A longer version of a tweet from earlier...

I don't know if I'll like the guy. I'm certain I don't agree with him on everything, or even a lot of things.

But...No one will ever be able to tell my son that a mixed race kid whose grandparents weren't born in the U.S. can't do anything he wants with his life.

Right now that makes me happy for my son in a way I can't express.

F*** it. Throw the ball downfield.

In honor of Sexy Rexy's return, his #1 fan...

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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Another sign we're growing up fast

Theo was begging for attention all day, so after dinner I sat down with him in the living room while he played. He stood up, ran over to me and started hugging my knees, pretty normal "I'm needy today" behavior. I thought I felt the beginning of a bite, so I pulled him away...

"Theo, no biting! Do you want to go to bed right now?"

Kid looks up at me and clear as day yells "YES!"

Ruth and I both blinked. "You heard that too? Well, OK then! Theo, if you want to go night-night, go to the stairs."

Quick as a flash, he's standing in front of the gate on the stairway. I took him upstairs and he practically put himself to sleep. Throw the books on the floor, can the songs, forget the milk, all he wanted was the crib.

Writing this down reminds me -- this wasn't even the first time he'd done this. During last month's road trip, probably the first or second night at my parents' house, he walked US through the bedtime routine. Out of the blue, long before we'd even considered bedtime, he grabbed Goodnight Moon and brought it over to Grandpa (who had pulled a lot of bedtime duty during his visit a couple weeks prior), then started pointing at the refrigerator door and yelling until I put it together -- he knows that's where his milk lives.

Never underestimate a toddler -- they know what they want, we just need to watch carefully and know the right questions to ask.

Life in my house

Ruth: "What are you nerding up to now?"

Me: "Thinking about a new blog post."

Ruth: "About what?"

Me: "I dunno. If I knew I'd be writing it."

Excitement?

A question I've been hearing a lot lately is "Are you excited about your new house?"

The answer, every time -- No. I'm not excited. Not even a little, and I'm not sure why.

It's a very nice house. It's in a gorgeous neighborhood. Our neighbors are friendly and generous with us. We're an easy walk or near-instant drive to everything we enjoy about Norfolk. There's very little it requires in the way of redecorating or repairs -- I painted a couple rooms and we're hanging curtain rods.

There's still plenty of boxes to empty and things to be organized and stored and hung on the walls, but when I'm not busy procrastinating, isn't all that part of the fun of a new place?

Yet, the only thing I've been even mildly excited about this week was our new refrigerator.

I definitely don't regret buying in the midst of the current financial climate. Before the real estate slowdown, this house would've easily sold for far more than we paid, so in that sense we got a "great deal." We have a solid, unspectacular loan with lots of money down from a local bank and my wife has an extremely secure, well-paid job in (sadly) a growth market. We also received some reminders during this move about the uncertainties and inconveniences of renting that left me happy we didn't go that route here.

Despite all our friends here, we did leave some friends and a comfortable routine behind in New England; I could just be missing our past lives, looking for something to replace them.

One possibility that has been sneaking into my head recently -- Ruth is weeks, or even just days, from getting on an airplane and heading to wherever her new ship will be meeting her. As we've learned from experience, approaching separations such as deployments cause all kinds of strange, almost random behavior when we know they're inevitable. This could be predeployment dread that I'm just directing at our new house.

Or, maybe I've finally truly internalized the nomadic lifestyle of the military family and it's left me hopelessly cynical about what should be a happy time. I know that if Ruth's plans come together then this house, however beautiful, is going to pass out of our lives in 4-5 years or less.

So...yeah. This little vent has cleared up nothing in my mind. It is a very nice house. Theo, Guinness and Aslan have settled in like they've lived here forever. I guess that's enough for me.

Our travels...

So today is the first time I've been on the Internet since Monday morning. As usual when I don't have easy access, the entire time my mind has been racing with funny and insightful blog posts that will never see pixels.

We've moved into the new house with no hiccups so far. The kitchen doesn't have as much storage as we'd first thought, but a trip to IKEA will solve that pretty quickly.

