Would a pocket like a cookie?

Alternate title: The Christening of My New Oven

Thanks mostly to Theresa, I've started reading food blogs, and I am now addicted. To the point where I almost don't have the time or energy to actually get up and leave my reading and ogling long enough to cook anything. But today my stomach was growling just enough (and I had just barely enough staples in the kitchen by now.. going on week two in the new apartment) to do something about it, and I decided to bake. But what to bake? Another thing about food blogs, especially the ones with glossy photos with lots of color and zoomed so the focus is on one item and the background is all fuzzy... you know the ones I'm talking about... is that they all show concoctions in perfect, cute little serving dishes. I don't have tartlet pans, pastry brushes, ramekins, and so on. I don't even have cake pans. So it goes with moving every year or two. One day I will live in my dream house (by house I mean kitchen) with endless cabinets and hanging pot/pan holder things, you know the ones that go on hooks above the cute little island with all the counter space you can dream of, and I will have counter space (and money) to afford a fancy stand mixer, not to mention a blender, food processor, hell maybe even an espresso maker. Ehhh not quite as important but still kinda cool (though I do love my little stovetop one). I digress. What I am trying to say is that I don't have the dishware or know-how to make perfect, photographable, bloggable desserts. Maybe hors d'eourves or soups, but desserts just have to be pretty. And today I was going to bake. So temporarily putting aside my dream of recreating beautiful blog-inspired pastries and the like, I thought about what I had, and what would keep well, and I decided on cookies.

Chocolate was a must. I had cocoa and I had chocolate chips. Oatmeal sounded enticing... and I love cranberries instead of raisins in cookies. But oatmeal-chocolate-cranberry cookies are just a little too standard to write about. Delicious, yes, but not new. I wanted to make something new. And then as I snacked on some dates I just bought at the store, it hit me: people always cook with dates! Why hadn't I thought of this? Well to be honest I didn't even know I liked dates until last summer in Dubai when I tried them for the first time since childhood and I nearly melted with love for the texture and dense but natural sweetness. Even in the last year, though, I have only eaten dates plain, maybe with tea or coffee but never in anything. But hey, I had a whole pound of them in the house, and they were a neat ingredient to think about. I did some recipe hunting and didn't find anything too enticing, but came to the conclusion that chopped dates were really as good as any other dried fruit to put in baked things, so I just played it by ear and made my own recipe, picking parts from others I have used before or found online, and hoping the ratios would all work out.



First, I had to chop the dates. Looking back, I think they actually sell "chopped dates", which may have been easier. It's like the chopped walnuts.. easy and even cheaper than the whole ones, and saves the hassle and mess of chopping them yourself. Lesson learned. But I had whole dates and plenty of time so I chopped them myself. Sticky as they are, they kept sticking to my knife so I threw some flour on the cutting board and the dates to keep the pieces apart. I think it worked out in the end.




I figured I should start with some sort of "recipe" or else I wouldn't be able to tell you what I did. So here's what I came up with:
1/2c butter
1/3c sugar
1/3c brown sugar
1 egg
1/2t vanilla
1 1/2c rolled oats
1/2c flour, plus about 2T mixed with the dates, dried cranberries, and chocolate. I don't know where I came up with this, but once, long ago, someone told me coating mix-ins like chocolate chips and raisins with flour helps them evenly mix into dough. Good advice that I've continued to follow over the years. Now that I think of it it probably came from my mom, and I'm starting to feel slightly guilty for not remembering the precise moment I learned this tidbit...
1/2t baking soda
1/2t salt
1/4t cinnamon
1/2c chopped dates
1/2c semisweet chocolate chips
1/3c dried cranberries

As a side note, most cookie recipes come in the 2 sticks butter/ 2 eggs/ 4-6 dozen output variety. That is a lot of cookies and I always end up halving the recipe, even if I'm baking for a group. But today I was baking for you, and I'm afraid you can't have any, so I halved it with practicality in mind.

