The Old Man Speaks...

So I guess the idea here is to send our thoughts out into the ether, accomplishing the dual goal of sharing our lives a bit with those who read this (the intended audience being immediate family only), and "forcing" us to be a little better about some form of Journal writing. We intend to write after Church each Sunday (AT A MINIMUM)...we'll see how well we do. Angelina is committed to driving this project, so we ought to do okay. I have no idea how long these entries will be...I imagine that some will be a few sentences, some a few paragraphs. I just got back from one of my Open Skies Treaty trips to Russia. This was a shared one with the Germans on the Swedish Saab. We came back a bit earlier than expected because we couldn't come to an agreement with the Russians mission execution. First time we have ever gone home early for failure to reach a meeting of the minds. Hope it is the last. That was my first time flying on the Swedish Saab. It is a very comfortable plane to fly in and work in, but it IS pretty slow compared to, say, the US OC-135 or the Russian TU-152, and doesn't have much in the way of legs (its flying radius is fairly small). They only use one camera, as opposed to the US plane, which uses one to four, or the Pod Group (another subject) which uses one to three. I really enjoyed my time in Germany on the way in and out of Russia. (My German Language proficiency started coming flooding back...unfortunately at the expense of my Russian. I'll have to put in some extra language study this week.) Germany is SUCH a beautiful country, in every time of year. The last couple of days were pretty rain-filled, but that didn't bother me much. No matter how much I love traveling, seeing new people, new places, learning new things and having new experiences, there truly is no place like home. And the actual coming home is often "The Best"! That first hug and kiss from your beautiful wife, that bearhug from your teenage boy, the jump into your arms by your not-so-little-anymore little girl...there really is nothing quite like it. And remind me to tell you how comforting (how awesome!) it is to be married to a good Navy Wife. They just don't come any better than Angelina. I will try to remember to talk a little about that topic in a future post.... More later...