Home Improvements

I'm thinking of some home improvements for Christmas this year......any ideas?

I think a new porch swing would be a romantic addition to my love palace!

God Bless Our Boys

Today is Sid Collin's birthday.

He is a red-headed cocksucker. But I like him none-the-less.

He is serving in Iraq right now and sent us all a letter which I am copying below.

We joke about everything in life, sometimes it's the only way to deal with the stress that life throws at us. At least, it's the most healthy way to deal with it.

And even though I am totally opposed to these "wars" we are fighting - I am the son of a warrior and a very patriotic man, so I love and respect each and everyone of our soldiers for the job they are doing and support them without reservation.

So when you say your prayers at night (if you are so inclined), please remember to include my friend Sid and his kids in your prayers.

Now, here's Sid:

Hey,


Sorry I have not been in touch before now. We have been in Iraq for one month as of yesterday (10th). We completed our RIP/TOA about a week later (Relief In Place / Transfer of Authority). This message is one of my birthday gifts to myself.

The Mission - my Military Police platoon is responsible for mentoring the Iraqi Police on the East side of the Tigris River in Mosul. Mosul has a population of 1.8 million. The Tigris River runs down the middle (mostly) and is the natural reference point. Not really an amazing river by our standards. More like the Okatoma with less trees. Anyway, I have 3 squads and they each are assigned to a District Headquarters. We travel to each DHQ about twice a week to train the police officers and assist in the maturing of law enforcement. I am out about 4-6 times a week as I travel with each squad on most missions. There are plenty of US forces here in Mosul, but the only ones going out are the MPs because of our mission.

The Excitement - my kids want some. I repeatedly tell them that I would prefer nothing happen. Been there, done that. We have had some excitement, but no direct action. While we were visiting my most urban DHQ, a car bomb was detonated about 1300 meters from our location. It was a small bomb at about 500-1000 lbs. I was sitting inside the building with an interpreter and a few other soldiers explaining communication operations to the Iraqi Desk Sergeant. Everything moved slightly to the left. A brief second later, we heard the boom. We all looked around. No one spoke. I glanced around to make certain we were okay, then walked over to the edge of a window, pulled back the curtain, and peeked outside. The black cloud was rising just north of the station. I told everyone to move back to our vehicles. From there, I directed air cover to check out smoke and get a battle damage assessment. As we say, battlefield boring.

Since then, explosions have become a part of our daily life. I have watched kids tell each other in passing that 2 rockets just hit the airfield (about a week ago) and that the movie they just watched sucks. Both parts of the conversation had the emotional connection of "hello". As we draw down our presence in Iraq, we become more of a target because the insurgents here want to jockey for position. Attacking each other is not producing the effect desired so they have begun to target us more.

The Daily Stuff - I have prayed openly with every patrol my platoon sends out. Usually, I am leading the patrol but sometimes I have to stay behind for other responsibilities. When that happens, I attend the patrol briefing and have prayer just before they mount up on the vehicles. Last night, our battalion chaplain attended our mission brief for the first time. He asked if anyone would mind if he prayed for us after the mission brief. I recognized the effort. He had to ask if he could pray, he had to allow anyone to leave if they would prefer not to pray, and he announced that he would be praying from the Christian perspective. My squad leader turned to me and we made a connection with our eyes. I got the message and stood. I told the chaplain that we had prayer before every mission. That despite the lives these kids lead outside of their military service, each one willing attended our mission prayer. I told him that even our Irish cohorts and civilian augments participated in the prayer. That he was welcome to lead our prayer tonight.

He shrugged everything I said off and continued on his deliberate way. He led us through the 23rd Psalm but had to stop and preach during it and then led us through the Lord's Prayer but had to add another blessing or two at the end. The kids saw it all as trying to one up me, but I asked them to accept it. We told a few Southern Baptist jokes quickly as we walked to the vehicles and I watched them leave. They came back at midnight and knocked on my door. Just like kids, they know that if I am not on patrol they need to stop by my door and tell me they are back and safe.

