Thanksgiving: My Family

OMG, how did a whole month pass? I fully intended to post this the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so it had some hope of being timely. But it took me 9 hours to get home from North Carolina, eating up my entire Sunday evening. And then it was two weeks before finals, and I had three memos, a 20-page paper, two finals and a take home to get through. And now it's a month later, and I escaped frigid DC for tropical Waialua, Hawaii. And I *absolutely* am thankful for that!

But this post is about my family. I don't know how the heck they put up with me. For the past ten years, the first question most of them ask me when they talk to me on the phone is, "where are you?" And they don't mean it as in, are you at home or at school or at work or the grocery story or the library? No, it's more like, what continent are you on? Because sometimes I've been in South America, sometimes in Southwest Asia, sometimes on the East Coast of the US and sometimes in Hawaii. It is kinda fun to keep 'em guessing though :)

I'll never forget telling my brother that I had taken the ASVAB in preparation for joining the Coast Guard nearly twelve years ago. He was into his second decade in the Air Force, and I think I didn't talk to him for a year or two when I was a young, thoughtless pissant in high school because I was upset about his participation in the military industrial complex that was such a major stumbling block to the peaceful, sensible, rightful way that the world *should* work. So, needless to say, he was a little bit surprised to hear that I was pursuing a military career ten years later. I think it took him about 30 seconds to pick his lower jaw up off the floor from where it had dropped when he heard I was enlisting. And then he proceeded to give me very useful advice...stay operational. Well, Jay, I did (finally) take some of your advice, and you were SO right! We've had some great conversations since then about the military, leadership, current world news and life in general. Thanks, bro, for sticking it out with me while I pulled my head out of lalaland.

And my brother has a wonderful family who I had the chance to see for a couple of hours Thanksgiving weekend. His wife, Susan, is a great mother to their three kids, homeschooling them and teaching them to be thoughtful people. In Africa. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention...Jay is a bush pilot in Africa for a missionary group, doing lots of medevacs and transporting medicine, people, supplies and probably a chicken or two in his planes all throughout eastern Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan...dangerous places where the runways sometimes have doglegs in the middle of them, guards with AKs and never mind the cows and giraffes blocking the way. So, Susan doesn't necessarily have all the conveniences of a regular suburban housewife. But she does an amazing job, keeping a bountiful garden and making beautiful quilts. Their kids are really sweet, but growing up so very, very fast. Alex is now taller than I am, and is starting to give his dad a run for his money in wrestling matches. Beth is beautiful, and will likely be completely stunning in a few years, never mind smart and talented. She crocheted me the coolest beanie for Christmas...awesome colors and it fits perfectly. And Sam is such a pixie, so impish and curious. I miss seeing them on a regular basis, but know they are growing up in an amazing place that will make them really cool people to get to know when (if) we ever live in close(r) proximity.

My dad and his wife visited on their way through Maryland enroute North Carolina to see my brother and his family the week before Thanksgiving. They were so patient with the kitchen under construction and other idiosyncrasies of my old house. I usually get to see Dad and Sandee on the Coast Guard's dime about every year or two. They live a couple hours from New London, CT, so I get to visit them whenever I go to a C school at the Academy. But I hadn't seen them since I got back from Bahrain, so it was really great to be able to host them for the night. They ran into some traffic and bad advice from their GPS that shortened the visit a little bit, but we got to chat over dinner, and they got to see where I live, for the first time since I left the east coast ten years ago.

Uncle Steve, Aunt Jan, Ally, Amy's mom Susan, and Amy

Thanksgiving itself was a wonderful day...exactly what the day is supposed to be. Tons of good food, a warm, crowded kitchen, great people and a fun time. I road-tripped down to my friend Amy's house in North Carolina to hang with her and her 9-year-old daughter, Ally. Her mom came over, and my Uncle Steve and his partner, Aunt Jan came in from Rockingham County for dinner.

Acrobat Ally and Jan, waiting her turn on the trampoline

Amy and I have been friends for nearly 20 years. I haven't kept in continuous touch with anybody else that I've known for that long, except for other family members, so I feel like I have every right to call her and Ally family. She has been there for me through all my stupid human tricks, ready to laugh at me, with me, for me and around me. We met in a political science class my first year at Berea College. In retrospect, I'm really surprised we never got kicked out of class. We laughed the entire semester...poor professor (he kinda looked like Ichabod Crane, which didn't help at all). And I don't know that the college farm was ever the same after we worked there for a summer. Work briefings took at least ten minutes longer but were so much more enjoyable for everybody because we joked around so much. Best line *EVER*: what happens if you don't wash sheep in cold water with Woolite? Do they look like this? (put palms on either side of your face by your ears and pull backwards so your face stretches tight). We tried to ask our boss that with straight faces, but could only get it about halfway out before we couldn't say any more words through the hilarity. She didn't think it was so funny. And meringue...that stuff kinda hurts coming out the nose. Just saying.

I don't know why Ally puts up with me...I'm kinda mean, pouring cold water over her in the shower after she threw some 'tude at me, and tickling her relentlessly. But she's known me as Crazy Aunt Charley for her whole life, and I hope to be there for her like her mom has been there for me. One of my favorite things about being back on the east coast is being closer to some of the people I love that I haven't seen enough of recently.

