Respite

Rejoice! Hallelujah! Shift work is over!

Advance warning: I'm pretty tired and I'm not sure my thoughts are logically organized tonight, but here are a bunch of things off the top of my head...

We just finished 14 days straight of working 11 hour shifts (3 hours of pre-watch tours, training, and briefs followed by an 8 hour shift). Plus, we started on a Friday, so there was a normal work-week leading up to it and we worked through two weekends.

Things finally started looking up this morning. In spite of a headache and the anticipation of a critique at 10 a.m., I crashed hard at 8 p.m. and managed to get 11 hours of sleep, took a shower in my own shower at home (instead of that sheet-metal closet with a water spigot on the barge), took ES to school and then treated myself to some Starbucks.

Aside: I know my previous post about ordering coffee at Mickey D's every morning gave Caffienated Cowgirl convulsions of horror, but I had every limited options at 4 a.m. I am SO ready for a day off tomorrow and the rest of the weekend. It's a pretty busy weekend we have planned though.

The critique wasn't bad, although I was starving and had to piss like a race horse by the time we finally finished 2 1/2 hours later. Something occurred to me as we sat there going through the sequence of events, causes, and corrective actions. One guy was typing up the group discussion on a cause-map Excel spreadsheet up on the big screen. I think having to sit and WATCH someone ELSE do ANYTHING in MS Excel (or MS Word or MS Outlook or MS ANYTHING) is a new form of torture that the CIA could start using instead of waterboarding.

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Man my neck hurts. I've given myself repeated cases of whiplash walking around the boat with all sorts of scaffolding, ventilation ducts, and other temporary services hanging in the overhead. Keep in mind I was tall to begin with (6' 2") and have always had to duck as I walk around the boat.

Aside: I've noticed a recurring pattern on each of my boats (including prototype as a "boat" in this discussion, there was MTS-635 then SSN-719 then SSN-725 then SSN-708). For about the first three months in each case, I was very cautious and ducking everywhere I went. Then at about the 3 month point, I would start to get overconfident that I knew where everything was and stop being so careful, so I would start knocking the holy crap out of my head on things that had been there the whole time (like the Feed Reg Valve handwheel, or the locking handle for VH-3 in between the navigation plots in control - I especially hated that one as Navigator). Back to my original line of thought...

With the added height of my steel toe boots and my hard hat, I have been practically knocking myself out. Thankfully, the hard had has kept me from getting any big lumps on my head, but it doesn't protect my neck from the whiplash that occurs as my head ricochets and goes flying backward while the momentum of my big'ole beer gut continues in a forward direction.

My instinct with the added height and increased number of hazards in the overhead has been to just walk around with my head angled down. The unfortunate results are that (a) it obstructs my vision of upcoming hazards in the overhead, and (b) when I run into things, it's like I put my head down and ran into a brick wall. It sends a shockwave of compression down my neck.

Advice to any other tall people going to the shipyard: What I've been trying lately that seems to work much better is to walk at a crouch, bending my knees and waist, but keeping my head upright. This has helped me to maintain good visibility of overhead hazards, and I think it reduced my height better than just ducking my head.

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In spite of not exercising and eating whatever was convenient (and convenience doesn't normally equal healthy), somehow I lost weight the past two weeks in a row. I don't know how that's possible, but I'm not complaining. I look forward to getting back into an exercise routine.

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Get sirius...

I've had KLOVE playing in my office all day every day for a while now. I'm starting to OD on KLOVE. Their playlist is great when you listen for an hour or two per day in the car. It lacks enough variety to listen to all day at work because you end up hearing the same songs about once an hour or so.

As an alternative, I've found out Sirius is available online. I've been listening to my favorite Channel 22 - First Wave for the past two days on their three day free trial. It's been AWESOME. I guarantee I never hear the same song twice in a day, but every song I'm like, "Yeah! I love this song!" I'm considering paying the membership to continue listening after the free trail is over.

Don't get me wrong, I still love KLOVE and listen in my car on my way to and from work, but it was a nice change of pace to get some variety by turning on First Wave the past couple of days at work.

