Another long day...

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

"Slow is Fast"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


and chocolate peanut butter fudge...

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

A very long day...

Ahhh, nothin' like going to work at 0800 and coming home at 1930 during Christmas stand-down. It wasn't a very good day today. Let's see, a few odds and ends from my very long day today...

1) Note to Self:

Dear Self,

Next time you snack on wasabi nuts at work, I don't care how much your eye itches from that eyelash that fell into it, RESIST the urge to RUB your eye while your hand is covered with wasabi dust.

Very sincerely yours,
Yourself

2) Belief in Santa: Why do some kids have to be so annoying about their disbelief in Santa???

First, last night at Cub Scouts, Santa paid a visit to the Pack meeting and handed out pinewood derby car kits. One of the older scouts in the back started singing and taunting, "One of the dads is missing, one of the dads is missing..." to point out that "Santa" was one of the dads who had stepped out and put on a Santa suit. Even after the kids dad had some stern words for him, he continued to make a big commotion about how it wasn't REALLY Santa.

Then, today, our neighbor's 3rd grade daughter across the street told ALL the little kids in our little neighborhood that Santa wasn't real. ES, being the Google fiend that he is, came inside to the computer and Googled, "Is Santa real?" I don't think he found any conclusive answers there, but he then went to LW and told her what the smarty-pants 3rd grader across the street said and asked LW if Santa was real. LW assured ES that SHE believes in Santa.

Once a kid learns about Santa, why don't their parents teach them not to blab and ruin it for younger kids???

3) Lost and Found:

For those of you either at or eventually going to the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), I highly recommend volunteering to sponsor an international officer. There are several dozen military officers from foreign countries who attend NPS under cooperative agreements we have with other countries. I think one of them is called FMEP or Foreign Military Education Program.

I sponsored two foreign officers while I was at NPS. The first was a Ukrainian Army Major and the second was a Greek Navy Lieutenant Commander. It turns out, the two largest contingents of foreign military officers there are the Greeks and the Turks. So when the Greek officer arrived, there were like two dozen other Greek officers there to meet him at the airport, and he didn't really need my help. Don't get me wrong, he was very nice and he appreciated me being there. We just kept sort of an "acquaintance" level of friendship while he was there.

The Ukrainian officer though, he was very isolated from friends and family. I helped him find a place to live close enough to bike to school, helped him find a bicycle, periodically gave him a ride to school since it was along my way from Fort Ord down to NPS, etc, and we became very good friends during our time together in Monterey.

Getting to the point: In spite of my bad day today, it had a very joyous ending. I lost touch with my Ukrainian Army friend from Monterey when we graduated from the Naval Postgraduate School in 2001 and each moved thousands of miles away. A few times over the years, I have made attempts to get in touch with him, but I did not succeed... until today. Yesterday, I finally found out he is stationed at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C. So I wrote an email to a general email address on their website asking them to forward it, and tonight I got an email response from him. I know it may not seem like much, but it really made me happy to hear from him after so long. (And just a little bit sad that I missed seeing him while we were stationed in DC).

Two Videos to Share...

Friends and family have sent me a few interesting videos in the past couple of days.

Note: First, scroll down and click PAUSE on my blog music so that you can hear the sound that goes with the video.

This one is gross, and I'm going to remember it every time we ever stay in another hotel again...




This one is pretty neat / cool / funny / enjoyable to watch...

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!

Week 3: Feast and Famine?

My WW results came out pretty good again this week.

Week 3 Summary
Result this week: 3.4 pound loss
Cumulative Result: 5.3 pound loss
Average Per Week: 1.8 pound loss

Granted, I've only been at this three weeks now, but it seems like I can't win on the weekly thing. Each week I've either been cautioned on losing too much in one week (WW doesn't want you to lose more than 2 pounds per week on average), or on gaining last week. However, I'm pleased that my average weekly loss is, in fact, a LOSS, and it's less than 2 pounds per week. I think that averages out over regular variations in weight.

Time to go to PT...

Barbecue Chicken (updated Monday, 17 Dec)

Tonight, I tried an experiment with cooking chicken on the barbecue grill. In the past, I have never been happy with my results trying to cook chicken breasts on the grill when they've been marinated in barbecue sauce. I need a high heat setting in order to get the temperature up in the grill and get the chicken cooked all the way through, but the barbecue sauce burns and makes the outside of the breast really tough, and the inside is really dried out. I've never been completely satisfied with the results.