Theo and I left Norfolk Sept. 5 to meet Ruth in Newport. After enjoying a few last visits around town and seeing Ruth graduate from DH school, we went back to Norfolk for a few days. Monday afternoon found us back on the road driving to IL for visits to relatives.

I'm pretty much brain dead at this point. Might have more to say about the trip but maybe not.

Cubs Win!

It's been a long day.

Photo credit: Grandpa

We're here

It took about 11 hours total, pretty amazing with a toddler and two cats, but we made it to Norfolk. We may have a house tomorrow, I hope.

Cats were SILENT almost the whole way down, which isn't like them. Theo was an absolute angel, because he always is. Bedtime for me. Walkthrough tomorrow morning...

Dear users of the Craigslist "Free Stuff" section

The proper response to a listing under "Free Stuff" is "When are you available for me to come to your house and take these items off your hands?" The proper response is not "Hey, call my cell phone."

Let's think about this -- from the moment I decide that something in my house that has been sitting in a closet since I moved in 3.5 years ago is worth so little to us that it must be given/thrown away, I'm doing YOU a favor. From the moment I pressed "publish", I stopped having an archaic music box in my house, and started holding a piece of YOUR property until you can come here and pick it up.

I might give partial credit for "Call my cell phone to give me your address and I will come straight over," but chances are that I'm going to get three responses in the first couple hours a listing is online, and whoever makes me do the least work is getting the goods.

And yes, I realize it would've taken me less time to dial a phone number than write a blog post. Shuddup.

Now begone, before we taunt you a second time

I put up a link to this at right, but man oh man there's nothing finer than the reaction in the Cuban press to the US Navy sending an amphibious ship full of doctors, dentists and aid workers to the Caribbean as part of an ongoing series of humanitarian missions.

I'm looking at this line in particular:

The USS Kearsarge will remain in Latin America for four months and will land in five nations of Central and South America and the Caribbean after landing in Nicaragua.

Panama, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago are the other nations that will soon feel intimidated by the warship before it returns to its base in Virginia.

one note

Although she's busy in school all day and has 200,000 other things to do, and didn't have a car, my wife made sure I had half-and-half in the house this morning. She obviously realizes her husband is a simple man, and she's dreamy.

Home, if you can call it that

Theo and I arrived back in Newport from our extended roadtrip yesterday afternoon.

Of course, with just about a week and a half until the movers arrive, this place is barely home anymore. The hiatus may continue, aside from a snarky comment or two and maybe some reader items posted.

Blogging from the road never even occurred to me. Too busy living, or just busy, I guess.

As much as I love to go on long road trips, the day before is never a good scene in my house. I try to come up with every possible excuse not to go or even to get ready to go.

Maybe that's a good thing, today, since there's plenty of purging and packing still to do in these parts. Of course, during the purge'n'pack I'm thinking of all the things on the trip list that aren't getting done, thinking that leaving for two weeks is stupid and I should find an excuse to come back early, and thinking that I'm not doing nearly enough rolling around on the floor with Theo this morning.

Once I'm out on the road all will be well, of course, and once I'm in IL I won't think nearly as much about needing to come back. Maybe I should just throw everything in the suitcase and start driving, ready or not...

RIP, The Morning Nap 2007-2008

So ever since the weather has improved, I've been hoping that maybe Theo would drop his morning nap early, give us a chance to start getting out and about more during the day. He's always been very sensitive to not getting his naps in, so leaving the house for more than a quick morning walk was tempting fate.

So of course, now that I really need him occupied for several hours in the morning and afternoon so I can get things done around the house, he has of course decided that he doesn't need that morning nap after all. Dropped it practically overnight, as if he never slept in the mornings at all.

Watch what I wish for, I guess.

Quote of the night, so far

"Only in retrospect do I see the wisdom of the great many things I've done."

An IT guy's job is sometimes therapy.

"Hi, I'm a Mac..."

And, you're a pussy.

