Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving (a day late)!! It’s been a great holiday for me so far. I flew down to Alabama on Wednesday after an early departure (officially sanctioned – Thanks, DCMS!) from work. I left from Reagan International from the terminal that has TSA Pre-Check lines…active duty military and others (I don’t know all the rules) get a special line. I walked past about a 45-minute wait, right up to the front with only six people in front of me. *And* I didn’t have to take off my boots, belt or take all the crap out of my bag. Loved it!

Yesterday was a feast with the Rocket Scientist and his family. So much food, wonderful people, a beautiful day and lots of laughter and fun contributed to a picture perfect holiday, touched with a tinge of sadness that I didn’t get to see my family, just talk with them for a few minutes on the phone. It firms my resolve to make a concerted effort to see them at Christmastime.

And today, I am *making* time to write a post. I haven’t for a very long time, and I kind of feel it in my head. Lots of post thoughts rattling around, making a bunch of racket in my skull. I don’t think I really have anything in particular to write about…or, no, that’s not quite it…I have a *ton* of things to write about. I just can’t. Predecisional, political both in the grand “federal government” sense (think fiscal cliff, Sequestration, etc., etc.) and in the internal CG sense, I just can’t write about a lot of the stuff I do on a daily basis.

It’s *frustrating!* I’ve said before that I don’t always start out with knowing where I’m going with a post. The process of getting the words out of my head helps figure out how to articulate exactly what I’m wrestling with and define the scope, underlying difficulties and potential solutions.

For example, I recently submitted my application to be a TRACEN Cape May Company Mentor. It’s something I’ve thought about doing for a while now, and since I’m a little closer to New Jersey than I have been for a long time, I decided to go for it. The application was fairly straight forward (sadly, the question I struggled with the most was, “What eight weeks over the next year are you most available?” Umm, none of them, but this is important to me, so I’ll make the time if you tell me when I need to be there). The meat of the application was the question, “Why do you want to be a Company Mentor?” or something to that effect. Huh, I hadn’t ever thought it through; I just knew it was something I wanted to do.

I wish I had access to my response while I write this post, because I’d take the easy way out and just cut and paste. But I’m still having difficulties with RAS, and I didn’t think ahead to what I was going to write about this weekend, so there ya go. Basically my answer was that one of the things I miss most about being a Commanding Officer (being on a ship in any capacity, really) is the interaction with my fellow crewmembers, especially the junior folks. There is something about their enthusiasm for all the new experiences that is inspiring and motivating. My current job that is so demanding, I need all the motivation I can find, and hanging out with new recruits sounds like a great opportunity to be reminded that the wonky budget work I do has real consequences to real people out doing real work in real dangerous conditions. I think I added that I stood to gain more from being a Company Mentor than the mentees might get from me.

In drafting my answer, though, it really started to make sense not only some of what I’ve been missing from not being underway but also why that sense of connection to field operations is so critical to my ability to make my best effort with program review duties. I wouldn’t have taken the time to go through the mental exercise of figuring out my motivational needs without the requirement of having to articulate why I want to be a Company Mentor. And that’s just good information for me to have about myself.

And it’s kind of funny that I feel such accountability from my blog. I mean, I *could* idk, journal about those things I can’t write publically about, but I just don’t have the forcing mechanism to make myself – being basically lazy and all. But because I’ve got such loyal readers, I feel obligated to continue writing for them…even if it is less frequently than before.

A quick side story about my readers: I’ve had a couple of recent encounters with people who read this bit of maundering. One was about two months ago: I cold-called somebody from one of my programs with a question. He’s something of a talkative sort who was newly reported and queried me about my background during the conversation. I gave him the last few years of my bio and at that point he asked me, hey, do you write a blog? Once I admitted that I did he told me he had run across it at his last job when he was searching online for resources about writing OERs to give to his JOs. I was a little embarrassed (but delighted) when he said he referenced my post to his JOs. I can only hope that one or two of them got something useful out of my thoughts on writing OER input.

And then just two or three weeks ago, I ran into a fellow blogger as I was making the trek between the two Headquarters buildings after a meeting. I hadn’t seen him for quite a while and stopped to chat with him for a moment. He said he was still reading my blog, it comes up on his RSS feed, and very kindly told me about how one of my posts about riding motorcycles had reminded him how much he enjoyed riding a motorcycle himself. He had a crash a couple of years ago, and hadn’t gotten around to replacing his bike. But after reading about my two-wheeled adventures, he remembered what fun he had and got a new motorcycle. Wow! I mean, Wow!! I guess I get a lot of satisfaction out of knowing that what I write resonates with other people and they find what I say useful. Hedging my bets against my mortality, maybe.

Regardless, I’m thankful for the forum.