Mom always told us that family does anything they can for family. I took it for granted for a long time, but Uncle Steve has done so very, very much for me over the years that it's hard not to be thankful for my family. He put me, my dog and three cats up in his spare room while I looked for a place to live before my first stint in grad school...for two months. He pretty much single-handedly renovated the kitchen in my new house. And he's just a cool guy. We're both the youngest in our generations, and along with my cousin Cameron (also the youngest), we keep the rest of the family on their toes. We're our own flock of black sheep :) Just make sure to wash us in Woolite.

I'm staying with my Mom over Christmas and into the New Year. We've had our difficulties over the years. We're both really stubborn, alike in some ways, and different in ones that make it tough for us to get along sometimes. Well, difficult for me to get along with her sometimes...I admit, I'm not the easiest person to get along with. Too many years in charge I think: I don't like it when things don't go my way. But she's always been proud of me (embarrassingly so sometimes...you know moms). One of Mom and my sister's favorite stories about me is the time we were in the grocery store in Ellicott City, MD, getting some last minute supplies for dinner. Vicki and I were both home from college. The store was crowded, and we were walking in a little bit of a gaggle, politely making way for people and generally being conscious of the fact that we were not the only people in the store trying to finish errands. But there was this snooty woman with her grocery cart that pretty much plowed through us like we were invisible peasants in her own personal kingdom. Well, I don't mind being ignored...but for god's sake, don't disrespect me. I pushed my nose up in the air with my finger (not my middle one...my mom was there for heaven's sake) and snorted like a pig...loudly. The woman looked around, slightly mortified.

I'm glad that Mom's enjoying her retirement. And even though I'm still a punk sometimes, I love her a lot.

I've got a bunch more family members to be thankful for...Aunt Linda and Uncle Adam, cousins Karen, Jennie and Roy and family, Cameron, Nancy and Jim, Robin and Blaine and family, and Jane and Eddie. I don't talk to many of them often, and see them even less. But I know they care about me and support me.

I haven't mentioned my sister yet, though. She's joined conversations on the blog before, usually with insightful words of advice or thoughtful comments from a completely different perspective. The funny thing is that we used to *hate* each other. And that really is not too strong a word. When we were in grade school, and on into high school, I couldn't stand being around her. She was always such a damn goodie-two-shoes. She tattled on me for trying to learn how to spit when I was ten. She was way smarter than me (still is), and just complicated things unbearably. She kept her room neat, made her bed, had better handwriting (still does), didn't throw a fit about going to church, dated nice boys, and didn't wear holey jeans.

Aunt Linda told us both sometime, maybe about 20 years ago, that we'd end up really good friends once we got older. We both thought she was delusional. I was a snotty little punk, out to piss off the world, and Vicki made it clear she was so very, very far superior to me. In every way.

It's amazing the clarity gained from those 20 years. And thank goodness for it. Vicki was the first person I called during that kerfuffle over the Endangered Species Act last fall. And the first person I called when my boyfriend broke up with me. And the first person I called when I found out I was going to take command of a ship...in Bahrain. She edited my college application essay for me. She is always, always willing to listen and offer encouragement. I love the fact that she knew me as a punk kid, and saw me grow out most, but not all, of it. And I am so truly happy that she is happy.

So I am so very, very thankful for my family. All of them.

Thanksgiving; My House

One of the other students at school asked me how things were going a couple of weeks ago. It was three days after I had popped myself in the lip with a pry bar, putting a hole through and through (does it count as iron intake if you're swallowing your own blood?), trying to get a piece of molding down in the kitchen. My lip was still swollen and hurt, and I was a little embarrassed by the glaring scab on my face. So I made some mention of being busy with kitchen renovations in my new house. He commented disparagingly about owning a house and settling down not being his "bag" so he really couldn't understand what I was talking about. Even though I know he thinks I'm off my rocker, I felt a little sorry for him. Home is a special place.

I'm settling into my new house. Nick-knacks are up on the shelves, and while I haven't hung any pictures yet, I know where they're going to go (need to get more anchors). The china cabinets are finally out of the dining room. Though now I've got unfinished spots on the floor that need to be sanded down and polyurethaned and gaping holes in the baseboards. But I'm slowly filling in the holes in the wall...slowly because it takes some willingness to get dirty to mix up the plaster of paris for patching said holes.

And the kitchen, whoa the kitchen! The kitchen used to have about eight square feet of poorly designed counter space. But with the exceedingly generous help of my uncle, I have a brand new kitchen with just a few more touch ups needed. This weekend we got all but the last cabinet installed...including a microwave!  Gotta move a gas line for the stove to get the very last cabinet in (yes, I'll be calling a plumber for that job), granite countertops need to be installed, and a tile backsplash and a coat of paint will finish the job. I'll have more than 30 square feet of counter space!! Whooo hooo! For right now, I don't even *care* that I've got contact paper-covered plywood for counters.

