pumpkin Ale - Thumbs-UP.  Flavor was good, although it did leave a slight after-taste.  I wouldn't turn away a bottle if offered, but if going to buy a six-pack for home, I'd look for one of the others listed above.

Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale - Thumbs-UP.  Added 13 Oct 2013.  The flavor in this one was pretty strong.  If you're not a pumpkin ale fan, then I would steer clear of this one.  It wasn't overpoweringly perfumy or spice-flavored, so I actually enjoyed it and finished the bottle.  Not much hops either.  Like the Saranac above, I wouldn't turn away a bottle if offered, and if you're picking out a mixed-up six-pack at someplace like Wegman's, then I'd include this in your sampler six pack.  Given how strong the flavor is, I'd be cautious about buying a full six-pack if you haven't tried it first.


 

Southern Tier - Imperial Pumpking Ale - Thumbs-Up.  Added 7 Nov 2013.  Very strong, nutty flavor, but not perfumy like some of the others.  Like the Weyerbacher, if you're not a pumpkin ale fan, then I would steer clear of this one.  Very light on the hops / not a strong hoppy flavor.  I enjoyed it though and finished the bottle.  It has a pretty high alcohol content - 8.9% by volume. 

Post Road Pumpkin Ale - Tough call.  Heavy hops, and I'm not a big fan of hoppy-beers.  If you like hops, you should probably give this a try.  As for me, I won't be going back for this one.  Also, flavor was better when I first opened the bottle.  As I got toward the bottom of the bottle, the taste of the pumpkin spices got pretty strong.  

Blue Moon Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale - well...  not so much.  Although it has a picture of a pumpkin on the label and says "pumpkin" in small letters under the BIG "HARVEST MOON" label, there's no detectable taste of pumpkin here.  Now, that being said, it was a pretty tasty, standard Oktoberfest type of beer, so I listed it here above some of the "meh" rated beers with weird tastes.





Harpoon's Pumpkin UFO (unfiltered offering) -  Meh.  It was okay.  I finished the bottle at least, but tasted pretty perfumy.  Given the choice of other pumpkin ales on the shelf, I'd skip probably skip this one.

Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale.  Meh.  Fairly light in body. Definitely pumpkin flavored. Tasted a little weird but nothing I could put my finger on. Not something I'd rave about or buy again.



 




New Belgium Pump-Kick.  Meh.  Odd flavor.  It says something about pumpkin and cranberry on the label.  I finished the bottle, but I won't be going back for any more of this one.




 

Shipyard Pumpkinhead - Yech!  Thumbs-DOWN.  It has an amaretto taste to it, and I HATE amaretto.  That being said, if YOU like amaretto, then you might want to give it a try.








Elysian Night Owl Pumpkin Ale - Yech!  Thumbs-DOWN.  Waaaaay too perfumy and overpowering strong flavors.  I couldn't take more than a couple of sips.  Poured the rest of the bottle down the sink.  Poured the rest of the six-pack down the drain, too. 

Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat - Yech!  Thumbs-DOWN.  Similar to the Elysian - too perfumy and very strong flavor.  I did manage to finish about half a bottle of this before I gave up.  I poured the rest of the six pack down the drain. 

Jacques Au Lantern - Blech!  Thumbs-DOWN.  After one sip of this, I poured the rest of the bottle down the kitchen sink.  Like the Elysian and Shock Top - very perfumy and STRONG flavor.

DC Events and Pentagon Gouge Update

Here are a few upcoming events for the National Capital Region and some gouge on the uniform shop and ITT down below:

9/14 - Saturday (tomorrow!) - Dulles Day Plane Pull.  This is a FREE event and has lots of planes and helicopters on display, and you can watch the teams competing to pull a jumbo jet across the tarmac.  I first took my kids when they were like 5 and 3 years old, and we had a great time.  This year there's going to be a Sea Harrier doing a vertical landing and take-off - click the link for the map and the schedule.

