Weekend Recap

Friday night

Friday for Family Movie Night, we broke our habit of getting our pizza from Boston's North End Pizza across the street and drove over to Pearl Ridge Mall to get pizza from CPK instead. We had a Santa Fe Chicken pizza that was really good.

Our movie selection for the evening was The Princess Bride. We had been talking about watching it for a couple of days, and I was pretty excited. Before we watched the movie, I kept saying things to ES like, "My name is Inego Montoya. You keeled my fadder. Prepare to die." and "Incontheivable!" ES thought I was crazy, looked at me like I had three heads and said, "What?!?!" The boys really enjoyed the movie, and now ES has been going around saying, "You keeled my fadder. Prepare to die." and "Incontheivable!"

I think given how well ES took to this movie and memorizing one-liner sound-bites from the movie, I may have to break out Monty Python and the Holy Grail next. Man, if I get ES quoting Monty Python, LW will go absolutely NUTS. :-)

Lazy Saturday

Saturday for me was one of those lazy days you need once in a while to just sit around and do nothing. In the morning, we happened upon Mr. Bean's Holiday on TV and got sucked into it. The boys and I really enjoyed it. None of us had watched any of Mr. Bean's stuff before. There wasn't a lot of dialog - just a lot of slapstick, physical type of comedy.

Then we watched the new episode of Battle 360 on the DVR. In case you haven't seen Battle 360 yet, here's a segment on YouTube:



We also played a good amount of LIJ.

LW was actually much more productive with her day, to include sneaking a car load of stuff off to Good Will (she has to do it in stealth mode so the boys won't throw a fit over the toys she takes).

Both our neighbors' husbands across the street were out of town and didn't feel like cooking, so we invited them to join us for dinner on the lanai. LW made up some awesome mini-cheesesteak sandwiches for dinner, some sort of frozen margarita concoction to drink, plus some downright sinful pots-de-creme from this PW recipe.

Mmmmm... Pots de creme
(We forgot the whipped cream though)

Sunday

My favorite song on the radio right now is Song of Hope by Robbie Seay Band (click the song title to give it a listen). I'm sad though, because it has been elevated it to that ultimately popular status where they play it like once an hour and I know I'm going to be sick of hearing it by the end of the day. As much as I love KLOVE, I wish they wouldn't do that (play good songs so repetitively that they run them into the ground and make you sick of them).

When we went to church, they started off with one of those songs that in all reality is a pretty good song, but the radio stations have overplayed it so much that it's just like scraping finger nails across a chalk board to me (Heaven by Salvador). Luckily, they made up for it though and played one of my favorite and NOT overplayed songs after the sermon - I Can Only Imagine by MercyMe.

El Mariachi Mexican restaurant

For lunch, we made our third attempt to find the Mexican restaurant in Kaneohe that one of my JO's recommended (oops, sorry, I mean DO's - we're not supposed to call them JO's anymore). The first two times, we tried to find it just by using the address in the GPS receiver and had no luck. Today we actually called the place and asked for directions. The lady on the phone explained to us that they were tucked back behind the Aloha Gas Station on Kam Highway, across the street from the bank. If you happen to go looking for this place, that's an important point to remember because there are two Aloha Gas Stations right across the street from each other, so you need to go behind the one ACROSS the street from the bank.

El Mariachi Mexican restaurant is a very nondescript little hole in the wall. The fact that all the tables were full in a place so hard to find is a pretty good sign their food is good though, eh?

Atmosphere: Once you get inside, you'll find about 8 tables crammed into a small place with some Mexican music playing softly in the background. Most hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurants share the same decor - paintings of Mexican countryside scenery, a Mexican flag, etc. This place had some of those typical wall-hangings you would expect, but added a coat of textured red paint and some faux-brick wainscoting for a nicer appearance. Plus, it was cleaner than your average hole-in-the-wall type of place.

Food: Although they didn't have my favorite mole poblano on the menu, they did have a good variety of other Mexican dishes that I love like carnitas, chili verde, and carne asada. LW had the carne asada burrito - I tried a bite and it was excellent. I had the carnitas and it was also superb. The meat was tender, flaking apart, and flavorful. The guacamole was the smooth consistency of the processed stuff you get at other Tex-Mex chain restaurants (i.e. not made from fresh avocados), but it was alright. The drinks are served from a fountain (as opposed to selling you cans of soda). While it wasn't the BEST Mexican food I've had on the island, it was certainly a very tasty meal that I enjoyed very much.

