They grow up so fast

Three things to share with you tonight.

First off, I'm not normally very impressed by photos taken with cell phones. However, I really liked this picture my wife took of our eldest son with her cell, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Does the apple fall far from the tree?

Second, ES had an assignment. "Have you ever thought about what the Thanksgiving turkey might say if someone asked him how he felt about being on the Thanksgiving menu? If the turkey had the chance to explain why he SHOULDN'T be on the menu, what would he say? You will write a persuasive paragraph as the turkey to convince others NOT to eat you for Thanksgiving dinner."

Here's what he wrote (click on image for larger view):


In case you can't decipher it, he wrote:

I am not a tukey. I am realy just a rabbit in a turkey coustume. I would not taste good at all because my coustume is made out of coton and you know that coton does not tast good! I am wearing a turkey coustume becase the powtan aren't hunting turkey any more. Instead they are hunting more rabb-its so all the rabbits are dressing up like turkeys.

I don't know about you, but I thought that was pretty darn creative.

Oh, as for the "powtan" reference in the paragraph, they are studying Native Americans. They recently had to submit a project with a sort of 3 sheet presenation on a tribe of their choice. ES chose to do his on the Navajos since we just learned about them while driving through the Four Corners area. He wrote one page about the Navajo code-talkers in WWII, one page about their homes (the "hoogans" like we saw in Arizona), and he wrote one page on how they used steam to take baths. His teacher said his project was the best in his class!

Finally, one of my favorite blogs that I like to read is MetroDad. He's a very talented and funny story teller. Today he posted his daughter's letter to Santa. The bottom line is pretty funny - go check it out!

Not so ugly anymore

I'm amazed at how quickly the baby bird in the hanging basket on our front porch is growing. I wish I had taken a picture of the baby last weekend to show you the changes.

Toward the end of last week when I took a peek, the baby bird was downright UGLY. It was transitioning from the skin-and-bones creature pictured in my previous post into something like a porcupine-bird with these little stubs of feathers beginning to grow.

Yesterday though, I caught a glimpse of the baby sitting up in the nest and watching her mom fly back and forth around the nest. The baby is actually really cute now with actual feathers. I grabbed LW's zoom lens and the step stool and tried to take a photo from a distance over by the southwest corner of the house. Even though I wasn't standing anywhere NEAR the nest, both the mamma and the daddy bird seemed to know what I was up to and were NOT happy with me. They took up guard positions on either corner of the roof and berated me with a continual angry string of chirping.

Mamma Bird on the southeast corner watching me "like a hawk." I focused the camera on the bird silhouetted against the white rain gutter in the background. The nest is in the hanging white basket in the foreground.

This was the Daddy Bird that was standing on the southwest corner very close to my head and angrily chirping at me. He sure looks intimidating with his feathers all puffed out like that, doesn't he? I don't know about you, but I'M scared (sarcasm). I'm guessing he's the Daddy because he's got bright red on his fanny to draw the attention of predators and lure them away from the nest. Looking at our Hawaiian birds recognition guide, I think this is a red vented bulbul (Pycnonotus cafer).

When I tried sneaking out the front door to take the picture, the Daddy quickly took up a new position on top of the flagpole to keep an eye on me.

Tonight though, I got another glimpse of the baby looking around outside the nest and checking things out. The mamma and daddy birds must have been off fetching dinner, so I managed to get a picture of the baby tonight.

It's the Baby!
(with feathers this time)

Not the Best Day Diving

Spotted Puffer

Besides the spotted eel photo I posted ealier,
this was my second favorite photo of the day.

Quick Aside: If you would like to see all the photos I took from today's dive trip, click here. (51 total photos in this shutterfly photo album)

An old shipmate and friend of mine came into town this weekend. He wanted to go diving on the Corsair on Sunday morning, so I started calling around the dive charters. First I called Dive Oahu, since they were the guys I dove with last time. They were busy with a class though. Next, I called Island Divers, because they run the scuba shop on Hickam AFB. They said they had spots available on the Sunday morning boat, and they would try going to the Corsair if conditions permitted. If not, we'd dive somewhere else.

Check-in time was 0800 at their dive shop in Hawaii Kai. According to their website, they'll pick you up from your hotel in Waikiki at 0700. Right as we pulled up to the dive shop and got out of the car about 0745, some guy was yelling into the shop about he was leaving to go pick up the others from Waikiki and he'd be back. I said to myself, "Self, he seems to be running a little late if those people are going on our dive boat this morning." But I figured they knew what they were doing. They're professionals, right? This is what they do for a living.