We're finally getting past the stereotype of Macs as the computer for artistic, sensitive, effeminate types. There's gotta be a dozen easily led blonds in Hollywood for every Drew Barrymore, go hook up with two or three of them and tell your publicist to stop describing you as "distraught" in public.

Then zap your PRAM and rebuild your desktop. You never know what viruses those Hollywood types are carrying...

Whoops, Old Mac Guy mistake, he's running OS X. How about "Reset your system management controller and run Software Update?"

Update

Kid is STILL ASLEEP at 8:30 AM, probably because he was awake (as were we all) from about 4 until 5:30 this morning. Sounded like teeth, or maybe a bad dream... who knows?

I'm very happy with how the house is coming along. The basement has taken far less time than I thought, the attic is almost done, and the garbage bags and donation bags are moving out the door. We're even getting more money than we'd thought for our used CDs, which is a nice bonus when I'm going to be living on rice and beans the duration of the fall.

Our infant stuff isn't selling on Craigslist as well as I'd hoped, but such is life.

I'm insanely jealous of Tom L. right now.

Michelle makes me laugh.

Brewing is all but offline. I've missed my date to bottle a batch of beer for our August trip (maybe tonight?), and I'm debating if I'm going to brew again before Norfolk, or just keep my ingredients sealed up and pick up again in September or October.

Everything is still online for the house we're buying in Norfolk. We've passed the inspection but we're still waiting for some financing hurdles. This might actually happen...

We've told our landlord we're out of here at the end of August and the minivan is reserved. No official date from the movers yet, but Labor Day should see Theo and I reduced to nomads, with all our stuff on a truck somewhere.

I can't say it enough -- we're going to miss Newport and a lot of people here; whatever people say about New England rudeness we've never seen it from the locals on the Island.

I'm already exploring our new neighborhood via Internet. Ruth and I already know it pretty well from our last stay in Norfolk, but I'm just checking out what's the same, what's different and daydreaming, whenever I have a few minutes...

We're going to find just as much fun there as we have here, assuming we don't put ourselves in the poorhouse buying drapes and couches and rugs and whatnot.

Spud is awake and chattering to himself. It's inevitable, whenever I realize that he's been asleep long enough for me to get something done for myself, he wakes up. I'm out of interesting things to babble about anyway.

That's my son

The local energy monopoly's favorite pastime these days is to show up on our block at a random hour of the day or night, tear out a section of the street with jackhammers and pavement saws, fill it in again and then come back several days later to do it all again.

So yesterday morning was our turn; the crew showed up just before 9AM, told the folks across the street to move their cars, and made extra sure to be rude and uncommunicative when the neighbor and I started asking questions.

So I put Theo down for his nap right at 9AM, turned on fans and white noise and crossed my fingers. His window is right below where the crew turned on their jackhammer about 9:30.

KID SLEPT UNTIL 11, not a peep out of him.

Of course, they turned off the noise about 15 minutes after it started, then they all stood around until lunchtime and the whole commotion was gone before we got home from our walk. WTF?

The postscript -- late that afternoon the tree commandos arrived to take a dying tree out of the neighbor's property. The tree guys were mega-cool, they waved to Theo and talked to Daddy in between swinging chainsaws, running the wood chipper and using their Bobcat with a claw on the front to haul away logs. Luckily they'd finished all that right at Theo's bedtime, or else it could've been a long night.

Today's walk

Today was almost 2.75 miles. Had to go look in on some cats for a friend right in the middle so I have no clue about time.

Then this afternoon all three of us took a walk to the farmer's market since Ruth had today off from work. It was 2.8 miles, with a stop at the coffee shop as Theo fell asleep in the stroller, so we took the time to catch up with a friend we'd run into while out and about.

Today's walk

A quick two miles. Theo was a beast yesterday after his morning nap consisted of passing out in the backpack, and Daddy's hips are feeling yesterday's long walk. I'm sure we'll be out for another walk later today.

addendum

One of my current projects is taking some long hikes of Newport, bringing Theo along in the baby backpack a friend loaned us. This morning I covered 5.2 miles on the island, with no apparent damage to legs or feet (yet). My next goal is a walk from our house, along the entire Newport Cliff Walk and back, probably about 8 miles. After that I'm going to work on finding a walking route I'm comfortable with down to the Ocean Drive/Brenton Point park area.