Unexpected Time

The phone rang yesterday morning when I was about halfway through my bowl of cereal (Honey Nut Cheerios (yes, rather plebian, I know, but a comfort-food throwback to breakfasts at my grandparents' house) topped with thawed peaches, chia seeds and cocao nibs). It was Lynn from The Farm, telling me she didn't think they were going to be particularly busy and they wouldn't need my help.

An unexpected Day Off! How glorious a prospect! I immediately changed into yoga clothes and planned to leave the house by 0920 to walk up the street to Joe's. In the interim coupla hours, I did some laundry, cleaned the litter box, folded clothes, and generally puttered around the house. After yoga, I admit I mostly squandered my day, lounging on the couch, reading a book, watching football and then some backlogged tv shows.

Oh, and cooking. Apparently, I cook when I have downtime...who'da thunk. It started with mac&cheese, polluted with chicken sausage and one of the last garden tomatoes from the summer. Followed by brownies with pecans. Followed by a melange-mess of a stew...sweet potato, onion, barley, poblano pepper, more of the chicken sausage, veggie stock, lentils, worchestershire sauce and a bottle of pilsner that had been lingering in my fridge for umm, longer than I can remember. Most of the stew has already been transferred to the freezer, back up meals for when I get home after a twelve or fourteen hour day. But the leftover mac&cheese joined the leftover quiche (bacon, spinach and feta...from when the freezer came unplugged a coupla months ago), salad fixings, apples, cheese, mole accoutrements, chestnuts and smoothie-makings in the already full refrigerator.

Speaking of smoothies, the subject of them came up during the office fun-run this Thursday. The XO finally took the opportunity to query me on just what was in them. I rattled off the list: frozen pineapple, peaches, strawberries or whatever else happened to be on hand, lately Swiss chard, but sometimes kale and/or avocado, oatmeal, fresh ginger, sometimes spirulina (a green algae superfood) and/or beets (though the combo of the deep green spirulina and bright red beets does mix into a disturbingly unappetizing purple-brown, somewhat reminiscent of radioactive pond-scum), tumeric, cayenne, chia seeds and cocoa nibs, yogurt and juice. I think I lost his interest soon after "frozen fruit." But the smoothies do pique interest in the office, and I have a standing request from a couple of folks who want to try them. Will take in samples shortly.

The brownies are wrapped up, still on the counter, singing their siren song to me. I don't know that they'll last through the day.

I made some preparations for the arrival of Hurricane Sandy yesterday also. Like putting odds and ends from the yard away, bringing the outdoor trash cans into the laundry room, bringing in some extra kindling (shoulda brought in more firewood than I did...how cozy would a nice cheery fire be to ward off the skittery feeling of the impending storm), plugging in the rechargeable lantern and finding extra flashlights, filling a couple of largish containers with water...just in case. I rode the fence for a while about going to the grocery store, but finally leveraged my lazy ass off the couch with the thought of just how aggravatedpissedannoyedfrustrated I'd be with myself if I ended up not having to go into work but not having any milk for my tea.

And this morning, I made apple-walnut pancakes.

The funny-ironic thing about all this food is that it's not really the type of food that is fit to share with other people. It's good enough for me, because when it gets down to it, I'll eat damn near anything I make as long as I'm hungry enough. But I have sufficient sensibility to realize pond-scum smoothies and melange stew do not appeal to most anyone else. I am gonna make some cranberry-apple bread pudding to take into the office when the storm is over though.

But now I'm rather at odds. What happened to all those things I've always said I'd do when "I got the time?" I've got the time now, and I can't remember a single darn one of them. I think this is actually one of my greatest fears...to become so involved in my work, regardless of whether it's due to demanding hours, long deployments, or inescapable responsibility, that I lose the rest of myself...my interests, my abilities, my sense of fun.

Now, granted, the circumstances of today (unknown amount of downtime, **crappy** weather conditions outside) limit my ability or desire to pursue a lot of what I like to do...The Old Man would probably permanently *revolt!* if I tried going for a ride today, and the garden/yard is a soggy mess that tampering with in these conditions would only make worse. Where are my inside interests though?

I've got bookshelves full of books to read (am saving them for when the power inevitably goes out and I don't have internet access anymore). I could clean house...hahaha -- well, I typed it with a straight face, anyway. Why isn't my loom set up? Oh yeah, no space and weaving definitely takes more of a time commitment, what with planning, set up and finishing, than I will have for at least a decade. Should I pick up knitting or crocheting? The Rocket Scientist recommended remote control boats.

I know...I'll practice writing, ya know, for when I start to write a book as so many people tell me I should. And plan homemade Christmas presents like when I was a poor college student. And, idk, just *wallow* in not having anything to do!

Stay safe, everyone!