Yaaaaaaaawn, streeeeeeeetch. Okay, I'm going to bed. Hope you all have a FANTASTIC weekend. I already think it'll be the best weekend I've had in 3 weeks. :-)

P.S. Oh, Jud's picture from the Washington DC Metro is really cool. (Go back to the 3/14 blog entry).

Dive Tower

From anywhere around the harbor, you will notice this prominent feature sprouting up out of the submarine base. In fact, it's actually an official NGS benchmark. This is where the Navy used to do training on emergency escape procedures for submariners.


For one of the requirements on the Tiger Cub badge, we needed to visit a historic place or museum and talk about how life was different in the past, so we had our den meeting at the Dive Tower this week.


They stopped using it for its intended purpose many years ago, and the octagon-shaped structure at the top of the tower was converted into a conference room. There's a great view from up there, although the slotted windows don't make for very good photography.

Our Den Leader kicks off the meeting at the top of the dive tower.

DL explains to the boys about what the dive tower was used for.

Each of the windows had a brass plaque that described what you were looking at and what happened there on Dec. 7th, 1941. After looking around out the windows at the historic buildings and reading the plaques, we watched a portion of the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! It was a BIG hit with the boys.

My feeble attempt at a picture of ES with the sunset in the background.

Stupid Kevin Tricks, Vol 35, Ed 142

Have you ever noticed that when your skin is wet, it doesn't slide very easily through cotton clothing? Have you ever suddenly realized you were late and jumped in and out of the shower with barely enough time for the water to reach your feet? Have you ever been in a hurry after you get out of the shower and not totally dried off before you start throwing your clothes on? Have you ever lifted your leg up and then tried to thrust it downward through the leg-hole of your underwear, only your wet skin snags on the cotton and causes your foot to come to a rapid stop, while the downward momentum of the thrust of your leg causes you to lose your balance while your legs are stuck in a figure-4 pattern and gone crashing to the ground? THUD.

No?

Me neither.

If anything as embarassing as that ever happened to me, I would have to create a new, anonymous blog to write about it so all five of you who read this blog wouldn't die laughing at me.

Another purely hypothetical question: Why is it, if something like that ever actually happened, that the world seems to slow down and your life flashes before your eyes? Actually, the last time I wrote about this phenomenon, it wasn't my life that flashed before my eyes, but a prediction of the future (how many bones I was going to break, which hospital they were going to take me to, etc).

Thank God shiftwork will be over soon. I need a day off.

Life in Decom

Decom is a sad time for a warship.

Standing at the door to AMR (Auxiliary Machinery Room) I can look all the way aft and see the forward bulkhead of the Reactor Compartment. I'd say that's about 30 feet of open space. All the atmosphere control equipment like the CO2 scrubbers, the oxygen generator, and the CO-H2 burners have been removed.

Forward crew's berthing looks like a cavern with all the racks removed. There's enough space in there to set up a pool table and a foosball table.

I spend most of my time nowadays in the Engine Room, but when I walk through the forward end of the boat, it brings back a flood of memories from when this great warship was at sea on the pointy-end of the spear, thousands of miles from any friendly bases for support.

The ship's once soft, cool, homogenous fluorescent lighting is secured, and light is now provided by these harsh, hot, bare incandescent bulbs dangling every several feet from a shipyard temporary services cable.

As I sit down at what used to be my seat at the wardroom table, my mind doesn't see the bare walls dimly illuminated by the shipyard temporary lighting. My mind sees the rack that used to be there with all our personalized coffee cups. My mind sees the walls that used to be decorated with framed photos from wardroom outings we had in various ports. My mind sees the smiling faces of the other officers sitting around the table at lunch or dinner, laughing and sharing sea stories about past adventures or predictions about future adventures to come. I can see Admiral Donnelly kicking back on the bench when he paid us a surprise visit during our port call in Kings Bay. I see the cribbage board out on the table. I see the bright smiling faces of midshipmen eager to learn about what a career in the silent service has to offer. I see the Weps coming in and putting his can of wasabi nuts out on the table for us to share while we burned a flick. I see the blue and white checkered plastic table cloth the cooks always put down for breakfast (easier to clean up syrup spills).

