Ernestoed on my parade

I'd been meaning to drive down to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to see the Wright Brothers Memorial down there, but we got pretty busy the last few weeks, so El Plan Grande was to go sometime this last week, when the workload subsided a bit. I'm kicking myself for forgetting it Kitty Hawk was so close (less than two hours); I had several opportunities earlier in the course to take an afternoon and head down there, but unfortunately, even though I had carved out enough time today, with Ernesto spinning up the coast and N. Carolina getting nine inches of rain yesterday, I was worried about getting stuck somewhere. So I stayed here and sulked.

For our last activity as a class, one of our classmates set up a tour at the Allied Command Transformation NATO headquarters, the second-largest NATO HQ in the world, right here on the Naval base. It was somewhat interesting (and always fascinating to see someone in another country's uniform -- today a German naval officer -- give a briefing in broken English), but we had really hit a Givadam Wall earlier in the week after a long written Final exam. We had lunch at the NATO cafeteria, and I had the "NATO Club sandwich."

"Why is called a 'NATO' club sandwich?" Lt Col Nelson asks.

I replied, "Because it includes Turkey."

Bar Har Har!

Semitemporariorphanism

After ten months of living with only the occasional fatherly interludes, we have established universal truths about Ryan. For instance, we know that if he is crying, it means one of three things:

• He's hungry
• He's tired
• Daddy is trying to put clothes on him

I know I'll get better at it, but for now, it's like trying to put curtains on a lawnmower. I don't know whether to start from the top or the bottom, what is supposed to fasten where, how it'll look when it's done, or, indeed, what the whole point is. And it seems the more he cries, the more the laws of physics prevent snaps from coming together.

I still love it when I am able to get him to fall asleep in my arms, giving Ainsley a mega-deserved break, but I have also learned that wearing a tank top is not the shirt to do it in. The boy's a yanker.

We are still trying tons of different foods with Ryan, and in the past week he's had his first taste of egg, yogurt, hamburger, and Pixie Stix. Turkey was his first "meat", a gerber-globule of pureed mush mixed with squash or something. We're just glad his recent gastrorectalintestinal issues seem to have passed (har!), so he's eating fewer fecal-forcing foods (though I did like singing "It's the Blue Prune Spoon!" to him at mealtimes).

Just say THAT four times fast.

Shornboy

After looking too much like Sideshow Bob the last few weeks, we decided it was time Saturday to get rid of the willo-the-wisps that were falling over Ryan's ears, tickling his eyebrows, forming a mullet.
The old wive's tale is that haircuts are traumatic experiences for little humans and sometimes their mothers, but Ryan was more curious and wiggly, yet comfy in the confident lap of his mother. Plus George, the Foulds Family Follicle Formation Fella, never busted out the automaton buzzcutting weed whacker shears, even though those tickle and feel funny on the back of us gents' necks.

Small steps, perhaps. "Baby" steps, I think they're called.

I do NOT have amoebic dysentery

While planning for the forced capitulation of the Algerian invasive bastards all week, on Tuesday the instructor told me that I was going to be sick on Thursday.
"Really?"
"Yep."
"...I am feeling a little rumbly in the tumbly."
"Good. Play it up."
Turns out they just wanted to give someone else a shot at running the show, but starting Tuesday afternoon and all through Wednesday, I started holding my abdomen, first lightly rubbing it, then occasionally doubling over in pain. I would randomly tell members of the staff I might have amoebic dysentery from some bad cous-cous, that my colon was on fire, or that I might require a colonectopy later in the week. Which I thought was sufficiently ridiculous and silly, but over the last two days, on separate occasions, no less than 8 people have asked me if I'm feeling better. Even after this morning, when the new commander told everyone to pretend I wasn't there because I was 'at the hospital.'
Silly folks.
They're so cute.

