Walker, Virginia Ranger

Made it home Friday afternoon about my usual gettin'-home-from-work time, and although it took a few minutes to remember my name, we enjoyed a happy reunion with tea and twiglets on the front porch.
Still happy as a larky clam to walk all over the joint if he has your finger, I let go of him in our foyer and darned if he didn't take a few stutter steps before falling down to his knees. Okay, progress.
An old friend was promoted to Lt Col this afternoon, and although I was flying during the ceremony, he and his wife had an open house to celebrate, and after playing BAWL out back for a few minutes, we had him back inside practicing his freestyle two-step on a cushy carpet. We'd lead him into the center of the rug, let go, and he'd stand there a while, contemplate his feet, and then STOMP STOMP STOMP his way to Mommy or Me, a big Look What I Can Do grin on his face. Of course, Ainsley's response was, "Yay!....Oh, no...."

So we thought we'd take his new-found sea legs to the neighborhood Easter Egg hunt in the playground. They'd roped off different sections for 9+ year olds, 4-8 year olds, and munchkins. We spread out in a line, and when the horn sounded, we took off at Ryan pace (Grandad holding a finger), heading for some plastic eggs in the grass. Unfortunately, some hispanic grandma figured she'd pick up everything in our path (until her daughter reminded her that she was not less than quatro), so Grandad veered off to the left and with a blocking movement of his own, barricaded a young girl from reaching an egg for Ryan to pick up. All told, Ryan only got three or four, plus a couple a cute blonde handed to him ("Ryan, can you say 'What's your phone number?' ... I mean, 'Thank you?'"), and it was over in less than sixty seconds.

But since it was a beautiful day, we spent another thirty minutes on the swing and going down the slide all by himself big boy like, probably to impress the blonde. Whom he proceeded to knock to the ground when she tried to hug him.

Minot Redux

My last training day in Salt Lake City had us drive up to Hill AFB to see some Minuteman IIIs being refurbished and put back together, as well as some huge storage facilities that house old 1st stages of the Peacekeeper missile. But they also have a mock-up MMIII launch facility and launch control center, bringing me shiveringly back to my three years on alert. Even though it's been 7 years since I stepped foot into one of the capsules, seeing the REACT console brought back tons of memories, eight ounces of which were good (one of our chefs, Airman Stephens, made a really good chicken sandwich).

With time to kill in the afternoon, my travellin' partner Eric and I decided to drive into downtown SLC, since we'd pretty much been on the outskirts all week. We took in "Temple Square", basically the capital of the Mormon religion. I thought that the Tabernacle Choir sang in the big castle looking cathedral thing I'd seen on TV, but the theater and organ et al are in the domed building in front -- unfortunately, re-opening after a two-year refurbishment two days later.

We didn't go inside the cathedral (which took 40 years to build in the late 1800s), but toured a couple visitor's centers, very slick multimedia affairs that just seemed oozing with money. Think Brigham Disney.

After a quick drive up into the foothills through the campus of the University of Utah, we headed back to our hotel, where I took in the pool since my back was bothering me and the hot tub was a tepid tub.

Witty title about it not being rocket science

Discussed nozzle construction today, with some interesting launch and ground-testing videos, though I disagreed with the instructor that "circumferentially" was a word but hey he's the one with the mechanical engineering degree, come to me if you want to know who Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury was.

A bunch more hangar tours today, some cool, some not, with the highlight a view of a gigantic mixing mechanism, used to combine different explosive material in an 18,000 gallon vat until the correct propellant 'recipe' is formed. Built like a regular kitchen mixer, only each spinner was the size of the hood of your car yet calibrated to move within .330 of an inch of each other.
We also got a demonstration of the different explosive materials' sensitivity, watching a guy behind plate glass set fire to different football-triangle sized bits of propellant, whack a couple drops of nitroglycerin, and set off other mini-fireworks to demonstrate what makes a rocket go whoosh.

Spent this evening with an old friend of mine from the England half of high school, who lives here with her husband and three children, including one little 3-yr old girl she named Ainsley, inspired by our mutual LCHS chum who happens to be one of our wives. It was very odd to hear my wife disciplined all night. "Ainsley, don't pick your nose," is just not something I usually hear at home.

Bizarro Votkinsk

Well here I am in Utah.
I haven't been here since a layover between Colorado Springs and Great Falls Montana in 1994, on my first TDY ever ever, with Todd Gossett and Rob McIntyre, to go check out how missileers do training.
Thirteen years later, it's still as pretty, with snow-capped mountain ranges both east and west, which are supposed to get capped two feet more tomorrow (4-6" here southwest of Salt Lake City).
Here for more training ("hasn't the military taught you everything yet?" say the Boivins), a three-day course to learn about how we Americans build solid-fuel rockets such as the Trident II Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile and my old Minuteman III. After a morning of lectures, we drove through the sprawling missile production campus, with building-bunkers with sand piled up on all sides for explosion dissipation (it's safe, Ainsley, no worries!), then had to drive forty minutes to a different industrial park to tour a factory, as wide as a football field and as long as three. We got to wear cool wine-colored smocks and safety glasses while we looked at enormous pieces of equipment that drill this, spin that, wrap those, mold these. It occurred to me that this is probably what goes on inside the factory out at Votkinsk, though with different smocks.