As always, I started by creaming the room temp butter with the sugars. By hand, with the only wooden spoon that made it with me during this move. Luckily I do still have my colorful set of stackable mixing bowls from my friend Martey, and the green one is quite nice for this size of cookie batch, by the time you mix everything in. Such a small batch does make for a lonely looking ball of butter/sugar in the early stage, though:

I added the egg and the vanilla, mixing thoroughly. Then the flour, oats, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Everyone says you should mix all the dry ingredients together first, and I understand-- you don't want a big clump of salt or baking soda in your cookie-- but this always seems like a waste of a bowl to me. I enjoy the challenge of lightly stirring the dry ingredients on one side of the main mixing bowl before you mix it all up together. And I'm all about bowl/utensil efficiency, as much as I really do love washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen in general (and I am an avid proponent of the clean-as-you-go policy). So you mix the dry stuff together, sort of, then mix with the wet stuff. Easy. Then I scattered a bit of flour among the cranberries and chocolate chips and threw them in along with the dates, and mixed it all up.

I think I forgot to tell you I set the oven to 350, though to be honest this was a bit arbitrary. I'm really just a big copier, and all cookie recipes seem to be 325-375, so why not start by trying 350. Who knows if my oven is even accurate. I didn't think to put the oven thermometer in until after I baked the cookies and turned the oven off.. but if I ever do remember, and write in here again, I will try to let you know whether my oven's temperature is accurate. Wow I am really good at rambling on endlessly about almost nothing. Hm. So then I made some little dough balls and put them on a couple of cookie trays, and stuck them in the oven. Nothing too magical. They looked like this:


I made about 2 dozen and still had enough dough for another dozen or so, which I put in the freezer for later. I would have put it in the fridge, but then I would have just eaten it all over the next 24 hours, and as it is my jeans are already feeling a little tight. I left them in 14 minutes but I think that may have been a tad too long, because them came out a touch crispy and I personally prefer them a little underdone and chewy. Despite my lack of many kitchen things I consider vital, like pot holders and tongs and a rubber spatula (though I bought a new one of those today), I do have an oven thermometer as mentioned above, and I also have these nifty stacking wire racks that my sister gave me when I moved into my first apartment and needed all sorts of household things.


And then, I ate them. With a beautiful paper towel napkin, sitting at the coffee table in front of the TV.


And then I stored the rest. In what one might call a cookie jar. Sitting peacefully between the paper towels and the toaster. With a lot of counter space that made it into the photo because I am still an amateur. Perhaps one day I will look back on this and see how far I've come in my blogging/photographing skills. Or maybe I will never blog about food again. Either way, this has been quite enjoyable, even if only one other person reads this.


Theresa, please come over and have a cookie or two or three, and then you can even sneak into the cookie jar once I'm asleep and eat more. You can even drink the milk from the container (I do it too.. totally acceptable in my book).

road to bahrain

Well, I'm back "home" from my vacation on the carrier, and have been for about a week and a half now. Though it's felt like a month. Yes, I'm now one of those people who draws Xes through the days on my wall calendar, which saddens me but not enough to make me stop. I'll try to give you a quick rundown of the last month that I've been blogless. Oh, and the title of this post is named after kemp's mix cd of mostly disney songs from the drive to the ship the day I left for deployment.

I think I explained life on the carrier fairly well in the last post, and if not, well too bad, and on to the more interesting stuff. I got to spend 4 days in port Jebel Ali, which is about 30 minutes from Dubai, so essentially we were in port Dubai (this was in May while I was on the carrier). It was awesome. My friends on the carrier were awesome liberty buddies and we coordinated it so we all had duty the same day and spent 3 nights at a spectacular hotel on the beach, and not doing much but eat and drink and smoke hookah and relax. I saw some of Dubai and walked around a bit but it was so hot (not to mention we have to wear long pants) and dusty and there honestly wasn't a whole lot to do that we didnt get to do. Spent one afternoon walking around the Gold Souk, where you can bargain for gold at really good prices and that was a fun people-watching and gold-ogling day, though I didnt get anything. Then the last day a big group of us did the MWR "sunset safari" tour where we drove for a couple hours across the dunes- more like a roller coaster or thrill ride than transportation, and fun at first but definitely too long- until we got to a bedouin campsite where we rode camels and went sandboarding and smoked hookah and finally had a big giant traditional arabic dinner (salads, kebabs, hummus.. etc) and a belly dancing show. It was fantastic. I posted a bunch of photos of the whole dubai trip on facebook and will try to add a few of them to this post in the near future, but I make no promises.