As I walk up the middle level passageway, I see the firehoses and remember the dozens of times I got to don my SCBA and go fight imaginary fires. I also remember how close I was to winning the MSP Derby before the sonar chief's car ran my car off the track. (I was robbed!)

The control room isn't as cavernously empty as the berthing or the AMR, but still... the Dive, Helmsman, Planesman, and Chief of the Watch chairs are all gone. The periscopes are gone. The sonar and fire control screens are black. I remember many-a-midwatch at PD or on the surface when those screens were the source of light in the control room. [Other memories from the control room censored - I could tell ya, but then I'd have to kill ya].

It's quite a paradox being on a submarine. The best part about being a submariner is being at sea doing the cool tactical steely-eyed killer of the deep stuff that submariners do. Unfortunately, that comes with a sacrifice of time away from your family. So while I miss our time as an operational warship at sea, I am trying to focus on the positive aspect of enjoying the time with my family while we're in the shipyard.

Monday Night Food and Fitness

Food

Wow, what a difference! I had been getting headaches several days per week and burning through my Imitrex supply like they were Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies. They seemed to come on around lunchtime. Since I read that article in NY Times that Jud emailed me, I went through all the lunch food supplies I had in my office and found a LOT of "autolyzed yeast extract." I took all those things out, and I haven't had a headache since. THANK YOU JUD! (And thank you NY Times for the article!)

Since then, my new favorite lunch item from the commissary is the Progresso Lentil Soup. It says on the side in big bold letters "NO MSG" and doesn't have any of the disguised varieties either. AAAAAND I tastes pretty good, too. Often the stuff that meets all my dietary needs tastes like corrugated cardboard.

I'm not exactly proud of the fact that shiftwork has resulted in me being much too familiar with the nuances between the different McDonalds on the island. If I go to the McD's on base and order a large coffee with two creams, they actually put the cream in the coffee for you. However, their drive-through is frequently closed even though their posted hours say the drive through should be open. So I end up having to get out of my car and walk in (I know, I know, I can feel your sympathy for my plight oozing through my keyboard and into my fingers - not). If I go to the McD's just down the street from our house, the drive-through is always open, 24/7. Unfortunately, when I go there and order a large coffee with two creams, they hand me the large coffee, and then they hand me a little bag with two creamer packets and a stir stick. So which is worse? Having to park and walk in to order your coffee, or having to pull the lid off and put the creamer in yourself? I know, I know, if these are the least of my worries in life, then I've got it pretty good.

Fitness

Fitness? What is that? I vaguely recall something about this place people call a "gym," but it seems like so long ago. Until recently when ES and I started going on bike rides together, the only "exercise" I was getting was climbing the ladders up and down between levels in the Engine Room.

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Talk about "can't teach an old dog new tricks"... Actually, this one might have to go in the file of "Stupid Kevin Tricks." Through years of experience, I have developed this confidence and physical ability to climb up and down the forward and aft escape trunk ladders while carrying things in one hand (coffee... notebook... small children... well, no small children in the AFT escape trunk, but you get the idea). Well, those years of experience were based on the "skirt" being in place. The skirt is this metal shield that is put there to create an area for divers to keep their head in an air pocket while they flood down, equalize, and open the escape trunk. Besides providing that shelter for divers, it also shrinks the size of the opening of the escape trunk and provides a handy smooth surface that you can lean your backside against as you reposition your one free hand on the ladder and continue your descent into the boat. When that skirt isn't there, and you let go with the one hand holding onto the ladder... there's nothing there to hold you up and you end up falling over [insert sound effect: "TIMBERRRRRR!"] until your back and elbow go crashing backwards a couple of feet into valves and pokey things sticking out of the side of the escape trunk. I wonder how many more times it will take me to unlearn the habit of leaning back into the skirt (since the skirt is removed / not there anymore).

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Not directly fitness related, but call it health and accident avoidance, I got a good laugh from this article one of my parental units sent me.