Best Purchase Ever

Sticking with the Master/Mistress/Dogster/Asher Bedroom, I had failed to mention that Ainsley had the grand idea to stop sweating through her pajamas.
As fallout from our new bedroom furniture purchased in the spring, with the high headboard that didn't look right up against the small single window, she had switched the orientation of the furniture around so the bed was opposite said finetchre, as they say in Quebec.
This sparked the idea, one night, when Asha and Ainsley were staring at each other through the warm, squiggly lines emanating from the comforter like asphalt in Arizona, that since our air conditioner just doesn't do the trick conditioning all 2500 square feet of house, particularly the closed-off upper bedroom in which Asha has to live all day in order to not become dim sung for the other cats, that we should get a small single window air conditioner.
Four weeks later, after realizing I didn't have the right parts, then realizing I did but it being too late to install before having to drive to Norfolk, but then having to wait for my father-in-law to graciously offer to build me a board to help support the machine in the storm window, then get my father's help to actually install the sucker, all the while feeling like crap because this was ONE HOT SUMMER, this here delay here, that Ainsley and friends were suffering through, it was finally, finally, a working piece of sleeping refrigeration.
PLUS
and here's the bonus
Throughout our marriage, wifeypants and I have struggled with her fondness for sleeping in total silence and my lifelong habit, nay, need, for sleeping in a howling vortex provided by a floor fan, air conditioner, or "white noise" shoosher over the years. With the boith of our son, however, said noisemaker was rightly verboten so we would be able to hear if our son was okay in the cradle or down the hall. But not only did Ainsley realize that Ryan slept better with some background noise muffling street noise/dog barks, but now that we have an air conditioner in the room...
Dan's happy.

Throwing Money at the Problem

After five years of medication, chiropractocity, exercise, stretching, special diets, massage, accupuncturement, and west African tribal chants, the back is still in some pain. But not as bad as it was, consistently, anyway. However, I have noticed the last few weeks that I feel a lot worse sleeping in my own bed than I do the one in Norfolk. Having swapped them back and forth over the years, it's hard to remember which of my old mattresses this is, but it's at least seven years old and at most twelve. So yesterday, we decided to take our credit card to Rockaway Bedding, horizontally test-drive a bunch of different styles, and get ourselves a new, firm, solid, King Koil Serta EuroTop flame-resistant mattress. To be delivered Tuesday.
Coincidentally, after we had decided on the brand, I noticed that the one we chose had been endorsed by some Chiropractic organization.
We did try out the Swedish space-age tempurpedic mattress, but I felt like a nerf football sitting in the armpit of a giant smog monster.
So NOT comfortable, is my point.

Implotzable

Well, that was a fun, carefree 9.93 months.
GONE are the days of being able to plop Master Dypierponts onto his bottom with the full knowledge that he would be in that same spot when we returned.
GONE are the days of free access to the stairwells.
GONE are the days of cat and dog tails being safe from slobber, ingestion, or a good squeeze.
GONE is baby Ryan, belly-dweller.

Meet Ryan, young-man-on-the-go-wherever-he-damn-well-pleases.

Who, thanks to his father's watchful eye, alREADy has a coffee table-produced knot on his forehead the size of a radish.

*sigh*

Growing pains for all of us, really, as we adjust the household members and pointy/hard furniture to this new-found mobility, which is still a sight to behold. He kind of looks like a combination of a baby gazelle and a martian rover, as he SLAPS an arm down as if to get a firm hold on terra firma before committing his knees in that direction, then SLAPing the other arm forward.

The crib mattress goes down the next notch tonight.

I Bless the Rains

For our exercises at JFSC, we are to pretend we're a joint planning staff at a made-up organization called "Africa Command" or AFCOM (currently most African nations fall under the purview of the military's European Command), and we've already had fictionalized wargames/scenarios centered around Tunisia, Algeria, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. For the Tunisia/Algeria wargame, they pulled three of us aside and asked us to plan the "Red Cell," or enemy war plan, so I was a little out of the loop about what the "blue" team was doing, though it was fun to get creative and pretend that we were Algerian badasses ready to defeat the Americans by any means necessary. I even built an eight-slide powerpoint information operations slide from their spiritual leader to be played on "MSAlgeria-JazeeraBC" (interrupting a broadcast of 'Algerian Idol') to encourage the good people of Tunisia to rise up against their government. After all, they had desecrated one of the holiest sites in all of Muslimdom (I showed a picture of a mosque with fake graffiti on it: "bin Logan is a doo-doo head").

For the Nigerian scenario, they split us up into different roles again, even assigning some to be liaison officers from other countries and encouraging folks to dress up in phone foreign uniforms. But that day I was asked to be the Public Affairs officer and prepare for a press conference, to be video taped in front of actual reporters and journalism students from the local area. So again, I was out of the loop of the actual planning process and the things I was actually supposed to be learning down here. A classmate joked that I should probably take it as a sign that they don't trust me and if I get a crummy job for the next scenario, I'd know for sure.

So yesterday I found out I'm in charge of the whole shootin' match. For a long, three-day exercise next week. Great. A little daunting, though since nothing's graded and everything's done in collaboration, we should do fine. It's also flattering to know the instructors think enough of me to put me in charge, but I still wish I'd had more input in the previous scenarios.