After Dubai I had about 10 days left on the carrier to eat, sleep, workout, and work a reasonable number of hours each day, and then I flew back to Bahrain and met the ship there. I was actually very excited to fly off the carrier on the COD (the transport planes they use for pax and mail), though even the catapult shot where you go from something like 0-120mph in 2 or 3 seconds was not as exhilarating as i expected. And the ride itself was pretty anti-climactic, but still kind of cool. Well I was not looking forward to going back, especially since my first day back we had a full day of pretty rigorous maintenance scheduled, but it wasnt so bad. It was a working port so I didnt have much time off, though the one day off I did go to another souk (I gather "souk" or sometimes spelled "souq" means something like marketplace) which included both outdoor stalls and tiny stores and a big mall. As I write this I'm eating these delicous and addictive arabic roasted pistacios I got at a nut/candy/miscellaneous food store down there, and I am really very disappointed I didnt get more because I'm almost out. They also had a lot of gold, and also rugs, tapestries, other jewelry, crafts, knock off watches and purses, and so on. I actually did get a few trinkets there since it was generally much cheaper than Dubai and I wasnt sure I'd have another chance. One night in Bahrain our whole wardroom went to the villa of another Navy guy stationed there for a "rug flop". It's something the guys stationed in Bahrain host for all the navy ships that come through, where the owner of a rug store comes with a hundred or so rugs (almost all handmade, from various places but mostly iran and india), provides a ton of delicous middle eastern food (and the hosts provide beer), and showcases his rugs for purchase. Worth it if only for the food and drink, but also intersting to talk to the Navy guys stationed there and check out rugs. About a dozen people ended up buying rugs, anywhere from $100 to $3000. But generally much cheaper than you can buy them in the states.

And now I'm back here on the ship, in my relatively tiny stateroom, getting not enough sleep or exercise and barely accomplishing a fraction of the work I have to do. There are good things-- I missed some people here, and it's nice to be standing bridge watch again, seeing the light of day, etc, but it's weird, I feel like a stranger sort of. I'm actually in a fantastic mood right now because it's Sunday so not much was scheduled, I actually got a good run in, and then we had a steel beach picnic, so I'm feeling pretty happy... but still time is going very slowly around here. In other news, I am working on getting my paperwork through to the detailer to transfer to the oceanography pipeline, so I should be getting orders within the next month or so. I have no idea where I'll be going but I'm hoping to stay on the west coast somewhere, and I don't think I can be any more picky than that because there arent really that many options as it is. And I really don't want to go to Mississippi, where most of the jobs are. But I'm sure I'll let you all know in here as soon as I know where I'm headed. In the meantime I'm getting excited to have at least a couple of months back in seattle after deployment before I have to move.

one more thing

I forgot to mention-- for those of you who may have been trying to get in touch with me for the last three weeks, I screwed up the mail forwarding/ out-of-office autoreply thing. So if you have tried to e-mail me at my normal email addresses, I have not gotten your emails. Write a comment on here with your address and I'll email you.

amphib life

Well, I've been living on the carrier for three weeks now, and despite all the improvements in quality of life over the DDG, since there are 5000 people and only so much bandwidth, the internet is too slow to even write a blog post. So here I am, and I will try to catch you up as much as possible.

I'll start with now, then go back in time. Perhaps even write a few more entries and pre-date them for easier reader comprehension, though I'm not even sure that's possible (to change the date). At least I finally figured out how to log into this site after trying ever link in arabic and still not getting to the login screen. You'd think having a satellite connection on a US Navy ship (that even has domestic US phone numbers everywhere in the world) the default sites would be in english, but even on google I have to add the "/en" to the address. And if anyone else is wondering how to access blogger on an arabic server, you can get a link to it in english from www.google.com/en.

