Coming Clean

(This is the post I would have done on Friday if my computer hadn't been kidnapped.)

As most of you know, I use my real name here, and also my husband's name, but except for Arwen, who uses her real name at her blog -- which I think is how most of you got here-- I've been using pseudonyms for the rest of my family. Since Arwen has been using real names on her blog bit by bit, and all my kids are active online, in the interests of simplicity I'm going to give you "The Name Post."

In order of appearance my children are:
Arwen Elizabeth (you knew that ;-) ) ,
Branwen Elanor ("Rosie" -- Rose is her confirmation name, and her husband "Anthony" is really Larry),
Miriel Margaret ("Maggie"),
Brandon Ransom ("George" -- confirmation name again),
Tirienne Anne ("Katie" -- confirmation name Catherine) and
Kelson Reuel ("Tommy" -- our last name is Thomas.)
I actually have been using our grandchildren's real names, so Daniel, Camilla, Matthew and Blaise they remain.

The names are mostly all from Tolkien and Lewis. "Arwen Elizabeth" scans the same as "Arwen Undomiel". (And if you're not a total Lord of the Rings geek and don't know this already, "ennorath" in Arwen's blog URL is Quenya (Elvish) for "Middle Earth".)

The name Branwen is used a lot in the Brother Cadfael novels of Ellis Peters, and is the name of a major character in the Wrinkle in Time books. Elanor is both Samwise and Rose's daughter in LOTR and a tiny white flower of Middle Earth.

Miriel was both an Elf (the mother of Feanor - Silmarillion)) and the last ruling queen of Numenor (read the appendices of LOTR). Margaret just sounded good with that, AND we were trying to give the kids one "normal-sounding" sorta-kinda-saint's name to use if desired. (Elanor sounds like Eleanor).

Brandon's name snuck in there when we weren't looking -- we wanted something that sounded good with "Ransom" (Elwin Ransom is the main character in Lewis' Space Trilogy. The name became popular about 17 seconds after we picked it!

Tirienne is named for Tirian, the last King of Narnia. We loved it, but didn't think you could do that to a boy, so we feminized it. It's pronounced "Tee-ree-ENNE". (Or, as we told my dad when he struggled with it, think of a letter N crying -- a "teary N".)

Kelson is the main character in the first-written trilogy of Chronicles of the Deryni by Katherine Kurtz. And Reuel is for John Ronald REUEL Tolkien. I guess we'd given up on the "normal" by then, although Reuel is a Biblical name meaning "Servant of God."

I realize this is a lot of information packed into a small post, but I thought I'd head off the most obvious questions in advance. Feel free to comment, and be aware that I'll be using real names from now on!

Down the River We Go. . . .

The title of this post is from a song that was in one of the music books my elementary school used. I don't remember which grade, but the series was published by Silver Burdett, before they merged with Ginn. If anybody half-remembers it, the lyrics are here. I can remember singing this song with great verve, which is rather funny considering that the largest bodies of water I had seen at that point were some creeks (pronounced "cricks"), a couple of ponds, and the murky, muddy, "lake" in which I learned to swim, more or less... Roger would say less.

But then I married my man from Michigan, and now live in a town on the shore of a Great Lake. And although it's not the O-hi-o river from the song, we also have a river. It's a big enough river that our town hosts its own tall ship. And we have lots of sidewalks right at the river's edge, from which this picture was taken. And this morning, Roger and I were down there with our camera.

George was on board this cutter, headed down the river. He's the tiny little dot about halfway up the superstructure, directly above the G in Coast Guard. He waved, we waved, and then down the river he went. And I, of course, went on my morning errands with a little bit of a tear in my eye. (In a week or two they'll be coming back up!)

Response to "George"

As some of you may have seen in the comments, my older son "George" chose to take issue with how I named the pets in the previous post. He said:

"I find it somewhat ridiculous, mother, that you have no problem openly naming Lucas, or putting quotation marks around "Joe", as some sort of pseudo-pseudonym, yet feel the need to fake the nickname of our first dog, Callebaut, aka Cal. Not "Bo", Cal. And while I'm not sure what Uncle Bo called his childhood pet, I'm betting it wasn't "Cal". This internet anonymity stuff is a bit odd, I know, but the 35,600 Google results for "callebaut dog" aren't likely to lead anyone to find out who were really are."

