I still remember

Sorry for no new blog post yesterday.

There was only one thing I could really think about. I wasn't sure what I should write about it or if I should write about it at all. I can't deny that it's been on my mind for the past several days though.

Yesterday was the second anniversary of the MSP accident in Plymouth, U.K. (For reference, see these two previous blog posts.)

That's where it happened.
Plymouth, U.K.

I sent the photo above of the entrance to Plymouth Harbor to my family on Shutterfly the day before we left port with the caption, "That's where I'll be tomorrow."

I only knew COB Higgins for a couple of days before the accident, and I don't think I had even met Petty Officer Holtz yet. I suspect those who knew COB Higgins and Petty Officer Holtz have a much harder time with this than I do. In my case, I will never be able to erase the graphic images of their deaths that are permanently etched in my mind, nor will I be able to forget the deep, dark, heart-wrenching feeling of terror and helplessness to save them.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of ETCS(SS) Thomas Higgins and STS2(SS) Michael Holtz, as well as to all the crew and families who suffered through that terrible experience.

Blog Celebrity and Blog Friends

The Naval Submarine League's annual symposium was Wednesday and Thursday this week down at the Tyson's Corner Hilton (just outside the beltway here in the DC area). One of my chiefs from the Mighty MSP was there to receive the Lockwood Award for Professional Excellence. Congratulations and well done, STSC(SS) Sowa! It was good to see you and Heidi and I hope you had a safe trip home.

Wednesday evening, my wife and I went to the Submarine Force Cocktail Party. It was a nice event. Since it was held in conjunction with the NSL symposium, there were booths set up by all the major submarine-related defense contractors with pens, posters, and other goodies to hand out.

The cost and the food were much better this time than last time we went a few years ago. The last time we went, it was like $70 per person and we barely got anything to eat. Okay, okay, I know it's a "cocktail" party, but still. We did NOT get our money's worth that night. This time around though, the tickets were "only" $35 per person and there were several buffet tables of everything from veggies, cheese, and fruit to meatballs, crab dip, and roast beef, plus an open bar.

Anyway, it's not that we went for the food or the booze mind you. It's a great place to run into old classmates and shipmates and friends. We had a good time chatting with several old friends and some of my new coworkers as well.

The surprise of the evening came when one old classmate and friend of mine who I haven't seen in... gosh... at least two years, came up and told me what a big fan he is and that he reads my blog all the time. I was floored. So hello, Chris! It was good to see you Wednesday evening, and I appreciate your positive feedback on my blog. :-)

It makes me wonder who ELSE is LURKING out there reading my blog and not leaving any comments. (You can always email me if you don't feel like posting a comment for others to read).

BT BT

Today I raised the number of blogger friends I've met in person from one to three. By this I mean people whom I have met through the blogosphere before meeting in person. Samantha and Kelly are in town for the Marine Corps Marathon this weekend, and they met me for lunch in Crystal City.

I tried to give them a wide variety of options for lunch and not corral them into any particular favorite of mine, but we went to an awesome Mexican restaurant. You'd think they read my blog or something.

Okay, okay, so I might have given them a slightly biased assessment of their lunch choices by saying something like, "Well, there's THIS AWESOME MEXICAN RESTAURANT RIGHT HERE (stomp stomp stomp) or we can go into that greasy food court over there."

Sam and Kelly - it was a pleasure to meet you both, and I hope you have a blast with all the MCM festivities going on this weekend. Have a good run on Sunday!

Farewell Mighty MSP

Tis a sad day.

The Mighty MSP is no more.

At approximately 1125 this morning, the CO ordered the Ship's Duty Officer to strike the ship's colors, and two of our quartermasters lowered the National Ensign for the last time. The CO signed over custody of the EX MINNEAPOLIS SAINT PAUL to the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, and the crew was released. (See previous post on decom).

It was a very simple, low-key ceremony in khakis and utilities on the wing wall of Dry Dock #1. The ceremony lasted all of 17 minutes. I will post some pictures of the ceremony as soon as I get them from the shipyard (the pictures taken by the shipyard have to be reviewed and declared unclassified before they can be distributed).

In the meantime, I thought I'd share a video with you. I've been cleaning out my office on the barge and getting ready to leave Hawaii. In the process of cleaning things out, I have happened upon all sorts of mementos.

In preparation for the MSP's crossing the line ceremony last year, we had a Wog No-Talent show where the wogs had the opportunity to demonstrate their talent at entertaining the shellbacks and earn a spot on King Neptune's court (thus bypassing going through the initiation ceremony the next day). One of our sonar technicians demonstrated his "talent" at video editing and he made this music video for us. It was unusual for a "talent" show, but I thought it turned out really well.

Award and Eval Gouge

Time flies.

I don't know what happened to February, much less June or July. How is it already halfway through August???

Things are winding down on the decommissioning of the Mighty MSP. Friday afternoon we had our final awards ceremony on the Lockwood Hall Lanai. Traditionally, when someone finishes their tour on a ship or submarine, they receive an end-of-tour award. Since we're decommissioning and the entire crew is transferring all at once, we had a LOT of end-of-tour awards to hand out. I managed to read through about 80 awards in a little over an hour by skipping the introductory and closing sentences that are the same on everyone's award and just reading the few sentences of real substance in the middle of the award citations. We also didn't stop to take a photo of each guy getting an award, and instead let everyone know in advance the CO would be available for photos afterwards.

As long as I'm on the topic of awards...

At no point during nuke school or SOBC did the instructors ever sit you down and say, "Hey, let's learn how to write an award." However, chances are, you got to your first boat and at some point your department head told you, "Hey, I need you to draft an award for Petty Officer Smith." Your first response was probably something like a dear-in-the-headlights stare.

For the sake of any those guys out there who are looking for some gouge on writing awards or evals, I thought I would offer some pointers here. Note that these are my opinions and by no means represent any official guidance or policy on behalf of the U.S. Navy. It is my hope that using these pointers will help you to write better quality awards and eval remarks and reduce the time it takes to have them reviewed and approved by your chain of command.

STEP 1. Get the Reference! You will make your dept head's, yeomen's, and XO's job a LOT easier if you submit your draft award already in the proper format.

For awards, there is a very well-written and actually very useful COMSUBPACINST 1650.2X. I'm sure there must be a similar instruction on the LANT side. It's only a few pages long and easy to read. This instruction lays out the policies for different levels of awards, provides the award format and sample awards. The COMSUBPACINST also has a useful "common errors" list and a checklist you can use before submitting the award. You should also check to see if your squadron has a local instruction that provides further amplification or guidance. I suspect every squadron has one.