Service: When we got there, all the tables were full, but we only had to wait like 5 minutes for someone to finish and leave for them to clear off the table for us to sit. Have you ever played that addicting game Diner Dash on the internet? I felt like I was in a real live version of that game. There was one waitress serving all 8 tables, but I thought she did an excellent job. Given how small the place is, she was never far away from any of us and easy to get her attention. She was working her butt off, but she did a great job.

Lego Sculptures at the Mall

After lunch, LW went to get a pedicure with the neighbor ladies from across the street. I had wanted to take the boys for a hike, but it was drizzling rain off and on with some heavy black clouds looming overhead. I didn't want to get a mile out and have the heavens open up, dumping buckets on us and turning the trail to mud (not like that's ever happened to us before).

Instead, I took the boys to see the lego sculptures display at the mall.

The boys check-out the hanging-man.
That gray tower he's hanging from is
all made out of legos, too.

ES and J check out the Parthenon.

Man! How do I sign up for THAT job?!?! I wish someone would pay ME to sit around and make sculptures out of legos all day. I couldn't do what he does with the curves of human forms, but I could totally do the parthenon and the other balanced shapes. Maybe when the Navy is done with me we can retire to Legoland!

This afternoon, I tried to be at least a little bit productive. When we moved the furniture around last week (when we thought we were staying in Hawaii for shore duty), I took down all the pictures hanging on my "me wall" because we wanted to put the entertainment center along that wall. Now that we're NOT staying in Hawaii and we have company coming at the end of this week, LW made up a new honey-do list for me, and the first item was to rehang the pictures. Normally, I wouldn't mind so much, but the aluminum frames in these houses make hanging pictures a pain in the arse. At least I got that item crossed off the honey-do list.

I started to write about wine-tasting tonight, but I'm going to save that for another post. This one has gone on long enough. If you've actually made it this far and read all of my rambling above, then please leave a comment - I'd love to know WHY??? :-)

Weekend Recap

First and foremost, I hope all of the mothers who read my blog had a Happy Mother's Day. We're very blessed to have so many wonderful mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, aunts, and dear friends out there who contribute to the joy in our lives. Thanks for the sacrifices you each endure as mothers.

Second... well... I've got a smattering of things to touch on, so in no particular order of importance, here we go...

Welcome to the Neighborhood!

Naval Station Pearl Harbor has been in the process of tearing down all the old decrepit housing and replacing it with new, modern houses. We were lucky to get in one of the new places when we got here. For the first several months we've lived here, half of our housing development has been fenced off as a construction area as they tore down the old places and built up the new places.

Just in the last couple of weeks, they have taken down the fences to reveal the new houses and people have started moving in. ES's best friend from school, E, just moved in right down the street from us. I mean, standing on our front porch, turn your head left 80 degrees, and you're looking at E's front door. They've been inseparable ever since. They played all afternoon Friday after school. Saturday morning, ES went to get E at 10 a.m., and they played continuously until 5 p.m. when it was time for us to leave for dinner.

In any case, to E's family and my CO's family and my old shipmate KM's family and several fellow submariners who just moved in up the street: Welcome to the Neighborhood!

Family Movie Night

Friday night we got some pizza and watched Back to the Future III. The boys really liked it, although E had already seen it and gave away pretty much everything. They all still enjoyed it though. I'm not sure if we'll ever put in BttF II though - I seem to recall that one was kind of weird.

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Failed Mother's Day Shopping Attempt #2

I should probably add this one to the Stupid Kevin Trick files.

Saturday morning, I headed over to Hickam AFB to pick up the rest of LW's BC from Island Divers. I did some research on other scuba shops on the island and took my BC and regulator in for service at another shop (I'll write more of a review on them when I see some results).

Then I went to the NEX to get some lunch and pick up cards and a Mother's Day present for LW. I got to the food court and stood in line at Taco Bell. I got to the front of the line and was about to place my order when I reached for my back pocket to pull out my wallet... and it wasn't there. I forgot it at home. DOH!!! Do not pass go. Do not collect $200 buy lunch much less a card or gift for LW. Go directly to jail home. That was extremely frustrating.