We went inside the dive shop and signed the standard liability waiver forms. My regulator had been squeaking on my last dive, and I need to take in for maintenance, so I planned on taking a rental regulator. I asked the lady behind the counter who I should see to check out a regulator. She looked at me like I had three heads and replied in a very curt tone, "We don't normally give out rental gear to CLUB dives."

Dumbfounded, I said, "What club? I'm not in any club." She was stupified and didn't understand why I was on this boat if I'm not in the club. I said, "I'm not a member of any club and I have no idea what you're talking about. I just signed up to pay $XX to go on this boat dive." She said, "Oh..." and thought about it for a minute. She asked for my name and looked me up in her computer. She saw in the computer that I had turned in a regulator for service a few weeks ago. That was actually LW's regulator, but she assumed it was mine and continuing her anti-customer-service attitude asked what was wrong with "my" regulator that just got serviced. I explained that was my wife's regulator and that mine was squeaking last time and needed service. She said, oh, yours will be FINE! I didn't feel like arguing with her and figured they would have a spare on board in case of any problems. (Do you see where this is going? For those of you non-literary types, that is called "foreshadowing.")

Next, one of the employees hollers out that we should start loading our gear on the boat. They didn't give us any sort of brief before putting our gear on board. Just, go ahead and load your gear on the boat and we'll get going. The result was total chaos. Everyone was stumbling over each other and trying to figure out whose tank was whose in the mix of air tanks and NITROX tanks. There were several rounds of musical-tanks as people switched from one side and one setup station to another. Rich, Greg, and I grabbed three tanks on the starboard side and got our BC's and regulators set up.

I had my own weights, but Rich and Greg needed to use the dive shop's weights. There was a bin with a whole bunch of weights and belts on the deck. Since the dive shop staff had provided no guidance prior to getting on board other than, "load yer gear and we'll get movin," Rich and Greg started to pull out weights and belts and tried setting up weight belts. One of the dive masters spotted them doing this and got all annoyed with them for "messing up the system" and if they could just hold their horses, then he would explain everything to the group. Oh... Okay. We're happy to wait if that's what you want us to do, but our last guidance was to load up and get our stuff ready.

The crew stopped everyone from setting up their gear to give a safety brief. One guy started the brief at the forward end of the boat, then another guy at the aft end of the boat interrupted him and started over giving the safety brief from scratch. Not everybody was there - a couple of girls were up flirting with some guy strumming a guitar in front of the shop. The people actually on the boat didn't listen to the safety brief and kept talking, and the dive master didn't tell them to be quiet or listen up.

Oh, and come to find out, that guy who got in the van and took off as we were arriving was actually the captain of the boat. He was off somewhere in a van picking up more divers, so those people that are getting picked up didn't get the safety brief either.

Then dive master at the aft end of the boat asked for everyone's attention and started briefing the dives. (Corsair wasn't even in consideration for today's dive.) He was practically done giving the brief for the first dive site when another crew member clued in on what he was telling everyone and said no, we aren't going there today. They started arguing over what dive sites we're going to. The dive master who had started the brief didn't put up much of a fight and said okay, I guess we're going to this other place instead, and commenced giving us the dive brief for THAT site.

About 0900, some of the "club" members sitting on the port side started complaining about how late we were. They said we should have already been in the water, but we were still waiting for the captain to come back with the other divers he was picking up in Waikiki.

Now, for LW's planning purposes, I had referred to the dive shop's website that said we should be back by around noon (they have an afternoon charter to do afterall). The captain finally returned and started up the engine while the last couple of people set up their gear. We got to talking with one of them. He said he was in town for the weekend and he had rode with the same dive boat the day before. He was supposed to give some presentation at a conference at 3 p.m., and the dive shop staff told him they'd be back by 11:30 or "12 at the latest." They didn't get back until 2:30! Yikes.

We headed out to sea, and it was rough. It wasn't very windy, but there was a good 4 foot south swell that heavily rocked the boat. In the end I think 4 people ended up spewing their breakfasts over the side to feed the fish. I was feeling a little queasy to my stomach and just rested with my eyes shut.

The first dive site was a barge at 90 feet. There was a heavy current going in the direction from Diamond Head toward Koko Head. As soon as we jumped in the water, we had to grab the current line dragging in the water behind the boat or else float off to distant lands.