So, for clarity --

Dear Only-slightly-pseudonymous George,

You are absolutely right! I should have just used the real names. But I wanted to avoid explaining how each animal was named, so I started with a never-used call name, and went downhill from there. I was just too lazy to fix it.

So the real names, in order, are:
Calico Snifter Boogie -- a beagle of high lineage but unfortunate "printed' pattern on his nose.
Callebaut -- a half-Aussie shepherd/ half chocolate Lab who was too classy to be called Hershey or Nestle
Aborigine Joe -- never called anything but "Joe" (or "Joe-dog" by Daniel and Camilla), half Aussie shepherd, half black Lab (we think)
Lucas -- a cute little black and white no-breed kitten

And by the way, son, if you don't stop picking on me (and your sister), I will tell the whole world that you don't have a weird name like your siblings, but are actually something totally commonplace and boring, like "Brandon". ;-D

Love you!

Mom

George # 5 -- USCG SNET

When I posted last June about George's boot camp graduation, George was already in California attending Electronic Technician school. He had been there since ten days after boot camp, (though he managed a four day leave to be home for Christmas), but his school proper started the first week of January. Electronic technician school is one of the longest "A" schools in the Coast Guard. [An "A" school is one where the basics of some "rating" (that's a job description) are taught.] ET A-school is the equivalent of an associates' degree in electronics, without the general courses like English and history that a community college would require.

Although he was there until the end of July, it was not nearly as "traumatic" for me as his mother to have him most of a continent (and three time zones) away as it had been to have him three states away in boot camp. The reason is simple -- the internet. George stays logged in to Instant Messenger pretty much 24/7, and checks his email obsessively, so it was easy to just plop down at the computer and have a little chat -- and believe me, I knew when his lunch break and end of classes worked out to in my time zone! It wasn't quite as good as having him nearby, but it was more communication than I had had with any of his sisters while they were in college.[ Even when they were only 1 1/2 hours away, either I (for Arwen) or they (for Rosie and Maggie) didn't have high speed internet easily available.] So we chatted at least a couple of times a week.

And sometimes we could even do better than that. George and Arwen both have Macbook laptops, which have built in video capability. So they got in the habit of having regular video chats, especially since Camilla was born while George was in boot camp, and he didn't want to miss any more than he needed to of his niece. And eventually he bought us a web-cam as well. I mentioned in my quick post on Saturday that we were going to play Trivial Pursuit with George by video, which was great! But even more fun was watching Camilla get all excited about seeing "Crazy Uncle George", whom she clearly recognizes!

George, of course, is no longer in California. He graduated from ET school the 28th of July, which makes him a SeamaN Electronics Technician (SNET) in the US Coast Guard, hence the cryptic title of this post! He was home on leave for a little over a week, and then his dad and I helped him pack our van and his car "Fang" for the move to his first duty station in Duluth MN. Fang is a little blue 1988 Aries K which I inherited from my mother which George has driven since he got his license. Technically it was the "kids' car", but George loved it and named it -- a tradition in our family -- and had to take it with him, so he paid us for it. He even got a vanity plate that says "USCG ET". (He left off the SN because at the end of December he will be eligible for promotion to Electronics Technician third class -- ET-3.)

One of the privileges of doing well in A-school is the opportunity to have first choice of the available duty assignments. George wasn't top of his class, but he was in the top half, so the Petty Officer in charge of duty selection was very surprised when George chose Duluth. Usually Ninth District (the Great Lakes) assignments get shoved down to the bottom of the class, and several people asked George why he wanted to go where there was so much snow when warmer spots were still available. His answer: "I'd rather have snow up to my armpits than spend another winter where there isn't any!"

Duluth is a beautiful city, set on a hill side where every street has a view of the lake. George found a nice little apartment in a working-class neighborhood not far from the hospital, and his dad and I helped him settle in. He reported to his duty station, and only after a few days found out from some of the other Coasties that his place is in the "Hillside Ghetto". All I can say is that the people who decided that that was a ghetto have obviously never been anywhere near Detroit! One of the first things he did (while we were still there, and we only stayed 24 hours!) was to get broadband installed in his apartment. So we are in constant touch, and are glad to here about how well things are going for him. The guys from his unit hang out together (bowling, or eating out, or "game night"), and his workload is reasonable, except when the guys at _______ (a station about 2 hours away that his unit supports) break something again. But the best thing of all is -- he'll be home for Christmas!!