My Sixth October

Ahem. Yes, I know it's been six weeks since my last post (or is it seven weeks?). Yes, I know I'm an absolute slacker. My litany of excuses includes: OMB roll-out, the Rocket Scientist's safe return from Afghanistan, a brief spate of fomenting minor revolution, a two-week motorcycle vacation in Florida, a backlog of household chores, and volunteering at Larriland Farm for their October weekend madness. And it's not that I haven't been thinking about writing, but I'm definitely feeling the difficulty of being limited in what I can talk about with regards to my job, and, well, a self-imposed limitation about sharing tmi about my personal relationships.

I know I've procrastinated too long when I get a text from FR, "Hey I think you are due for a blog post!" Nothing like getting tasking from an ex-XO...(his comment when I shared that thought with him, "Payback"...tee hee).

So here I am, mid-way through a quiet Sunday afternoon, with a cheery fire in the fireplace (just because I can and there's just a hint of a chill in the house), with the football game keeping me company, finally sitting down to get some of this noise out of my head.

And disappointingly, I'm going to start with a whine session. (No, I don't want any cheese with that whine...the cheesy post is going to be the one I write about the vacation -- two weeks on a motorcycle with my boyfriend cruising through southern Florida -- yes, it was all that. Definitely going to be sappy). But my job is hard. And kinda sucks. The hours are long, the problems difficult, the budget environment is...umm, challenging?, programs are in various states of acceptance, and the stakes are high.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like a challenge. And I don't need my hand held, or constant pats on the back or  atta-boys or public recognition of  how hard I work. But a win for the good guys, every now and again goes a *long* way to making a difficult situation more tenable. Instead, it's been contentious arguments, obstructionist behavior, obdurate attitudes, and even sometimes, unproductive castigations about insufficient contributions.

I'm a little embarrassed about that last one, because that was me. I could have handled the situation much better, but I was *FRUSTRATED!* I didn't say anything that wasn't true; there was just no way that what I said was a positive and supportive addition to the discussion. Especially since I couldn't bring myself to apologize for it. The best I could manage was to acknowledge how unproductive my comment was to accomplishing the goals of the meeting. Unfortunately, it put the receiving individual on the defensive to the point where s/he won't deal with me directly anymore, deliberately removing me from email replies. Dang.

Oh, and I said it in a public forum, with an audience of about half a dozen other people, so there's really no way to allow the recipient to gracefully recover. Double dang.

So yeah, I'm feeling a little beat up. Or maybe beat down. I can't decide.

But after working 60 hours a week in the office, I've been going to the farm one weekend day to help out with their October weekend festivities. Add another nine hours of demanding labor to my work week. I've been wondering why, oh why, I chose to spend my precious weekend hours busting my ass, being polite and helpful to customers, manhandling pumpkins, wrangling bushels of apples, dead-lifting gallons upon gallons of cider, herding teenagers in the packing area and making endless rounds to gather up abandoned baskets and carts.

The Farm has changed a little bit since I first started working there in 1987. I was a puny 14 year-old, at my first job; kinda shy, not much self-confidence, no idea of what work ethic was, nervous, wanting to do a good job, but not sure what all that entailed. Huh, 25 years ago...over the span of four decades (the 80s, 90s, 2000s and 20-teens). I counted it up, and I think this is my sixth October working weekends on the Farm.

My memories of the first few Octobers are covered in powdered sugar. From head to toe. In my hair, in my ears, up my nose. I spent 10 hours in the apple fritter booth, usually both Saturday and Sunday (that's back when The Farm ran the booth internally...somewhere along the way, they got smart and outsourced it to a local church group (?)/non-profit). I was the front-Girl...taking orders and payment, and putting the finishing touch of a dusting of powdered sugar on the fritters hot from the deep fryer. One day it was windy, and I ended the day looking like a ghost. I had more sugar on me than I think got on the fritters. I can eat fritters again now, 25 years later. But the smell of them still takes me back to those first few weekends.

I really enjoy going back to The Farm. Maybe it's an attempt to hold onto my younger days. I can't be old if I can still lift two half-bushels of apples at the same time (I've always been too short to try for three at a time). But, in particular these days, I think I enjoy it because I can contribute to the good guys winning without much effort on my part. I can walk into the market, back into the packing area and pack a peck of apples without thinking about it, look at the display tables and know what needs to be done next, jump onto a register and help whittle down the long lines, back up the clerks by bagging two lines at a time, answer endless questions from customers with a smile on my face. It's all stuff that I did so long ago and for long enough that it is fairly well ingrained in me. I can be good at it without trying too hard. And in these days, when I need the good guys to win one every so often, going to The Farm restores me a little.

It didn't hurt that the ride home was right at sunset, through the rural area of Montgomery County. The golden pink rays of the sun soaked into all the fall colors of the leaves changing, and just *lit up* the countryside. There were some solitary trees that were in full glory that were unbelievable...it seemed like all the goodness of the day was shining out through those brilliant shades.

