Another long day...

Shipyard Lesson for the Day: For any of you headed for the shipyard, remember this:

"Slow is Fast"

It really is true. This evolution that we started yesterday morning would have been done by early yesterday afternoon if we had taken it slow, not gotten in a rush, followed the plan and used the procedure. It would have been DONE and today would have been a very peaceful stand-down day with nothing on the schedule.

But alas, as a result of seemingly simple series of mistakes around 0900 yesterday, we were in a critique until 1930 and didn't finish routine daily stuff until like 2200 last night, and made it a monumental task for today's duty section to accomplish with lots of extra supervision and "help." So it would have been FASTER in the long run to go SLOW in the beginning and NOT spin us all up on this tangent of corrective actions.

To top it all off, since the CO is on leave, I got to spend lots of time on the phone today with the Commodore and NR representative.

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Flashbacks to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I'm sorry to say LW's sister and husband are stuck in Houston and won't arrive til tomorrow. My SIL is pretty mad at the airline, and justifiably so if you ask me. Their plane from Boston to Houston was late, but made it in time for their connecting flight. When they got to the gate for their connecting flight, they said, "We're sorry, we already gave away your seats to passengers waiting on standby." Um... HELLO! I'm HERE! I HAVE a PAID TICKET in my hand for THIS flight! It's not like they couldn't talk to the air traffic dudes and find out the inbound flight was delayed but would make it in time. I mean, that situation in an of itself is a bummer, and I guess there's not much you can do about it at that point, but that's not the real kicker. (Aside: Where did that expression come from anyway? "the real kicker"?).

The thing that would have made me go nuts on the airline employee would be when they told my SIL that the airline would only pay for HALF of the hotel for lodging in Houston tonight, because it was a "weather related" delay. Ya know what I would've said??? HORSE PUCKY!!! I'm STANDING here in front of the gate LOOKING at the airplane that I have a PAID ticket for and YOU'RE telling me the plane is already full, THAT has NOTHING to do with the WEATHER and you BETTER pay for my hotel room tonight! Knowing my SIL, I doubt she's given up on that battle yet and she'll get the airline to see the error of their ways.

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NAVSTA Pearl Harbor Christmas Gouge: For anyone headed to a boat out of Pearl Harbor, here's something I wish I had known a few weeks ago. Apparently, they take the Christmas decorations on the ships and submarines on the waterfront pretty seriously around here. I mean, in each of my previous homeports, they've had some sort of an award for the best Christmas decorations, but there was no harm / no foul if you didn't participate or didn't decorate. I have just in the past couple of days learned that it is a VERY competitive sport here in Pearl Harbor.

It turns out, all the admirals meet up at the admirals' boat landing on Thursday evening and go for a waterfront tour and judge ALL the ships and submarines' holiday decorations. They have several awards they give out, including a couple for being a "Scrooge" (i.e. miserly, enough to show you knew you were expected to put some up, so you threw up a strand to check-the-block and say you "participated") and for "Saving the Navy the Most Money" (i.e. NO lights?).

The competition is so stiff that apparently the ships that REALLY want to win will have an entourage waiting at the admirals' boat landing with Christmas-themed refreshements and singing Christmas carols to welcome them to their boat and try to win their votes for their respective ship's decorations and holiday spirit.

If I had known about this before all hell broke loose with this critique and another JAGMAN investigation going on, then I MIGHT have actually come up with a PLAN and put up a nice display. As it was, I ran to K-Mart tonight half an hour before they closed and bought a bunch of light strands and light-up candy canes to put up on our barge so we don't get any of the Scrooge-type awards. Hey, at least all the Christmas decorations at K-Mart are 40% off right now!

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If I could do my weigh-in today, I'd be in great shape for the week. Tonight though, LW made Oreo bark...


and chocolate peanut butter fudge...

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One last thing, I thought I'd share a picture of our new "Home is Where the Navy Sends Us" wall. We had seen similar displays in some other people's houses and liked the idea. LW did a great job putting this one together. From left to right, the pictures are:
- Ledge Light off of Groton, Connecticut
- Herrmann Hall at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California
- Point Loma Lighthouse in San Diego, California
- Mount Vernon in Northern Virginia