George #4 -- Still Stubborn

When my mom died a couple of years ago, it fell to me and the kids to clean out the house my brother and I grew up in. Although my brother lives in the same town, it wasn't practical for him to do it for two reasons: he has a full-time paying job, and he's just as much of a pack rat as Mom was. I was not at all surprised to find (along with the 37 plastic butter tubs and 53 containers from McDonalds' sweet-and-sour sauce for nuggets) all my report cards from way back when. My mom was just like that -- she saved everything. I deliberately chose to be different, and have not saved any report cards at all, even the "perfect" ones. In George's case, this is probably a good thing.

Despite George's great year in Mr. P's class, he had not had a miraculous turn-around in his approach to school. His grades "flickered" along with his interest and motivation (which were not always the same thing.) In tenth grade World History -- a class his sisters had proclaimed "cake" -- his grades were barely passing for most of the year. A major portion of the grade for any marking period included "map work", coloring various maps in various ways with colored pencils. George saw no reason to bother. George didn't do it. George's second semester grade for classwork and tests was an E. HOWEVER. George missed exactly four questions on the final exam, thereby getting an A for the exam, bringing his average to a D, and hence passing the class. He had learned the material. He just saw no point in doing what he considered pointless busywork.

Most of George's secondary school grades were like that. His dad and I were frustrated beyond belief! We knew he was smart and could do the work. And we knew that he wasn't a total goof off; his band teacher loved him (and gave him A's), as did his employers at his part-time job. Sometimes we wondered if they were talking about the same kid. "So helpful, so diligent, does more than he's asked, works hard." Huh??

There were two things that George remained clearly excited about. One of them was Quiz Bowl, the same academic "sport" that Arwen and Maggie loved. His poor grades his junior year caused him to lose eligibility, which was a blessing in disguise. It made him work harder his senior year so that he could play -- and graduate. The other thing that held his attention was the Coast Guard. He had been involved in the Naval Sea Cadets until his sinking grades made us force him to quit. And one of the best times of his life had been a week he spent at a nearby Coast Guard station accumulating training credit for the Sea Cadets.

The idea of enlisting in the Coast Guard was one George played with most of his life. Before his mediocre grades made it clearly impossible, he had talked about trying for an appointment to the Coast Guard Academy. So when, in the fall of his senior year, he called the recruiter and talked about enlisting, we were pleased. This was clearly something he was motivated to do. The recruiter said he'd get back to George to start setting things up, and then. . . nothing happened. After several months, George called the recruiter again, and was told "They've changed the rules. I can't even talk to you until you have you high school diploma in hand."

My husband and I were a little upset by this. George had never taken disappointment well, and we were afraid this would put an end to his interest in the Guard. And what would he do then? But we shouldn't have worried. George scraped by, got his diploma, went to the local "senior all-night party", came home, fell into bed, got up at noon and called the recruiter. He knew what he wanted, and was stubborn enough to pursue it!

I want to add here that although my husband and I were often frustrated by George's approach to academics, in other ways we were always very proud of him. As I said before, he held a long-term part-time job where they couldn't say enough good things about him. And it was always clear that he had a strong moral sense. This was demonstrated on one particular occasion by an absolute refusal to even be in the company of people he felt were "stupid." Arwen's in-laws have a lovely in-ground swimming pool which they rarely use, and to which we have a standing invitation in the summer, even when they're out of town. One such weekend we were planning on an afternoon of swimming, but when we pulled into the driveway, we could see that there were already people in the pool. George quickly identified "Sonia" (the daughter of the in-law's next door neighbors and his high school classmate) and some friends of hers. "Let's leave!" he said. "Nobody should spend any time with people like that." So we went to another friend's house on the lake. I never did get quite clear what Sonia's friends were into, but knowing George, it probably had something to do with illegal drugs or alcohol.

I'll finish up George's story on Friday. Since most of the family will be here tomorrow, you'll get a holiday post, but it'll be short. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

George #3 -- I Feel Strongly About That

When George was born, the first boy after three girls, everybody was quick to make sure we knew -- boys are different from girls! We'd had kind of an inkling that might be so, and there was certainly one way (aside from the obvious ;-D ) that we could tell right away. This was George's hair. Right from birth he had long, stiff, spiky hair. When we took him on his first outing, to our church picnic, a friend who was a hairdresser took one look and said "Oh boy, that's going to be interesting". This was at a time when rebellious teens were wearing their hair spiked high, and George looked just like them. It shouldn't surprise anybody that one of his first nicknames was "Spike".

