Nipped by the Feds...

Reason number 38D that women are better than men at being corrupt politicians.

(The woman in the picture is a MA state senator, and these charges are apparently no surprise.)

I hate Tennessee Nazis...

...and there's nothing funny about death threats, especially death threats against people under Secret Service protection. Nothing funny at all.

But man, every time I hear "White tuxedos and top hats, firing guns through the car windows," I giggle. Sorry.

Some days...

Maybe Theo has been fighting me all day because he knows October 25 is a big day for battles:

1415 - The army of Henry V of England defeats the French at the Battle of Agincourt.

1854 - The Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade).

1917 - Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia.

1944 - Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, takes place in and around the Philippines...

1983 - Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada...

OK, Grenada might not look like Agincourt right now, but in 600 years, who knows what they'll think?

Serious baby is serious

Had to post this one too. For the briefest of moments he stared into a camera lens and DIDN'T ham it up.

From Theo, Aug-Oct 2008

My new furniture

With the recent move, I was finally able to justify purchasing an piece of pseudo-furniture I've wanted for quite a while: A giant, premium beanbag. What can I say? I'm a simple man.

I promised Diana some photos to illustrate the actual size of the beanbag, so I had Ruth take a few before she left:

From Theo, Aug-Oct 2008

Theo and Daddy relaxing. But Daddy seems very concerned that Theo pay attention to the book they're reading. What could be so important?

From Theo, Aug-Oct 2008

Well, THAT explains Daddy's concern.

From Theo, Aug-Oct 2008

From Theo, Aug-Oct 2008

There's more photos where these came from. I'm putzing around with Flickr and Picasa, trying to figure out if either one will be more convenient than my dot-mac galleries when it comes to integrating with Blogger and Facebook...

But "Joey Beer" doesn't sound as good

I've been saying lately that barring a revelation about a dead girl or a live boy, Obama has the election in the bag -- but the "Billy & Roger Theory of First Brothers" indicates I may have to reconsider...

Paul will comment on this post

So during the move, my grooming routine suffered...





...to the point where I was thinking that maybe I'd throw a barn raising. It's not my record for a beard, but it's probably as much total hair as I've had in 10 years or so.

I'd also considered letting my readers vote on whether to hack it off or let it go until Ruth gets home. Then I realized, that would require coming to grips with how few people actually read this, and that's never a good thing.

In the end, even though I love that shade of red, I was annoyed by the extra weight on my face. So yesterday I took out the clippers...



Unfortunately, the clippers don't shave off that extra chin along with all the hair.

UPDATE: If only I'd realized everything I was giving up...

Attention Old People:

Bite Me.

One week down

So it's been exactly a week since Ruth left, and... Wait.

Just a minute.

WHAT!?!?! A FRAKIN' WEEK?!?! IT'S ONLY BEEN A WEEK?

If you'd asked me this when I didn't have a calendar in front of me, I'd swear it's been three weeks or a month already.

But it's been a week with no hospital visits and the house is still about as clean as when she left. So I guess we're going to make it.

A couple times a day I spend a few minutes with Theo in front of a wall of family pictures, asking him to show me Mommy, then after he points at her I tell him how much Mommy loves Theo and how she wishes she were home to give him a hug and put him to bed and help Daddy.

I've had him look at a few photos Mommy has sent from the ship and listen to some videos with her voice, but doing anything in front of the computer with him, it's only a matter of seconds until the computer itself becomes more interesting than what's on the screen. He's still trying to update his blog.

Finally, every night before bed, along with the usual litany of "night-nights" to family and honorary family all over the place, I tell him, "say night-night to Mommy, wherever she is"; and that's his cue to wave at the door to his room.

and I start getting verklempt, because how much cute can you fit in one kid?

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Do you hoppy-hop here often?

I'm naming this photo "Daddy's little player looks to get his cradle robbed at the playground." Click to view it at a larger size and just look at him laying on the charm.

My son: Doing better with the ladies before age 2 than Daddy did in 27 years of single life.

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Call it a political post if you must

So NBC gave Colin Powell some free air time this morning for a speech about the upcoming election. Ignored in all the endorsement blah-blah-blah was the most eloquent, direct endorsement of religious freedom and inclusion I've ever heard from a politician. The criticism is directed at his party, but to me the words are universal:

I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?

The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards--Purple Heart, Bronze Star--showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old.

And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn't have a Christian cross, it didn't have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life.

Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I'm troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.

Too much to ask, I suppose, that today be remembered for these words rather than an endorsement. Full interview is embedded below, the relevant clip begins @4:27.

Indeed

I linked a George Will column about Gettysburg at right (sounds like it's time for another visit), but his paragraph about certain ... misconceptions ... people hold about the battle reminded me of a story...