A Little Break

You're all gonna think that I don't ever work, between this post and the last. But rest assured, I do put in some hours. The week where I realized I had put in a 40 hour week already by 10 am on Thursday was the one that really got to me. There were a couple 2200 nights that week. Thank goodness that's not all the time.

However, this post is not about work, it's about taking a little break. I've been doing pretty good with taking a day off here and there throughout the week for various and sundry reasons...friends and/or family coming into town, getting my registration renewed. And I've sort of gotten over feeling awkward when I come in late or leave early to take care of personal business like physical therapy appointments or meeting workmen coming to the house for improvement projects. Sort of. It still feels like I should be able to clone myself on those days and be in two places at once.

But this week I took Monday off, and...went to The Beach. I've been meaning to, talking about it all summer long. Realizing that summer was almost over, time was running out, and weekends are going to start to get booked up here shortly, I decided two weeks ago (that was the 60 hour week...huh, funny how that works) that I just had to do it.

Now, I *hate* traffic, and there's nothing worse for me to be stuck in traffic with all the rest of the yahoos heading out to the shore. I played with the schedule a little bit, and decided to leave Saturday morning, stay Saturday and Sunday nights, and come back Monday. Not to brag, but it was a *brilliant* plan! It was great! Not hardly any traffic when The Old Man and I finally cruised out at about 1000 on Saturday (no reason to rush, and get up early or anything). We headed out on Rt 50, and were quickly over the Bay Bridge.

I looked at the weather forecast before I went (confession time: no, I did *NOT* GAR this evolution before I started it...maybe I should have. Or maybe not...would have gone even though I was close to Red. Weather and Equipment woulda been the high scores). So I knew there was a 60 percent chance of thunderstorms, but I figured, hey, passing summer thunderstorms...No Big Deal.

I stopped for lunch in Cambridge, MD, at Ocean Odyssey...very tasty! Fish tacos and local oysters. With one eye on a darkening sky, I got back underway, figuring I could stop for cover at a gas station if I needed to.

Ten minutes out of Cambridge, I needed to and there wasn't a single damn gas station to be found. I finally ducked under cover in Vienna, but by that point, I was already wet. The Rocket Scientist was very helpful in asking where my rain gear was. Why, oh why did I forget, and leave my rain gear at home in the shed where it was doing me exactly *no good?!* Equipment and environment spike up another point or two.

I stayed in Vienna for about half an hour, using my time wisely and chatting with my sister, who had just wrapped up her very own adventure in the form of a cross-country drive from Michigan to LA with her step-daughter in a car with 167,000 miles on it. Sounded like an ok idea when they started out; thank goodness they made it safely across without any major incidents. But eventually, I just wanted to keep going and get to my destination. I headed out again. And ran into some of the heaviest rain I have ever seen in my life! Even from when I was in Hilo.

Ya know what? Big fat driving rain drops HURT at 60 miles per hour. They sting even through denim. And it's hard to see through a rain-spotted windshield and a helmet's face shield. It stopped raining five miles from my turn off onto VA 175...eastbound to Chincoteague.

My first memories of the beach are at Assateague Island. We may have gone somewhere else first when I was young, but that's where I remember going for week-long camping trips when I was in grade school. I will forever and always associate Celestial Seasonings almond tea with those trips. I think there must have been a box of it in the camping kitchen gear...it's the only time I can remember drinking it. And I have to assume that the charring on the old percolator coffee pot (the only coffee pot I have in the house) must have come from Mom putting it on the campfire for her morning coffee that she would take to the beach for sunrise.

Assateague Island is a National Park. They've got the wild ponies there, and good lord, is it beautiful. I hadn't been back in probably close to...well, a *really* long time. And I don't know that we ever made it to Chincoteague when I was a kid. But based on a recommendation from JZ, one of the senior Reviewers, I chose to go there instead of a party town like Ocean City or Rehobeth Beach. Nothing against either one of them...just not my scene.

I didn't actually make it to the beach on Saturday. I got to my hotel right after check in time, soggy and a little road weary. The skies were threatening more rain, so I relaxed in the room and scoped out places for dinner. The best recommendation for what I was looking for was the Chincoteague Inn Restaurant, so I moseyed on over there, checking out some of the shops along the way. But, I was not done with getting rained on. It *poured* on me as I dashed from shop awning to shop awning.

The restaurant/bar was in convivial swing when I finally dripped through the door. The pre-season Redskins game was on the tv, until a bolt of lightening shot the signal. The gracious bartender was able to quickly resurrect it though, preventing a riotous mutiny by the crowd of enthusiasts. I intended to only stay for a beer or two with dinner, but each time I was about to the end of a bottle, it started raining even harder. Finally, though, I had my fill of smoke, empty calories and inane conversation, and made my way back out into the night. The hotel was only four blocks from the restaurant, but I waded through nearly knee-deep puddles all the way back. Lotsa, lotsa rain.