So today marks 2 months of deployment, exactly. Well not completely exactly, probably minus half a day or so to account for the day lost when we crossed the dateline, but then the 10 hours or so we gained while transiting west. Anyway... I'm now on my third ship of the deployment (but we've still only had one port visit). After Singapore, I went to the USS Abraham Lincoln, the carrier in my strike group, as a "desron fellow". Basically, they take junior officers from the various ships in our DEStroyer squadRON, which includes 4 of the "surface combatants" or "smallboys"- though if you're a surface warrior you're not allowed to call them that- we deployed with. Anyway, they take JOs and send us to the DESRON staff embarked on the carrier for a few weeks to help augment their watches and give us the staff experience. In other words, I am on vacation. I work, but it's planning and coordination stuff.. staff work... with no division to manage, no bridge watch, essentially none of the things that routinely stress me out on the ship. In a way it's not as fulfilling, because I'll admit sometimes I do enjoy the stressful bridge watches where I actually get to run events for the whole ship, and the excitement of accomplishing something like a major ASW exercise with my division. But, in the end, I thoroughly enjoy standing the same 6-hour watch every day (sitting down, in combat, monitoring comms and maintaining our tactical display), working out, sleeping, and doing unfrenzied planning and writing messages, making powerpoints, etc. A lot of the work is similar... it just has the feel of a job versus being my entire life. It helps that you often don't even know the carrier is underway because it doesn't roll at all no matter the sea state (since I've been onboard at least)... it just feels like a big, floating office building. I still wear a uniform anytime I'm not asleep or working out... have to walk about 100 feet to the head, i mean bathroom, and wouldnt dare take a shower barefoot... still on call protecting your freedom 24/7.. etc etc. I can even laugh and have fun with the people i work with since they're mostly my peers (versus as a division officer where most the people I work with are my subordinates) and we can even use first names. In general I just feel like a human being again, and it is very nice.

Well part of our role as DESRON, at least for now, is running a task force of coalition vessels in the gulf all under the same mission. I can't go into great detail for obvious reasons, but basically, we are coordinating between ships from 5 or 6 different countries, telling them what to do, and reporting to our seniors. This is in addition to our duties within the strike group. Well anyway, our commodore (he is my ship's CO's boss, and runs our staff of about 15) is in charge of running a big multi-national exercise this week, and now I'm on a big-deck amphib with two others and the commodore, running the exercise from here for the week. It seems we could have done it from the ABE, but here we are, and it makes a little sense since the ship we're on is actually playing in the exercise. So here I am, on watch at 4am, finally writing in my long-lost blog since I have the connectivity to actually do it. The funniest part is that we're working out of the ship's Landing Force Operations Center or LFOC, where the marines normally plan their landings (duh) for amphibious ops... what amphibs are meant for. Yet this ship deployed without any marines, which is why the four of us get to work out of this huge space with about 12 computers, 8 comms circuits, 5 large screen displays (one which gets TV input as well, very nice).. and so on. And, get this: I am wearing desert cammies. Please feel free to laugh at this. I feel like it's halloween. But this is our fifth fleet (mideast AOR) off-ship uniform... so here we are. Not sure what I need to blend in with, or what I could possibly blend in with anyway, but here I am, at 4am on a ship in the middle of the ocean in desert BDUs. I'll post a photo on here if I ever get one so you can all revel in the humor as well.