Perhaps I was too clever with my idea during the Nigeria scenario: we had a humanitarian crisis with 100,000 displaced persons getting set up in camps, and the Nigerian government had asked for our help in securing and feeding them, but we also wanted to relay the message to the public at large that we were there on a peaceful mission. So I came up with the perfect solution: edible leaflets.

By the second day we were calling them "LREs" (Leaflets Ready-to-Eat).

Go to hell Senor Zaire, first name Louis

Getting into the playoffs was remarkable-esque, but it came to an abrupt and surprisingly disappointing halt on Wednesday. Though our opponent had been undefeated and was stocked with burly marines the size of Redwoods, we were tied at 3 at the end of 6 innings. Unfortunately, we fell apart and lost by four. I was also pissed that the other team weren't exactly sportsman, bragging, hot dogging, yelling at our team to "drop it" on pop flies, etc. No cause for that. This is supposed to be fun. Ee Gee:
During one of my at-bats, I hit a foul ball straight up

let's freeze that image temporarily, the ball spinning on its upward trajectory, while I interject with the fact that on our first day of JFSC, back on June 26th, we had to wait in a few lines to in-process, get our pictures taken, etc. In one line, I stood next to this AF security forces guy named Mike and we chatted.
Mike was playing catcher for the other team during last night's game. I'm not sure if he remembered me, but I did him.

so my ball, rather than flying over the backstop, or hitting it and bouncing back down, happened to become lodged directly over the plate. Mike immediately stepped up with his glove, jokingly, in case the ball happened to drop down. So I immediately tackled him and pushed him into the back fence. To the guffaws and delight of the folks in the stands. By this time, the stupid umpire (who cost us several calls) decided to toss a different ball into the air to dislodge the first one, which didn't work, but the first ball nearly hit me in the head. So I went after the ump with my bat. More chortles. I then proceeded to hit the next pitch very very far, only it was caught.

Purtz.
All the more disappointing since it seems my next organized military sport is going to be curling or reindeer tossing or whatever they do in Siberia in November.

Stalking

I bought salad ingredients Monday.

However, one of my two roommates had filled up the upper crisper in our shared side-by-side fridge-freezer that I had been using (but recently emptied), so I had to put my salad, carrots, and cucumber down to the bottom, smaller, crisper. But the bag of celery just wouldn't fit.

Hmm.

I didn't want to lay it against the Commander's case of beer. Seemed rude and invasive. So I moved the Colonel's juice on the top shelf to the side and stuck the celery all the way in the back, sitting on its end.

When I got back from class the next day, the celery was sitting on the kitchen table.

You tend to see fruit, in a bowl, adjusted just so, on a kitchen table. Perhaps a vase full of flowers. But not cold celery in a plastic bag, looking sad and lost, like a Sunday newspaper tossed on the wrong curb.

I looked up on the top shelf again, and nothing had changed. Just a lack of celery. Soon after, the Commander walked in, and I asked if I could place my celery gingerly on his beer, as I seemed to have offended the Colonel's sensibilities by invading his personal juice space. The Commander was fine with it. Even offered me a beer. Go Navy.

So imagine my surprise this afternoon after the softball game to find no celery in the fridge.
I looked on the kitchen table to see if it had somehow escaped again. No. But further on...yep... there it was... in the garbage.

?

Either I am missing something or I have the world's most offensive vegetables on the planet.

The celery is back on the beer.
I'm sure that's why it comes in a bag. For such roommate assholiant emergencies.

Monsieur Twarr, first name Victor

After weeks of futility, close calls, scraped knees, burst hamstrings, and dashed hopes, our 0-and-3 record had us seeded quite low in the end-of-season softball tournament. Expectations were low. Consolatory beer was already purchased.
But no!
As Douglas MacArthur once said, "Someone sucked worse than we!"

I only went 2-for-4, but my towering drive to right field that the opponent somehow dropped when he lost it in the sun, clouds, or his glove, drove in the final two runs to "mercy rule" us to victory, 13-3.
Which means we play again tomorrow. Against some undefeated team who had a bye.
But still!

Consolatory beer never tasted so good as when drunk in the shadow of success.

-- George Washington.

Language Barrier

I'm just never going to finish this book on tape.
Misnomer that it is.
Since it's on CD.
But people who own TiVos still talk about "taping" shows.
S'anyway.

Two weekends ago a Lt Col from my class needed a ride to DC so he came along with me as far as Woodbridge, and this weekend another classmate was visiting a cousin near my house so I asked if I could tag along with him. It does make the time go by faster, having a conversationalist in the vehicle, as opposed to, say, dogs.