As soon as I jumped in, my octopus (back-up regulator) went kaput and started gushing air. I tried to no avail to stop it. I ended up having to climb back up onto the boat and have them trade out my regulator for their spare. Their spare was a piece of junk with broken mouth pieces that I had a hard time keeping in my mouth.

Other equipment problems of note were the tank valve was broken on one of Rich's tanks, and the batteries were dead in one of the rental dive computers someone else was using.

I got back in the water and we proceeded down to the barge. The current was so strong that kicking our fins was almost useless. We had to pull ourselves down to the barge using the mooring line. Once we got on the bottom, the current wasn't as bad, but still noticable. I started the dive with only 2400 pounds in my tank (full is 3000 pounds) because of the problem with my regulator free-flowing.

It ended up being a pretty quick dive. We did one lap around the outside of the wreck and then swam once through the middle before we headed up the mooring line back to the dive boat.

It was miserably rough on the surface. While others were barfing their brains out over the side, I sat quietly and tried to doze and wish I was back on shore.

Thank goodness, the captain decided it was too rough there and took us in to a drift dive along the China Wall. The second dive was actually really nice. I was able to go with a full tank of air this time. I saw a lot of fish and several moray eels (note my picture du jour). Visibility was pretty good, but not fantastic. Water temperature was in the mid-70's and I was fine in my 2.5mm shorty wetsuit.

Blunoz diving along the China Wall

Heading Back at the end of Dive 2 on the China Wall

By the time we finally made it back to the dock, it was like 1:30 p.m. and all the people who had signed up for the afternoon charter were sitting around complaining about how late we were coming back.

So, while the second dive was nice, the lack of organization, inability to keep a schedule, equipment faults, and poor customer service led me to give Island Divers a thumbs-down. I won't be going out with them again.

Photo du Jour

Okay, I have a lot more to write about and more pictures to post later, but I was really excited about this one picture I got on the China Wall off of Hawaii Kai today. I wanted to share it with you all before I get cleaned up for dinner. I'll come back later and write more about our adventure today.

Spotted Moray Eel in the China Wall

Dive Oahu

This afternoon I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the reenlistment of one of my Sailors just forward of the pilot house on the wreck of YO-257. YO-257 was a Navy oiler that was intentionally sunk off the coast of Waikiki to create an artificial reef. This was my first chance to go scuba diving in Hawaii, and it was AWESOME! We hired a charter with Dive Oahu, and David, Hector, and Ike did a great job.

Time: We met up at Dive Oahu to get our wetsuits and stuff at 12:45. The boat actually left the dock around 1:30 p.m. and got back about 4:45 p.m.

Temp: The water temperature was around 73 degrees, so we wore "shorties" (a 3mm thick wetsuit with short sleeves and short legs). I guessed at 18 lbs on my soft lead weight belt, and it was perfect.

Visibility: I think visibility was probably about 75 feet, because from the surface we could see the top of the wreck and the top of the Atlantis submarine going by, but not the bottom.

We did our first dive on the YO-257 down to a depth of about 90 feet. As the boat slowed to tie up to the mooring buoy, we could see the large white blob of the Atlantis submarine below us. We all descended to the main deck of the wreck and did the reenlistment ceremony there in the company of two sea turtles. Then we swam around the rest of the wreck to check out the hundreds of beautiful tropical fish.

This was the first time I have taken our Cannon PowerShot A520 with the underwater housing down scuba diving. I didn't want the first test to be at 90 feet. Plus, it's been a few years since I've been scuba diving and this was my first dive in a new (different) wetsuit, so I left the camera on the boat for the first dive to just get used to handling my buoyancy control. As a result, I don't have any pictures to show you from the first dive.

Update 4/4/08: Here are a couple of pictures from one of the guys who took a camera on the first dive:

That's the Eng on the left and me on the right.

This is me looking into the pilot house.

That's the EA (Electrical Assistant) checking out one of the two turtles that were on the main deck of the wreck.

For our second dive we went to a reef in closer to shore in about 40 feet of water. This time I took the camera, and it worked like a champ. I was really pleased with the pictures I got (even though the colors are subdued without a flash - I forgot to get batteries for my flashlight, too).

Traditional Blunoz Self Portrait.

This is to give you a feel for the visibility.

