Via RWN I found an interesting calculator that shows you how you'd fare under President Bush's Social Security reforms.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:39 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I had the chance to briefly instant message with Mrs. Sims today. She sent me the most wonderful Memorial Day photo of her son and his father's memorial brick at Texas A&M.

I think about Mrs. Sims all the time. She and I weren't even that close; we went to dinner a few times together, but that's about the extent of our friendship. I hesitate to write about how much she is constantly in my thoughts because I'm certain there are people on this post she was closer to. I don't want her to think that I've become some zany stalker who's deified her into everything that Memorial Day stands for...but I guess I have.

Mrs. Sims is absolutely everything that an Army wife should be: gracious, humble, and dedicated. She remains optimistic and proud in the face of the worst experience anyone could ever have. And she's always on my mind. She's the first person I think of when I feel down or grumpy. She was the first person my husband and I thought of when our cruise tablemates were being obtuse. And she was the first person I thought of when I woke up this Memorial Day.

You see, the Memorial Day post I wanted to write is how much the Sims family is always present in our household. It took that photo of their son to get the words to come out.

I'm sure Mrs. Sims feels weird about the pedestal I've put her on. She's just a regular person dealing with an extraordinary challenge. I hesitated to write the post I wanted to because I don't want to exacerbate her pain. But I want her to know how I really feel, that to me she's everything that Memorial Day represents: the day when we remember those who gave up everything for our country. And I am keenly aware, every day, that CPT Sims gave his life for the very freedom I enjoy. I want her to know that I will never forget that, as long as I live. I never knew her husband, but I will never forget him. Even if she and I drift apart, I will remember the Sims family on Memorial Day and every other day for the rest of my life.

I will remember.

Posted by: Sarah at 11:41 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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There's a fundamental difference between last year's Memorial Day and this one, a difference that I have been dwelling on all weekend: last year I didn't have any veterans to mourn.

I've thought all weekend about what I wanted to say today, but in the end, my heart just doesn't want to articulate the words. I'm thinking them though, and I'm remembering today. And I'm grateful for every day I have with my own soldier.

This is a memorial to every soldier our post lost last year. I will never forget any of them.

Posted by: Sarah at 05:09 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Smash's story, though creepy, is vaguely familiar:

JANUARY 2003 – It’s been couple of weeks since my reserve unit arrived in Kuwait, and we’ve just finished negotiating with the port authority to take over an abandoned building to serve as the administrative headquarters for our harbor security operation.

The building hasn’t been used in several years, so before we can move in we have a lot of cleaning and repairing to do. Everyone pitches in – soldiers and sailors, officers and enlisted work side-by-side to clean up over a decade’s worth of dust, grime, and general neglect. But despite all the activity, the hallways remain strangely quiet.

A yeoman is on her knees, scrubbing a particularly difficult stain in the stairwell. She decides to break the uncomfortable silence with a little bit of small talk. “Whoever worked in this building before sure was lazy,” she sighs. “Who would spill a whole pot of coffee on the stairs, and not clean it up?”

Everyone stops working, and stares at her.

“What?” she asks, looking around. “What did I say?”

“That’s not coffee,” one of her co-workers whispers.

“It’s not? What is it?”

“Blood.”

Apparently the room my husband used to email me from, the room I stared at whenever we had the chance to webcam, was awash in blood when the first American soldiers got there. My husband's camp in Iraq was an old Fedayeen camp.

We can hardly fathom things outside of our experience. A young American in the Navy would never imagine that she was cleaning up after a slaughter. I can't even begin to picture what a room covered in blood would look like. It's so beyond anything I've ever dealt with.

But it's so outside all of our realms. That's why when you do a Google Images search of Saddam+torture, you end up with photos of Lynndie England on the same page as a photo of "Saddam's henchmen amputating fingers". Torture is so far out of our realm that we conflate dog leashes and finger vises; most of us can't really imagine true torture. The Abu Ghraib thing is as bad as we get, but it's nowhere near as bad as things can get.

It's good that we live in a society where we don't have to regularly clean blood off of the stairs. But it sometimes prevents us from imagining that other cultures don't live with the naivete that we do.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:32 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Make sure you read Michael Yon's post on how the media get their news in Iraq (via LGF). Remember it the next time you read an article about "what's going on" in Iraq.