I paused for a moment before entering my room. The Old Man, poor thing, was stoically parked outside with no cover, fully exposed to the deluge. If only I could have rolled it into my room! But there was a specific house rule about no bikes in the room...and steps up to the porch. The Old Man was stuck out in the elements.

At this point, I was a little concerned about my prospects for any beach time at all due to the rain. But I woke up to a bright, sunny day on Sunday morning, and set out to make my way to the beach. Chincoteague is a perfect place for a bicycle, so first item on the agenda (well, *after* breakfast) was procuring two pedal-powered wheels. There are lotsa places to rent scooters, motorized trikes and bikes on the island, so I stopped by the closest vendor and then merrily pointed my hot-pink beach cruiser eastward...with a little wobble or two along the way as I got used to the old-school pedal activated brakes.

It was a gorgeous morning; a few clouds in the sky, a light breeze, birds *everywhere!* I don't know birds very well, but there were egrets, herons, seagulls, plovers, pipers, and I don't know what all else. There were a few other early rising people out, mostly friendly types, but some with that surly central Eastern-seaboard pugnacity that I did not miss living on the West Coast.

One of the very best things about having a bicycle on Assateague is that you can get to beaches where there's no parking for cars. It was about a three mile ride, mostly flat with a slight rise over a small bridge crossing the sound, through the marshes, straight up to the beach. I heard the surf long before I saw it, and smelled the salt in the air quite a way out. I locked the bike on one of the racks, and walked the last hundred yards over the dunes to the open stretch of sand leading to the waves.

There were a handful of people already on the beach, so I made a sharp turn to port and headed north for a little ways to my own stretch of empty sand. Spread my blanket, finished sunscreen application and moseyed  forward to test the water. And realized just how spoiled I've gotten being at beaches with crystal clear water for the last decade. I got used to seeing my feet on the bottom, even when I'm in neck-deep water. Not so much here. My feet disappeared into the murky waters when I was barely up to my calves. But it was still salt water, which is good for the soul. I ducked under the waves and played in the surf.

The sun came and went behind some clouds, threatening to dampen my day. I have been accused of having a curse of clouds at the beach. It can be bright and sunny before I get there, and as soon as I step on the shore, the skies darken and rain clouds threaten. But I was already wet, so what was a little fresh water washdown? I flopped on my blanket, covered my right arm (despite 45 SPF I'm still overprotective of the artwork) and dozed pleasantly. I woke a few minutes later to turn over, and saw the brightest, bluest sky with nary a trace of cloud on the horizon. Good for the soul, good for the skin, good for the mind and heart and all those other parts that don't get much attention during long weeks under florescent lights.

I only brought one smallish water bottle with me, though, so I was chased off the beach by a looming thirst after a couple of hours. The closest water fountain was at the visitors' center, so I cruised over there to fill 'er up, and then kept going to the beach access you can drive a car to. Umm -- madhouse! I found a relatively open spot to lay my blanket, but only stayed for a little while. The people watching was fun.

I was feeling peckish on the way home (translation: was madly ravenous), and stopped at a little cafe along the way. The crab cake was superb and gave the fuel necessary to finish the ride back to my room. After a long morning and afternoon in the sun and on the bicycle, I relaxed for a little while before heading out to get some ice cream...which turned out to be dinner because I was too lazy later to go back out. A little National Treasure and Sherlock Holmes later, and I turned out the light for the night.

My plan for the next day was to get up early and pedal back to the beach for sunrise. While it's always good to have a plan, it didn't quite work out that way. I slept in past sunrise, but took the bike to the beach and then ran on the beach. I saw one person when I very first got there, and one person as I was leaving -- and no one else. Was divine! I stayed long enough to go for a quick swim and then headed back to the hotel to get my stuff together to leave.

I didn't want to leave. Well, I wanted to ride the bike, but not back to the city. I'm kind of amazed I've lasted as long in the city as I have. Granted, I've had some nice long breaks, like last summer and this past winter when I went back to Hawaii. So there's been some respite. I just don't like all the people, and traffic, and buildings and hubbub and stuff. I swear I'm not counting the days, but I definitely am looking forward to Assignment Year 2014.

The sun was beating down by the time I was ready to leave, and putting on that leather jacket was not something I wanted to do...humid air pressed densely around me. And black leather, on a hot summer day...whose stupid idea was that? But I got on the road, and well, the air isn't so hot at 50 mph.

