Family Movie Night

The boys wanted to have a family movie night tonight, so we printed off our monthly Blockbuster coupons and headed off to pick out some movies. Tonight's flick was Evan Almighty. ES at first was annoyed with me for picking out this movie. In the car on the way home though, I asked him, "Who was Noah?" We talked during the car ride home about who Noah was and what God told him to do. Then I explained to ES that this was a funny movie where God appears and tells some guy named Evan to build another ark and everyone thinks he's crazy. We all enjoyed the movie tremendously. It was a pretty safe movie for kids - no profanity or gratuitous sex or blood and gore.

LW made some awesome gingerbread waffles from a Rachel Ray recipe for dinner tonight. Yes, we like to have breakfast for dinner periodically. I saw LW putting some pumpkin stuff in them - that's the only way she'll ever get those boys to eat anything pumpkin or otherwise vegetable-related is by hiding it.

Catching up on the Amazing Race tonight... What an excellent example in karma. So they all have to find a way to Vilnius, Lithuania from the middle of Western Africa. They go to the Air France office and the first team, Nicolas and his grandpa, sat down with the agent. The Air France agent girl claimed not to speak much English, but I think she was holding out on them. Nicolas tried to tell her he needed the quickest ticket possible to Lithuania, she said there was a flight that arrived at 1:20 p.m. He told her that'd be great and asked her to put all the other people on later flights... with the other teams standing right behind him well within earshot. Way to burn bridges, dude. So then, the airline lady tells him that flight is full and gives them a flight that lands at 5:35 p.m. Meanwhile, the next team goes to the next agent over, and she puts them on the 1:20 p.m. flight. The real kicker is that the same lady who claimed not to speak English to Nicolas-the-dimwit, when the next team came up, she just booked them on the 1:20 p.m. flight. So she just totally bagged Nicolas because he asked her to bag the other teams. Good job, Nicolas! (sarcasm) Not only did your karma bring you a 4 hour delay, but because the other teams heard your treachery, nobody's ever going to help you when you're in a tight spot. Between that and Nicolas' inability to find the salon later on, I can't believe they pulled it off - they almost came in last this leg.

Last random observation of the evening: Why do I always have Star Wars music going in the back of my head??? Sorry, just a little sarcasm. Those of you who know my boys and their obsession with all things Star Wars know that if they aren't playing a Star Wars video game, then they've probably got one of the Star Wars movies on in the background.

Long week

Ugh... I ache all over. I'm exhausted. I feel like I got run over by a truck this week. One sentence summary of this rambling blog post: I've been getting up at ungodly hours of the morning (and I'm NOT a morning person) and the variety of PT I've done this week has kicked my butt.

Monday, as I previously mentioned, I got up at 0430 and had to skip Command PT so we could do our walk-through of the drydock basin. Well, at lunch time, to make up for the lost PT, W and I went and played racquetball. This is the first time I've played r-ball in... I don't remember. W seriously kicked my butt. We played four games. The first game was a shut-out. The other three games I managed like 4 or 5 points to his 21. It was a great workout though. I was sweating profusely and racked up 860 calories in one hour on my HRM.

Tuesday was the big D-Day (D for Drydock). Got up at 0330 to shower, eat breakfast, and head out to meet W to drop his car off on the shipyard side, then drive us around to the sub base side. Stationed the Mighty MSP's last-ever maneuvering watch at 0600. We crossed the sill into the drydock around 0800, and they closed the caisson behind us around 0945.

Aside: Interesting point in Navy Regulations - the Commanding Officer is normally the one absolutely responsible for anything that happens on the ship. The big exception to that is when the ship crosses the sill of the drydock, then the drydock commander assumes responsibility for the ship.

We were about 30 to 60 minutes behind schedule on most of the agenda for the day, but other than that it went fairly smoothly. We got kudos from the pilot that we were the most courteous in dealing with the pilot and the most professional in line-handling on the waterfront. The shipyard guys said it was the smoothest drydocking evolution they've done since they can remember.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't exactly cooperating with us. The day before, we were all concerned about heat stress, dehydration, and sun burn. As we got underway from the sub base, it was partly to mostly cloudy out, and I said a prayer of thanks for the clouds providing us shade and keeping the temperatures down. Then, just as we were entering the drydock, the heavens exploded. I mean, it was just a torrential downpour for the next hour or so. All of us up topside were soaked through to the bone.

Along with the rain came high winds. High winds mean no crane operations. Because of the requirement to crane certain things into the drydock basin as soon as the basin is dry, and the shutdown of crane operations due to high winds, that postponed pumping down the drydock. We pumped it down far enough so the ship was resting on the blocks, and we managed to get the services brow (shore power, cooling water hoses, etc) and the personnel access brow across before they shut down the crane.