Grand Central Station

Saturday was chaos at our house. I think every kid on the street was in and out of our house at some point in time. At one point in the afternoon, my ears popped from the suction created when all the kids at once went galloping out the front door. It was as if there were some mysterious siren singing a magical song that lured them all out to the street.

You see, the housing management company here periodically pays for an ice cream truck to drive through our housing community and hand out free ice cream. This is a HUGE big deal with our kids. They really miss the regular visits of the ice cream truck down our street in Virginia. We frequently said "no" back then because (a) it cost money, and (b) they came fairly frequently. It's pretty hard to say "no" when it's FREE though. They sent out a flyer to warn us the day was coming, so there was great anticipation around our house on Saturday waiting for the ice cream truck to come.

Free Ice Cream!

Mmmm! Sponge Bob Popsicle!

You know your kids are filthy and in need of a bath when... you kiss your son on the cheek, and afterwards your lips taste salty from the sweat and grime of them playing outside all day. The bath water Saturday night was DISGUSTINGLY dirty.

When I went to get ES from E's house so we could go to dinner at 5 p.m., he was very upset. I had to carry ES from E's house back to our house to get in the car. Once I explained to him we were going to dinner at IHOP with his other best friend M from across the street, then he practically leaped in the car.

Mother's Day Recap

Mother's Day didn't actually start out very well for us. First, ES was up at 1:30 in the morning saying he felt sick to his stomach and thought he was gonna spew chunks. Of course, I can sleep through a nuclear detonation, so I didn't wake up to ES's episode until I heard the toilet flush and noticed LW was not in bed. (By the way, ES was fine and never got sick. He eventually went back to sleep).

Hooray for ES who for ONCE woke up, got dressed, and came downstairs without waking ANYBODY up. Unfortunately, some moron at a retail business on the east coast who didn't realize area code 808 was in Hawaii called our house at 7 a.m. I SPRUNG out of bed to get the phone and silence it before it woke up LW.

As soon as YB woke up and came downstairs, we got dressed and loaded up in the car. We went to Leonard's to get LW some malasadas for breakfast, stopped at Long's Drug store to pick up some flowers and a couple of Mother's Day cards (since my previous attempts on Thursday night and Saturday morning were thwarted), and stopped at Starbucks to get LW a caramel macchiato to go with her malasadas. I was very happy to discover when we returned home that she was still in bed upstairs. She had suggested I could take the boys out for malasadas in the morning, but I think she was pleasantly surprised with the Starbucks, cards, and flowers.

11:11 Rocks!

I had previously written about the concession we made in selecting FPC as our church home here in Hawaii. We missed the contemporary music we had become accustomed to in our previous two churches / previous two duty stations, but we really liked Pastor Dan Chun's sermons, and ES really liked going to the Sunday school there.

Good news! FPC has changed their third Sunday morning service. The new third service starts at... you guessed it - 11:11. It's done with the same sermon from Pastor Dan as the earlier two services, but the worship service is done with all contemporary music. This morning I already knew the tune of EVERY song they played during our worship service, and it was AWESOME! The band did a great job, and I really enjoyed it. It was pretty weird seeing Pastor Dan wearing jeans though. :-)

Zia's for Lunch

After church, we took LW to Zia's for lunch. It was the busiest we've ever seen it there. Our waiter understood he was in over his head and was apologetic for the slow service. This was the first time we've sat out on the porch though, and it was pretty noisy - especially with all the big chopper Harley's out for a Sunday ride. In spite of the slow service and the noise, the food was excellent as usual. I decided to try something new today and had the Garlic Fish Sandwich (from the menu: "sautéed in a white wine butter garlic sauce with our ZIA’S SPICE on garlic bread with lettuce, tomato, and onions"). I also tried the clam chowder, but it was a little heavy on the rosemary.

Highlander Test Drive

We've been discussing our options for car shipping and buying when we move back to the mainland. I keep hoping the government is going to sign into law the proposal to allow us to ship two cars instead of just one. In the meantime, the Navy will only pay to ship one car back. Options we're considering:

Option A) Sell my Camry here and ship LW's MDX back to the mainland. The MDX has a navigation system in it that doesn't work in Hawaii, so it's more useful to us back on the mainland. I wanted a navigation system in my Camry, but again - they don't sell them with navigation systems here. That just makes no sense to me. Since I didn't get what I really wanted, we could sell the Camry here and get me what I really wanted when we get back to the mainland (i.e. a new Camry WITH a navigation system). Still, I can use my handheld GPS for car navigation on the dash board of the Camry.