I should also have a working fireplace soon. I don't really want to go into the details of the ordeal that it's been to get it working again, but the chimney company has already sent out three crews, on four different occasions, and I've got at least one more visit from the owner of the company to look forward to before I can enjoy a crackling blaze behind the glass doors of the fireplace.

Every room needs to be painted, the drains for the shower and kitchen sink are slow to the point of frustration, the grass needs mowing (and has for the last two months), I've got at least one outlet that blows a circuit breaker if I use it, about half the windows need some sort of work and probably leak heat like they're open, and I still haven't seen into the crawl space because I can't get the access door open.

But I am thankful for my little house. It's comfortable. I won't say it's home yet, but I think it will be in another couple of months.

I've whined before about how much I've moved around in recent years. I know I'll be here for about four or five years, which is long enough to take my time with the needed improvements. So I'm not really stressed about the totality of the project before me, even if I get frustrated and overwhelmed sometimes by the details of any one portion of the overall task.

I can separate my satisfaction with my current situation into two parts, really. The first is just that I get to be in one place long enough to see more than one turn of the seasons here. I'm a big believer in a Wendell Berry-esque outlook that knowledge of a place is a good thing; knowing when the first leaves bud out on the trees in the yard, or when that particular window starts getting sun exposure, is important. It helps ground us, locate us on the planet, guide us when we're lost and give us perspective on things greater and lesser than our own individual outlook.

The second part is that I just really like the house. It's nothing very special, built in the 1930s and still standing. But with hardwood floors that finished up beautifully; a fireplace painted red; roses and peonies and a grape vine in the yard; radiators in each room; and a sun room that reminds me (very vaguely) of my grandparents' house. I don't know much about the last family that lived here, just that it was an elderly woman that must have passed away because her son was the executor that handled the sale. I've found random school pictures of relatives, maybe, tucked away forgotten in the back corners of closet shelves, and they left the coolest box-full of odds and ends, screws, nails, washers, hooks, pins, cords, just stuff, that have come in super-handy in the midst of so many projects. All the things they left for me was like a generous welcome into their home.

I've got grand plans for a garden and other yard projects, including lining the front walk with blueberry bushes, using the stump out back for growing culinary mushrooms, and pruning the grape vine to increase its productivity. I've already got pansies in the planter under the old Japanese maple in the front yard, rain barrels under each gutter, and a small herb garden outside the back door. Maybe, just maybe, I'll get an outdoor shower put in next summer. And my uncle just brought back my granddad's old push mower (thanks, Jan, for being willing to give it up). So when I do get around to mowing the yard, it'll be with a piece of equipment that's been around for a while and doesn't use anything but my own energy to make it work. I like that. And I'm thankful for it.

Thanksgiving: My Job

I  figured this was an appropriate time to be particularly thankful for my job since this past Thursday was Veterans' Day. I put my uniform on for the first time since 23 Jul, and went to the Brentwood Veterans' Day Celebration that my local little community put on. There's a Veterans' Memorial about three blocks away from my house that the City of Brentwood built a few years ago. About forty people showed up at the ceremony, some coming back in from where they currently live to honor their fathers and brothers who had grown up in Brentwood, and whose names are on the memorial. I talked to a former DC2 who served on the TAMAROA back in the Viet Nam War era. He was proudly wearing a Coast Guard cap, so he was easy to recognize. He was also very proud of his son who is currently a Marine. The ceremony lasted about an hour, and was nicely put on for a community of about 2000 households in a major metropolitan area.

The guest of honor, besides all the politicians that showed up, was a Councilwoman's father. Unfortunately I don't remember his name, but he served in World War II in the 92nd Infantry Division of the US Army. He was a Buffalo Soldier. He talked briefly about growing up in Goldsboro, NC and being in Washington, DC visiting his sister on December 7, 1941. He went home and enlisted in the Army, rather than waiting for his draft number to be called. He was very candid about the racial tensions that dictated the division of the 92nd among three locations for training, and he joked a little about their unit's destination being super-secret, except for the fact that they were all learning Italian. He said, maybe they were going to Ethiopia, since they spoke a little Italian there. But they were in fact deployed to Italy, I think he said in 1942. During his time in the Army, he earned the rank of 2nd Lieutenant, and made it "safely" through the war. He wrapped up his remarks with a powerful message of trust and belief in his country. He said we made it through all those troubled times, reflecting back to the discriminations he faced, and we can see it through these tough economic times as well. Because the United States is such a great nation, made up of great people.

As  he was speaking, I was doing some quick math in my head, and realized he was at least 85, and probably closer to 90 years old. The only medal of the four that he proudly wore above his left breast pocket that I recognized was the Purple Heart. I was glad I went to the celebration in my community, but his remarks made it a truly memorable experience.

The next day, I put my uniform on again and set off to CG Headquarters to get weighed-in. I admit, I completely spaced on the fact that I was supposed to do it in October, and ended up getting the nasty-gram from my Program Manager that I needed to come in "as soon as possible" to get it done. Whoops.