Wednesday morning, I had one of those mornings where I gradually gained consciousness, and as I woke up I said to myself, "Self, it's awfully light outside for the middle of the night. Normally when your alarm goes off, it's still pitch black outside." I turned my head to the left and looked at the alarm clock. Unlike the daybreak coming in the windows, the alarm clock was pitch black. The storm that came through Tuesday and through the night knocked down a lot of trees. The morning radio show reminded me of Virginia after it snows - listening to all the school closures and road closures, etc. Luckily, I woke up in just enough time to throw on my PT gear and head out the door.

My poor LW had the unfortunate ordeal of staying home with both boys since ES's school was closed, and she spent a substantial part of the day without electrical power. I think the boys were awake by 0640, and started saying "we're BORED" by 0645. No TV, no DVDs, no video games... They've got a gajillion and one toys to play with, but since the power was out, they didn't want toys. Why is it we always want what we can't have?

I went with a small contingent of the crew that did make it through the road closures and non-functioning traffic lights to Command PT at Bloch Arena with the PT Nazi. Since we had a smaller group, we moved into the aerobics room and did the interval training there. As usual, he worked us hard. My right shoulder was pretty sore from racquetball on Monday. After the interval training, my whole torso ached. Note that, according to my HRM, I burned 684 calories doing the interval training, almost 200 calories LESS than I burned playing racquetball (both were over almost an exact hour-long period).

We also finished pumping down the drydock Wednesday. Toward the end, I stood on the wall of the drydock watching the last of the water get sucked out, and the fish flopping around on the grates where the water left them. There were a couple of really big puffer fish - the biggest was like 18 inches long.

Thursday morning, still aching from the PT Nazi yesterday, I went to our new Thursday morning Command PT. It was still raining on and off outside, so we stayed in the gym at Bloch Arena. The COB and I alternated running laps around the basketball court and running the bleacher steps. So now, in addition to my torso aching from Wednesday, now my gluteals, thighs, calves, and ankles are sore, too. Basically... I ache all over.

I used to be able to lay down on the floor, and the boys would walk all over my back. It's almost as good as good as going for a massage. I've really needed it this week, and I keep coming home and collapsing in a heap on the floor hoping the boys would walk on my back. I even ASK for them to walk on my back. Somehow though, the fact that I'm asking them to do it seems to take the fun away for them. I guess they only did it before because they thought it was fun to beat-up on Daddy.

An old photo of a Daddy-massage from 2005

So we're starting a new Friday routine tomorrow. Now that we're in the drydock, it'll be very difficult to get an effective field day done on the boat. So we're going to try a routine that's been done on a few other boats. Liberty expires at 0400 so we can kick off Field Day at 0430 and finish before the shipyard starts its workday at 0630. We don't have anything else on the agenda for the day except for quarters on the pier to hand out some awards, so liberty is dependent on workload. We'll see how it goes.

As for now, it's time to hit the rack!

Week 1: Survey Says...

Monday Weigh In Results: I did my first weigh-in for WW Online for Men today, and I lost 4.4 pounds. Hoo-yah!

I was a little apprehensive about getting on the scale. I did really well all week at work, but when the weekend came, it seemed as if I left my will-power at work. Turns out I did alright. Although, they say more than 2 pounds per week on average is not healthy.

I really find that keeping a log of what food I eat helps tremendously. I think it's all the grazing and snacking I did that was really killing me.

Feeling Powerless: They craned our screw off... THAT was pretty amazing to see. Oddly, I didn't feel like our Mighty MSP was impotent when we offloaded all our weapons (we could always reload the weapons, right?), but seeing our screw sitting on the pier just really made me feel like the once-Mighty MSP is no-more a warship.

Drydock: Unfortunately, I didn't get to go to Command PT this morning because we had to do our walk-through inspection of the drydock basin at 0630. This is the first time I've ever been in a shipyard drydock. All my previous drydock experiences have been in the floating drydocks in Groton or San Diego. This drydock in the shipyard is absolutely ginormous. They've got all the blocks set up with the proper spacing in the bottom of the drydock, ready for us to set the boat down on the blocks tomorrow. Standing up on the caisson looking down into the basin, it looked like the blocks were set up to receive a dinghy. Our boat is just going to appear so tiny in comparison!