George was never rebellious or strong-willed in the classical sense (read "bratty"), but essentially from birth it was clear that his personality matched his hair -- somewhat unruly, and with a mind of his own. He took his own sweet time about potty-training, for example, wearing diapers long after most kids his age were proud members of the "big kid club". But when he decided to do it, it was done in a week, No problems, no accidents. Done. (I am very grateful to my mother-in-law, who had seven kids in ten years, for the advice that two kids in diapers, even cloth diapers, is much easier than one in diapers and one only half potty-trained. It saved my sanity!)

It was when George went off to school that the strength of his personality became even more apparent. He is very bright, and had no trouble at all with kindergarten, since the very wise kindergarten teacher who had all six of my kids didn't expect him to be just like his quiet, compliant sisters. We did put him in afternoon kindergarten sessions, though all his sisters had been in mornings, because it was clear that he was not a morning person! Neither am I! ;-D When he got to first grade, however, things got a little more complex. The content of his work was fine, except for the handwriting issue -- he obviously inherited his handwriting skills from my father, who was notoriously illegible. But the amount of his work -- even in first grade he didn't always finish his assignments on time, or at all. His teacher (who was the same one who decided not to skip Maggie ahead) would keep him in at recess, or make him do worksheets while everybody else had free reading time. (He loves to read.) But no matter. He did what work he wanted, when he wanted to.

At the school our children attended, students in the first few grades don't receive letter grades, just plus, check, or minus, showing how well they are mastering the grade level work. Since George was smart, the only minuses he received were in Study Skills and Penmanship. But we knew, and his teachers knew, that he was not a model student.

Due to a quirk in the grade assignments of teachers, George had the same teacher for both second and third grade. She was fairly good at getting more than the minimum amount of work out of him, but he was definitely still marching to his own drummer. Then in fourth grade, through another quirk, he once again had Mrs. M., who he had had for first grade. He was maybe a little more cooperative. Fifth grade, however, was his stellar year: he was assigned to Mr. P's class.

Mr. P is an award-winning teacher favoring a very hands-on style for learning. His classroom is full of aquariums and cages and models of this and that. For the traditional school Halloween parade each year, his whole class dresses as something educational. One year they were all Bob the Builder carrying pictures of simple machines. George's year they were all Statues of Liberty, with robes and foam crowns and torches, each carrying a copy of a Constitutional amendment. George loved Mr. P's class.

Aside from the good fit in learning styles, Mr. P had another attraction for George -- he had been in the Coast Guard. My husband came to our town when he was stationed here in the Coast Guard -- we have both a land station and a cutter assigned to this very boat-oriented area -- and although he was no longer a "Coastie" by the time we met, some of our friends were former shipmates of his and their families, and "Dad's time in the Guard" was a frequent and always fascinating topic at our house. And one of George's favorite toys as a preschooler was a model Coast Guard cutter, with sailors in life jackets, and radar antennas, and a small boat to lower.

So whether it was the Coast Guard connection, or just a good match of styles, George did well in Mr. P's class. So well, in fact, that he was co-winner of the coveted Science Award at the fifth grade graduation. We heaved a sigh of relief; George had found his academic niche.

George #2 -- Back to the Beginning

Although I posted a little bit about George back when I was sporadically writing here about a year ago, this systematic trip through the brief biographies of my children sort of requires going back to the beginning.... so here goes.

The summer I was pregnant with George -- 1988 -- was the hottest summer I can recall. Temperatures were routinely in the mid nineties, and the humidity was fierce. And I was due in the middle of August. Arwen was about to turn six, Rosie was four and a half, and Maggie was pushing 18 months. We were hoping for a boy, but another girl would be just fine. What was not just fine was where this baby was hanging out: head up, in a breech position. We were planning another home birth, and although the midwives were OK with delivering breech babies, they are less than pleasant for Mom, and sometimes a little scary. So the prescription was: let's turn this baby. Which meant that I spent ten minutes of every hour with my hips higher than my head.

