There's the Brett Favre from December 2009 we've been waiting for...

Last year, I noticed the Vikings were scheduled to come down and play at Arizona in December. I really wanted to go, but couldn't because we were completing our training exercise in the desert. So, when I was in Iraq this year, I noticed that the Vikes were AGAIN supposed to venture out to Arizona. I told Tally that would be my Christmas present and bought two tickets.

It was a crazy day. We were scrambling to get there because of one reason after another. But, we finally got there, and had a very good time, at least at the beginning. There were a lot of Vikings fans there, especially in our section. Of course, most of those in our section were pretty plastered and ridiculous, but it made for good comedy. See--look how much fun Tally was having:

Of course, then Brett Favre decided to become....well, Brett Favre. And, it didn't help that we couldn't block anyone or put any pressure on Kurt Warner. It was pretty ugly. I give the stadium there high marks. The food was good for a professional sporting venue, too.

On our way back to our car, we noticed two Vikings fans dressed in purple T-shirts with gold letters on the front. One had an "E", and one had an "R". Tally guessed that they must have been there with three others to spell out "FAVRE". We decided that they didn't pick the best night for that, but, oh well. I told her that maybe they were actually there with 10 other friends and were spelling out "INTERCEPTION". In that case, they would have been much more accurate with their cheerleading.

(Sigh.) Ladies and gentlemen, your 2009 Minnesota Vikings.

Coming up, a triathlon in December, and maybe some other stuff before Christmas.

SNOB ALERT!!!

As a public service to all loyal Tinjblog readers, I do have to mention that there are a lot of snobs in Napa Valley and the surrounding environs. Of course, there are tons of great people, but there are those who choose to be wine snobs, and those wineries where you have to (and, no, I'm not kidding) wait to be seated, at a formal table by a concierge in order to simply taste some wine. I'm going to start a winery in Napa Valley, require that much ridiculousness, then serve these folks some Boone's Farm wine. Ha!

Finally, there is the family who earned the memorial "Made Me Want to Drop My Dinner Plate on My Head Until I Lost Consciousness" Award at one of the restaurants we ate at. Luckily, they were behind me, so I didn' t have to look at them, like Tally did. UNluckily, they were RIGHT behind me, so I could hear every word they were saying. Of course, I could have been in a different zip code and still heard every annoying word and all the bragging. We got up to leave right after them, and we noticed that their table cloth was covered with different splotches of wine stains. It wasn't one big stain, but several, indicating that more than one of them probably got sauced all day at the vineyards, then sauntered on down to the local restaurant to finish off the evening by being loud, rude, and spilling wine all over. You stay classy, Napa. (from "Anchorman")

Napa Valley and San Francisco

We have wanted to make it up to Napa Valley and San Francisco since we have been in California, but just haven't been able to pull it off yet. Sooo, since we both had four days off for Thanksgiving, we decided to have our Thanksgiving meal the Sunday before (it was delicious) and travel over the four-day weekend.

It was a great trip! It is extremely beautiful in that area. Visiting in the fall was great--I think that would be the best time to go, if you're ever planning on it. Of course, I dispense that advice without having any authority or expertise to do so whatsoever. But, all of the leaves on the vines turned fall colors, along with all of the other trees. And, it was a great change for us because, even when we get out of the desert, the terrain in Southern California is very dry/brown. It was nice to see all that green for a change.

Without getting into really long explanations, these pictures are of Tally standing in the Vineyard, the two of us at a tasting room at a vineyard, and Tally outside of a cupcake store in Napa (the store did very good work)

We ate at two different restaurants for dinner, both of which were great. I won't go into it, but if you ever go, I would seriously consider Celadon in Napa and Tra Vigne in St. Helena. The food was really, really good.

On the way down to Carmel on Saturday, we swung through San Francisco. It was fun to say we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge. We drove over the the presidio and down to the beach, where we were able to get some pictures with the bridge in the background:

(I think I look the best when squinting.)

And, we then stopped in downtown San Francisco a little bit to shop and eat. It was very interesting, but pretty crowded. Of course, there were a ton of weirdos, who I enjoyed watching immensely. Too many to get into here, but, if you want to people watch, go to San Francisco.