The gas light had just come on to let me know I needed to refuel when the skies opened up and I found myself in a downpour. Thankfully, I spied a gas station just ahead and pulled quickly under the shelter. I filled up, groused about the delay to the Rocket Scientist, and sat there for a while until I thought it might be less risky to get back on the road. I made it 1.4 miles before I ran back up on the storm. I found another shelter, this time at an abandoned gas station, and sat there for another quarter-hour, staring at the radar picture on my phone and calculating that I had another 20 miles or so to go in the path of the storm before my trackline took me out of its way.

The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful. Not much traffic, a little windy at the top of the Bay Bridge, and I was home by 1600. I needed the break, and I'm so glad I took it.

WOD

Must finish this post...it has been languishing for weeks! But if I ever needed proof of my own nerdiness, this post will be it.

I am a word-nerd; kinda like a food-nerd, but with words. I like finding *exactly* the right word that conveys just what I mean, down to the correctly shaded subtleties. Not any word will always do. Sometimes the word I want comes bounding into my head, rolling blithely off my tongue, while other times I know it's out there, but I can't for the life of me bring it forth.

There is a certain amount of ridicule associated with being a word-nerd, gentle fun poked at having a large vocabulary. Many people think I use big words just to show off how smart I am (hahaha...if they *only* knew -- definitely one of those "fake it until you make it" instances, when it comes to me being overly smart). But really, it's not that at all. It's the communication of the thing that is important to me...the getting it *just* right.

I have some favorite words...heuristic, even though I have to re-look it up in the dictionary every so often to remind myself of what it actually does mean -- I'm still not sure I've got a good handle on it; prevaricate, because it's not quite lying, more stretching the truth like a fish story...followed closely by obfuscate; perspicacity, I used this once in an OER (Officer Evaluation Report) for one of my JOs and was talking to the Afloat Assignment Officer about it -- he suggested I might use another word for clarity's sake...oh, the *irony!*; mercurial, peckish, pulchritude, fissure, and squidgey.

I think my word-nerdiness started pretty early on. One of my favorite authors as a kid, and still really today, was James Herriott, who told stories about his life as a World War II era Yorkshire vet sharing a countryside practice, working with small farmers, townspeople and the occasional horsey member of the aristocracy. What eleven-year-old really should know what "sonorous" is? Most of the time reading his books, I could figure out the meaning of the word by the context of the story...but I think I actually had to look that one up. L. M. Montgomery also contributed to my vocabulary; Anne of Green Gables was awesome with big words!

And then there was "The Jabberwocky," by Lewis Carroll. I love that poem. I chose to memorize it junior year of high school instead of the Bible verses (yes, I did go to public school) being taught as literature. "Twas brillig and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. / All mimsy were the borogoves / And the mome wraths outgrabe." How fantastic is that?! It totally paints a picture using words that aren't real words.

So all this background only serves the purpose of setting the stage for describing a little bit of fun at the office. I think it tells *a lot* about the caliber of people I work with that I can honestly say that a "Word of the Day" game is cause for hilarity and morale. There's really two main players of this WOD game, me and EC, one of the other reviewers. We leave sticky notes on each other's laptops in the morning with our choice for the day written down. The challenge is to use the word (correctly, of course) in a conversation or other communique sometime during the day. We've had some great words: polemic, banausic, obdurate (though that one has been grossly overused recently), phthsis.

I'm pretty sure EC is winning. He's worked extirpate into a Digest to the Vice Commandant, routinely includes WODs in emails, and even got a Jabberwocky word (yes, I gave him a sticky note one morning that said, "WOD: A JABBERWOCKY WORD." I had intended he make up a word defined by its context, like my own personal favorite, squidgey, but his use was So. Much. Better.) into an email to our Captain. Who knew that a vorpal blade could be used against a programmatic initiative with the same effectiveness as against the Jabberwocky himself?! The absolute final, Final, *FINAL* bonus round will be if one of us gets a WOD into the FY14 Congressional Justification...EC said he's already got one planted, so as long as it doesn't get edited out between now and the mid-February release of the President's Budget, he's definitely gonna skunk me. There's always FY15 though!

Today drove home one of the most important lessons about words that I'll ever learn, but seem to have to keep banging up against before I really get it: big, fancy words strung sweetly together mean *absolutely nothing,* and can in fact be deleterious, if you don't pay attention to what your audience is actually hearing.

Abundance

So much for a post every other week or so. I'm slacking. At least on blogging. There's a lot been going on otherwise. I just can't write about it here for one reason or another...pre-decisional stuff related to the budget (*way* more drama than that boring ol' snippet of a sentence makes it sound), too personally inappropriate for the blog (you're wondering, based on my previous posts, what on earth falls into that category, but there is stuff I'm not willing to share here), or not my story to tell. It's been pretty stressful, taken all together.