Today was the first time I've ever seen a moray eel with my own eyes underwater, and I actually got to see THREE of them. Two were these really pretty white ones with yellow spots. The other one was a green and blue one in the rocks. Note, I did not dumb-down the resolution of these photos, so if you click on the picture above you can check out the details on the moray eel. I would estimate it was about 3 feet long.

Another first for me was getting to see a white-tipped reef shark. It was about 4 to 5 feet long.

We saw tons and tons of tropical fish, too.

Before climbing back up on the boat, I took one last Blunoz Self Portrait, trying to get Diamond Head in the background, but I mis-aimed and got Waikiki instead.

LW and I used to scuba dive a lot together back in Monterey before we started having kids. We would really like to go scuba diving together again sometime soon, especially while we're living here in Hawaii.

Welcome to the Blogosphere!

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

Welcome to the blogosphere!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jill and LW in Pismo Beach, Spring 2001

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

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

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

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

Anyway, so much for the trip down memory lane.

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

The Secret Life of a Blog Post

There's a pretty cool two-page spread in the February edition of WIRED magazine about "The Secret Life of a Blog Post." It's really fascinating to read. I never knew that "spam blogs" existed, but somehow it doesn't surprise me. It was interesting to read how corporations monitor blogs for feedback on products or commercials. The example they use in the WIRED article is someone sees a Budweiser ad during the Super Bowl and writes a blog about it, and how it gets automatically picked up by Data Miners and used by corporations. Pretty cool stuff. Here I thought my blog posts of favorite restaurants and stuff was just going out to the five of you who read my blog. I wonder if any CEOs of major corporations have read my blogs. If the CEO of Einstein Brothers happens to read this: WHY?? WHY DID YOU HAVE TO TAKE OUR EINSTEIN BROTHERS AWAY???

Another really cool WIRED article was this photo gallery. My friend E sent me the link to this one, pointing out the photo of the fiber-optic cables where they come into America from the trans-Atlantic cable. Check it out here.

In case you were wondering: No, WIRED is not paying me a dime for advertising. I just really like the magazine, that's all.

More Hawaii Sight-Seeing

Sorry, I have some catching up to do, so this post is a little long...

Wednesday, we did the Swap Meet thing and did some shopping at the NEX and Commissary. I had a new Hawaii experience at the Swap Meet. This was the first time I've had a malasada. I'd heard other people rave about how good malasadas were, but all since we moved here to Hawaii, so I just assumed it was a Hawaiian thing. Much to my surprise, reading Wikipedia, I see they are a Portuguese variant of the donut and originated in the Azores. Just a few miles away from us here in Hawaii, eh? Wonder how they became such a popular confection in Hawaii.

ES (Orange Shirt), Uncle J, and Uncle D
Walking Through the Swap Meet

Wednesday night, we went to Moe's to show the family our old Wednesday-night tradition. We've slacked off and haven't been going EVERY Wednesday like we used to, but it's still fun to go on occasion and get some balloon animals for the boys. What did the boys ask for this week from the balloon animal guy? ES asked for a brown dog with a blue leash, and YS asked for a light-saber. (I know, I know, BIG surprise).

Thursday, we took our visiting family members on a long drive around the island. After driving through Waikiki, we stopped in Hawaii Kai for some lunch. Both my GPS and my Blackberry said there was a Panda Express there, but we couldn't find it. So we tried a place called "The Shack" that looked okay from the outside and claimed to have good burgers (FYI - here's their website). For anyone else headed that way, I wouldn't recommend it. The food wasn't very good, the service was horribly slow, and the place was just dirty in general. The men's restroom reminded me of a roadside pitstop gas station bathroom - it was pretty bad.

Aside: We're not having very good luck with dining over on that side of the island. The only previous time we've eaten out there was at Roy's (website here). Normally we've absolutely loved Roy's in every other duty station. I wouldn't go back to the one here in Hawaii Kai for the simple reason that it was deafeningly noisy. LW took me there for Father's Day, and every other word of our conversation was, "WHAT?" It went something like:
"HOW'S YOUR FOOD?"
"WHAT?"
"I SAID, HOW'S YOUR FOOD?"
"OH! IT'S GOOD!"
"WHAT?"
"I SAID, IT'S GOOD!"
"WHAT?"
...So we basically didn't talk for the rest of the meal until we could get outside and hear again.