SNOB ALERT!!!

OK, so to briefly opine about the Wynn. As I mentioned, we got a good deal there, so we decided to stay. It's a beautiful place, the service and rooms and food (and everything!) are great, and it actually smells good for a casino, but it's just so ridiculous, we've decided.

Vegas can be very expensive (especially ANY of the huge casinos). But, the Wynn takes the cake. It costs $14/day to use the wireless internet in your room and $30/day if you were to use the fitness center (I ran around the strip for exercise, thank you very much.). The food, drinks, everything is too expensive. Now, this does keep a lot of the riff-raff away, which can be a good thing at times, I think. However, it certainly does attract that very famous species, the snob.

Now, don't get me wrong--there are many very nice people there. However, there are a ton of straight-up, rude snobs. No discrimination here--they are American, European, Asian, and everything in between. They can often be heard loudly complaining about little things, wearing ridiculous clothes, complaining about the (already amazing) service, aimlessly wandering right in front of you and inconsiderately stopping right in your way, not opening the door for you, and giving you disdainful looks (I think, because it's the cool thing to do).

Anyways, this led to high entertainment for Tally and myself. When we were getting ready to check out, we noticed the door and the end of our hallway was open. Inside this door was an extension of our hallway, but the carpet wasn't gaudy (see earlier post), the walls were painted a different color, and this hallway had its own elevators. We were shocked and curious. So, we did what anyone in our position would do: we decided to go over there and take there elevator down to see where it led to.

The whole thing was hilarious. We stuff ourselves into the elevator, overloaded with our cheap luggage. The other people we picked up on the way down included two Asian guys, dressed very expensively, a European guy who was very busy looking cool listening to music on his iPhone and couldn't be bothered, and a couple who got on at the spa floor, looking like they had just been pampered to death. We quietly rode down and got off. Well, this set of room had its own separate lobby with secret rooms and EXTRA-snobby people sitting all around. We coolly kept walking through, until we found the casino and made our way to the parking ramp. I'm sure they knew we were outsiders, since I don't think anyone in that group would be caught dead carrying their own luggage. It was hilarious and fascinating.

Next post: Napa Vally and San Francisco

Vegas (again)!

So, we headed back to Las Vegas for 1/7's Birthday Ball. The Marines always celebrate their "birthday" on the anniversary of their formation (which happened on November 10, 1775). Ours happened to be on the 19th, since all the different groups of Marines on any given base need to somewhat stagger theirs or no one would be around on the 10th. Since we're in the middle of nowhere at Twentynine Palms, my battalion generally goes to Las Vegas.

We decided to stay at the Wynn. Now, that place could be a whole other post on its own. Anyhoo, it all started last year when we used Hotwire! to get a hotel. We happened to land at the Wynn after we reserved a "mystery" hotel for a good price (those of you who use Hotwire! know all about how it works). Anyway, once we were guests there one time, we apparently got on their mailing list, so we got a good offer on a room rate this time, too. I don't think it hurt that we stayed there in the middle of the week, when rates are lower.

Notice this ridiculous carpet. This is in the hallway up on the 58th floor, where our room was. Now, I understand why the casino owners put hideous carpet in the casinos themselves--it is said that it's because they don't want your eyes on the floor, but up, looking around, so you'll notice all of the gambling options and spend more money. That may or may not be true. However, I don't know why you would need to put hideous carpet that looks like little mitochondria way up in the hallways where the rooms are. Furthermore, where do they buy this stuff? I told Tally there must be a "Casino Carpet Warehouse" or catalog separate from what any of us would ever get to peruse. Really, who designs this stuff?

Here's a picture of me risking my life savings on one of the high-limit slot machines. Oh, who am I kidding? We were playing nickel or penny slots or something, hoping to make $5 last as long as we could and get a free drink or something. No jackpot here.