How this worked out in practice was simple. I made a nice pile of pillows for my head, aimed a fan to be blowing on me, (no air conditioning), and lay down with my head on the pillows and my hips on the couch. I say "lay down", but it really felt like I was hanging there. Hot and sweaty, upside down, and trying to take care of three little girls. I tried to minimize the disruption by doing two ten minute stints consecutively. I did odd hours at the end, and even hours at the beginning, so 20 minutes upside down and then 100 minutes to do everything else that needed doing, rinse and repeat.

After I'd been at this for about three weeks, I was taking a Sunday afternoon rest (not upside-down) when I felt what can only be described as the baby doing some major thrashing around. I was hopeful , and my next visit confirmed it -- the baby was now head down. Of course, being the non-compliant sort, he had chosen a posterior presentation, but that was still better than breech.

So I went back to doing my sweating in a more-or-less upright position, and waited. Our seventh anniversary was just around the corner (eight days before Arwen's birthday), and we thought we might go somewhere air-conditioned to celebrate. But on the morning of our anniversary, we woke up to temperatures only in the seventies -- which felt positively chilly -- and to the certainty that I was in labor.

It was early labor, and I tend to have slow ones, so I did a lot of walking, all over the neighborhood. Compared to both my last labor hike in a blizzard and the sweltering we'd just been doing, the whole thing was amazingly comfortable, contractions and all.

By early evening I was in active labor, and the midwives had arrived. Thing were moving right along. But George, being his own stubborn self, refused to add another to my string of birthday baby, Valentine baby, anniversary baby, NOT. He arrived 15 minutes after midnight, our first boy, on a day all his own.

George #1

So if I am going to catch this blog up to date with real life, I should probably start with "George". "George" is my older son, who is 18 and in the Coast Guard. When I last posted last fall, he had just gone to boot camp, and we were waiting for a address so we could send him mail. Actually, from now on I'm just going to call him George with no quotes, even though it's not the name he regularly answers to. Although my daughter Arwen uses her real first name in her blog here, (because Googling "Arwen" gets you a million Lord of the Rings hits), for privacy purposes she gave the rest of us pseudonyms, and I'm going to stay consistent with her usage. She calls me Mom, naturally, and Salome Ellen is my real name, but I don't use both names anywhere but online, so it's not findable.

George's letter arrived shortly after I posted, and consisted of one page from a 4 by 6 notebook, saying: DOING FINE
SPREAD ADDRESS
WRITE BACK

(five lines of address)


LOVE TO ALL,
GEORGE

This is typical of my son; he writes almost nothing except on a keyboard, and my husband assures me that the all-caps style is required on official Coast Guard paperwork and George figured that would also apply to letters home. So we threw all the letters we had already written into envelopes and sent them away, and of course we continued to do so as long as he was in boot camp. Unfortunately for my 2 non-family readers, my beautiful granddaughter Camilla was born two days after that letter (and that will get a post of its own..), and what with writing to George and helping my daughter, I stopped writing here.

George had been due to graduate from boot camp on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and the plan was that my husband would pick him up, drive as far as my brother's house in Pennsylvania, and return home Thanksgiving Day proper. We would have our family dinner on Saturday, which would be nice for Arwen, whose in-laws live here too. They could make both dinners!

Unfortunately, there was a monkey wrench in the works. George, who had spent several months working on his running and stamina before boot camp, had forgotten about his arms, and couldn't crank out enough push-ups in the required time. So he was "rephased" -- which means kicked back a class -- and didn't actually graduate till the first of December. The downside was no whole-family Thanksgiving, but the upside was that I was free to go along to pick him up. I was able to visit in my hometown, walk on the Atlantic beach, and renew my acquaintance with an almost-forgotten New Jersey delicacy: Taylor pork roll.

Of course I also attended the graduation, and I was expecting it to be very emotional. I was proud, of course, and happy to be there, but a little wistful because I would not be meeting the people with whom George had spent most of boot camp. "His" boot company was O, or "Oscar", but they were ten days gone, and he would be graduating with Q company, called Quebec, but always referred to by George as "the dreaded KAY-beck." So I was a tad melancholy as the band filed in, tuned up, and prepared to play. I was expecting Semper Paratus, and would have been bawling very quickly, but instead they broke into Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer! (It was December, after all.) But the contrast was enought to make me laugh, and after that I was just proud and happy.


(Note: I still have a lot to say to get caught up on George, but I think I'll publish this now to keep my [infinitesimal] audience happy!)