It was the first time I've ridden the Metro in uniform. And maybe it's just me, but I felt like people stared a little bit, or at least didn't brush their eyes over me like just another body in the crowd. And maybe it's different for other, bigger people in uniform, but for a 5'2" pip-squeak, that uniform can make me feel more like I'm ten feet tall and bullet proof (to use a favorite Company Commander quote from boot camp). It's hard not to swagger a little when I wear it (I think it might be the steel-toed boots...they require a touch more leg movement so I don't drag my feet 'cause they're kinda heavy). Maybe I'm not only Just a Girl when I'm in uniform. Maybe it reminds me that I'm Just a Girl with sea stories, Just a Girl with shipmates, Just a Girl who's part of something bigger than herself. Just a Girl who can drive a ship. Just a Girl who has battled gremlins. Just a Girl who got pepper-sprayed, can shoot a gun, and knocked a guy on his ass practicing defensive techniques (sorry Cookie, it's just too good a visual image not to use).

I think it was a well-timed reminder that what I'm doing in school is important and will give me more tools to bring back to my service hopefully for the benefit of the Coast Guard. It's hard to remember that sometimes, stuck in statistics or microeconomics.

And, on top of those two experiences, I recently finished reading The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk (Back Bay Books, 2003). My Aunt Linda gave it to me at my Change of Command this summer, and I really enjoyed it. I'm pretty sure the first time I was introduced to The Caine Mutiny was at OCS; but I quickly became more familiar with it since instructors show it at every single CG leadership training I've attended ever since. I always thought that Captain Queegs was the main part of the story, since I've never seen the movie all the way through. The leadership classes always just show the typhoon part, or the strawberry scene. Turns out the story is really about Willie Keith and his growing up.

I felt plenty of sympathy for Willie when he showed up at his ship, not knowing really what was going on, stumbling through figuring out where he belonged and what he was supposed to be doing. And as the realization that dawns on him that Queegs is not the same as his predecessor, Captain De Vriess. One of the truest quotes comes after the verdict has come through on the Court Martial; the current Captain of the CAINE is talking to Willie about the burden of command, "You can't understand command till you've had it. It's the loneliest, most oppressive job in the whole world...You're forever tettering along a tiny path of correct decisions and good luck that meanders through an infinite gloom of possible mistakes." (pg 499) Oh my goodness, how true is that!?

But my favorite parts of the book are at the end, where the last captain of the CAINE is philosophizing about his time aboard:

"[He] experienced the strange sensations of the first days of a new captain: a shrinking of his personal identity, and a stretching of his nerve ends to all the spaces and machinery of his ship. He was less free than before. He developed the apprehensive listening ears of a young mother; the ears listened on in his sleep; he never quite slept, not the way he had before. He had the sense of being reduced from an individual to a sort of brain of a composite animal, the crew and ship combined. The reward for these disturbing sensations came when he walked the decks. Power seemed to flow out of the plates into his body. The respectful demeanor of the officers and crew thrust him into a loneliness he had never known, but it wasn't a frigid loneliness. Through the transparent barrier of manners came the warming unspoken word that his men liked him and believed in him." (pg 520)

And: 

"He spent long night hours on the bridge when there was no need of it. The stars and the sea and the ship were slipping from his life...All the patterns fixed in his muscles, like the ability to find the speed indicator buttons in utter blackness, would fade. This very wheelhouse itself, familiar to him as his own body, would soon cease to exist. It was a little death toward which he was steaming." (pg 522)

 Exactly!

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I miss being underway. I had a (non-Coast Guard) friend ask me today when I'd be getting back underway. We were talking about my getting a dog. I really want a dog, but I won't get any more pets until I'm out of the Coast Guard, and not deploying anymore. It's not fair to the pets to be shuffled all about when I get underway. I'll foster pets in the meantime, while I'm ashore. But I guess in the course of our conversation, I made it sound like I'd be going back out on a ship sometime in the near future. Imagine my chagrin at having to admit that it was actually going to be about four or five years before I get underway again.

And just so you guys don't think I'm just all about the underway thing...I am thankful for my job for a number of other reasons, many of them financial. The Coast Guard is sending me to school to learn something I probably should have majored in in the first place, back in the day. And I still get my salary. My job allows my mother to take advantage of the numerous and generous benefits of being a military dependent. And eventually I'll put on O4, and have something else to be thankful for. I've been hearing some stories from current CDRs that it took them 22 months to make LCDR from LT. I'm not there yet, but it's looking like it'll be pretty close for me.

And my job has introduced me to a lot of amazing people. One last recent episode: the day I was walking through the Metro in uniform, I happened to separately see two fellow Coasties I had served with previously. Now, it was at L'Enfant Station where the shuttle picks people up from the Metro FFT (for further transport) to the Headquarters Building, so it wasn't totally unusual to have plenny of Coasties wandering around. But, two? In one day? That's kinda cool. One was LT Beau Powers who I haven't seen since I left the D14 Command Center in 2006. We chatted for a few minutes as we walked to our respective trains. He's doing great things in the Command Center world. One more reason to be thankful for my job in the Coast Guard: it's such a small service, you can't help but run into the good people you served with again somewhere.

Thanksgiving: Friends

I run the risk of being ridiculously cheesy with this next series of posts, but it's my blog...I'll be cheesy if I want to.