Also, it was Tally's birthday (I won't say which one, except that it rhymes with "shirty") on the 18th, so we tried to celebrate a little. We both like Bobby Flay (from the Food Network), so we went to his restaurant, Mesa Grill, on Tuesday night, and had appetizers (which we delicious, by the way). Here is Tally modeling them for us:

Then, as we decided the two of us didn't need to split a whole cake of some type, here she is with her birthday cupcake (she had already chomped a piece out of the "Happy Birthday" chocolate disc):

Here are two pictures from the Ball itself, one of the two of us, and one of Tally with one of the centerpieces from the table. (No idea why she grabbed that to get a picture, but it is kind of funny.)

...I'm way behind

Sorry for taking so long to put more up here. The weekend before Veteran's Day, we decided to drive up Highway 395, which runs along the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevadas (mostly, in a beautiful series of valleys) in California and Nevada. There is a job opening at the Mountain Training Center for the Marines north of Bridgeport, CA (just north of Yosemite), so we went up to check the area out.

It's extremely beautiful up there and very different. We stayed in South Lake Tahoe, and we both thought that was beautiful. It's a very "outdoors" type area, with hiking, rock climbing, skiing, fly fishing, etc. We'll see what happens, but we both agreed we would enjoy it up there. Stay tuned and sorry I don't have many good pictures.

Soup! There it is!

OK, so it was soup time last night. It's getting a little cooler here (even for the desert), which means it was time to pull the trigger on a bowl of goodness. We decided to try Potato and Leek soup, which turned out pretty good.

Ingredients

1 pound leeks, cleaned and dark green sections removed, approximately 4 to 5 medium
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Heavy pinch kosher salt, plus additional for seasoning
14 ounces, approximately 3 small, Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced small
1 quart vegetable broth
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon snipped chives

Directions

Chop the leeks into small pieces. In a 6-quart saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the leeks and a heavy pinch of salt and sweat for 5 minutes. Decrease the heat to medium-low and cook until the leeks are tender, approximately 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the potatoes and the vegetable broth, increase the heat to medium-high, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and gently simmer until the potatoes are soft, approximately 45 minutes.

Turn off the heat and puree the mixture with an immersion blender until smooth. Stir in the heavy cream, buttermilk, and white pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning if desired. Sprinkle with chives and serve immediately, or chill and serve cold.

This was very good, but we changed a couple of things:

1) Cook down some bacon in the pot at the beginning, and use that fat to cook the leeks, instead of butter (you can still use some extra butter if there isn't enough bacon fat). Then, crumble up the baconand save it at the end to put on top of the soup.

2) Instead of using 1 cup cream and 1 cup buttermilk, we reduced the cream and buttermilk to 1/2 cup each and used 1 cup 2% milk to make up the balance. You could use all milk, if you wanted. It just depends on how thick/rich you want the soup to be.

3) Since we don't have an immersion blender, I had to just blend up the soup in two batches, then return it to the pan. After you do this, you'll have to re-heat the soup, even though it doesn't say so in the recipe.

Other random things...

So, sorry, we don't have a lot of pictures from our recent travails. We haven't done anything too crazy, though. I went home on leave from October 4th to October 16th. Right before that, Tally and I took a trip up to the central coast and unexpectedly found this cool little winery called "Talley Vineyards", as "Talley" is the surname of the family that owns it. So, of course, we had to stop there.

No, that's not a dead animal in front of her feet. That's some big cat that came waddling over while I was trying to take the picture.

Also, on our way back home, we passed by another winery area north of Santa Barbara. Tally always watches that ridiculous "Bachelor" show, and, for you other fans out there, you'll remember there was some tool named Andrew Firestone on the show several years ago. I believe his family is heirs to the Firestone Tire business, but they also own a couple of wineries. During the show, some time was spent there, and it was very scenic. So, we stopped there so Tally could say she had been there. It was an "amazing" "journey". (Anyone else who thinks the Bachelor is ridiculous will know what I'm talking about there.)

Then, the weekend after I returned, we headed over to Phoenix for a night, then up to Sedona. This was fun, as we had been to both places before and were looking forward to it. We stayed at bed-and-breakfasts both nights, which were wonderful. They were small, the breakfasts were wonderful, and the owners were very tolerant towards the ridiculous weiner dogs.