For evals, the "instruction" is a little more complex. The Navy Performance Evaluation System Manual (BUPERSINST 1610.10A) is more of a book in a 1/2 inch binder. You can download all 19 chapters of it in pdf format right here. I would NOT expect you to sit down and read the eval manual from cover to cover before drafting your first eval. However (comma), if you haven't filled one out before, it would be useful to use the step-by-step instructions in Chapter 1 (pages 1-1 through 1-13).

STEP 2. What to write. Okay, so you've reviewed the applicable instruction mentioned above and you've got your draft in the correct format, but now what? What about the substance or the meat of the remarks?

The nine pointers that follow are my personal observations. If you find that you are having trouble fitting everything you want to say about some truly great guy in the limited space available on the award citation or eval remarks, these pointers will help you eliminate some of those extra words that don't really add anything to the substance of the award.

1. Write positive, active sentences about what the guy DID. For example:

• "He repaired ___________ (...vital ship's equipment and enabled the ship to stay at sea on a mission vital to national security)."

• "He managed __________ (...the ship's Radiological Controls Audit and Surveillance program.)"

• "He planned __________ or better yet, "He planned and executed _________ (...a successful Pre-Overseas Movement upkeep that cleared over seven bajillion outstanding jobs in the Equipment Status Log.)

• "He coordinated _________ (...the activities of the shipyard and outside contractors in the installation of this new high-tech super-whiz-bang system.)

• "He supervised __________

If it's an eval and the guy didn't do a particularly good job at it, but got the job done, you could leave the sentences above as is. If it's an award write-up or if you want the guy to have a stronger eval, then you should add a little bit more praise to each of those sample sentences above. You can do that by inserting a positive adverb as the second word in the sentence. You will commonly see words like "superbly" or "flawlessly" or "expertly" in a lot of awards. That way, you're not just just saying he DID it, but he did it WELL. For example:

• "He quickly repaired ___________ (...vital ship's equipment and enabled the ship to stay at sea on a mission vital to national security)."

• "He expertly managed __________ (...the ship's Radiological Controls Audit and Surveillance program.)"

• "He meticulously planned and superbly executed _________ (...a successful Pre-Overseas Movement upkeep that cleared over seven bajillion outstanding jobs in the CSMP.)

If you want to say he's a smart guy or say something about him being a technical expert, the way I usually do it is by saying, "He demonstrated his technical expertise in the way he repaired the ______________, a repair normally conducted at the depot level" or something like that.

2. Definitely include any praise the ship has received from outside the command due to this individual's effort, and use active voice. If you write, "He was recognized for his efforts," then that is passive voice and leaves the reader guessing WHO did the recognizing. His chief? His divo? Instead, rewrite it as, "_____ recognized him / commended him for ________________." Here are a couple of examples:

• "The Nuclear Propulsion Examination Board recognized him for his superb management of training... or audits and surveillances... or maintenance and material history..."

• "Naval Submarine Support Center Pearl Harbor commended him for managing the best Command Career Counselor program on the waterfront."

• "Submarine Squadron THREE commended him for the flawless execution of the ship's post-deployment weapons offload."

Aside: How can you spot passive voice in a document? Look for the words "was" and/or "by." Instead of "A valve-lineup was performed by the LPO," (passive voice) re-write it as, "The LPO performed a valve-lineup" (active voice). See the difference? It's more concise and eliminates 2 words that weren't necessary.

3. Use rank and name in the second and last sentences, use pronouns in between. Every sentence should not begin with, "Petty Officer Smith..." You should write the guy's name in the standard second sentence, "Petty Officer Smith performed his duties in an exemplary and highly professional manner," and in the standard last sentence, "Petty Officer Smith's professionalism and loyal devotion to duty reflected credit upon himself and the United States Naval Service." In the rest of the citation in between those two sentences, use "he" and "his" instead of "Petty Officer Smith" and "Petty Officer Smith's."

4. Delete the phrases like "was instrumental to" and "contributed to." One of my previous XO's told me these are words you use as filler when you don't really have anything substantial or specific to write about a guy. It's wasted words that just takes up some of your precious limited space in the award or eval format. Disclaimer: Please remember (1) this is feedback for future writers to improve the quality of future awards, and (2) this is my opinion and not anything officially written anywhere. These are actually very common phrases you will see in a lot of awards, so if you have a phrase such as this in an award or eval you have received, please don't take it as a slight against you.

5. Delete the phrase "during his tenure on board." It's a statement of the obvious. The award already said that it was "for commendable achievement... while serving as a member of ___________ division in USS (ship name) from April 2003 to July 2007." That established that it was during his time on board. Besides, you wouldn't be giving him the award if it was for time he wasn't on board, would you?

6. Delete the phrase "provided watchbill flexibility." Qualifying a required in-rate watch station (for example, an nuke MM qualifying Engine Room Lower Level or an Nav-ET qualifying Auxiliary Electrician Forward) and providing "watchbill flexibility" are not reasons we give people awards.

On the other hand, it would be appropriate to recognize someone who demonstrated initiative and aggressively completed their qualifications AHEAD OF SCHEDULE. It would also be appropriate to recognize someone who demonstrated initiative and qualified additional watch-stations outside their rate (like a nuke MM qualifying Throttleman - a watch normally stood by an EM) or above their expected level for their rank (like an E-5 qualifying Chief of the Watch). Those are both examples of going above and beyond what is EXPECTED of them and are achievements worthy of commendation and praise.

7. Inclusive Dates of the Award. If you submit a group of awards as a result of some major inspection like a TRE (Tactical Readiness Evaluation) or an ORSE (Operational Reactor Safeguards Examination), the dates of the award should not be just the dates the inspection happened.

If a guy is commended by the NPEB (Nuclear Propulsion Examination Board - the inspection team) during the ORSE and you want to give him an award, don't write the award for "1 to 3 April 2007." The thing is, the guy didn't START doing a good job at managing his division or his program on 1 April when the inspection team stepped on board. He STARTED managing his division or his program (audits and surveillances for example, or training records, or material history or...) usually many months before that. So the award is really recognizing him for his efforts over that period of time that he was managing the program, and it culminated in the NPEB commending the program. I'm using ORSE and NPEB as an example here, but it is equally applicable to the TRE Team or to Squadron doing a Nav Eval.

Dates should be provided as month and year (except in cases of some specific heroic act or achievement), so put the beginning month and year that the guy took over in the job where he became responsible for the recognition the ship received during the inspection, and the ending month and year of the inspection itself.

8. Delete negative comments about previous personnel or programs. Your award write-up or eval remarks should neither initiate a report chit or JAGMAN investigation, nor should it be used as evidence in anybody else's Captain's Mast or Court Martial. Do not slander or otherwise implicate that the previous program manager was deficient or a lazy slug or a criminal. (Aside: EKMS comes to mind - it's always the previous EKMS manager's fault). Make positive comments about how much the guy you are commending has "dramatically improved" the program. You could also say the program improved by "two letter grades" from the previous inspection (be careful - actual ORSE grades are not allowed). Those are things that attribute the guy you are commending with doing a good job and improving the bag he was left holding without explicitly dropping dime on the previous guy who left him with the bag in the first place.