As we all know, it's coming up on Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving. I mean, it's All About Food - what's not to love? Turkey, yum; stuffing, used to hate it when I was a kid, but think it's one of the best things about roasted turkey now; mashed potatoes, must have garlic in them; and pies, lots of pies. And cranberries. With walnuts.

Just a few days ago, I was wondering where I was the last couple of Thanksgivings. It's a little thing I do around holidays - think about what's changed since last year and where I was. It's usually kinda a tough little exercise since I move around so much. Last year, KISKA's ombudsman invited everyone over for dinner. Delish! And fun. Year before that...Bahrain, don't remember if we were underway or not.

Holidays are odd underway. Somebody has to stand the watch. Every day. All day. And night. But it's a little sad when it's you standing the watch, hanging out with people you wouldn't necessarily choose to be with on those special days, missing family and the football games and parades and all the little traditions that make holidays something to look forward to. I find this lingering sadness tinged with pride, though. Pride for doing a job that not everyone is willing or able to do, pride for serving in an amazing service for a great nation with a fascinating history, pride for being willing to make sacrifices in order to contribute to a "greater good." I was never so great a patriot before I joined the service and went overseas somehow, but there's more reflection on that than I want to do here. Holidays can suck underway, but I think it's something that helps bond shipmates...you're all suffering together. Though the cooks (and the command) usually try to make sure that "suffering" is tempered with some morale.

Anyway, this post wasn't really supposed to be about holidays underway. It's supposed to be about Thanksgiving. And the cheesy part is that I'm going to write the next few posts on things that I'm thankful for. I've got so much that is going, has gone, and will very likely continue to go well for me that I feel it's somehow necessary to acknowledge that I've got it *really* good.

So, friends...I am thankful for my friends. I don't have a ton of friends, mostly because I'm a pretty introverted person, and I move a lot. I volunteered a few weeks ago at the phone bank for the local public radio station's fund drive, and after the four of us at our table introduced ourselves and talked a little about what we did with our days, one of the women asked me how I dealt with moving around so much? How did I make friends at each new place? Did I already know people here? I hemmed and hawed a little bit because I didn't know how to answer her. Usually I'm so busy with learning my new job that making friends and having a social life is pushed to the side. And I like the people I work with, so it's easy to hang out with them. But one thing about not being able to make friends easily makes me really, really grateful for the ones I *do*have.

Another friend-related anecdote: in Friday's yoga class, the instructor had us do a forearm balance with a partner. It's like a handstand, but with your forearms flat on the deck. I had tried and tried to do these in class on the Big Island and never quite gotten it right. I'd always overpower through kicking up my feet and end up going over the other side, or banging my feet off the wall, if I was using the wall as a support. But this time, with fellow-yogi Jennie supporting one leg while I lifted the other, I was able to find some stability and hang out for a couple minutes. She had a couple of fingers on one of my little toes to remind me that she was there, but wasn't doing anything else to help me.

Naomi, the instructor, gave us the explanation: friends provide that bit of assistance to see us through our weaknesses...just that little bit of extra support and encouragement that we usually need to succeed in a challenge. And they accentuate our strengths.

I immediately thought of my friend Anne. We've got a few things in common, but she's way, way, way smarter than I am and has a lot, A LOT more professional motivation and chance for success (like big picture success) than I do. I truly value her opinion, and have been known to email or text or call her to whine, complain and bitch about whatever triviality has recently vexed me. She always commiserates with just the right amount of sympathy and understanding, and then provides some spot-on insightful recommendation for how to make the most of a bad or frustrating situation.

And she has never complained about my food-nerdiness :) Though she did think I was a little out of my mind to go to all seven grocery stores in the local area looking for different ingredients for a wardroom dinner. Or was it ten stores?

And a shout out to a couple other friends:
Craig, thanks for your patience with listening to my tales of woe when we were all so far away from home. I can't help but remember those card games and smile.

Frank can always, always make me laugh. I usually give him good material to work with ("more work to be done in the kitchen"), but he has a true gift for poking fun at the absurdities that surround us all.

I'm so glad I met Auntie Jane. She's a wonderful woman, so full of love and aloha. I wish so very, very much that her neighborhood was peaceful, and hopes she and husband Terry are able to find the peace and happiness they deserve from being great people and having helped and befriended so many others.

Rickey taught me a lot about myself. He showed me how to slow down and look at things differently. 

And Lili is always there for me, even when we don't talk for months and months. We can pick right back up like no time passed at all.

Amy, Vicki, and Steve...I'll deal with you guys in a separate post.

More on Communications

I've been thinking about communication again. Or more specifically about what makes effective communication. I remember from all my training that communication comes in two parts, the message given and the message received. Both parts are important for the message to be effective. There have been a few events recently that reinforced the duality of communications for me.

First, I got back a couple papers from different classes. The first paper was a 7-page introduction on the importance of local food systems as a tool to help combat the many problems created by industrialized agriculture (not Coast Guard-related, I know, but something I'm really interested in). I was nervous about it. I thought I had turned in a piece of crap. I felt like it was rushed, that I really didn't have a clear goal and that I was just scatter-shotting, hoping I got something right. I could have done better with it.