Iraq...

OK, sorry for not putting anything on here for so long. I figure that, since I'm going gain an hour of tonight, this is a perfect time to get around to this.

I don't have too many good pictures of Iraq, but I'll put a couple of them up here.

We had quite a few instances of sandstorms, of course. However, from what people told me about previous deployments, ours didn't seem as bad as some in the past (of course, people love to exaggerate their old experiences). So, most weren't too bad, although a couple (including the one in the picture) caused you to get sand everywhere (in your room, in your ears, in your teeth--you get the idea).

Here's me wearing all of my crap (except my kevlar [helmet]) and attempting to look tough after coming back from some sort of trip off base.

When we did go off base, we rode in these things, called MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected; you can read about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP_(armored_vehicle))

I have some other random pictures, but nothing too great. We were at this base called Camp Baharia, which was just southeast of Fallujah, and there are now no American forces left there (all Iraqis). It apparently used to be some kind of "resort" back in the day where the Hussein boys used to hang out. Sadly, it seems, from many stories I've heard, that they commonly committed many atrocities there consistent with what they were famous for. This is a YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG61C8swnGI) showing what it looked like before the war. The little buildings were still there (we used them), but there was no grass, the tent were not there, and some of the buildings (such as the "disco" [not making this up]) were bombed in the invasion.

The most important advice ever when in Las Vegas!

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T FEED THE BEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Vegas!

So, decided to head to Las Vegas for a quick weekend getaway, since I will be going on post-deployment leave soon, and Tally won't be able to go with me, since she will be working.

We don't gamble much, but we still managed to have fun. We went to a show called "Le Reve" at the Wynn hotel (the picture of Tally and I above is at the Wynn), which was pretty neat. It's similar to the Cirque de Soleil (French for "The Orange Monkey") shows in that there were lots of cool acrobatics. Also, since it was set in a pool, the swimming and diving mixed in with the story was pretty neat. Tickets for these shows are pretty expensive, but good ol' Tally found out that there is a 1/2 off military discount, so it was great to get that.

Tally thought the fall decorations at the Bellagio were beautiful, as you can see by her wistful gaze upwards.

Also, we decided to have a once-in-a-lifetime meal at a really nice restaurant to celebrate my getting back from Iraq. We decided to go to a place called Carnevino, which is an Italian Steakhouse. It was wonderful. Very expensive, but a lot of fun, and we were able to try some dishes we will never be able to try again. However, they served us our wine in five-gallon buckets, as you can see by the picture of me.

Updates...

OK, so Tally and I have spent the last couple of weeks making several small trips, since she will be working and won't be able to go on leave with me. We went to Los Angeles last weekend, which was nice. Quinn and I took in a Dodgers/Giants game, which was fun.

However, the price of major-league sporting events is (I think) just getting completely ridiculous, and it wasn't event that bad for us (baseball is one of the cheaper live sports to go see). Quinn got us pretty good seats for $12.50 apiece, which was a good start. However, the rest of things went like this. Tickets: $12.50, Parking: $15, Dodger Dog, one beer, caramel corn: $22.50, arriving in the second inning and leaving in the sixth to beat traffic: priceless. OK, maybe not, but you get the idea.

Sorry, no pictures. Maybe next time.....

I'm back!!!

So, the last part of our Battalion (including me) got back early Monday morning. It is great to be home. Sorry for not doing much blogging while I was gone. However, I am deeply disappointed in any (formerly) loyal Tinjblog readers who have switched to other more "cool" blogs since I've been gone.

Tally and I have just been hanging out this week. I have to work the next two weeks, then I'll have two weeks off, during which I'll head back to ND.

I don't have the greatest pictures from Iraq. It all looks similar and, thankfully, it wasn't too crazy for us. I'll try to get some stuff up here eventually. Also, stay tuned for: LA Dodgers game with Quinn, Las Vegas, cycling, triathlon for Tally, weird classes at the gym, and quinoa.