But, again, when I take a step back and look at what is stressing me out, it all stems from the abundance of wonderful things in my life. My job is a high grade stressor. Long hours, complicated problems, high-stakes outcomes, delicate negotiations...but also smart, incredible people to work with, the opportunity to make a real difference for an organization that I believe in and that has given me so much, daily challenges and lessons to learn. I love my job. I mean, it's not underway, but if I have to be a sand-peep, this is the job I want. Even when it makes me tear my hair out.

I've had a couple of conversations about this with fellow reviewers. The general consensus is that, the work is shitty, the hours are long, the problems knotty and difficult, and the processes overly bureaucratic and opaque...but that just means that when something does get solved, fixed or changed for the better somehow, all that hard work is so very, very worth it.

At the same time work is so busy, there's other stuff going on in my life. I've been doing some updating in my house (yes, still). But that requires *being here* to let workmen in, or having to remember to leave the back door unlocked and the security key hidden somewhere that's easy to explain. On the grateful up-side, though, I came home on Friday, after a ridiculously demanding week at work, and stepped into a freshly cleaned *AIR-CONDITIONED* house! It was *glorious!* The new mini-split a/c system is so quiet and works so well. I kinda wish I could just go on Google maps, and cut out my little house and yard, and take it with me wherever I get transferred to next, because I really like my house and yard and garden. Oh, and the garden is overrun with cucumbers and basil. Thanks to my sister's cuke salad recipe, I have been known to eat an entire cucumber by myself for dinner. Peel the cuke, slice as thin as possible (I use a mandoline), squeeze half a lime (she uses lemon) over the cucumber slices spread out on a plate, and sprinkle to taste with salt and pepper. De-LISH!

Another little story about the house/garden frustration/abundance...a couple of weekends ago, I noticed that my new chest freezer (a recent, fantastic addition) had become unplugged. I had no idea how or for how long, but it was long enough that most of the stuff inside had thawed. AAAARRRRRGGHHH!!! So much for my quiet, lazy weekend. Instead I had to cook, cook, cook to make sure I didn't waste a lot of food. But I came out Monday morning with the freezer (plugged back in, of course, and humming away) freshly full of chicken mole and quinoa, corn bread muffins (I had frozen corn to use), and spinach, bacon, feta quiche. And last weekend, I continued my cooking frenzy and deposited homemade, personal-sized pizzas (pesto, mushrooms, anchovies, salami, garlic, mozzarella, eggplant and red sauce -- though not all on the same pizzas) and raspberry-rhubarb pie in the freezer for future consumption. How *on earth* could I complain about *that!?!*

And I won't bore you, and prompt an involuntary eye-roll with details of how sweet, and wonderful, and amazing, and...see, I tend to get a little carried away...fabulous the Rocket Scientist is; I'll simply leave it with the statement that I am *so ready* for him to come home. It is with a well-honed sense of irony that I will complain for a moment about how crappy it is that his job is keeping him so busy. Before he went on R&R, we would chat on Skype in his mornings/my evenings and his evenings/my afternoons (on the weekends, anyway), and I got used to that. But he stepped into a new position when he got back into theatre after R&R, and now he is working from about 6 am solid through until sometimes 11 pm and later. And I must footnote this comment with the recognition that at least (though much to his chagrin, I think) he's not going out on patrol, and is relatively safe within the confines of the FOB. So he's not getting shot at regularly, like so many of the troops are. But it is a low grade, kind of background noise, that wears on me--his being gone. Not for too much longer though.

So, while I might bitch, whine and complain about how tough things are for me, I do it with complete awareness that, in a twisted sort of way, I'm actually expressing my gratitude that my life is so very, very full of wonderful abundance. Really need to figure out how to just express the gratitude and *get over* the grumbling.

Operational or Support

I found myself in a few conversations this last week centered on how to define an operational unit. Well, the question being asked was actually how to define support, but it turned out in order to do that, we had to define what operational was. I had a couple of partners in crime during these discussions...my new office-mate, Master Chief Hooligan (should really ask his permission to talk about him before mentioning his name, hence the moniker), a Maritime Enforcement-type and CDR B, a Sector Prevention-type.

One point I stumbled on along the way was the importance of this definition. The XO had stopped in The Body Shop (colloquialism for my office), probably to task me or MC, and got sucked into the conversation briefly. I was going on about why we were talking about the definition of operational in the first place, and got a skeptical look when I said that at this point it was more a theological discussion. I started to backtrack a little, but quickly realized that it really *is* almost theological, more than philosophical. How we define operational within our organization is sacred. It is fundamental to the  daily function of the Service and is really a key component of the glue that cements together all our disparate missions. It is how a Boatswain's Mate working buoys on the Mississippi River near Kentucky can share a sense of purpose with a pilot patrolling for drug runners in the middle of the Eastern Pacific Ocean can share a sense of purpose with a Marine Inspector in Boston Harbor, climbing around the bilges in a commercial bulk carrier.