9. Spell out acronyms and use commonly understood terms. The guy's parents should be able to read the award without a Navy acronym dictionary. For example, instead of "he preformed vital repairs to the BQQ-5D", rewrite it as, "He repaired the ship's primary sonar system."

There you have it. Here endeth the unsolicited advice of the day. As always, I welcome your feedback on this.

Monday Night Food and Fitness - Favorite Recipes Recap

Food

I used to write a post on Monday nights called Monday Night Food and Fitness, but I fell out of the habit. It wasn't that LW wasn't making us awesome meals to eat, it's just that we got into sort of a rotation of eating mostly the same things over and over again because they were so good.

Tonight she tried something new though - chicken enchiladas, and they were AWESOME!!!! I wish I had more hands to give her more than two thumbs-up on this one. (How about two big toes?) The recipe was from our neighbor B across the street, and she got the recipe right off a can of Old El Paso green chilis. If you would like the recipe, here it is:

Creamy Chicken & Chile Enchiladas

1 lb uncooked chicken breast strips

1 package (8oz) cream cheese, cut into cubes

1 can (4.5oz) Old El Paso chopped green chiles

1 package (10.5oz) 6 inch flour tortillas

2 cans (10oz) green chili enchilada sauce***

¾ c shredded cheddar cheese

1. Heat oven to 400. Spray 9x13 glass baking dish with cooking spray.

2. In 10 inch skillet, cook chicken over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until no longer pink in the middle. Stir in cream cheese and chilis; reduce heat to medium. Cook and stir until blended and cream cheese is melted.

3. Spoon chicken mixture into tortillas; roll up and place seam side down in pan. Pour enchilada sauce over the top, sprinkle cheese.

4. Bake 15-20 minutes until hot and cheese is melted.

*** All the enchilada sauce they had at the commissary had MSG in it, but LW found some Ortega salsa verde that was MSG-free, and she used that instead. It worked out like a champ.

As I had stated before, the main reason I was writing the Monday Night Food posts was to (a) give a shout-out of thanks and praise to LW for the awesome food she cooks, and (b) to keep track of the recipes that I really like. That way, the next time LW is preparing her grocery list and asks, "What do you want for dinner this week?" I can click on over to my blog and remind myself which things she's made that I REALLY liked.

Up until now though, it's been scattered through a bunch of my previous posts. So mostly to make it easier for myself in quickly providing input to LW's grocery list, I'm going to write a summary here listing my favorites and linking back to the previous posts for the recipies.

Smokey Sweet Potato Chicken Stoup

Tortilla Soup

Falafel Sandwiches

Chicken Parm Meatballs

Layered Mexican Chicken Casserole

Spicy Chicken Breasts with Carmelized Onion Relish

Spiedies

Cilantro Stuffed Tri-Tip

Crash Hot Potatoes

Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie

Pots de Creme

Fitness

Falling out of the habit of writing my Monday Night Food and Fitness post also wasn't due to stopping PT. I just didn't have anything new to write about. Up until last week, we continued our routine of Command PT on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Mondays and Fridays, we did warmup calesthenics and stretching in Bloch Arena and then split up to do our own cardio-type workouts. I usually did a 3 mile run out to the waterfront and back along South Ave. Wednesdays, we had "The PT Nazi" personal trainer lead us through some interval training at Quick Field.

We're getting close to the end of the Mighty MSP's decom, and we're closing out sections of the barge like berthing and showers, so it's harder on the guys to have to go to Command PT and then shower at Bloch Arena or back at their barracks room and then have to trek their way into work in the shipyard. At the same time, most of the work on the boat is done and there's nothing keeping most of the crew on board past 1400, so it's easier for guys to just go to the gym and then go home to shower.

So we've declared an end to the Mighty MSP's Command PT Program. I will say it was a huge success though. On our final Command Physical Fitness Assessment (PFA), we increased the number of Excellent and Outstanding scores by 100% (from 21 to 42), and we reduced the number of PFA failures by 100% (from 10 to 0). Our crew lost a total of more than 300 pounds (I forget the exact number, but I'll look it up at work and correct this entry later). My hat's off to our previous COB, current COB, and our Command Fitness Leader for leading an excellent physical training program and really getting the crew to "embrace the culture of fitness."

Now, I'm riding my bike to and from work, so that is helping with the loss of the organized Command PT, but I'm still doing PT in the morning before I go to work on M-W-F.

Also, my left shoulder has hurt and had a limited range of motion ever since we tried doing that "combat fitness" routine with the PT Nazi on May 28th. Those wheelbarrows and crab walks and pushup-side steps really messed up my left shoulder. The Doc at the Makalapa Clinic said it's tendonitis in a tendon that's very hard to "get at" and that it won't be an easy process to recover. So now I'm going to physical therapy on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and doing specific exercises geared toward working that left shoulder.

Anyway, my main point being that I haven't been writing my Monday Night Food and Fitness posts because we fell into a routine on both fronts and I didn't have much new to write about.

It's that time again

Wow... I don't think I've gone that many days without blogging since I started blogging almost eleven months ago. We've been a little busy. You see, it's that time again...


Today the packers came and packed about half of the first floor of our house into cardboard boxes. Actually, I need to correct myself. The packeR came. Yes, they only sent ONE packer. At least he was a young and energetic guy. [Flashback: When we were moving out of housing in Monterey, CA, they sent ONE packer who was like 85 years old and moved about as fast as ES getting out of bed on a school day. That was the beginning of a very BAD moving experience for us.] Our packer today was pretty efficient and got the front room, play room, and family room packed. He still has the kitchen, laundry room, and garage to go on the first floor. Methinks they're going to need a least ONE more packer to come if they're going to get the three bedrooms and two bathrooms done upstairs in time to load the truck on Friday. [Update: Our packer just left for the day, and he said they're brining 4 packers tomorrow. That should do.]

The timing worked out pretty well. The estimated date of delivery for our HHG (household goods) in Virginia is the same day we expect to arrive in Virginia at the end of September. Good thing we finally got orders and scheduled our HHG shipment when we did, eh?

Yesterday we took LW's car to the Matson terminal. The Navy only pays to ship one car for us. Just before we leave the island, we're going to use the Navy's dime to ship my car to Baltimore. For now, we're paying $1,072 out of pocket to ship LW's car to Seattle. [Aside for anyone else planning on doing this: The Matson commericial office is right next door to the Military Vehicle Processing Center (VPC), you go down the same driveway.]