I visited Valley Forge once; as with most of these monuments, there's an informative short film to watch before you tour the grounds. At one point they talk about the contributions of the Prussian General Friedrich Wilhelm von Stueben, well-known for introducing formal military training to the Continental Army. Pretty standard stuff for those of us who have studied the history of the war.

As the lights went up and we all filed out of the small theater, the woman in front of us exclaimed to her friends, loud enough for everyone to hear,

"von Steuben was Prussian? But I thought he was GEEERMAAAN!"

I didn't laugh out loud. Not until she was well out of earshot.

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It can't hurt, right?

I believe that all future political speechifying should take place in a "Friar's Club Roast" style format.

Trader Joe's, bastion of civilization.

So I went to Trader Joe's this morning, not because I'm running low on food but because it's something to do with spud and I'm still exploring all their products.

I didn't go into the beer/wine section last time I visited; I'm feeling pretty good about my beer supply at this point, at least until I can start brewing again. On this visit, though, I figured I'd take a quick walk down the last aisle, and what do I find?

OTTER CREEK COPPER ALE.

...and the skies opened, the angels trumpeted, the choirs sang, etc...

My favorite New England brewery, and the one I didn't think I'd be finding this far south. I paid far too much for a six-pack of Copper Ale, and I couldn't be happier about it.

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Hey Diana

This AP religion article interviews some of your friends from GABF ... I'm sure you can guess who.

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Just the boys

Theo and I are finally getting back in the game. Tuesday afternoon/evening we were pretty much wiped out, after getting up early to take Ruth to the airport. Neither of us is at our best at 5:30 AM. Luckily for all three of us, airline travel is a lot less of a hassle when you flash military orders and a red passport.

The Norfolk airport is just as we left it, except it now has a Starbucks concession. When it's 7AM and you're holding back tears because you don't want to upset the 17-month-old who is staring at you and depending on you and you alone for the next 7 weeks ...well, a venti is in order.

We're all lucky I got us to the airport at 6AM in a decaffeinated state. Ten years ago, did I really make a habit of driving the Chicago expressways at 8AM with no coffee?

So the first day was bad news. Daddy wanted to stare at the wall and stew, but Theo wanted constant attention. Not the best start. But I got over it pretty fast and today we took a long walk, probably 7 miles or so round trip. I put him in the stroller and finally tracked down the Elizabeth River Trail.

This woefully underpublicized resource runs from West Ghent (where we live) down through Fort Norfolk, into the Freemason Neighborhood and Downtown, and much farther. The city is doing some construction on a section, so I had to detour into The Hague, well worth the early morning view. I'm so dismayed by the lack of useful descriptions of the trail I could find using Google that I've decided to break out a camera and Google Maps and document it. The way my other projects are going, If I finish that before our next move, it will be a major victory.

So the two of us walked down to the USS Wisconsin and back to West Ghent. Now knowing that our three or four favorite neighborhoods in town are all within a half-hour walk, I once again feel like the money we're spending to live in this area is so worthwhile.

I've also managed to be pretty good about another plan for deployment, to eat as many meals as I can with Theo. Never could do it when Ruth was around, either because of timing conflicts, me being unable to get dinner ready by Theo's early dinnertime, or because we wouldn't give up our valuable just-the-two-of-us-and-food time. With just the toddler and I here, none of that applies. Although I did have to throw him a piece of bread tonight while I fixed a hasty meal. [In another one of those "separated at birth" coincidences, Tom posted about this at Milspouse just yesterday.]

In truth, I settled in fast because I'm excited for her. I'm excited because she was ready to do her job, and now she's out in the thick of it. It will be hard to adjust to a new command and new duties as she's dumped into the middle of a deployment but she's had to deal with more.

I don't worry about Ruth and I. Seven weeks is a cakewalk, almost not worth worrying about when so many people (like us, earlier in the decade) go through so much more. I worry more about how the two of them will deal with the separation, it's a whole new world for them. I suppose 17+ hour days with no time to think about home will help ease the transition for Ruth. For the toddler, Routine is King, and anything works as long as you do it at the same time every day, so I plan to just carry on as usual, show him lots of pictures and movies of his Mommy and talk about her often.

The last question -- am I a worthy single parent? We'll just have to wait and see.

It's all up to me...

Sadly, I'll forget how to get out of my own house.

It's one of those days...

As the world proceeds from "financial meltdown" to "Crack each others' heads open and feast on the goo inside..."



As you can see from his Flickr stream and his home on the tubes, my friend Paul doesn't just edit photos, he also takes very good ones.

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On Military Husbands and the "wives club"

Now that I have some more time to myself and no television (and soon, no wife, but that's not important right now) to suck that time away, I want to start sharing my thoughts on my pal Tom Litchford's posts here, here, here and here about us military husbands and whether we're well served by the military's traditional (i.e. female-focused) family support structures. My bias, for those who don't know me -- I'm the husband of a career-minded Navy Surface Warfare Officer, so my opinions and observations come from that experience.

