Smoke Clears

Well, other than my father threatening to leave the bar we had dinner at on Thanksgiving eve due to my political views, I thought the weekend went pretty well.

To sum up the three points of his that stuck out the most:

1. There are no rules in war, thereofore the Iraqi prison scandal is overblown.

2. We will never see peacetime in either of our lifetimes.

3. I'm too cynical.

Say those three times fast without saying "Huh?" after that last one, and you're ready for a position on Karl Rove's team.

This will be the last time I mention my family in this vein. I love my family dearly and owe them so much, but it pains me that I'm losing the ability to communicate meaningfuly with any of them, except my grandparents.

Thank God the agree to disagree thing still seems to work with Mike and I. Mike leaves tomorrow, hopefully to get the package I sent him two weeks ago. He'll be back in December just in time for Christmas. The attitude over at Fort Bragg seems to be pretty casual, him being pretty buddy and on a first-name basis with the same superiors he worked with at the Rhode Island base (which you can get in trouble for). If the situation changes as the date to go overseas nears, we might both get more nervous.

He and his troop play the video game version of Black Hawk Down a lot, which baffles me. It even seems to get him down a bit given how grimly based it is on the actual real-life story, which he has studied pretty closely, given that the Black Hawk is the vehicle he'll both be flying in and working on.

The Black Hawks are pretty impressive. I've seen them take off; if Mike has the know how to keep something like that working, Mike should already be proud, even if he never sees a day of combat after all.

I'll stop now, seeing how I want to sleep so I can wake up and see Lynne tomorrow.