So we're now a single car family. LW needs the car to take the boys to school, so I am riding my bike to work for the rest of our time in Hawaii. It's not too bad. It's only 4 miles from our house to the barge in the shipyard. It'll be good exercise for me, and with the way the afternoon traffic gets around here, I'll probably make it home faster than driving my car.

We've got plane reservations to fly off the island to Portland, Oregon on 9 September. We'll drive across country from there, and the Navy will pay us mileage and a daily allowance for food and lodging. The SATO people (military travel agents) were pretty quick. I turned in my transfer package on Friday and received my travel reservations on Tuesday, and we received exactly the flight we had asked for.

It's kind of weird thinking about the fact that we've been in Hawaii for over a year already. Where has the time gone???

One year and two days ago, the Mighty MSP arrived in Pearl Harbor.

Reunion on the Pier
This photo marked the end of 10 months
of living apart from my family as a geo-bachelor.

One of my favorite photos of the Mighty MSP in Hawaii.
22 August 2007

It doesn't seem like that long ago that we were a sea-going submarine. In between our arrival in Pearl Harbor and our entry into the drydock for decom in December, we had several short underway periods to participate in exercises off the coast. I feel like I've had two tours of duty on the MSP now, just because being on a sea-going boat is so different from being on a boat in the shipyard. It was more fun when we were going to sea, but we have enjoyed the fact that being in the shipyard equates to more time with our families.

Back on the topic of PCS Moves... ES is 7 years old. When we arrive in Virginia, we will be moving into his 6th house. LW keeps saying someday she would really like to have a move that is NOT all the way across country. Since we got married, we went from Groton to Monterey to Groton to San Diego to DC to Pearl Harbor and now back to DC again.

Chief Results Are Out

The results of the FY09 E-7 Selection Board are published on BUPERS Online. In other words, board eligible individuals can look at BUPERS to see if they were selected, and people with command access like COs, XOs, and COBs can see the results for their command. We had 2 out of 7 eligible guys get selected.

Congratulations to those who made Chief!

Update: The message is out now, too. DTG 011859Z AUG 08. To see the entire list, keep an eye on this website. They will eventually post the message there at the top of the FY-09 where it says FY09 CPO Selectees.

The message is available as a MS Word document for download here. (H/T to Andy)

Military Bloggers

Checks with Chart pointed out an article about a 4-star encouraging military members to write blogs. The Navy Times article isn't very in-depth or mind-boggling, but the concept of an admiral encouraging us to blog surprised me at first. I've had a friend or two look at me with a raised eyebrow when they found out I wrote a blog and questioned if that was such a good idea. Like those skeptical friends, I was mainly surprised about the admiral encouraging military bloggers from the security aspect of it. Active duty bloggers pose almost if not just as much risk to security as cell phones with cameras.

Most of what I write here is about family life, raising two great little boys, and doing cool things around Hawaii. It sort of started out as emails out to all our wardroom telling them each time we found something new and cool to do. Then I figured if I posted it to a blog, then it wouldn't be pushing it on the people who don't care or don't want to read it, and it would make it available to anybody else doing a Google seach looking for first person accounts or "local" knowledge of things to see and do.

I intentionally stay away from many military topics so as not to raise any more eyebrows or invite unwanted attention about me inappropriately posting insider-info or opinions contrary to the top brass on my blog.

But then I said to myself, "Self, what's to say the admiral didn't mean for us to start blogging on the siprnet?" THAT would be a great idea. Aside: I realize in the article he talks about getting "published" - be it in journals or the Naval Institute Proceedings or blogs, so that implies the "open source" type of publishing, but I'm going to continue pinging on this secure blog idea.

You see, I'm all about not reinventing the wheel. Whenever I go into a new mission or experience, if someone else has already "been there, done that," then I want to find out how it went for them and learn from their experience. I want to learn from others' experiences and mistakes. Likewise, I generally try to go "open kimono" and push info to other boats that I know are going to do the same things I've done recently. Back during my DH tour, we had what we called the "Nav Net" where we had a large email distro list of all the SSN Navigators for sharing lessons learned and gouge. For example, I pushed a lot of info on the under ice transit of the Bering Strait to the Navs on Oklahoma City and Alexandria in preparation for their first WESTPAC deployments. In my current tour, I've both sought and pushed lessons learned for our Panama Canal transit, change of command, and having senior riders on board. I've also pushed a lot of decommissioning lessons learned over to the Augusta.

Tangential Rant: EVERY time each of the boats I have been on has gone into drydock, I have found myself making wise-cracks about, "Did you know that this was the FIRST time a 688-Class submarine has EVER gone into drydock?" The point being no, it WASN'T the first time for a 688 to go into drydock by a LONG shot, but it never ceases to amaze me the things that go wrong during drydocking because people didn't anticipate a problem before it happened. End of Tangent / Rant.

In hindsight, just as I shifted my local adventures stories from email distro to my blog, I think a siprnet blog would be a great avenue for sharing those lessons learned emails and putting them in a place in cyberspace where someone can do a search and find lessons learned about the next mission you've been assigned. For example, the one-on-one / point-to-point comms I've shared with the Augusta on decom lessons learned could have been posted to a blog. In that format, guys on future boats in decom could find and read these insights and lessons learned even after I'm long gone and the boat is being sliced up in Bremerton.

Okay, so there's some sort of Navy and Lessons Learned Database out there. The current lessons learned messages out there (like port visit lessons learned) are sterilized and formal, record message traffic type of stuff approved by the CO, and it'll have the ship's name on it. If it's fairly recent, then you could contact that boat and ask any questions that come to mind, but after a year or so when the key players have PCS'ed elsewhere, that ship will have lost that corporate knowledge of that event. The blog offers the advantages of offering frank, candid observations (be careful, I realize that can go to the other extreme, too), and more importantly, the blog would continue to be linked to me personally even after I transfer to other commands. A few years from now if someone reads my blog about decom and has a question about it, after reading my blog posts on the topic, they could email me directly for follow-up questions later on down the road.

I suspect nothing I'm saying here is new or unique. From what little I know about the academic discipline of "knowledge management" (KM), these are exactly the big picture objectives of KM.

In any case, maybe DoD should hire Google or some other big name company to start a Blogger-like site on the siprnet.

Oh wait... then again... someone thought hiring a big company to manage all the Navy and Marine Corps' computer systems was a good idea, and look what that got us.

Weekend Recap

Rewind to Friday: Command Picnic

Friday afternoon we had our command picnic out at Bellows Beach. That was my first time going to Bellows. It was a pretty nice place. I had heard it was a good place to go kayaking, so my plan had been to rent a kayak to take the boys out. The boys were too busy playing with the neighbor kids and refused to go. I didn't think it would be any fun if I dragged them kicking and screaming, so I left them home and went to the picnic myself.