Book club

OK, so I'm not Oprah, but because I'm bored, I'll put up my appraisals of the non-medical books (not that I've read much in that department) that I've read on deployment thusfar:

1) Generation Kill, by Evan Wright. The story of a Rolling Stone reporter embedded with the 1st Marine Reconnaissance Battalion during the initial invasion of Iraq. Pretty ridiculous. Don't read it if you can't handle some serious Marine-type language ("I want the language"..."You can't handle the language"...get it?) and some fairly gruesome actual war stories. Interesting, though, and, even with my limited knowledge, it seems to be very accurate. Thinking about the big, well-protected vehicles we ride around in now, it's remarkable that these guys were basically in humvees that didn't even have windows. Grade: B+

2) The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, by Robert Caro. This is a remarkable book by a remarkable author. I never thought I would get into something like this. My father initially read the trilogy by Moses about Lyndon Johnson. I eventually read those, which I think (almost impossibly) are even better than this book. The amount of research he did is staggering. It is 1100+ pages, but I believe I read somewhere that he edited it down from 3000+! Now, just a word of forewarning: you need to be a nerd to enjoy this book. You can be a cool, attractive, fun nerd like myself, but you need to be a nerd nonetheless. Also, reading this will take a lot of time (something my bank account is full of right now). I highly recommend any books by Moses, though. Grade: A

3) Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions, by Daniel Wallace. The book that the 2003 Tim Burton movie was based on. A short, light read, with kind of a neat concept. Short stories based on what seem to be tall tales told by the narrator's father during his childhood, interspersed with the reality of his present-day father, who is sickly and nearing death. Grade: C+

4) One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A crazy story of a Mexican family as it progresses through years and generations. It remarkably tells this story while reminding us (I think) of how certain things tend to stay the same, even though most everything else changes. Most astounding to me was the sheer descriptiveness. To think that Marquez could just pull all of this out of his mind is amazing. It goes on a little long for me, but is still a very good book. Grade: A-

5) How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else, by Michael Gate Gill. A story of how an elderly man who lost his job and is down on his luck in many ways starts working at a Starbucks in New York City. His coworkers are pretty much polar opposites of himself, yet he finds enjoyment in working with them and in serving others that he though he'd never have. He had pretty much had everything handed to him his whole life, but by losing it all, he found this job that gave him more fulfillment than he ever imagined. (That was pretty good, if I do say so myself. I think that should be the synopsis on the back of the book.) It's simply written, but the story is definitely what pulls it through. Grade: B-

6) The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink. The book that the 2008 movie (for which Kate Winslet won an Oscar for Best Actress and which was included in a humorous story on a recent "Tinjblog" post about old people in Palm Springs) was based on. It's an interesting concept for a story that is nicely developed. The most striking thing about it, I believe, is it's philosophical nature. The main character's father is a philosopher in the story, and the author gives a lot of space for the main character to explore his feelings, but, more importantly, WHY he might be feeling that way. It is simple in many ways, complex in others, elegant, and well thought out. I haven't seen the movie yet, but will definitely have to watch it now. Grade: A-

Greetings

Well, I see the old wifers hasn't bothered to put any new posts up here, so I guess it's up to me. Things are (thankfully) going fine here. Fairly monotonous and repetitive, but that's fine. I have been out briefly a few times into some of the local communities, so that has been interesting.

I have taken some pictures of where I am at, but I think I'll have to save those until after the deployment is over. However, I will have to work on putting some other pictures up here. Like, for example, of the sodas that they have over here with Arabic writing. Interesting, and not too bad (at least, the Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi aren't). However, I implore you, never, ever drink diet Sprite out of an Arabic can, should you ever find yourself in this part of the world. That's all I ask. You'll thank me.

It hasn't gotten too hot yet (but buckle up, I'm told). I guess you really get to hate your life in the summer over here. We'll see. Blowing sand hasn't been too big of a deal yet, either, but I've also been forewarned that this will get much worse. The food hasn't been bad, there's a gym here, and a nice area to run, so I can't complain and have gotten a lot of exercise, which is good to pass the time. I think that's about it for now, but will try to periodically put up some more posts.

A temporary farewell...