The Kids-Unbelievable. They are being asked to perform the most delicate phase of the war in Iraq and they are doing it well. It is easier mentally to fight a war. In the 2003-6, US forces could just shoot anything that moves. No questions asked. Now, there is a moral decision and consequences behind every bullet we launch. Restraint and discipline are our biggest weapons. A new enemy tactic we are seeing is to have young children carry what looks to be an RKG-3 grenade to the edge of the road. An RKG-3 is a Russian weapon the size of a WWII German hand grenade. It fires a shape charge through armor and could kill us, destroy our vehicle, or both. I told all 3 of my patrols that we would not fire on kids regardless of what might happen to us. Not one of my soldiers has challenged me on this.
My kids run the range of life. I have 2 medics. One was a high school cheerleader and we are not certain she could an injured infant, much less a wounded soldier. The other medic has postponed medical school for one year to make this deployment. He was offered the chance to stay back and start med school by the MSARNG but declined. He said that our platoon had been supportive of him for his undergraduate time and that we were his friends. He was accepted at UMC, LSU, Tulane, and USA. One of his roommates is a graduate of Youth Challenge at Camp Shelby. That is the military reform school for first time offenders. The YCP graduate just found out he is going to be a father and is now planning to get married we he goes home on leave. The girls in my platoon just stopped by my CHU to give me a meter long box of German cookies. A few days ago, we had a suspicious vehicle folowing our convoy. A car kept trying to pass our IP rear escort. I was down inside the rear vehicle and coached our gunner for the longest 20 minutes of our lives. He showed remarkable restraint. Eventually, the rear escort stopped and confronted the car. My gunner was sitting behind a machine gun and was the only exposed member of the patrol. he never complained. He never asked for relief. He just stayed there with his weapon trained on the grille emblem of that car.

I am not an easy man to work for. Spare the rod, spoil the platoon. But my soldiers know that I care about them and that my only goal is to bring them home safe and sound. While we were waiting on air cover to arrive at the car-bombing, we swapped radio messages between vehicles. Our running joke was that we had just ordered pizza and if the car bomb messed up traffic, would Dominoes stand behind the 30 minutes or its free policy. Unbelievable. Their first major contact in their first war and they have presence of mind to joke and laugh while we wait to find out if we are fighting our way out or staying for the night.

Funny stuff - We have developed sayings on the dod-an-pony-show theme. "Sometimes the dog gives it his all. He really did. He jumped through the hoops. He left the biscuit on his nose until told to eat it. Really, he had his heart in it. But the pony was just phoning it in. He just trotted around the ring letting the dog do all the real work. And that is not the kind of show we want our superiors to see." You should get the idea that this is said after a less than fulfilling moment that was mandated by our superiors. Tomorrow, our new P-PTT team RIPs in. We are expecting a whole new supply of field grade officers. A fellow platoon leader just stopped by my CHU and asked if I was on "kennel or stable detail for the show tomorrow?"

Facebook. Be careful if you venture to close to our platoon Facebook page. You have been warned. Every Friday night, we have a platoon cookout. Thursday is almost like a day off and Friday is the Muslim Sunday so we don't do missions on Friday. Friday night is like Sunday night and we cook out each week. Some photos are post on our Facebook site. NO ALCOHOL in IRAQ. Period. We have free access to non-alcoholic beer though and you would not believe how many soldiers in my platoon drink it. I don't get it.

There is plenty to laugh about here. The more we are stressed, the more we laugh about things that would not appear from the outside to be even remotely funny. I have gone a 4 hour mission and we told lines from the movie Blazing Saddles, Full Metal Jacket and Mitch Hedberg jokes for the entire trip. God forbid, but if anything happens to me. Please know that I was half way through a joke and my sincerest desire is that someone finishes the joke and my soldiers giggle.

I am okay. I am safe. I am performing a mission with the finest group of human beings I have ever known. God bless them.



Sincerely,

Sid Collins


Peace be with you Sid. You and all of your "kids"........

In My Heart of Hearts

As I look back on life, there are so many things that mean so much to me.

But like most things, there are a select few occurences that actually define those parts of me that are the most important.

The milestones that we all come across as we get older always hold special appeal within each of us - but for me, there is one thing that is at the top of the list.

Her name is Paige........

We can't really count anything about our upbringing as defining the "true" nature of our souls because the truth is, all of that stuff is simply an "accident of birth".

We are who we are because of who we were born to and where they were in their lives and all of that molded us into the people we became.

But later in life, when it is our choices that lead and direct our lives, well, those are the things that count most.