About ten minutes after I left the house, I was on my way driving out there and my cell phone rang. I answered it, and it was ES calling to tell me he wanted to go with me. My heart sank. I would have gone back to get him if it hadn't been for the traffic I had just battled getting over there in the first place. I told ES it was too late and I was too far away to come back and get him.

Much to my surprise when I got to Bellows, there were signs up saying the beach was CLOSED due to high concentrations of some parasite in the water. So it actually worked out for the best that I DIDN'T pay the money or go through the trouble to rent the kayak. Friday night I searched all over the internet to find out someplace I could have checked to find out the beaches were closed BEFORE I went over there, and I couldn't find any such warnings anywhere. There must be some way to find out, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Even though we couldn't go in the water, it was a beautiful day out and a very nice beach. The command picnic was a big success. I had hoped to have a photo to post, but I'm still waiting on an electronic copy of our group photo. Check back later for an update with the photo - photo added 6/17.

Mighty MSP Picnic at Bellows Beach

Saturday - Flag Day!

I already wrote about Saturday's Flag Day Ceremony on the MISSOURI. After that, we had a friend from church in VA in town for business. I took him for a tour on a submarine and we went out for a nice dinner at the Sea Breeze on Hickam AFB. We had only been to the Sea Breeze once before for our command Christmas Party, and thought it was a nice place. They have both an indoor section that has a fancier menu and an outdoor grill with a cheaper burgers and fries type of menu. We ate at the grill outside looking out over the beach and the ocean. The food and the service were good and the prices were reasonable. It's sort of a long drive out there with the slow speed limits on base (and the base police on the AFB are speed-trap-crazy), but it was a nice location.

Oh, and we didn't end up as celebrities after all. Nothing showed up in the newspaper. Oh well.

Sunday - Father's Day

The day started out well. I decided to go for a run in the morning before getting ready for church, and ES wanted to go with me on his bike. LW has been nudging me to teach ES to ride his bike without training wheels. Before we left, I raised the training wheels so they weren't touching the ground much, and I carried the socket wrench with me when we went running out on the bike path. I figured the bike path would be a better place to practice without the training wheels because there are long, flat, straight stretches of path.

So we jogged out to Best Buy (1 mile out from our house). When we turned around to head back, I stopped and took the training wheels off of ES's bike. He was a little nervous and really wobbly, but I'm proud of him for at least giving it a try. We went about half a mile back toward the house with me holding him up the whole way. That was hell on my back running while bent over at the waist and keeping ES from tipping over, so I stopped and put the training wheels back on for the rest of the jog/ride home.

After church, we tried unsuccessfully to find a Mexican restaurant in Kaneohe, then gave up and headed to our usual Zia's. I was surprised there wasn't more of a crowd at Zia's. It was a LOT busier on Mother's Day.

I've never had a problem with Zia's food before. I can usually steer clear of foods that are known for having MSG in them. Well, I missed something this time. I had the special that was sort of a margherita ravioli. It was ricotta stuffed ravioli with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella - none of "the usual suspects" for MSG.

Before we even left the restaurant, I felt really sluggish and fatigued. It grew into a migraine headache at home. I was really pissed off because I felt like I was being robbed of my Father's Day. As much as I joke about Father's Day having the same end result as Mother's Day (i.e. Daddy gets to take the boys somewhere and give Mommy a break), I was actually really looking forward to taking the boys for a hike Sunday afternoon. Instead, I took a nap and some imitrex.

I started feeling better around dinner time and managed to walk across Kam Highway to get us some pizza for dinner. We shared the pizza with our neighbors across the street. LW said I should go do the night-time geocache I've been wanting to do, and our neighbor B said I should take ES and her daughter, M. The kids said they wanted to go, so we loaded up the kids in my car and headed out about 7:30 (fifteen minutes after sunset).

Hanauma Bay on a Moonlit Night Photo from the Geocache Listing

"Sacred Moonrise and The Case of The Twisted Kitty" is a really cool geocache, and has been called "the best geocache on Oahu" by some. You have to do it at night, because the clues are only visible with a flashlight after dark. It is recommended to do it on a full-moon. Although it was partly to mostly cloudy last night, the full moon was poking through the clouds here and there. It was a really cool night-time view down into Hanauma Bay on one side of the ridge and across the water to Diamond Head on the other side. I couldn't take any good nighttime pictures of the scenery with my camera, but the photo above of Hanauma Bay on a moonlit night from the geocache listing is similar to what it was like for us last night.

Altitude Profile for our Sunday Night Hike
X-Axis is Elapsed Mileage in 0.2 mile increments
Y-Axis is Elevation in 50 foot increments

It ended up being about a 2.5 mile hike round trip from the suggested parking location out to the geocache and back. It was a pretty steep hill though. We parked at 150 feet of elevation and maxed out at 685 feet, for a total elevation gain of 535 feet.

ES and M with the Kitty
Photo censored so it won't spoil the
hunt for anyone else seeking this cache.

The hike is mostly on a paved path and easily navigable by kids. That hill is a lot bigger than it looks from the Hanauma Bay parking lot though. By the time we got out there it was like 8 or 8:30, and we didn't get back to the car until about 10:30.

ES Wasn't Sleep-Walking Back to the Car,
His eyes just shut because of the flash from the camera.

The kids seemed to enjoy it. ES and M are two peas in a pod and were in a state of perpetual talking and giggling until we got in the car to go home. About 90 seconds after I started the car, there was dead silence from the back seat. Not long after that, ES started sawing logs the rest of the way home.

So in the end... good start to the day, lousy afternoon, but a good finish.

Wednesday Aches and Pains

Maybe I should change my food and fitness posts to Wednesday nights. You may recall from previous posts that on Wednesdays, we have a personal trainer (a.k.a. PT Nazi) who leads us through a series of punishing interval training exercises. She always kicks our butts.

This morning was no exception. As it was, I never did recover from a killer session she led us through a couple of weeks ago, so let me take a step back and describe that workout before I describe this morning's workout.

We were supposed to be doing spinners, but one of the other trainers had the spinners room reserved. So instead, she took us into the Bloch Arena basketball court to lead us through her Combat Fitness course.

I'm sorry to report: I'm NOT fit for combat (at least by our trainer's standards).