Option B) Sell LW's MDX here and ship my Camry back to the mainland. It's LW's turn to get a new car (we've alternated upgrading cars back and forth every couple of years). It just so happens there is a shortage and high demand for USED Acura's on the island, and we've received offers from the local Acura dealers to sell our MDX to them. Looking on Edmunds.com, it looks like we can get $2k more for the MDX here in Hawaii than we can back in Virginia, even though the navigation system is totally useless here.

One of the cars we have considered upgrading to is the Toyota Highlander Hybrid. We really love the Camry Hybrid, and we've heard good things about the Highlander Hybrid. It just so happens the Toyota dealer where we got the Camry is right across the street from Zia's. Over lunch we got to talking about it and decided to stop by the Toyota dealer for a test drive.

The 2008 Toyota Highlander Hybrid is REALLY nice!!! We liked it a lot. One of the big selling points of the MDX for us was that it had a third row of seats without being ginormously huge. The Highlander has that AND it's a HYBRID. The ONE thing that would make it the hands-down winner for us would be if they put seat memory in. It's got enough of the other things we really want like such as the rear-view camera and whatnot that we might sacrifice the seat memory and go for it.

I think if I had to make the decision right this moment, then I would go with Option B - keep my Camry and sell the MDX here where they're offering $2k more for it, then buy a Highlander when we get back to the mainland to replace the MDX.

I think the next step is we have to find out where exactly we're going next for shore duty. Stay tuned...

Things we missed on vacation...

Things we missed while we were on vacation... (in no particular order of importance).

- KLOVE. Riding in the car yesterday, it was so refreshing to have KLOVE on the radio again. One of the first songs I heard in the car on the way to go scuba diving was Mercy Me "Here with Me." KLOVE was on a roll yesterday and just kept playing one song after another that made me want to turn the volume up on my radio.

- Spicy toothpaste. Normally, at home, YB uses a training toothpaste and ES uses regular toothpaste. While we were on vacation, we just used ES's tube of regular toothpaste. YB called it the "spicy toothpaste" and took a big slurp of water after each brush past his teeth. Wednesday night getting the boys ready for bed, YB was SO excited to have HIS toothpaste back and not use the "spicy toothpaste" anymore.

- Traffic on H-1 and Kam Highway. Oh wait... no, I didn't miss that. In fact, I totally forgot about it and didn't take it into consideration at all when buying our plane tickets home. In other words, I didn't think about the fact that if our plane landed at 4:30, then it was going to take us like an hour to drive home in the rush hour traffic.

- The Neighborhood Kids. Man... when we drove down our street, it was like a ghost town. I half expected to see a tumble-weed go barreling across our driveway as we pulled up to our house. Human reflexes could not push the buttons on a stopwatch fast enough to measure the time in between me putting the car in park and the doors flying open and the boys' feet hitting the ground. They ran across the street and started ringing the doorbells. It was as if there had been some sort of large-scale game of hide-n-go-seek, and they just announced "olly-olly-oxen-free" on a bull-horn. The kids came out of the woodwork. Within moments our front yards were total chaos with screaming playing children running in and out of our house and the house across the street.

Aside: I've reached a new phase in life. I have un-learned the conditioned response of going to the door when the doorbell rings. I was telling LW the other day that I think it would be interesting to hook up a monitoring device that would measure how often and how many times per day our doorbell rings. I doubt it's anything less than a dozen times a day, and it's never for me or LW. LW chastises me for not even getting out of my chair when the doorbell rings. I just figure why bother? We live in Navy housing with a gate guard controlling access (well... as long as you smile and wave and look like you belong , you're good to go, right?). On those rare occasions it's not for the boys, then they tell us. Then I'll get off my butt and go to the door.

Anyway, returning to my original line of thought...