This may be too much to do before the end of August considering what has to be done around here, but I can't spend every moment in the house...

A realization, and a roundup

Another post about myself and the blog, a sure sign of a blog in decline. Will I still be posting next week or will it be hiatus time again?!? Tune in and find out!

Over the past week, I've decided that if all goes well with the new house in Norfolk, I want to move Theo and I to Virginia and vacate this house before the end of August. Paying a month of rent in Newport will be bad news once we have two mortgages in Norfolk.

The realization from the post title: Theo and I need to be in Illinois for two weeks in August, maybe more. So in the past week, we've time-traveled from being over two months from moving, to being three and a half weeks from moving.

Following Paul's Law of Moving, while adding the corollary that "People with toddlers take twice as long as the childless to accomplish any task," I'm pretty much already in hopeless territory. (Confidential to Paul: Let us know you're alive, mmmkay?)

Thus, recreational blogging will pretty much stop until maybe Labor Dayish, unless I really find the need to vent. There are a few loose ends in need of tying around here, so I'm going to make the following series of broad generalizations and unsupported statements:

Tom (and MyMilitaryLife) directed me to this all-too-relevant USA Today Op-Ed from William Kistner, a Navy spouse and father who found himself standing on the pier (or probably tarmac in this case) as his wife was deployed to Africa. I'll recommend it while noting my regret that I can't talk more deeply about the subject right now.

What I'm reading lately: I've recently finished Into Thin Air and Under the Banner of Heaven, both by Jon Krakauer. I recommend them both highly.

I read The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis of Moneyball fame. The story he tells in this book is equally compelling to me, partly because I'm more of a football guy and partly because the story is far from over.

I started to read and failed to finish a memoir that I would love to talk trash about, but I have too much respect for the person's accomplishments to rip on the book. I won't say more about it, but the next time you read a bad memoir, just remember that I warned you not to do it.

I also (finally) read Einstein's Dreams, which was fantastitabulous.

I mentioned it to Tom this morning, but I'll reply to his post here too: Homeownership is scary, but after being goaded into it by my wife, I've found it well worthwhile -- when the situation is right -- and no more risky or stress-inducing than renting. The risks and stress are just different. As long as you put some money down on a place up front, get a fixed-rate loan from a reputable lender like NavyFed or USAA and stay well within your means (don't borrow as much as the banks will loan you, even if you're 100% certain that promotion is coming next year), the current problems in the mortgage market simply won't apply to you.

Finally, the post that's been percolating the longest, my thoughts on this month's Atlantic. Definitely read "What Rumsfeld Got Right" and "Electro-Shock Therapy." The battery problem is the fundamental issue in our current energy crisis -- oil has been our cheap, large-capacity portable energy storage, and now that it's no longer cheap, batteries need to get better fast. I admire what GM is trying to do with the Volt, but because they're GM I have every confidence in the world they will mess it up. I'm just happy I shouldn't have to worry about buying a car for a few more years.

As I've thought it over, my opinion of the cover story, "Is Google making us Stupid?" has evolved from cautious pessimism to outright disdain. It's nothing more than a bunch of controversial statements that have gotten attention because Oooo, they're so contrarian.

Twenty years ago, high-minded Atlantic writers would've been blaming all society's ills (e.g., short attention spans, declining literary culture, USA Today, declining subscriptions at the sorts of high-minded journals that employ Atlantic writers) on that popular pre-Interent boogeyman TELEVISION and its minion the sound bite; if they were talking about politics, they might have thrown in an unkind word for Rush Limbaugh. Fast-forward to today, and Carr tries to claim that the Internet is dumbing down CABLE NEWS, as if CNBMSNBFOX had led us into the golden age of an informed, wise electorate before the Internet reduced us all to quivering mush.