Remote Sensing: I wish I could have taken pictures, but cameras aren't allowed in the Controlled Industrial Area (CIA). Interestingly enough, cameras ARE allowed to orbit the Earth. Here are some shots from Google Earth:

Naval Station Pearl Harbor

PHNSY (Drydocks 3, 2, and 1 from left to right)

Drydock #1 That's what the Mighty MSP will look like by the end of tomorrow.

NPS Online: Totally random, unintended topic for tonight's post... If you're in the Navy and have a little bit of free time on your hands, I HIGHLY recommend the distributed learning programs offered by the Naval Postgraduate School online. There's NO OBLIGATION and CNET fully funded the program, so I didn't have to pay a DIME. I did the Space Systems Graduate Certificate program - 4 classes all online. All of the classes were really cool (at least for geeks like me), but I liked the class Remote Sensing Physics from Space the best.

IF, after you finish the graduate certificate, you want to incur an obligation and finish the masters degree, then you can talk to your detailer about going to Monterey for a year to finish the degree. So it's kind of like a free-try to see if you like the program before you incur a follow-on service obligation (although you lose a year of fabulous living in Monterey).

Tree Trimming

After church today we went to the NEX for lunch and bought our Christmas tree. I was pleasantly surprised by the reasonable prices on the trees at the NEX. We bought a Noble Fir from Tacoma, WA.

Christmas Tree Shopping 2007
This was the tree we bought - a Noble Fir from Tacoma, WA.

We came home and re-arranged the furniture in the family room to support the Christmas tree setup.

This is the Hawaiian quilt tree-skirt we picked up at the swap meet.

Last year, YS didn't really understood what we were doing. Yes, he enjoyed putting up the tree and "helping" put the ornaments on the tree, but I don't think he really associated it with the whole Christmas season. Today, I was surprised by how extremely excited YS was about decorating the tree. I mean, he was in a state of perpetual motion and absolutely could NOT stand still. He was hopping everywhere he went for hours on end. He couldn't wait for me to put the lights on the tree so he could put the ornaments on, and he kept asking over and over and over again when he got to put the star on the tree. So after I got the lights on, I lifted YS up to put the star on top.

YS puts the star on top, 2007.

My favorite quote of the afternoon: ES remembered the "rules" on placing fragile ornaments from last year and commented to LW that we had to hang a fragile ornament up high so YS couldn't reach it. LW explained to him that it was okay, YS is old enough now to know not to break them. Not long afterward, YS said, "Daddy, will you lift me up? I want to put this one up high where ES can't reach it and break it."

WARNING: HIGHLY ADDICTING GAMEUpdated Dec 3rd

Um... John? Thanks a BUNCH for introducing me to this game. Did you detect just a slight tone of sarcasm in my voice there? OMG this is addicting.

Can't... stop... playing...

Must... destroy... creeps...

You've been warned, but if you'd like to try it, click here. Also, I created a group to compare scores with friends. If you'd like to submit your score to my group, the group name is blunoz.



Update Dec 2nd: Observations / Strategy Tips I've learned so far:
- The Squirt Tower is the most effective weapon for rapid fire and damage, but they cost too much to use them exclusively.
- The Pellet Tower isn't very effective, but because they're the cheapest to build, I use them as walls to create a maze the creeps have to follow a torturous path through while the Squirt Towers pummel them.
- While you don't need to spend the money on them for the first couple of rounds, it's essential to build a Dart Tower before the first round of Group Creeps (round 3). The Dart Tower causes damage to all the creeps in a close proximity, so they're very effective against groups. The Pellet and Squirt Towers are almost useless fighting the groups, and most will get through if you don't have any Dart Towers.
- The Swarm Tower is devastating against the airborne creeps, but I have found they're not really worth the money. The Squirt and Pellet Towers are perfectly capable of knocking down all the airborne creeps and don't cost nearly as much as the Swarm Tower.
- I have not found the Frost Tower to be particularly useful.

Pellet, Squirt, Dart, Swarm, Frost...

- The Boss Creeps are extremely hard to kill, and it took me many games to finally kill one. When you do though, you win a LOT of money and can build a LOT more towers.
- The Dark Creeps may as well be a bunch of Boss Creeps. I don't know how on Earth we're supposed to defeat them. Maybe I need to use one of the other expensive special towers to knock them out. Usually, the arrival of the Dark Creeps mark the END of my game, because I can't knock one of them out, much less 20 of them at once!

Update Dec 3rd: Loping Squid blew my strategy out of the water and beat the game. Check out his blog post with a picture of his winning tower placement.