Here's a quick summary of the Combat Fitness course she led us through:

- Wheel Barrow across the width of the basketball court
- "Half Lap" = run up the bleacher steps on one side, then run a half-lap around the top of the arena, then run down the bleacher steps on the other side.
- Wheel Barrow again (trade places with your partner)
- Half Lap
- REPEAT x 2 (each guy got to do two wheelbarrow runs as the wheelbarrow and two runs as the runner holding the other guy's ankles)
- Walking Lunges across the basketball court
- Half Lap
- REPEAT (second run of walking lunges and another half lap)
- Pushup Side-Steps. I don't know what else to call these. You get down in the pushup position, do a pushup, still holding the pushup position do a side step / shuffle sideways and do another pushup, sidestep sideways and do another pushup, etc... ALL... THE... WAY... ACROSS... THE ... BASKETBALL... COURT...
- Half Lap
- REPEAT (second run of pushup side steps)
- Crab-Walk forward (walking on all fours with your stomach facing up
- Half Lap
- Crab-Walk backward
- Half Lap
- Crawl-Scramble forward (hands and feet with your butt up in the air)
- Half Lap

By the end of that session, I had blisters on my palms from doing the wheelbarrows and the pushup side steps, and my lower back was killing me. My back was bad enough I had to bow out of Command PT the following week, taking lots of motrin and just doing the elliptical machine to burn some calories.

Today I went back for more punishment at Command PT with the trainer. This morning we met over at Quick Field instead of Bloch Arena. Quick Field has a very large field with a running track around the outside of several soccer fields. One lap around the running track is just under a half mile. In a previous session at Quick Field, she had us running half mile sprints with exercises in between. I did alright until like the fourth or fifth sprint we had to run BACKWARDS and my hips were in agony. She changed it up a little bit this morning. Here's a summary of what we did today:

- 2 minutes jump-rope
- Run half a lap around the track (About a quarter mile)
- Walking lunges across the soccer field
- 2 minutes jump-rope
- Run half a lap around the track
- Pushup Side Steps (see the combat fitness above) across half the soccer field
- Crab walk across the second half of the soccer field
- 2 minutes jump-rope
- Run half a lap around the track
- Walking lunges across the soccer field
- 100 crunches
- Run half a lap around the track

My palms had finally recovered from the previous session, but I got those blisters back on my palms again this morning from the pushup-sidesteps again.


For yesterday's workout, I took my family to visit the USS NIMITZ in town for a port call. After I got done with work, LW and the boys came and met me over by where the NIMITZ was parked.

I didn't go into it thinking it was going to be a workout, but we climbed a LOT of ladders like this in order to get up to the bridge and back down to the flight deck and the hanger.

View from the Bridge. I'm sorry, but I just find it very bizarre that the officer of the deck can't actually SEE the pier as he moors the ship and sends over the lines.

Captain ES? I hope the CO of the NIMITZ doesn't read my blog and get our tour guide in trouble for ES climbing up in the CO's chair.

Of course, if there's dirt or grease or grime to be found... little boys will find it.

On the flightdeck, I took a self portrait by the flagstaff.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Hi-yah!

This afternoon I was introduced to the latest craze in martial arts. ES has invented his own version of martial arts. As opposed to judo, he calls it [ES]-oh. (So, if his name was Kevin, he would call it "Kevin-o"). When I told him it was time to stop playing outside and come inside for dinner, he threatened to annihilate me with his new karate-chop-like moves.

New Dance

After dinner tonight, I got to see something almost as funny as the weenie dance. I got the boys ready for their bath, and they said they wanted a shower instead. Okay, so I start the shower and close the shower curtain. YB got in the shower while ES was still getting undressed, and YB started singing one of those funny songs he makes up on the fly. I poked my head in the shower curtain to see what he was doing.

Like the weenie dance, I wish I could post a video for you to see without getting arrested for it. He was standing with his legs straight, shoulder width apart, bent all the way over at the waist so he was grabbing his ankles and his butt was sticking up into the spray from the shower nozzle. He was wiggling his butt back and forth and singing, "rainy butt dance, rainy butt dance, rainy butt dance..." Sorry. Maybe you just had to be there. It was pretty funny to see.

Where has the time gone???

Updated late on 5/21 with some editorial corrections from LW and CC and a photo from GMJ.


Holy Cow Batman. Has it really been 14 YEARS?!?! I wish I had my photo albums to scan one of my commissioning photos and include it in this post.

14 years ago today, I was wearing my choker whites and marching into the Camino-Founders Courtyard on the University of San Diego campus.

Update: Thanks to GMJ for emailing me this picture. Nope, I haven't changed AT ALL. Seriously, I look like I'm TWELVE for cryin' out loud!!! Nice coke-bottle glasses, eh? It's really weird to see empty space between my neck and the collar of my uniform. You mean "chokers" aren't supposed to choke you and cut off blood flow to your head???

I can only think of three times that I've worn my choker whites in my entire Navy career. Wait, LW and CC corrected me. There were FOUR times.

The first time was for commissioning (see above).

The second time was for graduation from the Naval Postgraduate School in June 2001. I've got a really nice picture of LW, ES, and me in my chokers on my desk at work, but I think it was taken with a film camera.

The third time was a change of command ceremony in Guam where I stood on the black steel deck forward of the sail under the blazing hot sun, holding that ridiculous ceremonial spyglass that weighs a ton.

Change of Command in Guam 2003

Yep, that's me with the spyglass in the picture above. I stood in the shade while waiting for the ceremony to begin, but then I had to move into the sunlight so that the official party could walk by the sail on their way to the platform.

Did I mention how much my arm hurt

after holding that #%&$#@ spyglass?

After the ceremony, I had quite a few people come up and tell me they were all taking bets on how long I would last before I passed out from the heat standing there in the sun for the entire ceremony.

The fourth time was for the Mighty MSP's Inactivation Ceremony last June in Norfolk.

Inactivation Ceremony, 22 June 2007

Anyway, maybe next year when we're back on the mainland and have all our stuff back out of storage I'll be able to scan a commissioning photo to post here.

I have no idea where this is going to go, but I thought it might be interesting to recap where I've been on each anniversary of my commissioning.

1 Year: Nuclear Power Training Unit (NPTU), Charleston, SC. Enduring life as a prototype student in 12 hour shiftwork, but enjoying what little free time I had in Charleston.

2 Years: USS PROVIDENCE (SSN 719), Groton, CT. I was single and excited to leave on my first deployment in June, so we were busy with POM (Pre-Overseas Movement) workups and certification. I get LTJG pinned on just in time to go on deployment and let the extra pay accumulate in my bank account while I was gone.

3 Years: USS PROVIDENCE (SSN 719), Groton, CT. LW and I have been dating for 2 months. We spend every weekend together if I'm in port. If I didn't have duty, then I'd go to Boston for the weekend to be with LW. If I had duty, then LW would come down to Groton. This was before 9-11, so she could just show a bag of food from Boston Market to the gate sentry and say, "My boyfriend is the duty officer on the PROVIDENCE," and the sentry would let her through and she'd park her car right SMACK in front of the boat and walk across the brow.

4 Years: USS PROVIDENCE (SSN 719), Groton, CT. While my fiancee, LW, is back in Boston planning our wedding, I'm now on my second deployment. This time it is to the Persian Gulf as part of the JOHN C STENNIS battle group. I pin on LT soon and let the extra pay accumulate in my bank account to pay for our honeymoon and stuff.