- DVR. If we ever go on a trip longer than a few days, we definitely need to bring DVD's of the boys' favorite shows off the DVR. They're so used to just picking up the remote control and turning on their favorite shows whenever they want. Every time we walked into our hotel room on vacation, they would turn the TV on and say, "I want to watch ________" and we would have to explain to them that ________ wasn't ON at that particular day and time. They just didn't get that. "Why noooooot? Just use the remote!"

- Now LW and I are catching up on our favorite shows that recorded while we were gone. LW was just watching Dancing with the Stars and I had a total flashback...

Teleportation Song: Kylie Minogue "Can't Get You Out of My Head." Suddenly, I'm back on deployment in Westpac, in a dance club in Brisbane, Australia. Most of the wardroom and chiefs' quarters are there and wearing our summer whites because we were invited out to this welcome to Australia social function. Some gorgeous blond Australian girl got the Eng and I to make fools of ourselves dancing up on one of those raised platforms in the middle of the dance floor. (We were just a novelty to draw attention to her - her boyfriend stayed close by watching us like hawks). I think the rest of the town heard all the U.S. Navy guys were going to THIS dance club and decided to join us. It was PACKED. I don't think any of us could have bought a drink that night. It was like we were celebrities!

- Crocs. Another one bites the dust... We were in one of the souvenir shops in Maui and saw these cute little decorative pins that are designed to poke into the holes of Crocs. The boys thought they were really cool and wanted to get some. Keep in mind at this point only YB had Crocs. So after we got back home, LW now had to take ES to get his very own pair of Crocs so that he could attach his new decorative pins to them. Take a wild guess what color Crocs ES picked out. Those of you who know him know that his favorite colors are yellow and orange.

Here he is in his new outfit (he wasn't cooperating with my requests for him to get dressed until I asked if he wanted to wear his new shirt from Maui).

ES in his new Maui T-shirt and Crocs.

This is the gecko pin ES chose for his Crocs.
(He picked out a yellow gecko of course...)

p.s. I went back and added a few photos to my last post from one of the other guys that went scuba diving with us yesterday.

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.

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

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).

Monday Night Odds & Ends

There are a bunch of things on my mind that I want to write about, so bear with me. I've divided them up into six topics with bold dividers between topics below.

Topic #1: Two of restaurant reviews...

Ruby Tuesday: This afternoon we went to the BX at Hickam AFB and to the post office to mail some Christmas packages to family and friends. As we left Hickam, it looked like the traffic heading back home was pretty horrendous, so we decided to stop at Ruby Tuesday for dinner on the way home. I foolishly thought that the phrase "turkey burger" implied "healthy alternative." OMG... Quick flashback to my explanation that I have a 35 point per day food allowance with WW, and I typically leave myself around 13 points for dinner. Okay, fast forward to dinner tonight where I had that turkey burger. Yyyyyyyeah...

25 points!!!
(just for the burger)

So I went a WEE bit over my food allowance today. Oh, that was a DARN good tasting burger though! Sure glad I did my weekly weigh-in THIS morning instead of TOMORROW morning. Looking at the nutrition information on their website though, I don't think I'll ever eat anything except the salad bar at Ruby Tuesday.

Bravo's: I meant to put in a plug for one of our favorite restaurants on the island. I absolutely LOVE Bravo's. It's an Italian place on Kam Highway just a smidge west of the Pearl Ridge Shopping Center (as you're driving away from the Naval Station, it's on the right hand side right after Pearl Ridge and that little watercres farm). First off, they bring you these little garlic bread rolls that are AWESOME. When the waitress puts that basket of garlic bread rolls in front of me, I just can't control myself and I start scarfing them down as if I hadn't been fed in weeks. Then, you can choose just about any type of pasta you want with just about any type of sauce you want. We went there Friday and I had the capellini with pesto sauce. I LOVE pesto sauce! Anyway, if you want to give it a try, I recommend going like right at 5 p.m. for dinner, because by 5:30 p.m. there will be a line of people waiting for a table.

Topic #2: JAG Lesson Du Jour.

Lessons in Legal Terminology: I learned something new today. Do you know the difference between assault and battery? I didn't. It turns out if you make some sort of a threatening gesture like raising your hand to hit someone, then that's assault (just the threat). IF, after losing a game of pool a Sailor mouths off to the winners of the game and one of said winners punches said Sailor in the nose, then THAT is actually battery because he made "unlawful physical contact." No specific reason for this JAG lesson of the day, just thought you might be curious.