9/20-9/22 - Friday-Sunday - DC Car Free DayS!  So, it used to be DC Car Free DAY (singular), and everyone who signed up agreed to not use or minimize use of their car.  Now they've expanded it to one weekday and a full weekend.  I'll at least do the Friday, not so sure about the weekend.

10/7 - Monday - Naval District Washington seasonal uniform shift to BLUES.

Navy Uniform Shop.  Speaking of uniforms, I just discovered that the old Navy Annex is GONE, flat, bulldozed, non-existent.  I asked around what happened to the uniform shop.  They've actually put the NAVY uniform shop in a trailer just inside the gate to Henderson Hall, and it's pretty darn convenient.  It used to be you had to fight for parking, walk all the way up to go through security to get into the Navy Annex, then go exploring waaaaaay down into the farthest reaches of the Navy Annex basement to get to the uniform shop.  Now, there's parking right smack in front of this stand-alone trailer, and no security to get through (other than showing your ID at the gate to Henderson Hall).

ITT.  Looking to buy tickets for something?  There are ITT offices at the Marine Corps Exchange, right next to the package store, and there is one at the Washington Navy Yard (WNY) inside where the food court is (across the street / behind Naval Reactors).  There is an Air Force ITT in the Pentagon on the 5th Deck, E-Ring...  It's over amongst all the cool Air Force paintings.  I think that's somewhere in the 9th to 10th corridor area.

Update on Pentagon Tours

This is an update to my previous post on Pentagon Tours.

Most hallways of the Pentagon have some sort of historic or current operations museum-type of exhibit.  Many of the A-ring hallways are museums in and of themselves.  Me being the type of person who likes to read each and every word of every display in a museum, it would take me a loooooooong time to get through all the Pentagon exhibits have to offer.

The official Pentagon tours are excellent, but you have to sign up weeks in advance, and they are only offered Monday through Friday.  Given there are about 25,000 people working in the Pentagon, chances are there are a few more people out there like me who want to give a tour to visiting family and friends on a weekend.  If you need to give a tour yourself, you can download a PDF of a self-guided tour from the Pentagon Tours website.

However, the official tour route doesn't go to a couple of spots I highly recommend like the Pentagon Building History (2nd corridor, 3rd floor) and the Army's Living History Exhibit (2nd floor, E-Ring between the 6th and 7th corridors).  Because the Metro entrance is closed on the weekends, you have to bring your weekend visitors in through North Parking or through the 2nd Corridor entrance.  As a result, I made my own tour-route, which I will list below for anybody else who is interested.

Before I describe the tour route, I want to tell you about two other things I did (and recommend doing) to prepare for a weekend tour.

First, go follow one of the official tour groups around on a weekday.  You don't have to sign up or anything - you've got a Pentagon badge, just loiter at the back of the official tour group.  The tour guides have a fairly set script they follow, but they have a LOT of interesting tidbits of information they use to keep people's interest as they walk their route, and they've put a lot of thought and effort into what sequence to cover what.  You will get a lot of useful ideas of things to talk about with your tour group that you wouldn't get from just reading the PDF file Self-Guided Tour brochure.

Second, I made a scavenger hunt list of things for the five kids in my tour group to find.  I told them they had to write down the first three digits of the nearest office address (like "3A5xx" for the 3rd floor A ring 5th corridor) for where they found each item, so I knew they really found it and didn't just cross it off the list. 

Scavenger Hunt List

Aside:  The hardest one for my group to find was a red lightning bolt.  If you need help finding anything on the list, send me an email.  There are at least two red lightning bolts, but they're very small and hidden in big paintings.

Since the Pentagon Gift Shop is also CLOSED on the weekends, I went to the gift shop ahead of time and got some little things like hats, magnets, stickers, or pins.  When we finished with the D-Day paintings, I had them turn in their scavenger hunt sheets to me, and I gave them an oral quiz on some facts about the Pentagon to see what they had learned.  In return for completing the scavenger hunt and passing "the quiz," I gave them each a "prize" (one of the things I had picked up in the Pentagon gift shop earlier that week).  From there, we headed back to the 2nd corridor entrance to go back out to South Parking.