In the meantime, if you're interested in what my own ship has been up to, check out this article about a recent maritime security/ humanitarian mission they did (also a big PR stint for the Navy): http://www.military.com/news/article/navy-news/uss-shoup-tows-disabled-dhow-to-safety.html

Hmmmm what else? I had meant to post an entry about Wog Day but by now that's old news so I'll write a couple sentences now and post a photo later when I get a chance. The basic story is that when you cross the equator at sea, tradition says that you have to prove to King Neptune (who comes aboard your ship) that you are ready and worthy to enter his territory and go from being a Wog (one who has not crossed the equator before) to a Shellback. There's a big ceremony-- it used to be a big hazing fest back in the day (for navy sailors, fishermen, everyone) but now it's sort of tame, at least in the modern US Navy that cannot condone hazing. The shellbacks on the ship run it, and can make the wogs do whatever they want short of hazing. We did a lot of silly, embarassing things like quack like ducks and waddle everywhere, eat breakfast lying on our stomachs with our hands behind our backs (I'll post a photo of this), and everyone's favorite, blow water out of padeyes (the indentions in the flight deck where you hook up the chocks to tie down aircraft) as it kept getting poured back in. So the last couple of hours were on the flight deck and we got soaked with green "slime" (dyed water), flour sprayed onto us while wet (took two days to wash it all out of my hair)... did some more padeye slime-blowing, PT... etc. You get the idea. Then in the end we all became Shellbacks. Funny story but I was actually already a shellback, but since it wasn't with the navy and didn't have my certified shellback card on hand, no one believed it counted (it was when I did a yuppy summer environmental program in high school where we sailed around the Galapagos). I do enjoy this sort of thing though so I was happy to do it again.

What else... at one point I thought it might be interesting to describe life on the carrier in all its details, but then I started watching the PBS show "Carrier" about the Nimitz (one of the nice things about the carrier over the DDG is that they have TV-- still only two channels of AFN or Armed Forces Network, but still.. it's nice to occasionally get to actually watch news, sports, etc). And honestly this show is serious reality TV, I don't know if there's as much drama on the ABE, and if there is I havent seen it, but the day to day stuff is really similar. And VERY different from the DDG. For example, there are about 6 different gyms to choose from, there's a rugby team (I went to one practice, in the hangar bay, but now practices conflict with my watch schedule).. not only do they serve fresh produce but they have mangos, avocados (regularly), bananas... Oh and once a week the wardroom hosts a movie night with pizza, wings, a movie on a big screen, and beer... fake stuff, but still. Not even o'douls but heinekin fake beer. Still sorta gross but it's a really nice gesture. What else... hmm OK well I think that's about it for now.

I've now taken two hours to write this post in between doing actual watch standing stuff, and it's now 0600 so i thought I'd note that I'm very glad I dont have to listen to the way they do reveille every day. For some reference, first I'll tell you how they do it on
A: Shoup: Play a song over the 1MC (ship PA system), OOD choice but has to be tasteful, no real requirement. Except every time I pick the song people call my music choice "gay" no matter if it's classic rock, oldies, r&b. The most popular genre seems to be country. Anyway, point is, we play a song (instead of saying "reveille, reveille, all hands heave up and out, reveille,") then say "breakfast for the crew".
B: Abe: Say reveille. They may also pipe it-- traditionally the bosun pipes different tones to mean different things... from reveille to chow to sweepers. Some ships pipe, some ships say the words (we voted at one point and I was one of the few on my ship who didnt find piping extremely annoying), and many ships do some of both, keeping in mind that piping for 20 seconds straight first thing in the morning ends up causing a lot of people to start their day pissed off.
OK, well the way they do it here is: pipe reveille. then say reveille (usually it's only one or the other). start playing a song for about 30 seconds, then stop, read the POD or Plan of the Day and give some weather updates, play another 30 seconds of the song (but so far they're 2 for 2 for not playing the entire song), then pipe breakfast. It's ridiculous. it's basically just 5 minutes of annoying noise.

Oh- I forgot to mention the best part of being on the carrier-- I actually enjoy my job, and I don't find myself bitching and complaining all day long. So that's good.

reminding myself i'm bad at blogging...