I got an A-. Definitely not the disaster I was expecting. Breathe huge sigh of relief! Sure, it wasn't an A+, but it wasn't a C+ either. The professor's comments: "In the next installments I want to see more sense of [prioritization]. This is well-informed and well-written but the agenda is massive." (Well-written, really? Yay...but I think he was merely impressed that I had proof-read.)

So he totally caught me out that I wasn't sure what I was really writing about. I didn't mean to communicate that, but it apparently came through loud and clear.

The second paper, for the other class, was a 3-page paper on inherently governmental functions. I felt a little better about this one, but wasn't sure if I was really addressing the professor's question. She wanted an analysis of inherently governmental functions, including a comparison between the current and previous administrations' approach and how President Obama's renewed emphasis on inherently governmental functions might be affected by new austerity measures, particularly in DOD. I went off on a tangent of why it is necessary to consider particular governmental functions inherently governmental.

I got an A. But there were *no comments* whatsoever from this professor on the paper. Just the pencil-scribbled "A" at the top of the page...and nothing else! Not very helpful.

Second event: multiple occasions of confusion with a professor's syllabus. She apparently mentioned the first day of class that a group project also required a 3-page analytic paper, but it wasn't on the syllabus. So we turned it in late. And then, another reading assignment was so poorly explained in the syllabus that I didn't even know that I needed to do anything for it. Again, she said she mentioned it the first day of class (which I don't remember), but had not offered a reminder or further explanation.

Now, I know I will complain about anything I can...I'll complain about being treated like a kindergartner and in the next breath complain about being treated like I'm geriatric. I know there's a certain amount of autonomy and self-responsibility incumbent upon graduate students. But I'm NOT a freaking mind-reader!

Note to self: ensure your message is received, even if it requires multiple reminders.

A further irony...the class is a leadership and management class. Maybe she's using reverse psychology on us to teach us about effective communication.

And last, I sent what I thought was a sweet note to a friend expressing appreciation for a particular quality of our recent communications. I contrasted our on-going dialogue with the hectic and disruptive nature of ship-board communications (middle of the night phone calls, sometimes nothing, sometimes critical). What I didn't realize was the potential for him to receive the message that I was calling him boring. *NOT* what I meant!

And the message that he sent back...nothing. Silence on the line. Whoops, I guess he's pissed that I suggested he was dull. Which I didn't! But, in this case, it's all about the message that was received, not the message that was sent.

So I don't really have a summary conclusion about communications. Just further cogitation on the subject.

Transfer Season

Transfer season is finally over for me. Well, or close enough to call it anyway. Technically, I've still got 70 days left to file a claim on anything that was broken during the move. But I've *got* my stuff, and that's why I'm calling transfer season over. Jeez, it started back in May or something ridiculous like that. And that's only because I knew where I was going next.

I have a deeply rooted love-hate relationship with transfer season. I love the fact that I get to do different jobs, usually switching before I get bored and/or totally burned out. That part of the Coast Guard's transfer policy really enables my short attention span and itinerant nature. I hate the fact that transfer season starts the fall before, when the shopping list comes out, and doesn't end until, well, the following fall, when all the household goods get delivered. I submit an e-resume in October, but don't know where I'm going until February, March or April! That's six months of continual worry and cogitation over where I'm gonna live, how I'm gonna get there, what job I'll be doing, who I'll be working for. I like to plan, and I'll plan even when I don't have any details about what I'm planning for, though it does tend to make me a little crazy.

And yes, I do understand the whole OPM process for officer assignments, having to wait for promotion board results and slating from senior to junior. I know why it is this way, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. One bright spot is that it should get better from a timing perspective as I get more senior. But then there's a balance of limited position availabilities and strenuous competition for the best jobs on ships. Because that's where the best jobs are, of course :)

But the fun only really just starts when the assignment is made. I'm shifting from a personal outlook to a managerial perspective now. On a WPB 110, roughly half the crew transfers every summer, give or take a few non-rated personnel who are waiting on school lists. And it's usually the ones that are qualified at *everything* that go because they've been there two years and have seen and done lots. They know where all the charts are, where all the property is, how to drive the boat, do boardings, fight fires (literally and figuratively), set up P6 pumps, launch the boat, survive a channel crossing, what was done in infinite detail to fix the autopilot that quit working right before the dockside, and a million, zillion other bits of corporate knowledge that makes things run smoothly. And of course, their next unit wants them to report YESTERDAY, because they've been gapping the billet because their guy geobatched to Alaska and took 30 days of leave to spend with his family before going out to the wilderness, and a Second Class Petty Officer has been doing the job of a First Class Petty Officer, and how fast can he get here?

We all try to do the best for our people, but nobody wants to take the hit operationally.

Transfer season is rough on every unit, with qualified people going and unqualified people coming in. It is a balancing act of making sure you've got enough people to get the job done while giving them the time they need to get their lives in order. I mean, it *is* their lives. I still don't think I quite appreciate what it's like to deal with a full-scale transfer, with a family, kids, pets and all the assorted accompaniments. In some ways I've got it pretty easy. Ship the car, pack up and ship the household goods, and go. Well, okay, it was a little more complicated than that, but only because I chose to make it more interesting with the whole cross-country motorcycle trip thing, and buying a house, and doing some renovation work before receiving my furniture. But I was only ever dealing with just me...no negotiations and compromises with a spouse or kids, or gyrations for pets. What a huge mess of stress for a family! And every two or three or four years!