In order to help plan my route and to be able to find specific exhibits quickly, I made my own map of the exhibits in each hallway.  I have NOT finished mapping it all yet, but I have all the A-ring hallways mapped plus a few of the interesting corridors and the Army Living History exhibit.

Click on image to enlarge.

Blunoz's Weekend Pentagon Tour Route
Given those constraints, I came up with my own tour path that went like this:
- Parked in South Parking, visited the Pentagon Memorial
- Enter 2nd Corridor Entrance (use restrooms there if necessary depending on how long your drive to the Pentagon was or how long you were at the Pentagon Memorial).
- Take elevator or stairs up to 3rd floor (remember - escalators are turned off on weekends)
- Pentagon Building History exhibit (3rd floor, 2nd corridor).  I put together some notes to talk about the history of how the Pentagon got its shape and comparing its size to other things.  I am happy to email you the powerpoint slides I made, just send me an email.
- At A-ring, turn right into NORAD hallway and go up escalator (walking up them like stairs) to 4th floor.
- USAF Aces exhibit (4th floor, A-ring between 1st and 10th corridor)
- USAF History and models (4th floor, A-ring between 9th and 8th corridor)
- U.S. Coast Guard history (4th floor, A-ring first half of hallway between 7th and 6th corridor)
- Naval Aviation history (4th floor, A-ring second half of hallway between 7th and 6th corridor)
- Down the stairs to 3rd floor.  Here at the 5-6 Apex you can take a side excursion down the POW/MIA hallway (3rd floor, A-ring from 6th to 7th corridor) and then back again, or continue onward.
- MacArthur exhibit (3rd floor, A-ring between 5th and 4th corridor)
- Down the stairs to the 2nd floor.
- Soldier Signers of the Declaration of Independence (2nd floor, 4th corridor)
- Out at the E-Ring, take the stairs or elevator down to the 1st floor.
- 9-11 Memorial Chapel (end of 4th corridor on 1st floor)
- 9-11 Memorial Quilts (1st floor, 4th corridor) back to the A-ring then left into
- Eisenhower Exhibit (1st floor, A-ring from 4th to 5th corridor).
- Women in the Military exhibit (1st floor, A-ring from 6th to 7th corridor)
- Up the stairs to the 2nd floor.
- Go out the 7th corridor to the E-ring.
- Army Living History Exhibit (2nd floor, E-ring from 7th to 6th corridor)
- Continue along the E-ring past the 6th corridor to see something pretty cool.  You can't miss it.
- Turn around, go back to the 6th corridor and out to the A-ring 
- Disaster Relief Exhibit (2nd floor, A-ring from 6th to 7th corridor)
- ANZUS exhibit (2nd floor, A-ring from 8th to 9th corridor)
- Out the 10th corridor and make a U-turn to the left by the Hall of Heroes in order to see the D-Day Paintings in the ramp going up to the 3rd floor.  

So you COULD take the route recommended in the Pentagon Self-Guided Tour brochure, and it would be shorter.  You COULD take the route I developed and listed above that'll go to more of the exhibits.  Or, you COULD make up your own route using my map up above.

Tubing on the Shenandoah River

Friends at my church asked me to organize another tubing trip on the Shenandoah River like I did back in 2009.  We went with River Riders again in Harpers Ferry.  They were VERY busy, but they have a large staff that has been doing this for a while and somehow manage to get everybody through in a pretty well-orchestrated and efficient manner.  For anyone else trying to organize this as a group activity, River Riders has put together a very useful group-leader packet with all their gouge and recommendations how to make things go smoothly.

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It was a gorgeous, sunny day.  

75F air temp, 77F water temp.

I used my last blog post as a guide for what to expect.  This time we brought lunches with us to put in the cooler tubes.  River Riders advertises that they have tubes to rent that will carry a cooler to bring lunch and refreshments with you on the river.  I emailed them a couple of times asking for the size of the cooler, but they didn't respond.  At the River Riders compound, you have to pay for the cooler tube rental, but they didn't have one there to actually SEE how big it was or how many we would need for our small coolers.  So for anybody else heading out to River Riders, here's how big the cooler tubes are:

Note, they have a large and a small cooler tube, but both cost the same price to rent.  I recommend chipping in and getting the large tube and sharing.