Saturday we went to a Turkish restaurant (only the sign out front called it "Euro-Mediterranean") to celebrate the in-between birthdays of our dear friends the Boivins senior. Ryan's first taste of ekmek. And first glance, again as far as I know, at a fish tank. With fish as big as his head. It was fun asking for a "Beer, please" and thanking the waiter in Turkish, though I didn't want anyone to get the impression that I knew many more words than that. Ryan successfully flirted with a female server, but hit himself in the eye with his Redskins cheerios container, so that ended the night on a downer.

We're getting the garage door taken care of, but a routine inspection of our fireplace showed a bertload of creosote and an improperly installed wood-burning stove (stoopid home inspector!) so now we're considering getting rid of it altogether and just have a "normal" fireplace.
I also trimmed several branches from a tree, watered the lawn, killed some hornets, and emptied the litter boxes.
It's like I live there or something.

Today, since Seminar 9 was in civilian clothes to go watch a semi-pro baseball game, our instructor mucked up our schedule by bringing in his escortee from the Joint Forces Staff College Hall of Fame induction ceremony to our Seminar -- a Turkish (whoa!) two-star general who attended the college eighteen years ago as a Major. I thought I would be nice to welcome him ottomanly, so when doing my intro, I said "good morning" to him in Turkish, and

NOTHING.
not a smile, not a nod, not a nada.
Asia Minerd.

At least at the gas station Sunday night I told "Sveta" at the counter 'so long' in Russian and it made her night...

Time to Buy a Doorbell

Dear Friends,

If we don't answer the front door right away, and you think we're home, we might be downstairs, might be putting the baby down for a nap, might be out in the back yard.

There's no need to get frustrated.

Larded Lightning

After a two-week delay (due to rain one week and excessive heat another), we finally had our second softball game on Monday. We were a little rusty, but jumped ahead early and I was enjoying my position as the "Rover", the softball-specific position midway between the outfield and the infield. I was involved in over a dozen plays, and coupled with going 3-for-4 at the plate (all doubles!), I was pretty pooped by the end. But it was fun. I came up to bat in the top of the 7th inning, down by 3 runs, 2 outs, 2 runners on, and was able to smack the ball into my favorite spot in the far right field corner and clear the bases. The next guy knocked me in, and we had gallantly tied the game, only to lose it in the bottom half.
Several people nicely complimented my play, but someone had the audacity to accuse me of having "wheels," which of course made me think, well, sure:
As per usual, I was more sore two days after the game than the day after, but we have another makeup game today, so we'll see how much air I have in the tires.

Pop in le Pew

Though I cannot account for my wife's whereabouts for half of 2005 and 2006, I'm pretty sure that Sunday was Ryan's first time in a Church.
At least outside Mommy's belly.
A friend of Ainsley had invited us to her son's baptism in Manassas, and I for one was confused at first. I've never been to a baptism before, save my own, back in the day, when hybrid cars were half horse and digital cameras were only found on the Jetsons and Mr. Spock's night stand, but I've seen pictures of other people's. Always a family photo, parents and godparents surrounding a pastor and a bucket and kid in a big white wind sock. So I assumed the baptism was just a baptism. But when we got to the church, there was nothing going on in any of the back rooms (except I did find a table with name tags and a sign that said "please fill out a nametag" and I'm all about nametags -- "Ryan's Daddy" I put, since none of her friends really know me, but Ryan's famous). We walked into the back of the main church just as the main organ kicked in for the first hymn, so we stepped out briefly. Is this it? Are we here? Then Ainsley spotted her friend up front -- so the baptism was just part of a regular service. So Ryan got to stare at the stained glass windows and flirt with the lady behind us.

Afterwards, the baptisee's mum (she's British) invited us to her home for a huge spread, so Ryan got to hang out with his little friends he's been hanging out with since he was born. And I got to work on his balance (wasn't even touching him with my left hand!)

Tubular

Despite my wife's calculated advice ("duck"), I only hit my head twice.
After last week's celebration of all things supersonically stealthy, this week we were able to hop-skip over to the piers for an arranged tour of the USS Hampton, a Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered submarine. (I walked around with my hands in front of the jibblies, if you know what I mean.) Some random stats:

Displacement: 6000 tons light, 6927 tons full, 927 tons dead
Length: 110.3 meters (362 feet)
Beam: 10 meters (33 feet)
Draft: 9.4 meters (31 feet)
Complement: 12 officers, 98 men
Armament: four 21-inch torpedo tubes, 12 vertical launch Tomahawk missiles