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Hud writes about the death of the movie theater. My husband and I went to the movies twice while we were home, but it's eight bucks a pop these days! For the price of the two of us, we can buy the movie instead and watch it as many times as we want. I much prefer going here on post, where the price is cheap and the National Anthem is rockin'.

Also, I'm a nerd, and I prefer to watch movies at home because I can knit.

Posted by: Sarah at 05:42 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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An interesting comparison in Orson Scott Card's latest:

Why, just a few weeks ago a CBS television show (Cold Case Files) ran an episode that made an outrageous attack on my church, in which items as sacred to us as the Quran is to Muslims were openly displayed and mocked on national television.

But you didn't see Mormons rioting over it. Oh, we were angry enough-- it was infuriating to be treated with such contempt, as CBS, without a second thought, turned its airwaves over to some Mormon-hating writer who reveled in having the power to get at us with impunity.

But you see, we Mormons are very much aware of being in the minority. The memory of "Christian" mobs and state militias murdering helpless Mormon men, women and children, and then betraying and assassinating our leaders while they were in government custody, is still keen within our culture. It didn't happen far away, it happened in Missouri and Illinois. And it has continued in the years since then, in isolated incidents of murder and expulsion throughout the world, not least in America.

We remember our forebears leaving their homes again and again to get away from an oppressive majority. We remember our haven being invaded by the United States Army; we remember being prepared to burn our homes and crops and flee again, leaving our homeland a desert rather than submit to oppression again.

But in the years afterward, we learned something else, too: How to get along. How to avoid making waves. How to blend in. How to make a moral stand when it matters, without alienating those who might stand with us and without (usually) provoking those who stand against us.

That's what you learn when you're in a perpetual minority.

When would Muslims in the Middle East have learned lessons like that?

Posted by: Sarah at 08:09 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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CaliValleyGirl hit me up with this blog forward...

1) Total number of films I own on DVD/video:
I just went and counted: 222. (Holy crap, I just thought of all the money I've spent on movies.)

2) The last film I bought:
Ordered Team America yesterday.

3) The last film I watched:
Actually we went to see Be Cool tonight. I liked it, but my husband thought it was too close to Get Shorty.

4) Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order):
Well, that's hard. How 'bout I name some movies that I never get tired of no matter how many times I watch them, like Raising Arizona, The Royal Tenenbaums, True Romance, Joe Dirt, Ocean's Eleven, Superman II, and Smokey and the Bandit.

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Bunker heard another ridiculous statement about how someone's freedom of speech was being trampled. Seriously, do people even know what that means? Have we become so comfortable in our Sanctuary that we can't even discern real oppression, real torture, or real human rights violations? Remember when I was reading The Gulag Archipelago? Remember how the first person to stop clapping at a tribute to Comrade Stalin, after 11 minutes of straight clapping, was sent to the gulag? Or the woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and happened to walk past a truck full of bodies? Or the man who had doodled on a newspaper photo of Stalin? All of them gone. Disappeared. Dead. That's a freaking example of not having freedom of speech. Heck, even Europe's closer than we are, where Oriana Fallaci can be prosecuted for being "offensive to Islam" in her book.

Anyone in the US who barks "freedom of speech" doesn't even know the meaning of the term. They live to see another day, don't they? They don't go to trial for the things they've said, do they?

They need a civics lesson.

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(via Bunker) Bush Country: The Middle East embraces democracy--and the American president by Fouad Ajami

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I was thinking about civility again this morning and I remembered Den Beste's post on Thomas Dewey. It's worth reading again.

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When Tim left blogging, he did so because of what he calls "death of civility". Perhaps I am not old enough to notice any trends over time, but I have noticed people acting far differently than I would.

On our cruise we participated in an organized game of Scattergories. We split into five teams of six players and went to work. One of our categories was "foreign cities", which was a cinch for us. We used the name of a German city near us, knowing that it would never be a duplicate. Well, my husband and I got accused of cheating; the other teams refused to accept the name of a city they'd never heard of, saying that we must have made it up. We were steaming mad because to us our honor and integrity had been called into question, military values we take quite seriously. Our teammates were the oldest players in the room, two couples who were roughly 40 and 60 years old. The older gentleman threw a fit on our behalf, saying it was disgraceful that the other players in the room distrusted our word when we lived in Germany with the military. But in the end the young people in the room were not to be swayed. The six of us on our team left the game disgusted: twenty people thought that we cared more about winning a game than truth and honor. Twenty people thought that we were either too stupid to know the names of real German cities or too deceitful to be trusted. Twenty people thought that our accepting another team's word that avocado is a real ice cream flavor in Colorado was more natural than their accepting the name of a city that can be confirmed by any map. It was the death of civility.

