Playdough

After the wife didn't seem to appreciate me trying to teach my son to point, wink, and make a *click-click* sign like an old hairy gigolo, I worked instead on getting him to do a 'thumbs-up'. First by demonstrating, then by letting Mommy win a "thumb war", then by letting him try. He is inclined to stick his index finger out instead, but if we work really hard, and hold his fist down, and staple a piece of dental floss to his fingernail, we can get that little sucker up.
He actually picked up on it pretty quickly, and once threw out a spontaneous "Aaaayyyy".

I read in a pregnancy magazine that Ainsley had subtly left on top of my face that pregnant mothers are supposed to sleep on their left side. It's supposed to increase blood flow to the fetus and release pressure off either the kidneys or the liver, I forgot. Probably the liver, I deduced. Then I thought that "Liver" would be a nice name for a girl, and perhaps that's what Liv Tyler is short for.
I'm thinking I had too much wine with dinner.

My Army boss announced that we were going to do a Staff Ride to get out of the office for a day. Some folks didn't know that it's a chance to analyze a battlefield first-hand, convenient here in The Civil War's backyard. An Air Force lieutenant colonel suggested instead that we go to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum, since rockets are closer to what we do for a living. An Air Force major pointed out that if we went to a Civil War site, we'd just point out how Air Superiority could have contributed to the overall success of the Union.
"You Air Force people just don't get it, do you?"
HEY DON'T LUMP ME IN WITH THESE GUYS, I'M A HISTORY MAJOR AND DID MY THESIS ON THE BATTLE OF PERRYVILLE and then I got quiet because I worried that they were going to make me organize the trip. Or drive the bus.
The boss jokingly said it might be Fredericksburg (since that's where he lives); someone else suggested "The Wild."
"You mean 'The Wilderness'?"
"Whatever."
"Well, that's kind of a hard battlefield to walk around in...what with it being in the wilderness and all."
I offered that I'd never been to Appomattox or Chancellorsville, but they decided to go closer, Manassas.
They also decided, despite my all-Caps espousalment from above, to go smack-dab in the middle of my next deployment.
Fine.
I'll just go to Appomattox.

More Ryan words: cucumber, tomato, pink, do, bib, moment, all done, xerophilous