They split us up into groups of four or five and took us down into various parts of the boat (subs are "boats"; surface craft are "ships"). After crossing a gangplank from the dock and having a bell rung -- very traditional-like, each of us stopped and saluted the flag at the bow (front; the pilots amongst us referred to it as the "nose") of the sub, which I didn't really understand, but I didn't want to *har!* rock the boat, so I complied. We eased around the main mast, regarding the odd, black, playground-rubber-like coating around the entire hull, and then stepped down into the sub, where we were greeted by the "captain", even though he was only a Commander. Again, some Navy tradition.
It only got really cramped down in the third level back in the machinery room, where you had to walk almost sideways to squeeze between racks, but headroom really wasn't a problem (the head-butts I attained were from climbing up some angled stairs and hitting something near the periscope -- I checked out my car to make sure it was still on the pier). But it still boggles the mind to think that 110 men are crammed into the equivalent of a three-story apartment building for anywhere from ten days to two months (there are only about thirty bunks on the boat, so with shift work you can see there's an awful lot of sharing).
The Lieutenant showed us the bridge and told us about the sonar equipment, so I did my best quiet Sean Connery ("One ping only, pleash.") for the amusement of DQ, who repeated it out loud and got a big laugh. Bastard.
So next week one of the Army dudes needs to get us a tour of a tank or something.

Metamorfathis

Pophood changes a feller. Perhaps books have been written on the subject.
I'm sure the distance of the last nine months has had a lot to do with it, but Ryan has always been this baby person. Even, on some levels, my baby person. But it has only recently, gradually, occurred to me that this lad is my son. It's weird and vaguely unexplainable. Obviously. I'm sure a lot of it has come out of our more recent interactions, especially with Mommy off getting her feet scraped or whatever women do in salons, but I am becoming a father to this boy.
But more is happening to me. In class this week we watched a "60 Minutes" video about North Korea that showed their dilapidated infrastructure and starving children that a year ago wouldn't have made a dent. But the video also showed babies, and something in me just twinged that never had before watching television.
And Monday, a Major in our group was promoted to Lt Col. He had his parents there, and a close friend with his wife and two kids (his own family is in Belgium). The promotee had asked for someone to watch the kids in the back of the room during the ceremony, so Dennis and Alston had volunteered, but as the ceremony started, the girl, somewhere between 2 and 3, started fussing in her stroller and started demanding, in a Colonel's-speech-distracting way, for her release. Alston complied, but she immediately ran around the chairs in front and hugged the promotee around the leg, yelling "Uncle Roger!"
Later, after being carried screaming out of the room by her mother, the girl was back in Alston's charge, kneeling on a "big people" chair, bouncing around on it as it wobbled, leaning WAAAY over towards her face to reach a Marine hat on the floor ... and I just couldn't concentrate --This New Father Was Worried For the Kid.
Plus Uncle Roger's speech was boring as hell and eighty-five times too long and was keeping us from our mid-way-through-the-course party.

Adapt and Overcome

Well, we didn't have any cutlery.

What would you do?

Old School'd

Our instructors had offered we wee students to provide career-specific briefings to the rest of the class when time permitted, so I thought the gang might enjoy a brief rundown on space operations. Unfortunately, time permitted on Friday, last thing before breaking for the weekend. So I knew most people wouldn't be listening to me if I was the last thing between them and the door.
Fortunately, the guy before me went long with his briefing, so the instructors asked me to wait until Monday for mine.
Back to UNfortunately, that Friday briefing was painfully unfunny, uninteresting, uncool, and, as I mentioned, longer than it should have been. Granted, it's hard to make NATO logistics sexy, but I half-wanted to brief Friday just to give the Seminar gang a better taste in their mouth for how their week ended.
"How long would your briefing had been?" a Navy Commander asked me in the stairwell later.
"Dunno. Never given it. But I had 64 slides."
"!" said his expression, since the logistics briefing only had 34.
"Well, I have lot of pictures that go by quickly."
"...okay..."
Back to FORtunately, over the weekend my Dad brought over the latest Air Force Magazine, which contained this year's Space Almanac, which allowed me to check my facts -- it's been nearly two years since I've given a full-blown Space 101 brief.
Monday. I was first on the docket, but the 1030 guest speaker had canceled, so the morning schedule was all dorked up. I realized twenty-five minutes into my talk that I was going to go long as well, but when I started hurrying, the instructor told me to go ahead and take my time. I finished after about forty-five minutes, wowing, entertaining, mesmerizing, debunking myths about space, showing cool infrared photos, sufficiently praising Milstar. Then the instructors had a few questions, one about WMD in space (not allowed, by treaty, but other weapons are not prohibited), another about the value of the International Space Station. Then Commander Miller posed one:
"What's your biggest budget crunch currently?"
"Well, my wife really wants to buy a hot tub..."