I was reminded of that Scattergories incident and Tim's values when I read this exchange between a reporter and a Bush spokesman today. You don't speak like this to people in public. You don't accuse people of lying unless you have good reason to. And when you're a reporter, you really shouldn't let your complete distaste for the administration show like this.

The death of civility is all around us.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:21 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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1 Considering some of the comments left at deployed milbloggers blogs I'm not terribly surprised by your comments. It does surprise me though how heartless and cruel the anti-war types can be. For supposed peace lovers they are a violent group.

Posted by: toni at May 23, 2005 09:53 AM (SHqVu)

2 Not really so surprising, now that I think about it. To be civil one has to be civilized; one has to believe in civilization. Clearly, those on the left do not. They no longer believe in Western civilization, indeed they loathe and despise it. That's exactly their point, and our problem. So no surprise that they behave like uncivilized persons, for that's what they are. Yes, things are different now. You have a large swath of Western citizens who despise their own society, who secretly yearn for it to die. While this is not unprecedented in human history, it's not common (for obvious reasons, it's fatal) and it is also rather new to the West. It certainly wasn't like this when I was a child (born in 1954). Civility isn't dead, it's just badly wounded. The same could be said for civilization itself. This is not a time to leave the field to the barbarians, it's a time to bind the wounds and fight, because we are in a fight for our survival. The real war, the war that threatens our very existence, isn't the fight against radical Islam. The mullahs and their nutcases can, at the most, greatly inconvenience us. The real war is the one right here at home, the one that was being fought on that cruise ship. That's the one where the stakes are survival. Note how, ever since the election, things have not quieted down. If anything, it's gotten worse in some ways here at home. I think it's because the real war is just starting to ramp up. God bless us all, we're gonna need it.

Posted by: DSmith at May 23, 2005 10:32 AM (cN0XN)

3 Glad you guys had a great vacation - enjoyed the pictures that you posted. We went to St. Croix last year (I am not a good cruise person) and had a blast - very similar water! Anyways, I feel the same way about the death of civility. It's gotten to the point with me that I dislike discussing the President, politics, or the war with people that I know will disagree with me. Actually, I don't mind the rational disagreements - we all have them, and we walk away happy. But the vile spitting foaming at the mouth invective I hear nowadays makes it not worth any of our whiles. And like you, there's no greater insult to me than to question my integrity... Bryan

Posted by: Bryan Strawser at May 23, 2005 10:37 AM (0WnvF)

4 Er, just out of curiosity...what was the city?

Posted by: Jason at May 23, 2005 06:18 PM (Xo3eX)

5 Well gee how about the fact that just like the president from Tejas (Texas, in the american idiom) of forty years ago this one has lied us into a war. Oh I know you don't think he lied, but the facts are that Iraq had just about ZILCH to do with 9-11, let alone the fact that it was hardly a threat to us. You really need to study the history of this nation a bit better, you might realize that while we often had "good intentions" we were blundering buffoons. Does not the Christian expression: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" apply anymore?

Posted by: Bubba Bo Bob Brain at May 23, 2005 09:07 PM (aHbua)

6 I think if we all listened to the age old adage that it is best to not discuss politics or religion in public, we as a society would be better off. That being said, it ain't easy to do these days. But, we still should try.

Posted by: Sean at May 23, 2005 09:15 PM (cl3Om)

7 Sean..I have never understood that adage, and still don't understand it. How on earth would you have a democracy without discussing religion in public? How can we possibly exist as a polity if we are each to live in our own hermetically-sealed cells without communication?

Posted by: David Foster at May 26, 2005 01:20 AM (+c+ME)

8 From today's Washington Post: "Interrogators at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, forced a stubborn detainee to wear women's underwear on his head, confronted him with snarling military working dogs and attached a leash to his chains, according to a newly released military investigation that shows the tactics were employed there months before military police used them on detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq." Makes you wonder what parts of our society are most responsbile for the breakdown of civility. If I find this sort of behavior disgusting and counterproductive, does that mean that I "yearn for the death" of my society? No doubt someone will say terrorists don't deserve civilized treatment, and they may be right, but surely a civilized society wouldn't put anyone into that category without some due process.