Topic #3: More Poking Fun at My Son's School

As I have mentioned before, ES goes to a Catholic school. It continues to amuse me how the school administration's policies and practices just seem inconsistent with Christianity.

The first of my latest two observations has to do with the school's winter pageant. In today's world of everyone trying to be politically correct and say "happy holidays" so as not to offend any non-Christians, you would think the ONE place you'd find a "CHRISTMAS" festival or pageant would be at a CHRISTIAN school. It just boggles my mind.

The second thing that struck me as odd was the First Grade Idol competition (a talent show like American Idol). Um... my memory is a little fuzzy on this, but wasn't there something in the Bible about "thou shalt not worship false idols"? Okay, okay, so this is not in the same context, but I still thought it was kind of funny.

Topic #4: Bedtime Prayers

Normally before we say bedtime prayers with the boys, we ask them what their favorite part about the day was and say thanks for those things during the prayer. I don't know why I didn't try this before, but tonight I tried something new. I let ES and YS each have a turn to say things they were thankful for during the prayer. Here's what they each prayed for on our first attempt at them contributing to bedtime prayers (listed in the order they prayed for them):

ES:
First Grade Idol
Otis (his favorite stuffed animal dog that has been missing for a while now)
Jesus
Doggies

YS:
"My teachers" - "Miss Tala" and "the other one"
Fishies
Horsies
Baby Jesus
Light Sabers

Topic #5: Shopping

Thanks to those of you who checked the mainland stores for the red light saber ES wanted for Christmas. As LW mentioned in a comment to my previous post, we found the rare variety of red light saber at the Hickam AFB Base Exchange tonight. Hooray!

Topic #6: KLOVE is BACK!

KLOVE has been off the air here in Hawaii for a couple of weeks now since a big storm knocked down a bunch of power lines and trees and made a mess of things. Today while I was at work, I got a phone call from LW all excited because she turned on the radio just to check, and KLOVE was BACK! Hooray!

Step 1: Open MouthStep 2: Insert Foot

OMG. I have an announcement to make.

I... am an idiot.

I just made myself look like a huge horse's patootie. This definitely would have been deserving of one of those "Stupid Kevin Tricks" emails I used to send out to family and friends to highlight what a colossal moron I can be at times. Hang on, and I'll get to that part of the story in a minute...

So tonight was our wardroom Christmas party at our CO's house. It was a holiday martini themed party with a gift exchange, so we got a babysitter. Had a great time at the party. The CO set up two activities to start. First there was a worksheet of riddles for Hawaiian sayings. There were like 28 to guess, and LW and I got 16 right. The winners got 20 right and won some Godiva-chocolate covered pretzels. Then there was a list of Christmas song titles that had been swapped out with synonyms, and you had to guess the Christmas song titles (like "Quadruped with Crimson Proboscis" for "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.") There's a description of the game and a list of these alternative carol titles here.

After the two ice-breaker activities and a bunch of AWESOME food, we did the gift exchange.

Aside: I can't imagine where YS learned this new word in his vocabulary. We were out doing some Christmas shopping yesterday, and I was surprised to hear my 3-year old YS use the word "AWESOME" in two sentences in a row. We were in the toy aisle looking at attack helicopters and Star Wars toys. It was the first time I had heard him use the word, and he said it with such emphasis... it just sounded really familiar... like I was listening to a tape recording of myself even. Odd. Anyway, back to the story...

The gift exchange was one of these things were everyone drew a number. #1 got to pick a present out and unwrap it. #2 could either steal #1's gift, or pick a new present out to unwrap. #3 could steal either #1 or #2's gift, or open a new one, and so on. If you had a gift stolen from you, then you got to pick another gift - either a new wrapped one or you could steel one, but not the one that just got stolen from you. After a gift got stolen 3 times, then it was "dead" and could not be stolen anymore.