New Rims

Mommy's new glasses

LW just picked up her new glasses on Friday afternoon. She says she feels old. I think they look really nice on her (she won't let me take a picture).
(This is LW, here is one I took with the webcam this evening. He took like 5 of me yesterday but forgot to put the SD card back in the camera, not my fault!)

We were sitting in the family room watching Shrek the Third for family movie night on Friday. YB came over and climbed up on my lap. He looked across the room at LW and said, "Mommy, why are you wearing your sunglasses?" I explained to him that they weren't sunglasses, they were just Mommy's new glasses to help her see.

YB: [Blank stare] Huh?

Me: They're just like the glasses Daddy used to wear.

YB: [Blank stare] Huh?

Me: Don't you remember when Daddy used to wear glasses? [before laser surgery]

YB: [shakes head no]

Me: [A few points and clicks of the mouse on the laptop next to my chair to show him a picture of Daddy wearing glasses back in Virginia.] See, there's Daddy with glasses. Don't you remember when Daddy used to wear glasses?

YB: [Giggles and shakes head no]
Has it really been that long ago since my laser eye surgery??? May of 2005???

Yes, son, Daddy used to wear glasses...


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Daddy's new ride

Given our past couple of experiences with slow-poke YB trying to go for a bike ride with ES and me, I thought it would be a great idea to get one of these Co-Pilot things and YB could just ride along with me. As it turns out, it's a little bit too big for YB. He can't reach the pedals, and he's a little scared / weirded-out by it. That's okay, he'll grow into it eventually.

ES on the other hand absolutely LOVES it! Every day I come home, he runs up to me with that I-want-something-don't-I-look-lovable-and-adorable look of his and tells me he wants to go for a bike ride with me. He freaked out a little bit by the bike banking into the turn the first time we went at a good pace around a corner, but he's getting used to it now. We started out just riding around the neighborhood to get used to it. We've been going out on the bike path and steadily increasing our mileage. First we did 2 miles to Best Buy and back. Then we did 5 miles to Pearl City and back. Today we did 6 miles out to where you could see the mothball fleet in Middle Loch. It's been a great workout for me, because I can ride at MY pace AND with the added weight of pulling ES behind me. He can pedal and help, but most of the time, I can hear the rapid-clicking from his pedals sitting idle. That's okay though, because he's having fun, we're having time together, and I'm getting good exercise out of it.

K's new ride

Update on the "trusty steed" jogging stroller / bike trailer I sold to the Eng: The Eng's daughter, K, is absolutely obsessed with it. After he bought it, he took it home and took K for a test ride in it and she LOVED it!!! She got really upset when he took her back home. That night she kept going back out to the garage and sitting in it she just thought it was SO cool.

You need to understand that Eng was taking her RUNNING with him. They would go for like a 2 mile run and she would make it about a mile and a half before he would have to pick her up and let her ride on his shoulders. Eng's wife said K didn't really LIKE running, but she did it anyway because it was time with her Daddy. So that being said, you can imagine how this new red chariot thing is just downright AWESOME in K's little mind, because now she can still have the quality time with her Daddy, but not do any work. :-).

Pokey face

In a new derivation of YB's pokey hair phrase, he declared I had "pokey face" Friday night. Because of the change in our shiftwork schedule, it had been a while since I shaved. He was sitting on my lap while we watched the movie and he kept patting my cheeks, smiling, and saying, "Daddy has pokey face."

Welcome to the Blogosphere!

I'd like to give a shout-out to Jud and say

Welcome to the blogosphere!

Jud happens to be my cousin, but more importantly, and in spite of being related to me, he and his awesome wife are very dear friends to me and LW. One of the things I miss about being stationed in California was being able to see them on a somewhat regular basis.

Jud grew up in Florida while I grew up in California, so we only saw each other once every several years growing up. When I moved to Groton for sub school and my first sea tour, Jud was going to NYU. During those first 9 months I lived in Groton (3 months in sub school and first 6 months on the boat), I used to go down to "the city" to watch Jud's NYU hockey team play on Friday nights at Chelsea Piers and then just hang out the rest of the weekend. We had a lot of fun and I really missed him when he graduated and abandoned me for the southwest.