River Riders upgraded their standard tubes.  The new tubes have a built-in cup-holder.  I liked that, although the cup holder wasn't big enough for a Camelbak bottle.

In addition to bringing a few footballs and tennis balls to toss back and forth on the water, we also brought along some water cannons.  I told the group if they brought water guns, they had to FLOAT because I didn't want someone dropping their toy plastic water gun in the river, then it sinks and becomes a piece of trash in the river. 

So we brought a few of the water cannons made out of those foam noodles.  They shoot pretty far, and they float if you drop them.

Our trip went a lot quicker this time than it did last time.  Last time, we had a 10:30 reservation, we got on the water at 12:10, got off the water at 1:30, waited for the bus back to River Riders, and got back to River Riders after 2 p.m.  This time, we had the same 10:30 reservation, but we got on the water at 11:30 and got off the water at 12:30.  So the operation at River Riders was a little more efficient and the river was moving a little faster - 1 hour instead of 1 hour 20 minutes. 

We could have gotten on the water even sooner if I had been on-the-ball about the liability forms.  When I handed them our liability forms, they audited the stack and found several where the second page hadn't been initialed, or a birthdate was missing, or the child hadn't signed (even though the adult had signed).  Next time, I will make more of an effort to get the liability waivers filled out in advance, and I will audit them to make sure EVERY blank is filled in before I try to turn them in. 

Also, I had two people who emailed me they were coming, but I didn't have a phone number for them, so we waited for them to show up.  Next time, I'm going to make sure I have a phone number for everybody who signed up, so if someone doesn't show, I can call and find out where they are or if they weren't going to make it.  

If I had done those two things above, then we would have gotten on the water another 30 minutes sooner (at 11 instead of 11:30).

Last time we didn't bring food with us, so we were forced to go back to River Riders because we were starving.  This time, we brought our lunches, so we could easily have gone back and gone down the river again.

Overall though, it was another fun and relaxing float trip down the Shenandoah River.  I hope we get to do this again next summer.

Paddle Log #31 - Cockermouth River with LRCT

I'm a big fan of the Lakes Region Conservation Trust (LRCT) in New Hampshire.  They preserve a lot of natural lands around Lake Winnipesaukee and make the property available to the public through walking trails and provide information on kiosks at the trailheads.  They also conduct organized hiking and paddling excursions.  Back in 2010, the boys and I went on the LRCT guided-paddle on Squam Lake (see Paddle Log #20) and had a great time.

This summer, our vacation week coincidentally lined up with a LRCT guided paddle on the Cockermouth River and Newfound Lake.  Now, my wife's aunt and uncle live right on Newfound Lake just around the bend from the Cockermouth River, so twice before I've paddled up the river on my own (see Paddle Log #19 and #27).  I enjoyed going this time with a guide who was able to teach me something about the local plants and animals along the river.

We met up at the site of an old marina that's been gone for some time.  We had a safety brief and an introduction to the history and ecology of the area here before we got out on the water.

Getting underway.  YB decided to stay home for this one, so just ES and I took the Emotion Tandemonium out for her second voyage.

There were almost 20 boats in our group.  That's our guide, Rick, on the left.

Rick explained the significance of a white oak being here in the wetlands.

Rick used his paddle to show how deep and what type of bottom there was, and what that told him about the river.

We saw several turtles and lots of small birds along the way.  There was quite a temperature difference between the lake and the river, too.  It was 62.5F on the river, but 74.8F in the lake.

ES relaxing.

Father & Son photo.

Near the end of the trip when the group stopped for lunch on the beach and then planned to go back up the river to the marina, ES and I just paddled around the Paradise Point Nature Preserve back to my wife's aunt and uncle's house.  We went back to get the car a little while later.  