... but I suppose there are some of you out there who like to hear about my life. So here goes. I'm one full month into a 7-month deployment, so that's good. Though I am already through 1.5 containers of chocolate covered espresso beans, which i was supposed to limit myself to one per month, so that may become a problem around August or September. Speaking of rationing snacks, it's really bizarre but as much as I love food in general in life, there isn't really anything specific that I miss. I keep trying to think of stuff for friends/family to send me in care packages and I can't think of much. Mostly it just makes me sad that everyone else (especially my roommate on the ship) gets a care package every 2 or 3 weeks when we get mail, and I want to feel loved (yes i know if you're reading this you love me, so thanks, no need to pity me..)... but I keep reminding myself that I actually don't really care a whole lot for material things, and the things I do care about I already have, like my ipod and books and a pirate do-rag. And it also turns out I don't wear pirate do-rags, so that's sort of a waste of space, even. Oh, and I have my camera, but I'm bad at thinking of good times to take pictures. Aside from that, I have taken a few that I suppose I should share with you all, so if I have the patience after I finish writing this, perhaps I'll add a few to this post.

So, right now I'm in Singapore, our first real port visit of the deployment. We did stop in Hawaii for a couple of days, but it was a working port and I only had one day off. I saw a couple of navy friends stationed there, spent one evening at the beach drinking fruity, overpriced beverages and watching the sunset behind the palm trees, but otherwise it was pretty unmemorable. I hope we'll get to stop there on the way home, too, and I'll actually get to climb a mountain or go snorkeling or diving or something. Anyway, we're in Singapore for a few days, most notably for our Change of Command tomorrow, which is where our current CO leaves and we get a new one. So a lot of us in leadership positions have spent a fair amount of time going through paperwork, walking the new CO through our spaces on the ship, etc, but I did get Wednesday evening and yesterday off to see the city. And luckily it's pretty small, so I did get to see most of it. First we (my roommate Shaunnah, and another girl from the ship, Lis) checked into our ridiculously nice hotel room, then we wandered around to find food. I really wanted some indian food, but we were so starving we ended up eating when we smelled a food court in an area called Bugis. English is the main language here, but the stall I decided to get food from didnt have anyone speaking english, so I just pointed at a couple of things that looked like curried vegetables and chicken, though i'm still not sure what it was. Anyway, most things here are way more expensive than at home, especially now with the US dollar so weak, but I managed to get a giant plate of food (i think the "chicken" was actually some sort of bean curd or something, but was delicious) for the equivalent of about $1.50. Then walking around later I had some fresh squeezed dragon fruit juice which was a little weird but good. We didn't do much else the first night but wandered around in and out of street markets and just taking it all in. We got back to the hotel and wandered down to the spa, where for the equivalent of US$130 you could get a 60 minute massage, or, for free, you could go to the "relaxation room" or in one of the three hot tubs, sauna, steam room, or showers with those crazy rain shower heads. So Shaunnah and I spent about an hour there, and then i crashed at about 10. We had talked about going out drinking/dancing/what have you, but I was majorly sleep deprived and passed out as soon as I hit the bed. Then yesterday we wandered around some more, saw a couple hindu temples and a mosque, spent at least an hour just walking through Chinatown, and went for a "bumboat" ride along the Singapore River, where the tour guide/ boat driver didn't speak English but they did have a tape recording of a very peppy American guy giving a tour that they played in the back of the boat, which was pretty hilarious. OK.. not much else was too exciting, and I think i'm getting into too great detail about Singapore anyway, so i'll move on...