Posted by: Pericles at July 14, 2005 03:25 PM (hHudX)

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We went back to the dog breeder to make the final decision today. It was a long battle between these two challengers

but in the end, one of them was just too timid. Both of them were a little skeptical when we first got there, but one trembled when we held him and cried when we set him down. The other seemed more laid back: he took some time, but eventually he tested out his legs and came over to lick my husband's arm and make friends. In the end, we had found our puppy.

It's going to be a long month until we can bring him home! Now we just have to fix on a name...

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1 Sarah - he's beautiful. Congrats on the soon to be new addition to your family.

Posted by: toni at May 21, 2005 01:59 PM (KXhoZ)

2 Looks like he has black bands around his eyes, Name him Bandit.

Posted by: Rosie at May 21, 2005 06:25 PM (kaTPV)

3 Name him a name that sounds funny on such a cute puppy. Something like Zoltran the Destroyer or some such. Or how about Dawg? No, wait, I got it. Brian. As in Brian Griffin from the Family Guy.

Posted by: James at May 21, 2005 11:38 PM (UQWvC)

4 Looks like an Ali Baba to me.

Posted by: Bob at May 22, 2005 05:53 PM (WMa4u)

5 OH too cute! Makes me want another one :-)

Posted by: Sissy at May 22, 2005 08:24 PM (uXS+O)

6 Aww...he's adorable! We named one of our cats Chesty, after the Marine Corps hero (Lt. Gen. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller). He's a tough guy, so it seems like a great fit.

Posted by: Carla at May 23, 2005 09:59 AM (6tYwr)

7 My wife gushed over the puppies. They ARE absolutely adorable. Kalroy

Posted by: Kalroy at May 27, 2005 01:34 AM (9RG5y)

8 Sarah, Name him "Grok the blog dog"! ;-)

Posted by: Pamela at May 31, 2005 12:37 PM (E34Gm)

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My husband and I have said all along the same thing that Donald Trump is saying: we want the WTC back. Not a garden of peaceful tranquility, not a beam of light, but the same symbol of capitalism and prosperity that the WTC was. I wish it could happen.

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Theresa's comment on the last post made me smile. I didn't care where we went on vacation, as long as we were together. It's funny because we came home from two and a half weeks at the beach without getting a tan! My husband and I aren't really beach people; we're definitely sunscreen people! This was the front yard of our hotel in Ft. Lauderdale...

and we spent most of our time inside Arby's and the mall! The real vacation was just being in the US, getting to shop for clothes that we both needed and food that we both craved. On the cruise, we sometimes felt guilty about just hanging out in our room, but Theresa points out another military family perspective: all time spent together is time well spent. And we participated in plenty of cruise activities; we even won trophies for winning four of the six trivia contests.

To me, the highlight of the trip was the colors. I saw colors I had never seen before, shades of blue and green that photos can't really capture. The world was so bright we could barely keep our eyes open for the photos. The world looks a whole lot brighter here

than it did here

That's what this vacation was all about.

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1 LOL - I don't tan... so the couple of times we've been able to do a beach vacation - I haven't had a tan either when I got home. *grin* Sounds like it all turned out great - minimal problems so you two just had a chance to hang out and relax together.

Posted by: Teresa at May 19, 2005 11:11 AM (nAfYo)

2 Sounds like you had a wonderful time. Hooray!

Posted by: Princess Jami at May 19, 2005 02:17 PM (0gPLe)

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I've heard several military families say that they prefer to live off-post because they don't want to feel the presence of the military 24 hours a day. I, however, have enjoyed living right in the thick of things ever since my husband began his military career. We've always been on-post, and we've lived in very isolated military settings, such as the Officer Basic Course and then Germany. I had never really thought about the omnipresence of the military until we went on this vacation. This was our first time away from the military, for every other time we've taken vacation, we've gone to visit family. It was our first experience being surrounded by civilian strangers, and I must say it was unnerving.

The first thing that happens when you meet someone on a cruise is that they ask where you're from. This is the most complicated question you can ask someone in the military. Where are we all from? We started trying to simplify things by just saying we're from Missouri, but then we often ended up having this conversation:

Strangers: So, where are you all from?
Groks: Um, Missouri.
Strangers: Great. What do you do there in Missouri?
Grok: Um, well, we don't actually live in Missouri; we live in Germany.
Strangers: Oh...well, what do you do there?
Grok: We're there with the military...