Overall, we paddled 3.1 miles in about 2 hours and 45 minutes.  It was a little slow and boring for ES, but I thought it was very informative.  I was glad we went, and I look forward to joining LRCT on future guided excursions when we can make it back up to NH again.

Paddle Log #29 and 30 - Lake Winnipesaukee

We took a break from unpacking boxes to go enjoy a week in New Hampshire on Lake Winnipesaukee and celebrate my wife's grandparents' 75th wedding anniversary. 

Last summer when we went to the lake, we flew to NH, so we didn't have our kayaks with us.  I ended up borrowing a kayak one day and renting kayaks on two other days.  That got us to thinking maybe we should just buy a kayak to leave at the lake and not have to worry about transporting it. 

Let me just say, it amazes me the things you can buy on Amazon.com and have delivered just about anywhere...

Paddle Log #29 was the maiden voyage of our new Emotion Tandemonium kayak. 

Last summer, my eldest son and I rented a Tandemonium from Trexler's Marina (see Paddle Log #26) and liked it a lot.  It's very similar to our Ocean Kayak Malibu Two XL in that it is a sit-on-top, but it also has cup-holders molded into it.  Just like our Malibu Two XL, it is very stable and nearly impossible to capsize. 

Time Stamp leaving the beach, YB with me, ES in his own kayak.

This is why I like coming to the lake later in the summer.  The water was VERY nice.

The boys brought their water cannons and had a blast (or two, or three) duking it out.

It started raining, and we headed back to the beach.

We were only out for about 30 minutes and paddled a smidge under a mile down the shore and back.


Paddle Log #30 was my solo trip around Long Island.  This is the third summer I've done this trek around the island.

I love this place.

This time, I had the treat of stopping to watch a loon feed her baby chick.  I didn't paddle any closer, and she didn't seem to mind me floating there while she dove down to get something to eat, then came up and fed some to her chick.  I also got to see a flock of about 16 mergansers swimming along the eastern side of the island.

I'm normally pretty annoyed by graffiti, but in this case I pretty much agree with the message.  Indeed, although I was disappointed by a couple of rainy days at the lake, I just reminded myself that a rainy day at the lake is MUCH better than a sunny day in the Pentagon.  :-)

It was a very calm and easy paddle until I got past the bridge there at Trexler's Marina.  In fact, I paused there at the bridge, got my phone out of my dry bag and emailed my wife to tell her I'd be back in 20 minutes if the boys wanted to get ready to go out in the boat.  Then, all of a sudden, the wind picked up out of the west-northwest.  As I rounded the north end of the island, I was paddling directly into whitecaps and choppy seas.  What should have taken me 20 minutes ended up taking me 40 minutes of very strenuous paddling to get back home.
 

 Time stamp returning to base, note the flag blowing violently in the wind.

Even so, it was an awesome paddle - mostly a relaxing, quiet time admiring the beauty of the lake, watching the loon and her chick and the mergansers, and then getting some strenuous exercise at the end.

Trip Stats from the GPS

Pentagon Gouge: What's Changed?

So, as one might expect, things change when you go away from a place for any significant length of time.  I left the five-sided palace of bureaucracy we call the Pentagon back in August 2010, and now I've returned almost exactly 3 years later.

As a result, I'm going back through my old Pentagon Gouge posts and updating them where they need to be updated.

For the benefit of my readers who may have followed in my footsteps out of the Pentagon to the fleet and may someday return to the Pentagon (CW?), here's a quick snapshot of my first impressions on returning to the building:

3rd 2nd Corridor Entrance:  When I left, access from South Parking was via the 3rd Corridor entrance and the 2nd Corridor entrance was closed for renovations.  On one recent particularly hot, muggy afternoon, I walked from Crystal City to the Pentagon and made the mistake of trying to walk to the 3rd Corridor.  Doh.  Closed.  They've swapped.  Now the 3rd Corridor entrance is under renovation and all access on that side of the building is via the schnazzy new glass turnstyles at the 2nd Cooridor entrance.