We continued our drive around the island past Hanauma Bay and up past Koko Head to the blowhole. It was a really nice, scenic drive. We had scattered showers throughout the day, and the stop-and-go driving worked out well. We would stop at some scenic spot to look around, we'd admire the scenery for a few minutes until it started raining, then we'd get back in the car and keep going.

We drove through the Hoomaluhia Botanical Gardens, and they were nice (and free). Our guide book and my GPS led me to believe that you could drive all the way through and come back out on the other side, but that was not the case. We got waaaaaaay deep into the gardens and the road was blocked off, so we had to turn around and drive all the way back out again.

Mahalo for Removing your Shoes

Then we went to the Valley of the Temples to see the Byodo-In Temple. That was actually really cool. I think it cost $2 per person to go into the big Japanese temple. It was very peaceful and beautiful scenery. I was surprised that the boys actually seemed to enjoy it, too.

Self-portrait of me and LW
at the Byodo-In Temple.

YS and ES watch a black swan and the koi fish.

YS has taken an interest in taking pictures. We didn't have a problem with it since this is about the age that ES started using the camera, too, and hey, electrons are free. (I might have a problem with it if he was burning through real film). LW was using her expensive fancy SLR camera, so we let YS take off with the Cannon Powershot we just got (see previous post on this topic). He got some good shots in, mostly of the koi fish and black swan and the temple, but he also got this great shot of LW:

Then, he took this great picture of his feet in the parking lot...


Unfortunately, soon after he took that picture of his feet, he dropped the camera on the pavement with a CRASH. Yes, we told him a hundred times to put the strap around his wrist so he wouldn't drop it, and he had the strap around his wrist most of the time, but not this time. It left a dent on the lens, and the motor no longer works to extend or retract the lens when you turn the camera on or off. It is, in a word, KAPUT.

So I'm sorry to report, you won't be seeing any more snorkeling pictures from us anytime soon. Keep your fingers crossed that Cannon will repair it under warranty for us!

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

Friday, I took my visiting family members out on the COMPACFLT Remembrance Tour. This tour is offered by the Commander Pacific Fleet boat house. You have to be sponsored by someone in the military, and the sponsor has to go on the tour wearing summer whites (or equivalent for other branches of the military). One military sponsor can bring up to four guests with him or her on the tour.

Let me tell you, if you are in the military and have family or friends coming to visit, THIS is THE way you want to take them to see the ARIZONA Memorial. The lines for the ARIZONA Memorial are always long and you typically have to wait two hours before you can take the boat ride out to the memorial. Indeed, this morning on our way to the Remembrance Tour, we drove past the ARIZONA Memorial museum and the line of people waiting for the boat ride was like 3 blocks long.
On the Remembrance Tour, you don't have to wait in any lines. You have a reservation to show up for either the 0900 or the 1300 tour on a designated day (they normally do the tours on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but they did another one today because of the holidays).

After being greeted by the staff from the Admiral's boat house and a quick introduction, they take you through a model room and explain how the ARIZONA looked before the attack, and how the ARIZONA and the Memorial resting on top of it look today. There are also a lot of maps and photos from the attack and the aftermath.

Next, you go into a small theater and watch the same National Park Service video that they show the general public over at the ARIZONA Memorial museum.
When you take the Remembrance Tour, it takes you all the way around Ford Island, so you get to see the USS UTAH Memorial, the spot where the USS NEVADA ran aground, and a lot of other little odds and ends around the harbor. Then you go to the ARIZONA Memorial, then by the USS BOWFIN, then back to the Admiral's boat house. All those members of the general public who stood in line for hours only got to ride from the ARIZONA Memorial museum, out to the memorial, and back again.

Blunoz' Family at the ARIZONA Memorial

The only drawback is there is a minimum age limit, so you can't take young children with you (LW stayed home with the boys this morning).

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

GREEN STUUUUUUFF! (see previous post for background) Oh, BTW, HALLELUJAH for the magical powers invested in Uncles and Aunts. Why is it our kids don't trust us? LW or I could tell one of the boys to try some new food or to try some new way to eat the food to make it taste better or go down easier, and they'd NEVER listen to us in a BAJILLION years. But Aunts and Uncles are somehow more cool and certainly more trustworthy than us tricky parental units.