This either led to awkward silence or awkward questions. Maybe we were talking to all the wrong people, but we didn't get the sort of insightful or curious conversations I was expecting. When we told our dinner-tablemates on the cruise that we were living in Germany with the military, we didn't expect them to virtually ignore us. We talked at length about their jobs and backgrounds, but they didn't ask questions about Germany or Iraq. When the husband and I went back to our room, we discussed how we had braced ourselves to answer all sorts of questions about military life and deployment that never came.

The biggest thing that I learned about myself on our vacation was that I found I really missed the perspective that military life brings. We deal with things that are so far outside of the civilian experience that everything else seems trivial. A military family would never ask someone where he's from, because we know how often that changes. A military family would never say that it would be terrible to live on St. Maarten because we've seen that the poverty and problems of Iraq and Afghanistan far surpass those on Caribbean islands. A military family would never complain about a five-hour plane ride because we've all seen the mothers traveling alone with three kids, moving them across the Atlantic to meet up with their soldier. And a military family would never ever say that working on a cruise ship must be one of the hardest jobs out there because they work such long hours and don't get to have any fun. (Seriously, we had to bite our cheeks to keep from laughing out loud at that one. If we could be so lucky to get "deployed" to a cruise ship!)

And military couples share one suitcase when they go on a 7-day cruise. I've never seen so much excessive luggage.

I found myself quite the fish out of water on this trip, and I longed to go back to where everyone understood us. I never realized how much the Army has become my comfort zone, and I'm quite happy to be back to where everyone wears BDUs.

Posted by: Sarah at 07:05 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
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1 Welcome back to the real world! I am always amazed at how little civilians know about the military. Even those who spent four years in then got out seem to forget wuickly.

Posted by: Bunker at May 18, 2005 07:49 AM (pzzx0)

2 Welcome back! I grew up in ultra-liberal Massachusetts, and what did my father do? He built ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic [Nuclear] Missiles).

Posted by: David Boxenhorn at May 18, 2005 02:57 PM (XUVN1)

3 Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay! I missed you so much.

Posted by: CaliValleyGirl at May 18, 2005 03:15 PM (3RSki)

4 Sarahk, I've been visiting your site every day, as I always do, and I'm happy to see you back. I didn't have time to post last night, but I did link to this post at the top of my blog. More linkage to come when I go home. David, Now your secret's out! How could you live with the s-shame?

Posted by: Amritas at May 18, 2005 03:49 PM (+nV09)

5 Sarah - Glad you checked in. Amen on the long silence that follows when you tell most civilians "We're in the Army". Funny thing is: let two GIs meet for the first time in an airport somewhere and they will chat as if best friends for three hours about Iraq, BRAC, Basic Training, commissaries, war movies and the quirks of learning to live in Germany, Italy, Thailand, Korea, Japan, DoDDS Schools, Texas weather, the time they pulled hurricane search and rescue duty and how much better AFN is now than it used to be. Might it be that most folks know so little of the military that they are clueless how to follow up that answer? I bet it is the same sort of cluelessness that was revealed to me whenever folks who just came on post for a tour or their nephews graduation from AIT can't seem to quit talking about "just what polite, good cleancut Americans" these soldiers are. Excuse me...your expectations are showing...you were thinking perhaps that the military is comprised of the type soldiers Newsweek and CBS seem to favor for coverage? And Bingo on the where ya from question. After a few years in the Army I permanently changed the question "Where ya from ORIGINALLY?" That helps some...still is rough on Army brats though. Hi to Mr. Grok. Love to you both. And CPT Patti (STILL the Sweetest Woman on the Planet) says hi!

Posted by: Tim at May 18, 2005 04:01 PM (hby1v)

6 Most people are only interested in talking about themselves. What they wanted was for YOU to ask them about their lives... Unfortunately - it sounds like none of the people you were traveling with or meeting were of the inquisitive sort. In other words - interested in learning about something other than their own little world. A good answer to the civilian question of where are you from... "we're a military family, we currently live in Germany, but are originally from Missouri". This gives them all the info they need to either ask you more about where you live - or (more likely) tell you about all the places they've lived... or be rude and turn away (something that happens in the civilian world too... way too often). I don't think I could do a cruise though... it just gives me the willies thinking of getting on a boat packed in with all those people. *grin* I know there are advantages - but I prefer to go to a hotel and just hang out with my husband - even if it means I see a bit less of the world.