PAC (Pentagon Athelic Center):  The entrance to the PAC has moved and is now part of this rat-maze of temporary walls through construction.  It took me a couple of times bumping into dead-ends by trial and error - trying to get there by a means I considered "logical" when there is no logic to it.  It's actually pretty easy once you figure it out.  On the first floor, just walk all the way to the end of Corridor 7 and you'll see a sign that says "PAC" with an arrow pointing toward the door to Stairway 74.  Take the stairs down one floor to the mezzanine, and continue following the signs to the PAC.  Coming out of the stairs on the mezzanine, it's a right, then a left, then a left, then a right, then a left, then a left, and then you'll see the glass turnstyles to the PAC.  Luckily, there are lots of signs along the way.  You have to swipe your PAC membership card to go through the turnstyles toward the PAC, and you have to swipe your Pentagon badge to come back through from the PAC into the Pentagon.

Uniform Shop:  There used to be a rat-maze to get to the uniform shop on the 5th deck above the Metro entrance, and I had advised people to just go to the Metro entrance and then take the stairs up to the 5th deck to find it rather than negotiate the rat maze.  The maze is gone.  The renovations in that section are all done, and you can approach the uniform shop from any direction and not run into dead-ends.

MTBP:  This is probably the biggest improvement since I left.  It used to take a LONG time to submit and get approved for your initial National Capital Region (NCR) Mass Transit Benefits, then then once a quarter, you had to go stand in line at designated hallways at certain times to receive your Mass Transit Benefit Program Metro Checks.  Now it's all mostly automated on the web.  My initial sign-up and approval happened really fast - like within a day or two (it used to take WEEKS).  Now, when you sign up on the website, you tell it the serial number of your Metro SmarTrip card and how much your commuting expenses are each month, and they automatically put the money on your SmarTrip card.  I thought it was pretty sweet to see the balance on my SmarTrip card magically go up on August 1st without having to stand in line to get my Metro checks and then take them down to the Metro station to load them onto my SmarTrip card.   

Uniform Policy:  This one perplexes me.  When I left, just the USAF and USA guys were wearing their digital camouflage uniforms.  We had an all-hands call with the CNO one day.  When we got to the Q&A, the first question was some brave O-5 who stood up and asked if the CNO would reconsider the policy on allowing us to wear our working uniforms around the Pentagon or out in town.  If I were to summarize the CNO's response in two words, it would be: "Pack Sand."  What he actually said was something along the lines of "I want us to maintain a more professional appearance."  (Aside:  Doesn't that imply that the other services looked UNprofessional in their working uniforms?)  Well, there's been a change of CNO since I left.  I have heard that guys are wearing NWUs over on the Washington Navy Yard (WNY), but not in the Pentagon.  The part that perplexes me though is that the Marines are now wearing their digital camouflage uniforms around the Pentagon.  So now the Navy is the ONLY service not wearing their working uniform in the Pentagon.  Don't get me wrong - I'm not whining.  I'm not upset about it.  I'm not pounding my fist on the table and saying, "I WANT MY NWUs!"  I'm just making an observation of something that I noticed has changed since I left, and since I wasn't here when it changed, I don't know how or why it changed the way it did.

RedBox!  There's this whole new section inside the Metro entrance with a nice food-court on the first floor and shops (even a Best Buy!) on the second floor.  One of the very first things you'll see when you come in the Metro entrance at the top of the escalators is one of the "shops" is just a big empty red room with two RedBox kiosks.  It's actually pretty cool.  Last weekend, I rented a RedBox movie at the grocery store two blocks from my house.  We watched it, then I tucked it in my backpack and I dropped it off at the Pentagon on my way in through the Metro entrance the next morning.  Today (Friday), I went on the RedBox website, reserved a movie, and picked it up on the way out of the building.  I watched it with my family tonight, and I'll return it to the RedBox at the nearby grocery store tomorrow morning. It's pretty convenient and you can't beat the price ($1.50 per day).

Well, those are the first several things that have come to my attention so far.  I'm sure there will be more as time goes on.