Woe is me (and a lot of others!)

The Tigers went down in a tough one today, and I'm sad to see the loss. At least they beat Alabama a few weeks ago, and I was tickled at that one, since I work with several Tide fans. I work with only one Hog, and will be off until next Thursday, so hopefully I won't catch too much flak when I get back to work. They're in the SEC title game, and will draw a good bowl, but the BCS title just slipped away. I know it's just a game, but it sure is disappointing when your team goes down to somebody they should have beat.

An empty mind?

The pictures:
l: Me in Kuwait on Christmas Day 2003 (2nd tour)

c: SGT Doug McClure (Daddy)

r: CSM Sam McClure (Uncle Sam - one of Daddy's older brothers)

The pictures of Daddy and Uncle Sam show part of the reason I have stuck with the military so long - it runs in the family.

The blog has been empty, maybe because my mind is empty right now, or because I've been otherwise occupied. I like that "otherwise occupied" better than empty, so that's what I'll go with right now. I had to go back to Ft. Polk earlier this week to finish demobilizing so I can start my final active duty orders. The orders are for 1 year, 1 month, and 17 days, ending on 31 December 2008 with my active duty retirement. YAHOO!!! I can't believe I'm actually going to be able to get an active duty retirement. I guess if you hang around long enough you can get pretty much what you want. I'm glad I won't have to wait until age 60 to start drawing the money. I never figured when I enlisted in January of 1973 that I'd still be fooling with the Army over 34 years later. I have had a good career for the most part. The multiple deployments to Kuwait over the past 5 years have not been real fun, but that's what made it possible to hit that active duty time I needed, so I guess even somewhat unpleasant experiences count for our good if we approach them with the right frame of mind. But, the deployments weren't too bad, because I had mostly good people working for and with me, and I had some good bosses. Attitude is everything.

Happy Birthday, Cay

Today (Nov 9) is my sister Cay's birthday. I won't say how old she is today, but I'm 54 and she's one year younger than I am. Next June our brother Mike turns 52. From his birthday until mine in August we are 1,2,3 in age, then I jump ahead.

Sizzling stuff for a blog, huh?

Hmmm...

OK, I'm going to join in on NaBloPoMo (or whatever it is), or at least try to. I don't think I can equal Jessie's creativity, since I no longer have small children around, and since I don't do much interesting stuff. We'll see how it goes.