Posted by: Teresa at May 18, 2005 04:12 PM (nAfYo)

7 Grok: Nice, but I think you've taken this liking of military life too far. You've got to be flexible, as my drill sgt. used to say. Civilian or military, people are people, you know? There are good and bad with every styles of life. I never tell other folks that I was in Iraq unless asked, I've seen too many people trying to take advantage of that status. Sure, I was there, done what I was supposed to do, so let's move on, you know?

Posted by: nerdstar at May 18, 2005 06:19 PM (ccm++)

8 I gotta say that "Where are you from?" thing always makes me laugh. Just answer them, "I've lived on every continent but Anartica and Australia. In tents, in hotels, in palaces, and under the stars--wishing I had a tent, hotel, or palace.... Where you from??" Most times you get questions about what you do etc... Makes a great ice breaker. Plus, you can tell about your heroic expoits later ;-) I have found most well travelled people have never actually travelled. They've "been there" but haven't "done that"!

Posted by: Jamie at May 18, 2005 10:16 PM (yDBbJ)

9 On a side note.... I went on a recent TDY and took a backpack (with my laptop, clothes and uniforms). Never occurred to me to take more? You mean people don't roll their clothes???

Posted by: Jamie at May 18, 2005 10:23 PM (yDBbJ)

10 When asked "Where are your from?" I always answer "Where did I grow up or where did I last live?" That usually throws them enough to stop and think about it - then they want to know where I've lived and if I know where I am going to next. (Right now the Canary Islands with the hubby would be good). The mantra is only 6 months to R&R...only 6 months to R&R). Household6

Posted by: Household6 at May 19, 2005 03:09 AM (T+Tkq)

11 "Deployments" for cruise ships? hmmmm*jotting down* Must have Dear husband try and get one of these AWFUL assignments.

Posted by: ArmyWifeToddlerMom at May 19, 2005 09:44 AM (Z6ake)

12 Perhaps the "civilians" were shy to ask about your positions with the military because of their perception of the military or something negative they had read... Perhaps they accept what you do the same as police or fire personnel? I see it as our jobs (within the military community) to correct misconceptions and educate the civilian population, not just sit back and marvel at the lack of inquisitiveness on their part. If the American public has a lot to learn or re-learn about the fine state of our services, then we (as a community) have a lot to teach.

Posted by: Some Soldier's Mom at May 21, 2005 11:28 AM (8Burp)

13 After all the traveling to wherever you've been, isn't it great to get "home" again? Because "home" is wherever you and your love half lay your head at night, secure in the comfort that you are each there for each other, and your bed is "home" in Germany. Because, in your military life, home is where you go to work, go to sleep, and go to live and love. Yeah, my cruises were a little different than deployment to Iraq and sailing the Caribbean waiting on cruise liner guests. A lot less space, and a lot longer underwater. We would have killed something just to be able to see our girls and kids, and follow it off with a beer. If you stay in the military till retirement, you'll remember how bad things COULD have been till the last breath leaves your body. Everything after Iraq is gravy, and worth savoring. So welcome "home", Sarah and husband. We are all glad to have you back. Thanks for sharing the vacation with us. Subsunk

Posted by: Subsunk at May 21, 2005 01:43 PM (dT4Ud)

14 I am disappointed with 'those' people. I would expect them to ask if you were in Iraq and how was it for both of you and go from there. At the very minimum for them to thank you both for your service. Timmmmmm. Hiiiiii.

Posted by: toni at May 21, 2005 02:05 PM (KXhoZ)

15 Well..as a life long civilian who has lived in peace,freedom and utter blissful security in the same small Indiana town her whole life (save for college) I am shocked to read your comments. I NEVER fail to say "Thank you for serving our country." when I meet a member of the finest military in the world. Past,present and even future (kids with delayed enlistment) soldiers and sailors ALL get my respect and gratitude. I know darned well how BLESSED I am to be a citizen of these United States of America. NOW....the only thing I truly do NOT get about your post S,is the one suitcase for 2 people thing!! GOOD HEAVENS WOMAN! It's vacation,treat yourself to your OWN bag. Glad that you are both back safe and sound.

Posted by: Mary at May 22, 2005 12:12 PM (/CoEY)

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We're having the time of our lives here, eating and shopping to our hearts' content. (And looking at alligators!) I can barely button my pants from all the cheeseburgers and milkshakes I've been having! The USA is a blast...

(And I just saw the heaps of spam I got delivered. Will fix when we return home.)

Posted by: Sarah at 06:09 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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