GO NAVY! ...and Another Episode of Food Coma

GO NAVY! I rolled out of bed this morning at 6:57 and headed downstairs to turn on the Army-Navy Game. I got downstairs to find ES already had the TV on and was flipping through the channels looking for the game. YS had no interest in watching football and went to watch Star Wars in the front room. ES lost interest a little before half time. The boys were making a colossal mess around the house and I gave up on watching Navy kick the CRAP out of Army at the end of the third quarter. That was pretty amazing to see Army fumble the ball at the ONE yard line though. That 98-yard kickoff return (pictured at right) was awesome, too. That happened on the initial kickoff of the 1986 game at the Rose Bowl, too.

XBox Rant: I'm a little annoyed with XBox Live at the moment. LW and I have gold accounts to play XBox online with our friends. The gold membership costs like $50 per year. The boys like to play, too, but they don't play enough to make it worth paying the $50 per year. We were so excited when we found out about this new "Silver" membership that was FREE though. With the Silver accounts, we signed the boys up as children under our accounts. It worked great and we had a lot of fun playing online until today. Come to find out, when we signed up for the Silver accounts for the boys, it automatically came with a free-month trial of Gold access. So when that free month trial ended, it reverted back to Silver, and as it turns out, Silver does NOT allow you to play online. WHAT THE HECK?!?!? What's the POINT of having the Silver membership? It let's you have a FRIENDS list... WHY? There's NO POINT in having a FRIENDS list if it won't let you PLAY with your FRIENDS!!! They should offer some sort of a family membership that let's you set up multiple profiles for online play without paying the fifty bucks for each individual. Okay, sorry, I'll get off my soap box now.

A New Restaurant Discovery: Two of my guys were reenlisting tonight at Dave & Busters down at the Ward Center in Honolulu. Not sure how bad the traffic would be, we left early this afternoon and headed toward Honolulu. We figured if there wasn't any traffic, we'd head to the Ala Moana Center and took care of some Christmas shopping. Traffic was a breeze and we made it in plenty of time to get our shopping done, check out the fish in the koi pond in the middle of the mall, and head over to Ward Center a few blocks away.

The boys would go nuts if we took them to Dave & Busters. The games all look cool, but they aren't really little-kid games. It's more of an adult arcade. A friend told us about a restaurant called Ryan's in Ward Center (kiddy-corner across the street from Dave & Busters, next door to Brew Moon). So I went to attend the reenlistment ceremony while LW and the boys went and got us a table at Ryan's.

The reenlistment ceremony went well. I thought Dave & Busters was a cool place to have it and spend some of their reenlistment bonus check - certainly better than what I saw some guys do with their SRB checks in Guam (but what happens in Westpac stays in Westpac, right?).

Ryan's was AWESOME. I absolutely loved it! I checked out the menu online before we went out there, and I was very pleased with the prices. We got there and it was a nice place overlooking the Ala Moana park. We had really good service from a nice waitress from Oregon (Aside: Tonight we learned that there's a cooperative agreement between Oregon and Hawaii, and Oregon residents get in-state tuition rates at Univ of Hawaii, and Hawaii residents get the same benefits in Oregon.) The food was just fantastic! Now, mind you, I was really good on my diet all this week. It's a good thing I was though, because I gave into temptation tonight. I started off with a salad...

Seared Island Poke Salad with Frizzled Ogo
Soy-garlic marinated Island fish wok-seared with Maui onion and sweet bell peppers. Served atop seasonal greens with our housemade ginger- wasabi aïoli, fried ogo and toasted macadamia nuts.

OMG, my taste-buds were in Heaven! Something THAT good could NOT have been "good" for my diet. Oh, but then the boys' dinners came with ice cream sundaes, and I made the mistake of looking at the dessert menu. I love coconut, and I have a weakness for creme brulee. When I saw the Haupia Creme Brulee on the menu, I just HAD to try it. It was equally as good as the salad I had for dinner. Now I should go run a few laps around Navy housing...

The boys liked their food, too. They DO have a kids' menu and provided the boys with activity sheets and crayons. ES had the pizza and YS had the chicken strips. For those of you who know YS, this comes as NO surprise to you since that's almost all he ever eats. However (comma), YS's chicken strips came with sweet potato fries, and they were really good! He actually ate them, too!

So, for those of you in Hawaii reading this blog, if you haven't been to Ryan's, I highly recommend it. Great food, great service, nice atmosphere, and all for very reasonable prices (on the food anyway, the drinks were pretty steep). I couldn't believe the place was mostly empty at 6 p.m... on a Saturday night... in a shopping mall... during Christmas shopping season... What gives?

Incidentally, we had previously tried Brew Moon which is next door to Ryan's. I don't recommend Brew Moon. The beer wasn't very good. The food was so-so and not really worth the price you pay for it.

I miss winter.