I learned a couple of quirky, trivial, somewhat interesting lessons in life as a result of helping Jud move out of his apartment in Manhattan. First, there was the NY City recycling system. Most of the stuff in Jud's apartment that he didn't want to take with him wasn't of any significant monetary value, so we took it by the armload down to the curb in front of his building. By the time we went back upstairs, grabbed another armload, and brought it down to the curb, the first pile of stuff we had left was already gone! We're talking about the bottom half of a manequin, the wood he used to make his loft-bed, an old beat-up dresser... It gave new meaning to "Gone in 60 Seconds."

Second, it had never even crossed my mind to use the U.S. Postal Service as a moving company before. All of the things Jud valued and wanted to take with him, he packed into about a dozen boxes and addressed them to his new office in Utah. I had my ensign-mobile 1994, 4-door, Chevy S-10 Blazer, and it was like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle fitting all those boxes into the back of the car. We barely squeezed all the boxes in and headed over to the BIG post office across the street from Madison Square Garden. It was a holiday (Memorial Day), so we had to go to that post office since it was open 24/7/365. $330 in postage later, all of Jud's personal belongings were on their way to Utah. Heckuva lot cheaper than the U-Haul option. From there, I drove Jud over to Newark and dropped him off at the airport.

I overcame my feelings of betrayal that Jud left me. God had a plan for each of us. If he hadn't left NY, then I might not have started going to hang out in Boston (too many weirdos in NY), and I soon met LW and started spending most weekends (at least when I wasn't on duty) in Boston. Likewise, Jud needed to go to Utah so he could meet the love of his life, Jill. I was honored Jud came all the way back to Boston to participate in my wedding two years later, and I was very sad that I was on deployment and unable to attend Jud's wedding.

After finishing my first sea tour in Groton, we moved to Monterey, California. We stopped to visit them on our way driving across country. Again later, we went out to visit them. We were out at dinner at a nice Japanese steakhouse, and LW and I noticed Jill wasn't partaking of any tasty alcoholic beverages about the same time Jud and Jill noticed LW wasn't partaking of any tasty alcoholic beverages either. It just so happened that Jill got pregnant right around the same time LW got pregnant. Several months after that, we all met up down in Pismo Beach on the central California coast for a "babymoon" (last hoorah getaway before the trials and tribulations of parenthood consumed our lives) and had a wonderful weekend together down there.

Jill and LW in Pismo Beach, Spring 2001

LW went a couple of weeks past her due date, and the doctor agreed to induce labor based on the fact we were supposed to leave Monterey for Groton again in 4 weeks. It just so happened that Jill went into labor early, and by some bizarre coincidence, our first born sons were both born on the EXACT same day.

For the next few years, we were stationed in San Diego and periodically visited with Jud, Jill, and Ethan. It was just so cool to watch ES and Ethan growing and developing considering they had been born the same day. We visited them in Utah a couple of times, and they visited us in San Diego several times. Plus we all met up in Long Beach for my sister's wedding. We had a fun little quiet-party sitting in the hallway of our hotel outside our rooms drinking some tasty beverages while we waited for the boys to go to sleep in the room with the lights off.

ES & his pal Ethan after a long day at Sea World in 2002

I have very much missed living close enough to Jud & Jill that we could visit them more regularly, but we continue to keep in touch thanks to the wonders of the internet. We have each had a second son (not born on the same day this time, but still pretty close in age). I hope our paths will cross again soon so Jud & Jill can meet YB and we can meet Max.

Anyway, so much for the trip down memory lane.

In addition to being a dear friend and relative, Jud is also a fantastic photographer. He's earned all sorts of awards including the 1999 Thompson Newspaper's Photographer of the Year and the Society of Professional Journalists Photographer of the Year awards in 2004-2006. You can check out some of his awesome photographs on his website at www.judburkett.com, and if you'd like to check out his new blog, click here.