Day One

Today was the first day of my new job as a fingerprint technician at the Dept. of Homeland Security(Northrop Grumman). I interviewed for the position in January and my clearance has finally gone through after over five months of waiting and a metric ass-ton of paperwork. I am so excited to be working again. These lazy afternoons after school have been pretty great but it felt even better to fill out my time sheet today with the amount of hours I worked. I spent the afternoon watching videos about harassment, pride and professionalism and a very weird one about superfund sites and toxic waste cleanup(I have no idea what that has to do with fingerprinting). The harassment video brought back some fond memories of those semi-annual Navy training videos. You know the kind, they have some guy make a comment like "Hey Linda, could you go ahead and bring in those reports and while you're at it, it wouldn't kill ya to start dressing a little sexier, maybe lose the bra tomorrow mmmkay?" The people I work with are all really friendly and really are a bunch of smart-asses, they spend all day playing jokes on each other and laughing. One guy thinks that the bar-code scanner is posessed and only works if he says the name of one of the other employees out loud. I watched him literally scan hundreds of bar-codes and say the name to himself every time and snicker. "See guys? See? He have a lucky name." Tomorrow I take in my bank account info so I can FINALLY start earning a paycheck again.

Operation JOE M.A.M.A. (Episode I)

In the cold drizzle of a typical winter morning in Everett, Washington one man embarked on a United States Warship with a dream, a mission and...........a doll. His codename is "Danny Boy," his mission, escort G.I. Joe on his travels around the world. This is his story........

My ship left for their six month deployment a while ago* and I sent G.I. Joe with them for good luck and asked for the guys to send pictures of Joe on his travels. "Danny Boy," has reported an overwhelming enthusiasm among the crew for Operation JOE M.A.M.A. He has been standing watch, troubleshooting equipment, drinking beer in exotic lands and enjoying a variety of other wholesome Navy** activities. So without further delay, in honor of Memorial Day, here is the first part of the Operation JOE M.A.M.A. series.......

Life on the Big Blue

UNDERWAY!! Joe has kissed his wives goodbye

and bid farewell to his loved ones and takes one last look
at homeport before the ship heads out to sea.

There's a hell of a lot of ocean on this planet and steaming from port to port leads to a lot of time stuck in that tin can with the same 400 faces day in and day out. G.I. Joe is a Firecontrolman(FC), one of the proudest rates in the Navy. The FCs are those onboard who make the difference between cruise liner and warship. FCs love to be at sea, as they say "Land is nothing but a navigation hazard, Arrrrrrrrr." Since G.I. Joe left the States he has spent a lot of time working. Every day he must stand watch, sometimes he even stands a couple of watches in a day:

"Hey Meat I'm outta pistachios up here........

.....I don't CARE if you're duct-taping the div-o to the ceiling.....

.....I'm @#$&'in hungry man!!!"

Navy equipment is often designed by the lowest bidder. This is the reason that the FCs have such great job security. Equipment breaks often and only the freakishly intelligent (and handsome) FCs have the skills to troubleshoot it. Gooooooooo JOE!

"Well I've tried eveything else," Joe said as he lifted the rifle to his shoulder.....

As anybody who has been in the Navy can tell you, the mess decks offer up a wide variety of delicious, nutritious, gourmet foods. Sailors often continue coming to the ship for dinner even when they return to homeport because the food is just so much better than any cheeseburger or steak or lobster you could get on land...........what? I'm serious...haha...ok......no, the food really leaves something to be desired, but there's usually a lot of it!! Refer to the equation: Quantity>Quality..........this formula seems to find it's way into a lot of aspects of Navy life:

"Wow, these chicken wings are awfully small.....hey
sir, have you noticed there haven't been any gulls around recently?"

Sometime there is even time for a little fun and games to pass the time between ports.....playing cards have been keeping sailors busy since the days of the tall ship:

"I'm all in b*tches!" Joe exclaims exuberantly.

What foreign lands will Joe see? Will the Navy recruiting slogan "Let the adventure begin" live up to its promises.......stay tuned for episode II: Hong Kong Phooey vs. G.I. Joe.

Happy Memorial Day Everyone!
Operation Joe M.A.M.A is dedicated to those men and women who have served or are currently serving in our nation's defense.

*In the interest of national security and the safety of my brothers in the Navy, the timeline of this series has been falsified, the names of ports and order in which they were visited may have been changed.

**This site is in no way affiliated with the United States Navy. Opinions and technical information are generated purely by the semi-twisted mind of the author.

This Pretty much sums up how I feel today....

I love Fridays!!!!

You're gonna eat lightning and you're gonna crap thunder...

Name the character who said that.........not the point. Things at the house are pretty busy these days. It's been nice enough outside that I've started taking on some part-time landscaping work, just for a little extra fun money. We are now full-time, round the clock babysitters. Our friends went to Italy for two weeks and we(Rach) agreed to watch their 2 year old daughter, Lena. She's a major sweetie and she tells me over and over again how funny I am, "Doe....Fhunny....Doe....FHunny....Djoe.......funny......" hey, a compliment's a compliment, even if the person it's coming from has a vocabulary of about a dozen words and a hundred incoherent burbling sounds. She also is having a good time playing with the new puppy in the house. We shuffled through a few names for him and finally settled on calling him Rocky. He seems to enjoy it, both Rachel's and my parents had dogs named Rocky so we named him in honor of the Rocky dogs of the past.

Here's a few pics of the pooch, feel free to "awwww....."
Also, did anyone happen to catch Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner? Holy Moly, President Bush really doesn't appear to enjoy Colbert's distinct brand of political humor. Check out the C-SPAN video coverage of it here, it's comedy gold (and twenty-four minutes long).