Will wonders never cease? It actually looks like we're going to make it into drydock "on schedule" on Tuesday (4 December). I say "on schedule" because it has been postponed a few times. We were originally supposed to go into drydock on 27 September. The first problem was that the submarine already in the drydock was behind schedule and didn't get out of the drydock until a couple of weeks ago. Then the shipyard had to do repairs to the caisson, but they couldn't do it until Congress approved the budget. I was not holding my breath that this would go down on schedule. Luckily, the SY commander found another source of funds to pay for the caisson repairs without waiting for congress to approve the budget.

I hope by writing this, I'm not jinxing us or counting our chicks before they're hatched. Every time I have gone into drydock on each of my previous boats, I have always ended up saying to myself, "Self, you'd think this is the FIRST time a 688-Class submarine has EVER gone into drydock before." It just boggles my mind how many things come up last minute that you would THINK someone would realize, hey, they're going into the drydock in 3 (or 2, or 1) day(s), maybe we should _____________. There's always something. (Aside: That brings to mind stories from the last week in port before deployment, but I'll save that for another blog post).

We did have a Hawaiian priest come down with the CO and Project Sup and say a blessing on the bow of the submarine though. I was glad he said the prayer both in Hawaiian and in English so we could tell what he was saying. I thought that was cool though. It was something new I hadn't seen on previous drydocking availabilities.

So I was cleaning my stuff out of my stateroom on the boat, and came upon all my cold weather gear in the hang-up locker. I love my cold weather gear. You see, growing up in San Diego, I was accustomed to a summer-time-year-round climate. When I joined the Navy, I knew I would be moving around every couple of years, and I wanted to experience life in other parts of the country (and the world). So I volunteered for a boat out of Groton for my JO tour, and the detailer was only oh-so-happy to oblige me (nobody asks for "Rotten Groton"). I loved living in the historic district of Mystic, CT and the changing seasons in New England.

Reminiscing of winter as I cleaned out my hang-up locker on the boat.

When I reported aboard my first boat, all the other officers told me I had to go to the mall and buy a headsok. I did, and I love it. I've used it ever since. When we moved to the DC suburbs for my last shore duty, I upgraded and got a new headsok with the Polartec. By the end of my JO tour, I had the headsok, the UVEX goggles, the polar snow boots (I got them on sale at EMS in the spring! I love EMS!). I even found a pristine pumpkin suit for sale on eBay for 20 bucks.

Me and ES hiking in Northern Virginia, January 2006.

I was very proud of ES that day. We hiked 4 1/2 miles and it was 17 degrees out!

That brought to mind a sea story... Wait, how do sea stories start again? "Once upon a time..." No, that's not it. Oh, I got it. "So there I was..."

Being on a boat out of San Diego, I rarely had the occasion to use my cold weather gear, but I always kept it in my hang-up locker just in case. There were a couple of times when I was really glad I had it, like the time we had to surface near the Aleutian Islands during a transit to Westpac and I was tasked to man the bridge. (The great circle route from San Diego to Yokosuka takes you way up along the Aleutian Island chain).

We pulled into Esquimalt, British Columbia for a port call (it's the Canadian Naval Base right next to Victoria). On our way inbound, it was miserable, cold, and rainy up on the bridge, and I was very glad I was warm and cozy in the Control Room for the maneuvering watch. When the Captain came down from the bridge all cold, rosy-cheeked, and wet, I made the mistake of laughing and commenting on how nice it was in the Control Room. The Captain said, "Congratulations, you just volunteered to be OOD when we drive outta here."

Fast forward to the end of the port call and the morning of the underway. All the JOs (whose only experience had been on this boat out of San Diego) were laughing at me as I "suited-up" for the maneuvering watch. I went to the bridge fully decked-out in my cold weather gear. It was cold and drizzling wet as we got underway, but it... was... AWESOME! I had a BLAST! I love driving the ship. Even better, I love the winter and being suited-up against the cold. I was nice and cozy warm and comfortable. The other guys on the bridge had very lightweight gloves and jackets on and were freezing their butts off and complaining their hands and faces were numb.

I had to laugh a short while later when we were getting ready to go up the Behm Canal into Ketchikan, Alaska, and the guys who were going to man the bridge came and asked me if they could borrow my cold weather gear.

Quick aside: Don't get me wrong when I talk about how cold it was during our port call there. Esquimalt was one of my favorite port calls in my Navy career. LW and ES flew up to Oregon and then drove up to Victoria with my wonderful step-mother. We had a great visit. I could write a whole 'nother blog post about that, but I've kept you staring at your computer screen long enough. I'll save it for another post.