The hottest gifts that got stolen a couple of times were:

• Starbucks gift card
• Bottle of wine with some submarine wine glass markers (little ID tags to keep track of whose glass is whose)
• A pair of colorful champagne flutes
• Wood dolphin serving dish
• Best Buy gift card

The CO said next time he does this, he's going to make a new rule with regard to husband-wife teaming on stealing things. There were a few interesting interchanges that went down. The first one was when the Eng got the wine bottle with the submarine wine glass tags. When it came to Dave's turn, Dave stole the gift from the Eng. When it came to the Eng's wife's turn, she stole the gift from Dave. Then Dave's wife started talking about how she knew what she was going to steal when it came to her turn. Well, then someone stole the Eng's next gift after that (I forget which one it was), so the Eng had to pick again. Then he and his wife came to the realization that if he stole the wine gift from his wife, then it would have changed hands 3 times and could not be stolen anymore. So he "stole" the wine from his wife and it was "dead" and they got to keep it.

Then the CO's wife got a Best Buy gift card. You don't have to read many of my blog entries to figure out that I love Best Buy. So it came to my turn, and I stole the Best Buy gift card. The CO wasn't very happy (his wife would never do anything with it, so in essence it would be his if she had kept it). I was very happy and didn't think anybody else would want it besides the CO. Low and behold, one of the JO's wives stole it from me. So I had to pick out another gift, and I couldn't steal the gift that had just been stolen from me. Following in the Eng and his wife's footsteps, I stole the coffee and biscotti gift from my LW, and my LW then stole the Best Buy gift card back for me. (Insert sinister evil naughty laugh here - AH-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaa!). I think if we were to do it again, it would be a good idea to add a rule that you can't steal from your spouse.

Like I said, we had a great time at the party and came home. It was very dark and raining off-and-on, so I offered to give our new babysitter a ride home because she lives on the opposite side of our housing area from us several blocks away. We pulled out of the driveway, and I was being blinded by our neighbors' Christmas lights and decorations across the street from our house. LW and I had recently discussed how there's always someone on the block who feels the need to go over-the-top on decorating for the holidays. So I made a joking comment to our babysitter along the same lines of how there's always gotta be someone on the block who feels the need to overdo the Christmas lights. (I'm sure some of you already see where this is going...). So we drive on over to the other side of housing. The street she lives on had a lot of houses with NO lights, and one or two houses with a simple string of lights along the gutter...

and then there was this one house that really stood out from the rest...

I started developing this sinking feeling in my stomach...

I kept waiting for her to say, "This house right here," but we kept progressing down the street closer and closer to the house that was lit-up like Vegas...

I felt like everything slowed down to slow-motion and I started muttering to myself in my head, "Self, no... no... no no no no no... NOOOOOOO!"

Yep, you got it Toyota. We got up there toward the end of the street and I gulped and asked which house, and she pointed and said, "The one with the lights." OMG how humiliating. I feel like SUCH an idiot. New Balance shoes are great for running, but they aren't very tasty.

On a positive note though, this marks another milestone this PCS move. Each time we go to a new duty station, it's a challenge to find a good babysitter you know and trust and that the boys like. Our babysitter tonight seemed really nice and seemed like she did a good job (we'll get the after-action report from the boys when they wake up in the morning). If she'll ever forgive me for my crass comment about obnoxious Christmas lights, then it will be nice to have her back so LW and I can go out on occasion sans little boys.

Shifting topics - I miss KLOVE. I listened to KLOVE all the time in my car up through last Tuesday. Unfortunately, the storm that knocked down a lot of trees and power lines and left my poor LW stuck at home with the kids without any electrical power on Wednesday also did something catastrophic to KLOVE. The power came back, but KLOVE never did. I wonder what happened to the transmitter and if there's anything we can do to help. I wrote them an email to ask.

Weekend Recap and a few odds and ends

I'm writing my recap of the weekend and a smattering of other random topics on Monday night since the storms yesterday kept causing power surges and kept knocking out our internet service.

Friday afternoon I felt like I saw Elvis. There I was, driving along near the Makalapa gate when I saw a guy walking along in khakis. He has a very distinctive walk, and I said to myself, "Self... could that be Wild Bill?" Bill was a sub school classmate of mine last year. I was sure he was stationed on a boomer out of Bangor, so I figured there was no way he was walking down the street here in Pearl Harbor. But as I got closer, I said, "Self, it IS! It IS Wild Bill!" Bill is a true steely-eyed killer of the deep - a true submarine warrior (sorry, can't tell ya about it). I felt really blessed to have Bill in my group at sub school. He's one of those guys that just doesn't get pissed off. No matter what happens, he rolls with the punches and gets the job done - and he does so without being a jerk about it, either. That's a challenging balance I have seen few submarine officers master. (As for me, I think I tend to tip the scales toward the "jerk" side and don't do such a good job of rolling with the punches).

