New Shoes!!!

Today my new running shoes came in the mail. They are everything I hoped for. Very light, but supportive where they need to be and fit with a Superfeet insert.

They'll need a little breaking in and then it will be like running in slippers. My preference in a running shoe is for it to be firm. I don't want to run on pillows. These trail runners are right in the sweet spot where I can feel the road but excess shock is absorbed.

Unfortunately there is a lot of shiny neon yellow on the shoe. Soon it will be brown. Everything here turns brown.

Other people were excited when I got my shoes too. Shoes and boots are a major topic of discussion.

My sister also made a variety of cookies and sent them to us. We love cookies. We really love peanut butter cookies.

We may take some of the peanut butter cookies to the chow hall, zap them, and top them with vanilla ice cream.

I really do mean "we" in the plural too.

The other news is that my beautiful and brilliant world-saving wife is now back in the US. Now I can more easily bother her while she is at work via G-mail chat.

This is an outstanding development.

She won't really get a chance to unwind and re-adjust because she has two weddings to attend in the next two weeks. Those will be the second and third weddings I've missed on this trip.

Not cool. I am really sorry and do wish I could be there.

I can also call the nearest base and have them connect me to her phone. Oddly, due to her cell phone number not being a local call from our house, I have to call the base nearest where she grew up to have them connect us.

On the work front, well, processes are evolving for the better. It's actually fun to be a part of it. It reminds us that the enemy is actually a very bad human and not, say, Microsoft Office 2007.

We get confused sometimes.

Oh, and if any of you read GEN McPeak's Op-Ed about the F-22 in the Wall Street Journal, I apologize. He was one of the leaders of the great Fighter Mafia, the man who decided chest hair needed to be visible in our blues uniforms, and brought the world Total Quality Management (only Scott Adams benefited from this because it fueled an infinite number of Dilbert strips).

F-22's are really cool. Really really really cool. They have incredible capabilities and can truly dominate the air war. But once we've used our stealth assets to destroy the enemy air defenses, or degrade them sufficiently, in the beginning of a conventional war... why can't we then use lots of cheaper and less stealthy aircraft for many of the lower-threat follow on missions?

We have only one Ranger Regiment that in part exists to kick in the door so the rest of the force can come in behind. No one in the Army is arguing that every unit needs to be the Ranger Regiment.

It's an imperfect metaphor, but close enough to make the point.