And our careers are often the place where we define ourselves. But those situations are simply when we were in the right place at the right time or we got lucky and were picked at random for a job. All of us probably found ourselves luckily chosen out of a slew of people all looking for the same thing.

But relationships are different..........

While it is true that many people find themselves in relationships simply because that is the way things just worked out - some of us are there because of decisions we made. Or in my case, decisions that someone else made on my behalf!

Sometimes those decisions were difficult for us due to circumstances beyond our control.

And many times, we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. (see many first marriages)

But sometimes, fortune smiles upon us. Lightning strikes us out of a clear blue sky. Prayers are answered and plea's are heard.

For me, the defining moment of my life was seemingly simple, yet at the same time, an extremely complex series of events that led to the truth of the post secret illustration I "borrowed" at the top of this post.

My defining moment was when my wife, the absolute love of my life, made a conscious decision to allow me to love her.

That may sound convoluted.....but it's not.

I loved my wife from the first time I met her in my Sunday School class many, many years ago. We were in very different segments of our lives at that time.

And I guess, to qualify that statement - when I said I loved her, I didn't mean that like it sounds on the surface. She was a person that immediately clicked with me. She had everything I ever wanted in a girl and the package that presented itself was one that I would never have changed one thing about. But I wasn't thinking about a relationship - I just loved her. Above all others that I knew.

And it is still like that.

I am accused of being a "hopeless romantic", and maybe I am - but that only applies with her.

And though a thousand variations on life, at some point we both found ourselves at a place where all of what we have now is possible.

But one thing had to occur in order for that to happen.

So at some point, and I'm sure that point came with me being very, VERY persistant - she made one decision that changed my life.

She decided that she would let me love her!

That was all it took. Because the depth of my love for her rewrote the entire book of my life. I'll even go as far as to say that it "rewired" my entire self.

I put away all of my "self" and reinvented myself into the man that I WANTED to be.

No longer was I a victim of my circumstances. I was free from all of the constraints that I and society placed on me and I was able to be the person that I always dreamed I could be.

Which is where I am today and will remain forever and ever.

I truly believe I am the luckiest boy in the world.........and I owe it all to her simply saying "yes".

I did not ask her then, or now, to do anything other than to be open to allowing me to love her. And wherever that took us was fine with me.

All I needed was a chance........

Because I knew in my heart of hearts that I was born to love her and if she gave me that chance I would make the most of it.

The best part is that all of this required absolutely no effort on my part.

It's simply that natural for me.

So thank you Paige. Thank you for saying "yes".

You changed my life and I will always be yours.

Thanks for wanting that!!!

Peace.

Life's a Beach!

We spent a lovely weekend at the beach. I love sneaking off with my wife - even though we had a few 10 year olds with us.......

I would have much rather had that alone time with the smell of the ocean and the sound of the waves crashing!

And speaking of waves crashing, my beautiful, patient, wonderfully beautiful wife and I went to the gym at the condo on Sunday morning. And as we were playing with the machines, we happened to look out the windows towards the beach and were very shocked to see 6 foot waves crashing against the beach!

I guess we missed out on the weather reports of the storm that was coming.

Luckily, it wasn't much - but it certainly stirred up the gulf a good bit.

If it hadn't been so damn cold I would have loved to go out and ride some of those waves. But alas, in my old age, the temperature of the water has everything to do with my immersion in that water!

Anyway, we had a nice, relaxing weekend and I wish it could have lasted longer.

There is something amazing about being at the beach with the most amazing girl in the world and I just didn't want it to end.

I could retire there and make love with the patio door open for all eternity and never grow tired of my life!!

Hope your weekend was good too.......

11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month.....

Today we honor our heroes.

In our society today we tend to minimize the sacrifices that were made for us by our best and brightest.

But lest we forget, there are generations of brave men who have answered the call of our country since it's founding who have made the ultimate sacrifice for God, Honor and Country.

I buried my uncle yesterday - right next to my father. They were both warriors who gave of themselves without a thought for life or limb - simply because it was what was required of them in their hearts.

As so many of our young men and women are still struggling in far off places - not because they want to, but because they are called to - I pause and say a prayer of thanks.

And would ask that each of you do the same.

Peace (may it come in our time)..........

Still Alive and Kicking!