5 Years: In transit. I checked out from the PROVIDENCE and LW and I are enjoying (using the term loosely) a long drive across country seeing every family relative and historic site possible. That's another blog post for another day, but let's just say we aren't going to intentionally take 3 weeks to drive across country ever again. Soon we'll arrive at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.

6 Years: Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. LW completed her scuba certification, and we spend a good deal of time scuba diving and enjoying life around the Monterey Peninsula.

7 Years: Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. LW is VERY pregnant with ES - overdue, in fact. I finished my thesis early so that I would not have to worry about the thesis after the baby is born, so it's a big waiting game. Given our impending graduation and departure for Groton, the doctors will induce labor in a few days so that we can start our PCS move across country.

8 Years: USS HELENA (SSN 725), San Diego, CA. I've just transited under the polar ice cap via the Bering Strait and completed PACSUBICEX 2002, and we stop in Pearl Harbor for a port call. LW and ES flew out to meet me, and we had an awesome week in Hawaii. ES is crawling now and chases the birds along the sidewalk around the Hale Koa.

9 Years: USS HELENA (SSN 725), San Diego, CA. LW is about 2 months pregnant with YB, and I'm getting ready to leave for WESTPAC for the third time in three years. This will be the first official "deployment" for me on the HELENA though, because the previous two trips were less than 56 days, so they weren't "deployments." During this deployment, LW would get to endure fire storms, raining ashes, and the emotional stress of packing up our valuables in the car and being ready to evacuate due to the fires.

10 Years: USS HELENA (SSN 725), San Diego, CA. In a few days, LW and the boys will come down to the boat to help pin on my new collar devices. In anticipation of going out to sea for most of the rest of the summer, we've got our house on the market and LW plans to take the boys and leave soon to find us a new home in the DC suburbs. I would detach in Sept and fly out to meet them.

11 Years: NGA, Chantilly, VA. Enjoying the suburban DC life, hiking, geocaching, bike rides, touring battlefields, launching rockets. Oh yeah, I just had laser eye surgery (PRK) at Bethesda Naval Hospital, so I'm now free of glasses!

12 Years: NGA, Chantilly, VA. We've just returned from a wonderful week-long family vacation to Aruba. Still enjoying the suburban life around DC, but anticipating my departure in September for the Submarine Command Course (SCC) and the PXO training pipeline. At this point we think we're going to a boomer out of Bangor.

13 Years: USS MINNEAPOLIS SAINT PAUL (SSN 708), Norfolk, VA. Yep, I got an ORDMOD while I was in SCC sending me to MSP instead of HMJ. We just returned from deployment on April 4th and enjoyed a month of post-deployment stand down. LW and the boys are still living in the DC suburbs because we're leaving Norfolk on July 6th to change homeports to Pearl Harbor. Flashback to Year 3 - when I'm in port, either I'm driving to DC for the weekend or LW and the boys are driving to Norfolk for the weekend. Actually, on this anniversary, I'm underway en route to Kings Bay to offload our deployment weapons and commence midshipman ops.

14 Years: USS MINNEAPOLIS SAINT PAUL (SSN 708), Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in decommissioning. Enjoying our time in Hawaii, but looking forward to moving back to the mainland to be closer to family and friends. Decom is scheduled to finish at the end of August, so the entire crew is negotiating with their detailers for orders to detach in September and report in October to their new duty stations.

Where will we be this time next year? I predict either Norfolk or the DC suburbs again. We're anxious to find out so we can get started on our PCS move logistics.

Monday Night Food and Fitness

Food

This week, in addition to some of our new staples - tortilla soup and chicken meatballs, LW also made one of my old favorites this week that she hadn't made in a while. It was from this Cooking Light recipe she found when we lived back in Monterey. If you don't like spicy food, don't be alarmed by the word "spicy" in the recipe title. It really isn't spicy (at least by my standards). It's a chicken rubbed with some spices and cinnamon and served with a relish made of diced onions, red peppers, basil, and balsamic vinegar. According to the Cooking Light nutrition info, it's 4 points per serving on WW (one chicken breast and 1/2 cup of relish).

One of my new favorite snacks is the Organic Beef Jerky that LW found at Costco. I love beef jerky, but most of the regular stuff has MSG in it. The organic stuff is really good!

Fitness

Tis the season once again when we see large groups of people mustering in PT gear near the big yellow line painted on the pavement to mark the PRT start point. We kicked off our first PRT this morning at 0630, and we're running it every day this week. I did mine this morning to get it out of the way. I did okay.

I need to pause here and say congrats to my good friend Loping Squid on his AWESOME PRT run time. (a) I've NEVER run the PRT that fast. (b) On my last PRT before I left shore duty, I set a personal record (PR) and ran it faster than I had as a midshipman, and I remember how AWESOME that felt. So I can relate to Loping Squid's feeling of accomplishment.

After I got back to my office this morning after the PRT, I was looking up my PRT score and got to wondering. Why is there a non-linear relationship between run time and score on the PRT? In order to improve your grade from a "Satisfactory" to a "Good," you only have to knock 15 seconds off your run time (14:23 to 14:08). Likewise, at the other end of the table, in order to improve your grade from "Excellent" to "Outstanding," you only have to knock 30 seconds off your run time (10:38 to 10:08). It's a lot harder in the middle of the table though. In order to improve your score from "Good" to "Excellent," you have to knock a FULL MINUTE off your run time (12:23 to 11:23).

So if I was either a borderline failure or a jack-rabbit leading the pack, then there would be incentive to try harder because 15 to 30 seconds will bump you up a grade. As a guy who typically scores in the "Good" category on the run, what incentive do I have to try and improve my run time? I got a "Good - Medium" this morning (just under 13:23). I'd have to knock a full minute off my time to get an extra 5 points and the distinction of a "Good - High", and another full minute off my time to get an "Excellent - Low."

You would think when the Navy went back and revised the PRT scoring table and divided the Satisfactory, Good, Excellent, and Outstanding grades into Low, Medium, and High sub-divisions, that they would have made the increments a little more achievable to provide incentive to improve.

Okay, I'm getting off my PRT soap box now.

More Fitness-Related Shopping

I have previously written about my quest for Under Armour running shorts. As much as I love the Escape II shorts I picked up, I decided to try something else out. For one thing, I still have a few nice pairs of cotton PT shorts that I would like to continue to use. More importantly, the Navy is about to release the all-new, officially sanctioned Navy PT Gear (see Bubblehead's post on that topic). We received a message that encourages people in leadership positions to get their official Navy PT Gear right away and set the example. Being one of those guys in a "leadership position," I suspect I'll be getting my official Navy PT Gear sooner rather than later and won't get to wear my nice Escape II UA shorts to Command PT anymore.