Back to the personal experience. So my household goods were packed up in Hilo on 28 Jul. They were ready to be delivered on 22 September, but I pushed it back by two weeks so I could get the floors refinished in my new house. Totally, completely, 100% worth it...the floors look glorious, and it was so much easier getting them done without all my stuff in the way, never mind the heavy coating of sawdust I avoided getting all over everything. My only real complaint towards the end was that it got chilly for a couple of days right before I got my stuff, and all I had with me for warm clothes was two pairs of jeans and a sweatshirt. I'm too cheap to go buy more stuff, knowing that I've got perfectly good stuff on its way. Ok, so most of my discomfort was due entirely to my own little idiosyncrasies.

My stuff was delivered last Wednesday. Finally! The moving guys showed up just after noon, and were gone by 3:30 (well, they were back by 4:00 to pick up the hand truck which they had forgotten to take with them). Unloading everything went smoothly for the most part. Only a few snafus...like the fact that the box springs for my queen bed didn't fit up the stairwell. Cuss, whine, bitch, moan, still didn't get the springs up the stairs. I'm still working out what I'm gonna do about that.

It's been like Christmas in every box. My toaster oven was packed in its original box, so it was easy to spot. But the packers had taken out the tray and put it in a separate box. Toaster was useless until I found the tray (which I did yesterday...sweet potato fries for lunch today!). I looked in all the boxes labeled "Kitchen - Pots & Pans" for my crock pot, so I could make some vegetable chili to see me through this week. Nope, not in the Kitchen - Pots & Pans boxes; it was in the "Kitchen - Bowls" box. Huh. And I went through the boxes looking for my three-hole punch so I could get my school work organized. I looked in the "Desk Drawers" boxes, and the knick-knack boxes, but found it in the last of twelve boxes of books!

And I know I've been a little manic about it, but I think what takes me the most time is smoothing out all the packing paper so that I can save it. I mean, it's perfectly good paper, with all kinds of useful uses. I saw this bit of gardening advice, to make a lasagna garden, layering paper, compost and leaves or grass clippings in the fall where you want a garden bed. By the spring the bed is ready, all the weeds smothered, and you can plant straight into the lasagna. Brilliant...and a perfect use for packing paper. It'll also make great fire starters for the fire place. And it's good for cleaning glass and mirrors. And I'll never need to worry about packing material for anything I ship to someone, ever again! You get the idea; I can't bear to throw out all that lovely, clean paper, so I spend a lot of time unkrinkle-ing it. Besides, it takes up way too much room all balled up to throw out.

Nothing is broken, only some minor scratches. And my house is starting to come together. Completely off topic, but I *really* like my house. It's just the perfect size, old enough to have character, and my stuff fits and looks good. It feels like home, like some place I will be happy. Sure, it's not perfectly perfect, but then again, neither am I, so we fit.

And lastly, I am So Very Grateful that I don't have to go through another transfer season for another few years.

Tying Up a Cyclone

I don't usually read the stories that get incessantly emailed to me by military.com, but something about the title of this one caught my eye.

Navy Pulls Patrol Boat Fleet for Damage

September 16, 2010 

Virginian-Pilot

The Navy has sidelined its fleet of coastal patrol boats operating out of Bahrain after inspections revealed "significant structural damage," and has limited the operations of five patrol boats homeported at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek.

Chris Johnson, a spokesman for Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, said the Navy has ceased operating five Cyclone-class patrol vessels in Bahrain until they can be permanently repaired and restored, a process that may take months.

Inspections of the Little Creek boats are ongoing, and those patrol craft could be pulled from service, too. In the meantime, crews will operate them under certain restrictions.

The lightweight, 169-foot steel-hulled boats were built by Bollinger in the 1990s and expected to serve 15 years. With one exception, all have hit or exceeded that milestone.

Problems discovered in the boats' hulls -- warping and buckling of the steel frame, as well as corrosion in various tanks -- are a cumulative result of hard use and severe operating conditions, Johnson said. The extent of the damage was first discovered this spring, after two of the Little Creek boats, the Hurricane and the Thunderbolt, sustained some damage in a storm off Cape Hatteras in April while en route to Florida.

When engineers looked closer, they found pre-existing hull damage on those boats. A formal inspection process followed, which determined the damage potentially affected all the vessels in the class, including three that were transferred from the Navy to the Coast Guard.

Most of the repairs on the overseas ships will be done by shipyard personnel in Bahrain, Johnson said, although some U.S. specialists might be sent to help. Johnson said the work will take a couple of months, and said it was too soon to estimate how much the repairs will cost.

The 30-person crews of the Bahrain-based boats deploy from Little Creek and typically serve six month tours. The crews rotate, but the Cyclones stay in Bahrain.

Um, where do I start?