Well, the reunion was magnificent in its outcome. Meaning that no one died, got divorced or "hooked up" (except for the one in the closet that we're not going to mention ever again..........)

It was great to see everyone and I'm hoping that we can do that again.

In another 30 years!

Peace

Pig for Days

Starting my 30th high school reunion tonight!

I've got a bunch of pulled pork to bring and as you can tell, my wife helped cook it!

AC/DC was the B O M B!

The AC/DC concert was pretty darned good. For old guys that started playing in that band when I was in the 7th grade - they rocked HARD!

We ate at Couchon down on Tchoupotoulis Skreet for dinner. And that was quite amazing as well!

Let's see, concert menu consisted of: Boucharie Plate (salami, tasso, cured pork loin, hogs head cheese, pork pate, pickled stuff), fried rabbit livers with pepper jelly, smoked oysters on the half shell, boudin balls, fried pig ears with molasses creole mustard, smoked brisket with horseradish potatoes, ham hocks with marinated greens on sweet potatoes in a black-eyed pea broth, redfish on the half shell and some charred banana ice cream for desert.

Yep, along with a nice bottle of Rioja, it was quite the meal!

At least it beats the hot dogs and big ass beers that I used to injest before concerts in New Orleans back in the "day"!

This getting old isn't so bad after all!

Tickets in the Entergy suite for the concert is not too bad either! Nothing like a seat right at the stage, just up a little - with all the free booze/food you need...... But the biggest benefit for us was that there was a bathroom right there! It may not sound like much but I promise it takes care of the worst part of concert going - when to plan your pee!!

Anyway, I loved it and we made it safe and sound - and in the end, that's all that matters!

Peace.

Survival of the Fittest!

Well, homecoming was not much of a big bang - but it was good to see lots of folks.

We didn't get there early enough to get into too much trouble - plus my beautiful wife had a migraine all weekend.........which is not much fun for her.

Would that I could take a magic wand and take her pain away......I surely would!

And since we've got my 30th high school reunion coming up this weekend, I'll have yet another chance to do a little dance, make a little love and get down like it was 1979!

Ya'll come join us.

Peace!

Highway to Hell

Yes boys and girls, I am truly on the Highway to Hell.

But in a good way!

My braintrust, including my lawyer, my stock broker and myself, of course, are going to New Orleans Wednesday evening to see AC/DC from the comfort of a suite courtesy of Entergy.

This getting old is a pain in the ass, especially when getting up on a cold morning, but it does have it's advantages because I'm old enough to know enough connected people to get to do cool things at no cost to daddy!!!

BooYa......

Tuck Fulane

Homecoming is Saturday!!! And we'll be playing our former nemisis Tulane who since the realignment of our shitty little conference isn't our nemisis anymore even though they're only 100 miles down the road.

I still have memories of the first game in 1979 where we were literally cheated out of a win at our own stadium and the referees almost got killed in the riot that ensued.

And even though I have "matured", or should I say "slowed down" or "evolved" beyond the sort of stuff that happened during the celebrated homecoming shenanigans of my first 20 years post-graduation, I must admit that I still look forward to seeing everyone and dipping my wick back in the bucket.

I am very sad that we don't play the old alumni/active fraternity football anymore on Sunday morning - and even though it's been 10 years since we did, I can still remember the week at work afterwards when I was too sore and hungover to even move..........

Ah, the memories of a frat boy!

So I hope to see you there, I'll be the loud, obnoxious one with the party hat on!

Peace.....

The Fat Man

My boy Rush Limburger is cracking me up these days.

He's astounded that there was a backlash against his proposed participation in a group buying an NFL franchise.

"Astounded I tell you"!

He's blaming Obamerica for it.

He says that everyone is a tool for the horrible way our country is run these days.

I say that the chickens always come home to roost and that Karma is a Bitch!

I'm sure that it's difficult when you spew hatred and dissention for a living and then you just don't understand when polite society looks down their noses at you and doesn't invite you to the party.

I'm sure that he doesn't understand when he's admired by so many "ditto-heads" that he can't play with the majority of people who find him and his views revolting.

I say good for the NFL. Even if they are elitest snobs at best. I say that we should all get what we deserve every once in a while and the fact that you make a bazillion dollars a year should in no way indicate your position in society.

Fuck the Fat Man. Fuck him up his stupid ass.

Peace.