The discussion went in predictable directions, of course. We used the "Operational Distinguishing Device" litmus test...though that one had a few problems for me: how did I get an "O" for my time at the D14 Command Center, but my MKC and FS2 on MAUI didn't? Well, I mean, I know how that happened, and it definitely informed the discussion...as a ridiculous outlyer. It was two different commands, obviously. And if I had to go back and change it -- make it make more sense -- I'd give up the "O" device from the Command Center and give it to the MKC and FS2. But the argument against them receiving the device was that they provided a support function on the ship. Read: They didn't do boardings. They only ran the boat deck crane, responded as part of the repair party in case of an emergency, handled lines and ran the focs'le or fantail during Special Sea Detail...nothing *all that* "operational" (really hoping the sarcasm is coming through here). Hell, neither did *I* as the CO, but I still got another "O" for that tour. Does Command and Control make a job operational? Maybe so...maybe that's why I got the device at the Command Center. Really, with the CC, though, I was just the mouthpiece...no different from a phone talker, passing communications from the leadership on the bridge to the operators on the flight deck. And I am still offended on behalf of my MKC and FS2 that they were not considered operational.

I think that line of argument originally came from discussions on larger cutters, WHECs/378s, where it was called into question if the Storekeepers (SKs - supply clerks), Yeomen (YNs), Health Service Technicians (HSs - corpsmen) and probably Food Service Specialists (FSs - cooks) were really operational, or more of a support function for operations underway. Again, they (typically) were not doing boardings. But, at least when I was on HAMILTON and BOUTWELL, they were phone talkers, tie downs, and part of the repair locker for flight ops and general emergencies, line handlers and line heavers during underway replenishments, and quarterdeck watchstanders, with guns, ready to defend the ship in ports, foreign and domestic against any threat...sounds pretty operational to me. Just because nothing happened that they had to react to, doesn't mean they weren't ready to react (if that was the case, most folks at MSSTs likely wouldn't deserve "O" devices, since they are in place to react to possible threats...but do their job so well that those threats very rarely manifest. How do you prove a negative again?). Well, and then there's that whole thing of, I don't know, just *being underway,* away from family, home, normal life.

So, it's more than just the "O" device. MC Hooligan, in typical MC fashion, attempted to simplify the definition to an easily understandable quantity. He said, If you have the possibility of being cold and wet, in the middle of the night, you're operational. I added that there has to be a level of associated risk, maybe of not coming back unscathed. This, then encompasses Marine Inspectors, Vessel Boarding and Security Teams (VBSTs) and probably the entire Incident Management division at Sectors. Most Sectors (I won't risk saying *all* Sectors, because I've been told, "you've seen one Sector...you've seen one Sector (instead of "you've seen one Sector, you've seen them all")) have Response, Prevention and Logistics Departments. The Response and Prevention Departments are the operational side of things...boardings, inspections, pollution investigation and clean-up, all those good things where people are exposed to bad weather, risky situations, dangerous conditions. The Logistics Department supports those functions.

I'm almost ready to suggest an "Operational" point system...you get so many points for being in uncomfortable situations: cold and wet, hot, sweaty and dehydrating (think off the coast of Panama), dirty and grimy (scrambling through bilges and engineering spaces); so many points for being in life-threatening situations (climbing the jacobs ladder to do an off shore boarding, going onboard an unknown vessel of any kind); so many points for being away from home (underway for two months, two weeks or, hell, even two days, or on a 2 days on-2 days off schedule at a station); so many points for busting your circadian rhythm all to hell (mid-night SAR cases, offshore boardings by the VBST that started out scheduled for 2200, but that get pushed back 'til 0200 because the ship being boarding is running a little behind PIM (path of intended movement...when you expect to be where underway), and do I even have to give an example from being underway on a cutter?); so many points for every time you have to do a GAR model risk analysis during the course of your day (my record for a day underway was probably around 15); so many points for...you get the gist of it.

But all that really does is prove that "Operational" is a spectrum...different things add to a person's operational-ness, depending on the unit they're at, the type of job they are assigned to do, the collateral duties they have. Someone will *always* be able to find that outlying example that goes against the general rule/guidance.

And it's funny the stated, unstated and unstate-able biases we each brought to the table during the course of our discussions. In the end, as a Program Reviewer, I had to concede that Sectors are, in fact, operational. As a cutterman, I'm not sure I'll ever get there. Just like I'm not sure I'll ever understand the justification of ACIP (Aviation Career Incentive Pay...ugh, don't get me started). Or fatigue standards for boat stations. I will always honor and respect the importance and contributions of other career paths...while reveling in the knowledge that *I* have the **coolest** job as a cutterman :)