All that being said, I decided to try some UA HeatGear boxer jock shorts as something I can wear under my older cotton gym shorts or under the new Navy PT gear shorts. I really like them a lot and plan to buy a few more pairs. They provide the same anti-chafing comfort and support that I liked about the Escape II shorts.

When I go hiking, I want the extra pockets on my cargo shorts for my GPS receiver and cell phone (common, who can go hiking without a cell phone? :-) ), but they were never the most comfortable. However (comma) the UA boxer jock shorts work great with my cargo-shorts when I go hiking.

I don't understand UA's L, XL, XXL sizing system though. For both the Escape II shorts and the boxer jock shorts, I've had to try them on to figure out what size I really needed, and I took a different size for each type. My point: TRY THEM ON BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE STORE OR BUY MORE THAN ONE PAIR ONLINE.

Sub Ball

Wow, I haven't written anything new all week? Well, I did update the information on the sub ball posting, but no new blog posts.

LW's birthday was this week. In lieu of a birthday cake, I got her an Edible Bouquet, and it was a big hit.

This is the small size Berry Chocolate Bouquet with Dipped Bananas and Half-Dipped Daisies.

We had some friends in town visiting from the mainland and were doing touristy things with them mostly. Thursday we took them on the COMPACFLT Remembrance Tour.

Memorial Flowers Adrift in the Tears of the ARIZONA

LW took this great shot at the ARIZONA Memorial - oil from the ARIZONA mixed with flower blossoms from some wreath or memorial tribute. The tour guide said the wreck continues to leak something like 9 quarts of oil per day, and they call them "The Tears of the ARIZONA."

Here I am looking at the colorful tropical fish and coral on the starboard side of the ARIZONA.

Friday night we had a great farewell dinner for our visiting friends at KoKo's restaurant in the Hale Koa hotel. If you're in the military and looking for someplace to eat in Waikiki, I highly recommend KoKo's. The food is excellent and the prices are significantly lower than any of the other places you could try going on the beach in Waikiki. We almost forgot that they shoot fireworks from the beach in Waikiki on Friday nights. We were in the car driving toward home, but got to watch them from the car.

Saturday night, we had a great time at the Submarine Birthday Ball out at the Turtle Bay Resort. LW and I left the boys at home with Grammy around 2 p.m. to head up there to the very northern tip of the island, expecting to encounter some traffic along the North Shore.

It was pretty weird pulling out of the driveway with no little boys in the car with us. It was also sorta sad that the boys didn't seem disappointed we were leaving without them, but then again Grammy did promise them ice cream.

We did encounter some traffic on the North Shore, but we got to the hotel around 3 p.m. and had time for me to use the gym at the resort while LW tried to take a nap. We didn't want to go to the cocktail hour before the ball and start drinking on an empty stomach, so we had some fries and some banana cheesecake from the Palm Terrace restaurant in the lobby and it was AWESOME.

We had a pretty good turn-out at the ball. Most of our wardroom was there.

Mighty MSP Wardroom Plus Admiral & Mrs. Walsh

In case you aren't familiar with submarine birthday ball traditions, there is always a competition for the best table centerpiece. Our centerpiece theme was the MSP Mart. As the shipyard boat in decom, we have become the spare-parts source for every other 688 Class submarine in the fleet. We had the flashing blue light to draw everyone's attention to our big Blue Light Special sale. We had some valves and switches (with Danger Tags still attached), some nuts and bolts (with a QA tag attached), various tools, the sink from the XO's stateroom. I tried to bring the door to the XO's stateroom, but it was too heavy and too cumbersome. Our centerpiece ended up being too big to fit on one of our tables, so it ended up being a side-piece on a separate table in the corner instead.

MSP Mart Centerpiece Sidepiece

Yes, that's the commode from the CO/XO Head on the boat. The A-Gangers rigged it for the Enlisted ball the night before with a fan and some brown streamers. The fan is blowing the brown streamers up out of the ball valve, and if you pull the flushing handle, it sounds an air horn. One of the RC-Div (Reactor Controls Division) guys made the "Rx Low Fuel" alarm (Rx = abbreviation for Reactor - ours is very nearly "out of gas"), complete with the red flashing lights and alarm bell that went off when we flipped a switch in the back. (See it lit up in red in our wardroom photo up above). Being the environmentally-concerned people that we are, we thought we should recycle as much of the boat as possible, so we brought a jug of "Used Hydraulic Fluid" (Captain Morgan's), a sample bottle of "Controlled Pure Water" (Vodka), and "DI Water" (Gin) among other things.

It worked out really well for us considering the prices they were charging at the cash bar. Mixed drinks were $8.75 for a six-ounce glass with about 5 ounces of ice. For $3 at the bar I could get one third of a can of soda poured into a glass full of ice, so I decided to go up to the vending machine by our hotel room and got the entire can of soda for $1.50 (STILL an outrageous amount of money for a can of soda, but half as expensive for three times as much soda).

We won the "Hyper-Nuke Award" for our centerpiece.

I don't know which was funnier...

(A) The fact that the Chop thought he would find a date for the Sub Ball on Craigslist.

or

(B) The fact that there REALLY WERE listings for sub ball dates on Craigslist (both M4W and W4M).

Poor Chop though, his date backed out on him because she didn't realize it was the same night as some Earth Day concert going on down in Waikiki.

LW and I felt pretty old when we found out one of the JO's wives didn't know the words to the song 867-5309.

Of course, we had to have a self-portrait.

Of course, we had to have the traditional blunoz self-portrait at the ball. This one was actually taken by LW, but I was proud of her for upholding the tradition. :-) I couldn't have done a better job myself.

I drank a lot of water and took some motrin before going to bed last night. I felt fine this morning (hangover wise), but my arms and back are really sore. LW says it's from too much dancing, but I don't buy that. In spite of the fact the hotel "blinds" (if you could call them that) could not hold back the morning sunlight, LW and I enjoyed sleeping in until 8:30.

This was the view from our hotel room balcony this morning.

We had planned on relaxing by the pool this morning, but it was just way too windy. We had a light breakfast in the lobby and wandered around the hotel a bit. Then we got showered and checked out. We avoided North Shore traffic and drove home via the windward side.

We stopped to have lunch at the infamous Giovanni's Shrimp Truck, and it was really good stuff. The story about them in the Oahu Revealed book is pretty funny. It's hard to believe that little truck is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their menu is pretty simple. $12 gets you a plate with 12 shrimp and two scoops of white rice, and you choose between scampi (heavy garlic), spicy, or lemon-butter. LW and I shared one plate of the scampi, and it was really good. Note: You can get their hot sauce on the side to dip the shrimp in. I'm not sure I would want an entire PLATE of the shrimp drenched in that hot sauce.

I hope you all had a good weekend! I suppose I should go do something productive now.