Nolan Ryan

The Good News: our son is talented, energetic, and athletic. One of his earliest words was "touchdown" and he loves identifying any Redskins logo in the immediate area, but with football season behind us, the ever-present basketball out in the cul-de-sac has become his new imaginary best friend. Whenever we can redirect him indoors, the ball is his favorite toy, and The Ball comes in many sizes. Small little hand-sized plastic ones, head-sized cushiony ones, inflatable bowling-ball sized ones, even my giant exercise ball. Even the nerfy football, unround, yet fully grippable by the half-pint. He will throw and throw and throw and throw. Halfway down the hall, right up in your face, or onto a dog's head, he throws the ball and throws the ball.

We continue to try and get him to catch the ball. But into each bridge a life must crawl unto pass. Or something.

The Bad News: our son loves to throw. He has now discovered that food flies pretty far, nearly as far as his good pal The Ball. He also likes to practice his throwing motion even without a ball in his hand, resulting in smacks to the face of any one (or pet) in the vicinity. So while we work on encouraging his grasp of the split-fingered fastball, we continue to discourage his emulation of the GI Joe with the Kung Fu Grip.

Potty Hotty

Friday I was able to join 1,500 of my closest friends in the National Capital Region, 130 or so fellow future promotees, their families, guests, coworkers, congressional staffers, Pentagon City Mall shoppers, and anyone who got lost inside the Ritz-Carlton, to enjoy drinks and finger food for a ridiculous amount of money in a room that got so hot that even Ainsley took off one of her coats.

I had initially balked at attending, not appreciating the high admission fee and feeling that I'd already paid my "hoorah for me" beer fee out in Votkinsk, but then realized:

1. I would see some friends I hadn't run into in over ten years, and
2. I would get to wear comically large phony silver oak-leaf clusters

Sure enough, I ran into a ton of people I've intermatrixed with over my 14-year career, one from basic space training in 1992, several from my 93-96 Colorado assignment, a few people from Turkey (including a two-star general who was a colonel at the time), some from my Pentagon job, and, it seemed, nearly half of my AFIT class from Dayton. And although the large phony silver oak-leaf clusters weren't as comically large as I'd hoped, Ryan got a kick out of them. And I was pleased my father could attend, even if half the time he was relegated to watching a diaper bag while I was off renetworkschmoozing.

Discernable Nonsense

When I left for Russia, Ryan was just starting to babblespeak, and only had a few words down.
Now, Mr. Loquacious is a volcano of words, spewing forth everything from 63% of our pets' names to favorite foods to animal sounds. His 'balloon' is adorable, his 'up' still a gentle whisper, his 'please' missing the 'z' at the end but he rubs his belly as the sign says so we know what it means.
His signs are amazingly advanced, too, with "help" being particularly popular -- it's turned into more of a "want". However, the sign for help -- cupping a thumbs-up with the other hand and lifting up -- was a bit too hard, so Ryan just pounds one fist into the other and then points. I didn't know what my wife meant until I saw it, but it really does look like he's about ready to get into a fight. "You want some of this?" *smack*
Some words I've needed translated, particularly distinguishing between "Tucker" ("tckock") and "circle" ("kuhcccuh"), and his "grape" leaves a lot to be desired, specifically the g, r, a, and e, leaving us with a "p" spray (so to speak) whenever he hears the word. "Grape?" "pppppp!" "...Napkin?"
I'm not sure when she got the time, but he's terrifically adroit at identifying animal sounds, from the 'ssss' of a snake to the chest-pounding 'a-wa-wa-wa' of a gorilla (I understand we have Grandpa ("pa-pow") to thank for that). And reading a book with him last night where the focus was supposed to be a cow going night-night, there he was, identifying the "lad-doe" sitting on the back wall.
Ainsley used to lament the fact that he was saying "Daddy" a lot sooner and a lot more often than "Mommy", even when referring to her. But now, she is her own entity, and if I go into his room when he wakes up and it wasn't me he wanted, it's the most beautiful, slightly sad thing to hear peeped out of his little mouth. A slow, inquisitive, angelic, "....Ma-ma?"
*smack*

The Peremony was Nipe

Ryan woke up aroud quarter to eight, and I didn't want to walk in on him and freak him out first thing, but couldn't resist following "mama" up the stairs to peek in on him. She opened his curtains, and said, "Ryan, where's dada?" And he darted his pointin' finger over towards my picture. So I said, "Yes, but here, too." He whipped his head around, then looked at Ainsley, who said, "Who's that??!", so he just pointed at my picture again. As I only exist in 2-D, really.
I walked in, and he gave me big, open-mouthed, six-tooth, squinty-eyed grins. My boy. Now I'm REALLY home.
He had a play date with his buddy Jack at a church's day care -- though he didn't appreciate getting hit in the head with a plastic frying pan, he did enjoy the small slide and see-saw. That afternoon, Grandad came over to babysit so Ainsley and I could go to my friend Jean's wedding up in Arlington. Despite the freezing rain that turned to snow, it was a nice wedding, and lovely to see an old friend find happiness. However, I was a little put off by the typeface in the program, with the cursive italicized "C"s all looking like "P"s. So it looked like after the lighting of the unity pandle, we'd experience the presentation of the pouple.