I guess I should start by saying that I'm no longer *on* a ship, and am not easily able to keep up with fleet news, not having access to my CG computer profile.  Last thing I really heard about the status of the Coast Guard's cutter fleet was that DALLAS and GALLATIN were in drydock for 18 months to repair significant structural damage. And honestly, I haven't heard if they actually made it out. Though reading GALLATIN's mishap about their drydock fire gave me the willies for the remainder of KISKA's time on the blocks. So, anything I say has the high likelihood of being out of date, if not out of touch.

But what does the Navy know that we don't? What is it about their Cyclone-class ships that is so significantly different from our Island-class cutters? I can immediately identify two things that are different, one which should help us, and one which might be worse.

First, and probably grossly simplifying some of the differences, the way the crews are managed between the Cyclones and Island-class ships are different. The Navy crews don't stick with one hull, they rotate between the various ships, serving six months on a ship in the NAG, and then rotating back to the states for 12-18 months (I think that's the right ratio) of training, etc. They remain together as a crew, but switch around on ships. From my perspective, that undermines the development of a sense of pride about their ship that encourages the crew to really care about what happens to the ship, spending those extra hours on maintenance, taking deep pride in doing what's right for the ship, because, hell, they're just gonna turn it over to someone else in a few months and then they won't have to deal with it. Like I said, gross simplification, but still significant.

On the other hand, the CG ships are already older than the Navy ships. Built in the 1990's and expected to serve 15 years, which they've already exceeded--sounds familiar...are we talking about WPBs or PCs? If I remember my dates right, USCGC MAUI (WPB 1304), second oldest currently operational hull in the WPB fleet, was commissioned in 1986. She's 24 years old. She was 23 years old when I served onboard.

I remember one patrol on MAUI, we were supposed to be going into drydock for a regular maintenance period, but because another ship (can't recall if it was WPB or PC) had a more immediate maintenance issue, our drydock was delayed by some number of days days to allow them time to complete repairs. No biggie, the schedule changed *all the time* out there, and we were all pretty used to it. But somewhere along the way, MAUI had picked up a small hole, maybe dime-sized, in the hull just below the exhaust port in the engine room on the starboard side. Below the water line...in the engine room. Nothing about that made me feel good.

The shoreside DCs patched us up, and away we went. I had been pretty diligent about specifying my concerns with the materiel condition of the ship in our daily status report. I felt that as long as the weather stayed good, and we weren't pounding into the seas, we should be able to limp along and just get through the patrol and safely into drydock for more permanent repairs. It was February, so while it wasn't FAC like the summer months in the NAG, we also weren't taking the 24-hour ass-beating we had during the late fall, early winter months. Until our last day in theatre, and a shamal came winding up from the southeast.

Within the span of about four hours, the winds shifted around to the southeast and sped to 35 kts sustained, gusting to 45 kts. Seas built to solid 10-12 footers. Our tasking had us on an upswell, downswell ride on a track about 1.5 miles long. So, 20 minutes of a nice downswell ride, followed by a sketchy, sketchy turn to come about, and then 30 minutes of complete, 100% snot.

We'd been doing this for about 2 hours, when our tasking group came over the radio, and told us to head 14 miles away because they had a report of a Kuwaiti fishing vessel taking on water. I threw down a but, sir, recommending that one of the PCs might just have better sea keeping abilities in current conditions, and OH YEAH...they didn't have a HOLE IN THEIR HULL!!! And by the way, we were only making 7 kts into the swell so it would take us over two hours to get on scene because there was no *way* I was gonna try to speed up in that shit.

Thankfully, the taskers saw the wisdom in that logic, and make arrangements to send a PC. And fortunately, by the time the arrangements were made, another vessel had assisted the fishing vessel.

The weather stayed shamal-ly for the next 12 hours, and it was really weird once the winds did shift. Within 30 minutes, the winds shifted 180 degrees, but stayed up around 35-40 kts. The seas answered the winds, and for about two hours, it was a googly mess out there, as the northwest swell countered the southwest swell. But MAUI made it through, and we sailed safely back to Bahrain and drydock.

I did spend a significant amount of time second-guessing my reaction to the tasking. My operational commander had said the repairs were good enough to send us out to do the job. It's not a comfortable position to say that your ship is not safe enough to go out and potentially save lives. Are the lives of my crew more important than the lives of the unknown fishermen? Was there really a risk of us sinking? I assuaged my discomfort somewhat with the knowledge that there was another unit available and better suited to respond, but what if there hadn't been? Would I have turned down the tasking?

I think in some ways, a ship is more than just the ship. She's a triumvirate of the ship (the steel, the hull, the engines, the bridge), the crew, and the command. None can do without any of the others. And each has to implicitly and utterly without doubt, trust the others. I did not trust my ship in that case. I knew my crew would overcome whatever was thrown at them, but my poor, battered ship with a hole in her skin, she was having a hard time of it. And that undermined my confidence, which in turn undermined my effectiveness as the Captain.

So, is the Navy doing the right thing by tying up the ships? There's definitely an operational impact to what they're doing. I can only imagine what the scramble looks like to overcome the gap in coverage. And at least in the CG, we've got the FRCs on the way to replace the WPBs, so there is a long-term solution in the works.

But it's the meantime that worries me.