Wild Bill and Rich at AUTEC in Nov '06.

Anyway, I was right, Bill really is on a boomer out of Bangor. Poor Bill cracked a tooth and had to be BSP'ed off here in Pearl to go to the dentist. When I saw him there on the street, he hadn't been off the boat for two hours yet and was wondering to himself, "Self, I wonder who I might run into here during my brief visit to Pearl Harbor?" I managed to go out and grab a cup of coffee with Bill last night before he went to rejoin his boat this morning. It was great to see him and swap some sea stories.

- Friday night, we went over to the Ala Moana center so LW could return some stuff and look for a glass pitcher at Sears, and so we could get some dinner at Islands. I will forever be in debt to my college roommate, Ryan, for introducing me to Islands. Back then, we would go to Islands whenever we went to visit his parents around Hermosa Beach or Santa Monica. Since then, Islands has spread across southern California, and we went there frequently during my previous sea tour in San Diego. Now we've been blessed with an Islands here in Honolulu - close enough we can go every once in a while for a little indulgence, but far enough that we don't go often. Islands serves absolutely awesome, enormous burgers and tacos. The one here in Honolulu has great service, too. (Not to imply that other Islands have lousy service, just expressing my pleasure with the service here).

- Family Movie marathon. We frequently like to have a Family Movie Night and rent some movie to watch together as a family. It was awesome in our home theater back in Virginia. But it's not the big screen that matters, it's the spending time together as a family, right? So since it was going to pour rain all weekend and we had two coupons for Blockbuster that were going to expire, we went for two movies instead of one.

First we watched Transformers. That was, wait for it... legendary. Okay, the plot was a little on the weak side, but better than I expected, and the special effects and the action were just amazing. Great movie - highly recommend it! That's one we're going to buy because the boys and I will watch it over and over and over again.

Second up, we watched Surf's Up. It was okay. It was done as sort of a spoof on reality-TV shows, like interviewing the main character and having him tell the story of what happened, interspersed with video clips of what happened. It was kind of funny the way they made fun of reality-TV, but that humor went over the boys' heads. I think the boys lost interest in it before the end. Probably won't watch that one again.

- Speaking of reality TV, a favorite show of both LW and mine just started up again - The Amazing Race. Unfortunately, with all the problems of power surges and satellite reception coming in and out, the DVR missed the first half of the show, so we missed the introduction of who the contestants are this time around. Luckily the website has lots of good info so we can catch up. I always like watching the polls on the website week by week of who the viewers think are going to win the race. I think it'd be way cool to go on the Amazing Race someday.

- Thanks to our friend Corey for giving us a heads up! There's a new Lego Star Wars video game coming out this week!
I really like Lego Star Wars. It's very simple to control and very forgiving of mistakes, so it's great for small children to be able to actually play the game. It's not overly gruesome or violent (when you "kill" the bad guys, they break up into Lego pieces - no blood and gore). Two people can play at the same time, which sometimes helps alleviate fighting over the XBox (except when ES wants to go one direction and YS wants to go another direction - your characters have to stay together on the screen). Plus, there's a lot of adult humor written into how they tell the story of Star Wars with these mini skits that are actually pretty funny. I found this video that shows there's an Indiana Jones character you can use in the new game - complete with a bull whip and pistol.

- I wanted to change the song on my blog to my favorite new song on KLOVE, but I can't find it on the project playlist website. If you go to Phil Wickham's myspace page though, his song "After Your Heart" is the first song that starts playing in the background. You can also check it out on the KLOVE top-songs list. I really liked his comment on his myspace page, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

- BTW, have I mentioned how much I appreciate my absolutely awesome wife? She puts up with so much. She's "on the job" as a busy mom taking care of me and our boys 24/7. I know she gets tired of the never-ending piles of laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, cooking, and playing taxi driver to take the boys to school and swimming lessons and piano lessons and everywhere else. I know it seems like she's got a thankless job, but I really appreciate everything she does for me and the boys. You're awesome, Sweetie!