Waiting and Writing

Since I posted last week, "George" has gone off to boot camp and I have missed him much more than I realized I would. On the other hand, I have learned again how much information is on the internet if you want it! After about the third crying spell, which my husband, bless his heart, assured me was not only OK but a good thing (none of the "thank goodness he's out of the house" stuff), I got on Google maps with the satellite overlay feature. I can see the track he'll be running around, and the barracks building where he sleeps, and so forth. The base even provides a "driving tour" for people who are coming to the graduations -- every week, year round-- and I can identify the buildings by name. When we finally get some mail, I'll be able to visualize what he's doing pretty precisely.

Which brings us to the "waiting" part. The first week of boot camp is essentially "intake processing", where they sort out the ones who maybe have a medical problem missed by initial physicals, or don't have all their ducks in a row with some other aspect of their life. Some they keep, some they send home. But during this process all the recruits stay in an intake barracks, (which I can see on Google ;-) ) until they are assigned to a recruit company with a number (e.g. N175) living in a "squad bay" in a particular barracks. And until they get that assignment, they don't have a mailing address.

My husband, who did all this himself just over 30 years ago, assures me that as soon as the assignments were given last Friday, they sat all the recruits down and had them send a note home with their addresses (and probably not much else.) Since getting mail is good for morale, they want those addresses out there to family and friends. (We have an email all prepped to go to the whole extended family as soon as we get it.) But since yesterday was "Columbus Day" -- and I'm old-fashioned enough to like Columbus, and think he did a good and useful thing -- there was no mail service. Our long-awaited address was just sitting somewhere. No wonder they call it "snail mail" ; and then the snails get a vacation!

I have about a four-page-both-sides-on-legal-pad handwritten letter waiting to go, and the minute I get that note I'm going to address an envelope, slap on a stamp, and head for the nearest late-pickup mailbox. He may not be my baby anymore, but he's my son, and he's going to get mail!

Back from Real Life

Not to imply that my blog is unreal, but typing here requires TIME, which in the last month has been used up by a lot of "real life." This does not include the catering job, which is being indefinitely postponed because so far there are no registrants for the local class. We did acquire a pod-type coffee machine, which is a much better resource for a smallish (10-15 max) class size then trying to make the right amount in a large brewer. But I have been confirmed in my opinion -- my family are "hot beverage snobs!" I knew they were picky tea drinkers, as I am one myself (the water must be boiling, the pot must be preheated, it must brew for exactly so many minutes, and so forth.) But when my 13-year-old's (!) comment on the pod coffee was "Well, it's better than that stuff they make in the urns at church" I knew we must be snobs. Sigh!

The "real life" which has happened in the last month has been quite varied. My younger kids went back to school, and for the first time since 1993, when our oldest entered middle school, we have children in only one building, on one schedule. It's almost disorienting! There have been band practices, football games (including the great cross-town rivalry, which the blue team - ours - won),
a trip to the state capital for a get-away weekend trip which our kids gave us for our 25th anniversary, another trip to the state capital for the annual conference of the state pro-life organization, three out-of-town business trips for my husband, and visits from our grandson, and of course his parents.

But the "realest" part is what we did today -- we sent our 18-year-old, our older son, off to the Coast Guard. He's not quite gone yet; along with 10 or 12 other wet-behind-the-ears types, he is checked into a hotel near the recruiting office for the night, and we will go and see him sworn in tomorrow. But he doesn't live here any more, and probably never will. (Of course his "stuff" still lives here - he was allowed to take one very small duffel bag to hold the clothes he is wearing, and nothing can go with or to him until he ships out to his A-school in California after Thanksgiving. And considering what we still have that belongs to his older sisters, including a wedding dress, I don't expect we'll see it moved out anytime soon.) This was a different kind of "going" than we've had so far with his sisters, since when kids go off to college you assume that they'll be back for at least a couple of summers, and two of our three so far have gone to schools within an hour-and-a-half of home.

Since he will only be able to send and receive real ("snail mail") letters -- no email, no online access, no computer at all, no ipod; no wonder boot camp is hard -- I have made a resolve to write him at least one letter a week. And here is where it gets good for anybody reading here: the resolve includes writing here, and catching up on my other letters and emails as well. (Writing, that is. I read them as fast as I get them ;-) ) So my "real life" will now include enhanced communication, and you're the first to know! (I can't send a letter to him until he sends his address; even the recruiters don't know what it will be until it's actually assigned.) Details will follow.