Catching Up

It's been a day or two since I've posted, things have been going on around here, so I've been a little preoccupied. I am posting some pictures from the past little while. The picture above is the flag on Greg's and my sailboat. We had the first navy jack up for a while, but we ended up switching to the union jack because every ship in the navy was flying the first jack. I thought this was a cool picture, and what better way to start my post. We sailed in the race on Wednesday night and someone stopped and asked us what the flag was for. I told him it was my tribute to the Navy. As always, we didn't win the race, but we weren't dead last, either (okay, next to last, but who's counting?). This next pic is of Rob's boat, Graceful. She's a beautiful boat and he does and extraordinary job of captaining her.

I would've posted a larger picture, but I didn't want this post to get too long. Especially since I also have a very nice picture of the committee boat from this race, Miss Teak, along with the sun.

She's a beautiful boat, too. I really like the reflection of the sun with her. I'll have to make sure that the people from racing get these pictures so they can have pics of their boats, if they want them. Maybe I'll burn a few CD's to give to Mike and he can take them to the Captain's meetings and pass them out. The race went very well, and we had lots of fun, even if all of us were bummed out for some reason on Wednesday.

Yesterday, we went down to Blackwater for a routine review of the contract. Kim, Heather and Chaplain Johnson all ended up participating in the scenarios as Tangos (bad guys). I put on a helmet and an orange vest and took pictures. The first picture is of the Chaplain (James) all dressed out and ready to go as the Tango. I told him I wanted to caption the picture "The Chaplain in his pull-ups." I don't think he liked that--the trials and tribulations he has to suffer as a man of the cloth ;)

He had a lot of fun, as did Kim and Heather. I'm glad they got to participate in the scenarios because it was good for them, lets them see something of what the students go through. The true confession here, though, is that Kim wanted to go play a Tango because the last time we were at Blackwater, she took a stray simunition round to her thigh and she wanted to shoot back. She got her wish, too, she got to shoot two guys in the back. Teach them to check their six! the instructor said that Kim was grinning so wide when she got to shoot them that her helmet lifted up about 6 inches. I think he exaggerated, it was probably only 5 inches ;) This next pic is a guy on the ladder coming up to clear the area above. I thought he was going to shoot me at first, I was holding up my orange vest to make sure he saw it--I wasn't dressed out in any protective gear, just shorts and a helmet with a neck guard, and the infamous orange vest. I guess, in hindsight, the orange vest was the best protection--I didn't get shot at all, even though everyone else did. Here's the kid that I thought was going to shoot me as he was coming up the ladder.

For some reason I think this is a cool pic. If you look at his left pocket, you can see a painted mark where he got shot, probably from a previous scenario, though.

I cooked a nice gourmet dinner last night, braised lambchops with an avocado and roasted garlic sauce, steamed asparagus and a mixed greens and herb salad with a balsamic/dijon/shallot vinaigrette. It was fantastic! Greg was in a bad mood last night, so I thought it might cheer him up to have a nice, gourmet dinner. I bought a bottle of Italian Chianti to go with it. Excellent choice, too, the chianti went well with the lamb.

Just got an email, BCC, from Terri Sanderlin about our student UIC's where she was addressing CDR McFarland and Joe Picarello. Fred Barranger was upset because we had so many student UIC's and is trying to accuse us of building an empire. Kim hit the roof because she said he's the man to talk about building an empire with everything he did with LTA. I hit the roof because we need that many student UIC's to ensure that students get serviced by the correct PSD. Right now we have students who are at Little Creek who have to make a 30 minute drive to Norfolk to their servicing PSD because the UIC for their school is a Norfolk UIC. This just doesn't make any sense to me why NPDC--Fred Barranger specifically--is so worried about this?! We have a job to do, and that submission was to make sure that we could provide the best service possible to our students. If he changes it, we're going to end up screwing the students, yet again, because Fred Barranger is too STUPID to realize what the truth is. Geez, it's just like when someone makes admiral, you give a guy GS15 and he forgets reality--must be the frontal labotomy they gave him, assuming he had any grey matter up there to begin with.

I have yet another road rage incident for you, this time it was a gold Nissan Altima that cut FC1 Keen off, not just cut her off, but screamed at her out the window, "you better wait!" Woman, if you hadn't cut her off to begin with, you wouldn't have had to worry about it, would you?! That was:

GOLD NISSAN ALTIMA

VIRGINIA LICENSE

YGZ 5044