Why do I bring this up, you ask? Uncle Dave tonight got YS to eat PEAS. Not just the 3 peas we tell him he has to eat because he's 3 years old, but like three heaping tablespoons full of peas. Then, when ES saw that (a) Uncle Dave thought it was cool and (b) YS was actually eating it, he decided to give it a go, too! Now, if LW or I had suggested putting peas in the bread and making a pea-sandwich, the boys would have said we were absolutely nuts and REFUSED to let such a cockamamie concoction pass their lips.

Hooray for Uncle Dave! (Oh, and he got YS to drink all his MILK before he left the dinner table, too!)

Weekend Recap ...and a tangent on Self Portraits

This post started out as a short weekend recap, but evolved into a much longer rambling.

Didn't do as much as I would have liked this weekend, but then since I was out at sea last weekend it was nice to have some time to just veg and relax.

Friday night we did the fall festival at ES's school that I already wrote about.

Saturday we did some shopping and went to the farewell party at the Eng's house.

Sunday morning we ended up skipping church because YS slept in until 9:30. LW and I were starting to worry something happened to him in his sleep. Both boys are normally up and clicking away on the computers by 7 a.m. at the latest. When LW and I get up in the morning, we have to forcibly remove the boys from our computers in order to check our email. Yesterday, YS was super tired and cranky and did NOT want to go to bed even though it was way late after the farewell party. Normally, putting our boys to bed late is just a recipe for disaster, because they'll STILL get up at their usual time the next morning, and then they'll just be tired, cranky, pains in the arse all day long. Luckily for us, YS slept in way late this morning, and because we were out late we didn't want to wake a sleeping dragon. As a result, I'm happy to report that he was very pleasant to be around all day today. ...I wish I could say the same for ES (went to bed late, got up usual time, was cranky off and on throughout the day).

Once everyone was up and about, we loaded up our Camelbaks and went for a hike over on the windward side of the island in Kaneohe. We went looking for a geocache along a nice trail in the Friendship Gardens. Although we didn't find the geocache, we still enjoyed the short hike and the view from the top.

Entrance to the Friendship Gardens

The boys on the trail.

How on Earth did they get this thing all the way up here?

I always take a self-portrait on the trail.

Why do I take all those self-portraits anyway? That brought to mind a story actually. I wish I could go back and thank some random commander I met in Coronado in the summer of '92. It was SWO week during CORTRAMID. CORTRAMID is Career Orientation and Training for Midshipmen. You spend one week with the sub force, one week with the surface warfare guys, one week with the aviators, and one week with the marine corps to help you make an educated decision on what you want to be when you grow up (or graduate from college and get commissioned).

Back when I was a midshipman, everyone was still high on Top Gun and feeling the "need for speed." As a result, the aviators didn't have to do much in the way of recruiting - they had more applicants than they had slots to fill. Aviation week for me was spent in Whidbey Island doing a lot of sitting around waiting, going to the gym, goofing off, hiking, going on ONE ride in an A-6 Intruder (which was awesome), sitting around waiting, going to the gym, and more goofing off.
The other three weeks though, the sub guys, the SWOs, and the Marines actually tried to let us see and do as much cool stuff as possible so we might consider signing up for something else besides being a Tom Cruise wanna-be.

So, getting back to the point, there I was... It was SWO week and we were spending our day with the "gator freighters" (amphibious assault ships) riding in amphibious landing craft on the beach at Coronado. I was going around taking pictures of all sorts of cool stuff. Some commander saw me and said something to the effect of, hey, let me take your picture with that in the background. Not that I asked for his advice, but he just offered up that later on in life, the pictures I took would be more interesting to me if they had either me or someone else I knew in the picture instead of just random scenery.

I've followed his advice ever since then, and he was absolutely right. I could look up a picture of the White House or the Eiffel Tower on the internet anytime, but a picture with me in it and the White House or the Eiffel Tower in the background shows that I was there. It dates the picture. It also shows what I looked like way back then, who I was there with, and at what phase in my life I visited there (before or after getting married, before or after having kids, etc).

Of course, when you're in public places like that, you can always ask some other tourist nearby to take your picture. When I got into geocaching and going on long hikes in the woods, I worked on my skills at taking my own picture with my palm pilot camera - as proof that I found the geocache and to document my adventures.

This was perhaps the first blunoz self-portrait,
just after I discovered geocaching and just
before the Army-Navy football game.

This is one of my favorite blunoz self-portraits
hiking in Northern VA with my ES (that's
the Potomac River in the background).

...So how's that for a random ramling??? I totally didn't know where this post was going to go when I started.