So I had an idea tonight. Some of you who are more experienced in cooking or using your barbecue grills may laugh at this and say, "I can't believe he didn't know that." Maybe I should start reading up on barbecue tips on the internet.

In any case, here's what I did tonight that really worked out well. After LW had marinated the chicken breasts in the barbecue sauce, I pulled out the roll of aluminum foil. LW had some sort of "no-stick" aluminum foil, and I don't know if that played a roll in it (no pun intended), but it worked and the chicken did NOT stick to the foil. I wrapped the two chicken breasts up in foil and rolled the ends together to make it a sealed pouch.

I put the barbecue grill on a high heat, and the temperature gage read in the ballpark of 500F. Normally I have to cook chicken for 15 to 18 minutes to get it to cook all the way through, so I put the foil pouch with the chicken in it on the grill for 18 minutes to be sure. Twice I flipped the packet over in the middle of that time, but I'm not sure if that was absolutely necessary.

When I took the packet off the grill and started to open it, I got a little nervous. My nostrils detected a smell of charring and burnt stuff. However, when I got the packet fully open, I found that while the barbecue sauce was burnt, it was just laying in the foil and not stuck to the chicken. The chicken itself was absolutely fine! It was tender and juicy all the way through, and the meat was almost falling apart.

Why the barbecue sauce burnt but didn't stick to the chicken, I don't know. I was really pleased with the results though.

Monday morning afterthought: Does putting the chicken in a foil pouch defeat the purpose of using the barbecue grill? I mean, I could put the foil pouch in the oven and get the same results, right? Help me out. What am I supposed to be getting out of my food cooked on the barbecue grill? What does exposure to open flames give it that just baking in the electric oven doesn't?

Another Substantial Change in Home Entertainment

We went shopping today...

In Best Buy, I had one of those life-changing experiences. I can think of two times in my lifetime that I've experienced something as mind-boggling as this (in the category of computers, electronics, and technology).

The first time was in like 1993 when I got to use a computer with a SoundBlaster card for the first time. A friend showed me the game Castle Wolfenstein - the first FPS (First-Person Shooter) type game I had ever seen. Instead of the standard PC "beep" noise, it was actually making real lifelike sounds like the German guards' voices yelling, "HALT!" I was in awe and HAD to get a SoundBlaster card for my computer. Now we just accept that as the norm. EVERY computer has a super-whamodyne sound system these days. Who in their right mind would buy a computer WITHOUT a sound system built in?

The second time was in 1995 when I went over to my friend Vince's room in the Susse Chalet in Groton during SOBC (Submarine Officers Basic Course). Vince had one of those new "surround sound" systems. In order to demonstrate it for me, he turned on True Lies, and I was blown away by the all-encompassing sound that made me feel like I was IN the movie. The other really good sampler was Jurassic Park with a sub-woofer so you could feel the tyranosaurus rex's foot stomps reverberate up through your legs and through your chest cavity. I think it was less than a week later that Vince took me to Lechmere and I bought my very own surround-sound stereo system.

My experience today was on-par with those previous two revelations in modern technology. They had on display an HD DVD player showing Night at the Museum on an HD screen.
O... M... G... I was getting dizzy watching it. It didn't feel like I was watching a screen. It felt like I was in a playhouse watching a LIVE performance. The boys and I were totally mesmerized and couldn't be pulled away. I mean, I've seen HDTV's on display before, but they've always got some pretty picture of mountains or flowers or something off the discovery channel that looks cool, but I couldn't really say off the top of my head if it was any better than what I see on other TVs. Seeing this, a really cool movie that I had seen before, I could TELL the difference.

Excuse me while I go wipe the drool off my chin...

We didn't make any impulse purchases today (LW was with me in the store, so she managed to break the hypnotic trance and lead us away from the TVs), but now we're comparing the reviews on Consumer Reports and evaluating if the finances can support.

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Oh, and an update to my blog music... At least two of you (I think that makes a simple majority of the regular readers of my blog) were unhappy with my music always being the same. So I changed my blog music to "random" mode and added a bunch more songs to the list. I hope you enjoy the change of pace.

BTW - WELCOME HOME JOHN!!! Or should I say, Bienvenue à la maison! John had to move his family from one foreign country (where at least they spoke English) to another foreign country (where they don't speak English), and then promptly left his wife and son there while he went to a 3-month school back in DC. Glad you made it back home safe and sound. I know J and Q missed you tremendously, and Q must be bouncing off the walls to have you home. Now STOP READING MY BLOG and go get your wife a cup of coffee! (I'm assuming you're reading this in the morning your time - if not, go get her a glass of wine instead).