And just like the proper response to scapegoaters of TV has always been "Change the channel or turn it off, moron," someone needs to tell Carr that if he really believes that our pre-Internet brains were superior, he can rejoin the majority of humanity who still lives offline.

The truth is, the culture Carr pines for never had a golden age except in the minds of its partisans. It's never been large or celebrated; exclusive and difficult would be better descriptors. Someone who spends their time jumping from blog to blog or refreshing their RSS feeds shouldn't turn around and cast blame on a fault-tolerant global information network for rewiring their brain. They did it to themselves.

...one more thought. A lot of the "me too-ing" of the Carr article has been fake concern about the "pose" or "tone" of blogging, that blogs by their nature foster an attitude of post-GenX ironic detachment or somesuch. For anyone who thinks that similar "bloggy" pieces of short, witty, self-deprecating writing didn't exist before the Internet, please get yourselves a volume of Montaigne.

Assuming, that is, that you can still read on paper.

New iPhone features

OK, I give in

Not writing here in almost a week usually means I have something on my mind that I don't want to make public.

So here it is: Yeah, we did put an offer on a house while we were in Norfolk. And the offer was accepted, so we have a contract to close on the house before Labor Day. It even looks like we'll be able to finance it without selling our current house, or selling Theo to the highest bidder.

We like this house a lot, but having been burned before by the homebuying process, I'm only about 51% excited about it right now and Ruth is more like 0.5% excited.

Maybe after the inspection I'll let myself get 60% excited or so, but don't expect any full-blown giddy around here (or any other details about the place) until we've signed the closing paperwork and have keys in hand. Email me if you're interested and think you're someone who should know this information.

We're home

It's been a long trip but we're back in Newport. Theo handled the car ride quite successfully, a good test run for the much longer drives coming in August and September.

The trip was a great success. We saw a bunch of houses we like in our price range, and most importantly talked to a mortgage banker who will give us a reasonable loan without selling our bodies, our current house or Theo. So we're planning our next move as far as making offers, and when there's something interesting to tell, you all will be the last to know. Thhhhhpt.

On my mind.

You know that you've got too many things on your mind when you think about checking the (running) washing machine for the baby monitor receiver. It was in the bathroom, thanks.

I don't post much about anything related to Ruth's work because I'm paranoid, and all evidence to the contrary I have to assume that her entire chain of command (Hi Mr. President) and all the other scattered millions who get DoD paychecks are reading whatever I write.

That being said, given that this blog is mostly personal and that this subject has dominated my thoughts all summer, I don't know why I haven't mentioned much that OHMYFRAKINGJEEBUS we're moving in about two months. This afternoon we leave for Norfolk to go look for a house.

Of course we won't be able to make any solid offers until we sell our current house in Norfolk. More than any particular home features, we want to move to a walkable area of the city where we can continue living with minimal car dependence, as we have here. As a lot of you probably know, it's not easy to muster much enthusiasm for looking at a bunch of homes that might not (but realistically, given the market, likely will) be around when we get around to making an offer.

In the end, I have to tell myself that our solid financial condition and the total buyer's market in Norfolk will leave us able to buy SOMETHING adequate in a neighborhood we can live with, even if our current place doesn't sell at all. We can even drop the price of our current place to a fire sale price, say 25% off our original asking price, and our equity would leave us with enough down payment to afford something nice in the area we want. [NOTE TO ANY POTENTIAL BUYERS WHO MIGHT HAVE READ THIS: FUCK YOU, I'M NOT LOWERING THE PRICE THAT MUCH. NOT TODAY, ANYWAY. AND YES, I'm intentionally screaming.]

This certainty in my brain that the variables of the situation all fall in our favor does not ameliorate the uncertainty, or the corresponding worry in my gut, at all. I should totally be preparing to get us out the door in four hours rather than writing a post, but it's one of those Get This Out of My Mind situations.

So right now I have posts percolating about last month's polo match (too many cute pictures to count) and Tom's "support systems for military husbands" post. If you see either of these posts this weekend, you'll know that the house selling and buying is going very, very well, but I wouldn't advise holding your breath on that...