In addition to Tom's posts, MilSpouse has a great article on their website, split into two parts, that gives some good background on the challenges of the husband.

Despite its absurd length, this is meant to be another waypoint in a conversation, not the last word. Hopefully it's comprehensible and adds more light than heat to the topic.

As "The Guy" who has often changed a gathering of "wives" into "spouses," I've had very few bad experiences. However, I'm not a common case. Contrary to "guy" stereotypes, I'm very comfortable around groups of women and I have no problem being a good listener or talking someone's ear off, as circumstances demand.

I've had my share of dirty looks from wives who made it clear through their arrogance and snark that they didn't like the idea of women on ships or men in the "Wives' Club;" however, I noticed that they were generally negative people, who had some reason to be upset with most people and situations. Even without any men in the room, they would find a way to be unhappy, so I didn't take their actions personally.

Lacking any firsthand horror stories, I still share Tom's sense that the existing support structure isn't helpful to husbands. Then again, the spouse groups I've been involved in had a very small core of regular attendees; many of the wives were no more dedicated than the "attend once and run like hell" husbands. So maybe it's not just the men who are poorly served?

I wonder, is the entire concept of the wives/spouses club an anachronism? The institution of the wives club was created for women who were far from their extended family, had little to no contact with their husbands during deployment, were expected to be helpless and pitied without a man around, and without work or interests outside family life -- in short, women who usually bore no resemblance to today's spouses of either gender. Today's military wife brings a set of experiences much more like mine than like the military wife of years past.

In my experience, for couples today to succeed at the military lifestyle, the non-military spouse MUST have interests and "a life" completely unrelated to the military member. Among my "Navy Wife" friends, the question "When are they going back to sea so I can get back to normal?" is sometimes asked only half in jest. When a couple can't create independent identities, even a short separation becomes intolerable and one of the relationships -- either the military career or the marriage -- is doomed.

Cheap travel, instant global communication, more and more nonmilitary husbands who have never been subjected to the "you poor thing" military wife stereotype and fewer and fewer women fitting that profile: Maybe it's no wonder that the traditional model of the spouses club is no longer relevant.

I think there are other reasons the military husband is overlooked -- email me if you want to have a long, boring discussion about them -- but it's more important to ask, "What should spouses groups do to stay relevant to both men and women?" and "What should individual spouses do to retain sanity in the age of neverending deployments?"

Don't read this as a eulogy for the spouses club. It just needs to be seen in its proper context. Instead of expecting an official group to be the sole source of support and social interaction, call it a first resource among many.

As far as what groups should do for husbands, this may sound simplistic, but I think my good experiences could be chalked up to the leaders and "regulars" in the group who did their best to make me welcome. If I'd received an icy reception from those groups, I certainly wouldn't have returned. In the end, if you can treat me as professionally as you would a co-worker, I'll probably feel part of the group.

It's easy to say that family groups should look for activities that have appeal across gender lines, but it's not practical to constantly find activities that will draw in both genders, regardless of whether or not they have kids. An organization will tend to represent the majority, and if that's women alone with kids, the childless husband is going to wonder where he fits in.

What groups and group leaders can do if they have a small number of husbands who don't seem linked to the group -- encourage them to get together on their own, if the group's activities aren't of interest. Leaders can use their training opportunities and connections to other units to gather information, for instance could the base form a husbands group from multiple commands? Is there a command anywhere nearby that has a critical mass of husbands to form a group but would welcome more?

The individual husband should recognize that their unit's spouses club is going to have access to information they may not get anywhere else, and maintain links to it regardless of how they feel about the people or activities. You can make it through your wife's career while never having an emergency or question or crisis that requires an official conduit to your wife's command, but the one time you need it, you must know who to call.

In the end, if a military husband feels that he needs a group of men who are going through the same experiences, it's up to him to take the initiative and find those men himself. It feels silly to say this on a blog, but the Internet does exist. Form a meetup group, create an online forum, just start poking around Google. We military husbands are out here, and always ready to lend a hand.

Triumph

I don't think it's quite up to the "Star Wars Nerds" episode, but Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at the San Diego ComiCon is like like shooting fish in a barrel ... with a thermonuclear bomb.

Work flashback

Back when I worked for money, my boss and I had this EXACT CONVERSATION about timesheets pretty much every month.

All it does is encourage them

C&D Approves (of) This Message.

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The day is coming...

Ruth went to the base and checked in this morning. She's now waiting for a call -- at any time they can call her to get on a plane at a moment's notice to go to her ship. Chances are she'll have more notice than that, but maybe not.

So yeah, we're all totally relaxed and having a great time. Thhhhhhhpppppppt.

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