Well, as far as work (and therefore my life) goes, I was getting very excited for the changes that are sure to come with the new captain, but now it turns out I'm going over to the carrier in our strike group for at least a month as a "desron fellow" for our destroyer squadron-- basically my captain's boss who's in charge of the 5 smaller ships that deploy with the carrier. They like to take junior officers from the ships for a few weeks at a time to learn what it's like over there and to be a sort of liaison to the ship. I was really excited about escaping here for a month or so, until the timing worked out such that I will be missing the first month of our new CO's tenure, AND I'll be missing some really awesome port visits with Shoup while i'm gone, since they're splitting from the rest of the strike group for a few weeks. I can't tell you details now for obvious reasons but in a couple of months I'll let you all know, and probably whine about it some more then, too. But in the end I think it'll be good to get away for a little while. I'm also trying to figure out my future right now, since i have this "oceanography option" to stay in the navy but as a meteorology/oceanography officer-- basically instead of going to a second ship, at the end of this year i'd go forecast weather or map the ocean floor or something, at a shore facility. This sounds like an obvious choice, but I'm starting to think more about my long-term future and honestly I dont think I want to make the Surface Navy or oceanography into a career, so I'm sort of torn about what to do. But... in the end I'm fairly sure I'll do the oceanography thing, which will land me most likely in Mississippi, San Diego, or Monterey, CA. As those of you in Seattle already know, I'm pretty heartbroken about having to leave Seattle, but I suppose either way I'd have to eventually.

OK, this is much longer than I intended, and I do have some work to do... but first, here are some pictures.

This is just an average sunset from our flight deck, with an SH-60B helicopter in the background. I think I took this one when we were in the Sulu Sea, around the Phillipines.


I couldn't help but take this one from a little courtyard in Singapore, where they had tables with checkerboards carved/painted on, and dudes playing checkers and chess. Just like Harvard Square, but without the Au Bon Pain.


And here's Singapore from the bumboat. Tropical flora, crazy modern architechture, and some mythology... the "merlion" fountain protects the city. Lion because the name Singapura means "Lion City".

swo

So i got my SWO (surface warfare officer) pin, as you can see in this photo.. basically it's the culmination of all my qualifications on the ship over the last year and a half. A big pain in the ass but a relief now that i have it, and i thought i'd give you all a visual of what exactly it is. It's the weird gold thing above "US Navy" seen here...

free willy

I tried the blogging thing and it didnt do much for me then, but with limited connections to the outside world, I think i'll just resort back to it for this deployment. or at least today. Anyway, this photo is the cover page of a liberal hawaiian weekly paper that came out over the couple days I was in Hawaii w/ the ship on our way to do a USW (undersea warfare) exercise. The timing is not a coincidence; there has been a ton of lawsuits all over the country (world?) about the use of sonar and its effects on marine life over the last year or so, and they literally had just come out with the latest litigation for the hawaiian opareas in time for our exercise. Without getting into too much detail, basically they just put out a bunch of ridiculous requirements for us to power down or secure sonar if we see any marine mammals (particularly whales... especially since it's mating season for humpbacks). Now I'm a tree-hugging hippie (or at least compared to my navy counterparts, so they tell me) and you'd think i wouldnt want to kill the whales, and, well, i dont. But I am also the ASWO, anti-submarine warfare officer, and for this particular exercise I was pretty much in charge for my ship, which meant I had to be in charge of all our MMM- marine mammal mitigation- measures. And man is it a pain in the ass to keep logs of every time you see a whale, how far away it is, its bearing, what it's doing, etc etc, and update every 5 minutes... all while stopping the exercise completely if it's too close. I mean, can we say poor planning? There are plenty of places out there, in the Pacific even, where there aren't a bajillion whales, so why did we pick such a heavily whale-populated area to do a sub-hunting exercise where we're using sonar the whole time? Not to mention I ended up spending more of this week dealing with whales, training lookouts, reporting sightings, drafting messages, etc, than i did looking for subs. Oh, and then when we did secure our sonar because we were in the middle of a big pod of minke whales, everyone up to the three-star admiral in charge of the eastern pacific fleet wanted to know why. It's this big catch-22, they want you to protect the whales, but then when you follow the rules and do it, everyone and their mother wants to know why. Sort of like how they tell you to shoot the guy in self-defense if you have to, but then if you do it, you get detained and questioned for a million years after. Or at least that's what i imagine it would be like. So anyway, I just wanted to share this funny newspaper cover and give everyone a sense of the crap i do that keeps me awake 20 hours a day. Now i'll just wonder if anyone besides me will read this? Well if you do, please comment, because like i said, I'm sort of desperate for contact with the outside world... and it's only been 2 weeks so far. Scary.