Just wanted to sign off before I leave the good ol' US for Iraq. We'll be there for seven months, so should be back in September. I should be able to update the blog from over there, but, if not, Tally will take care of it. Thoughts and prayers are always appreciated. If we have the internet connections we are supposed to have, I will have access to Skype and other video-calling sites. So, if you have a webcam, look me up. Send e-mails to my current Yahoo! account for now, or contact Tally--she can let you know if I have a new e-mail that I am supposed to use while over there.

No pictures from the last week, but we've had a good time. My mom, Jill, came out, so we've been showing her around. We were down to the coast today, which was a little chilly by CA standards, but fun. There were several dolphins that we could see surfacing just a little ways out, so that was cool. We also finally got to Joshua Tree National Park, which we enjoyed. That's all for now.

New TV

As you can see, nice picture. Also, for sizing purposes, I'm not sure of the "inches" per se, but it is approximately 3 wiener dogs wide and 1.5 wiener dogs tall.

Super Bowl snacks (clockwise from upper left: parmesan-garlic chicken fingers, spinach and artichoke dip, turkey sliders, oven-baked french fries)

Super Bowl 43 (they should just get rid of the Roman numerals)

Tally and I had a lovely and quiet day on Sunday watching the good ol' Super Bowl. We decided to not have or seek out any Super Bowl parties, since I'll be taking off in about a week and we wanted to hang out together.

First, the TV. Let me take you back a little. The heat in our house went out on January 9th. Luckily, we are in CA and not in ND, but it does get a little cool here at night, and with no heaters going, the temp in our house was getting down to 54-55 degrees by morning. Why it took until today (25 days) to get our heat going, I have no idea--you'll have to ask our property management company and the local heating/AC company that was working on our furnace. Despite that, we did not have to pay rent at the beginning of February for the days that we did not have heat in January. This added up to a savings of ~$900. Keep this and a picture of a TV in your mind.

Next, I need to explain to you about wives. So, while our heat was out, our house was obviously cold (we did have a couple of space heaters going). Also, during that time, Tally came down with a cold and had a couple of days off from work. Me, being the perennial husband-of-the-year candidate that I am, moved our only TV into the bedroom for her, so she could stay in bed with a space heater on her and watch TV on her days off while she was sick. This led to the natural conversation of her suggesting we could get another TV for the living room and leave the first one in the bedroom. I didn't really go for this, so then she reached for the "Well, it helps me relax at night, and otherwise, the dogs and I might get spooked by noises we hear--the TV would block this out". I eventually buckled and agreed. Of course, I had nothing against getting a new TV right before the Super Bowl. Also, we had purchased a Nintendo Wii a week or so before. Now, even though I might enjoy and use these things more than Tally, there's that other thing...OH YEAH!...I'm going to Iraq for seven months in about a week. So, who will benefit on all fronts from the new technology. That's right. It's the wifey...it's always the wifey. Just remember that.

So, we blew our rent savings on the Wii and the new TV, and we don't regret it. The Super Bowl was great--I like both teams, but was cheering for the Cardinals. I should have bet on the Cards, since they covered the spread (Pittsburgh was favored by 7 points), and maybe I would have won eleventy billion dollars. We made some homemade Super Bowl snacks which turned out pretty good. I'll slap some pics up of all this stuff.

Stay tuned for Jill (my mom) coming out in a few days, and John and Quinn going to the UCLA-Notre Dame men's basketball game on Saturday, while Tally valiantly attempts to set the Guinness Book of World Records record for "most shopping done on a Saturday morning in LA ever".

Movie time and Oldie McOldersonville...

On Saturday, Tally and I had a nice little outing to Palm Springs. We decided to see a movie, so I talked her into Slumdog Millionaire. I highly, highly recommend this. Maybe not "drop everything and go see it immediately", but "drop everything, take a 30-min nap, then go see it immediately". Nicely done, good story, cute little kids from India.

So, as we were waiting at the outdoor ticket counter, two old guys with thick Boston (I think) accents are going up to get their tickets for themselves and their wives (Dustin Little, grammar Ph.D., there's probably something incorrect there, but, oh well). The guy in front of us says "I'll take two tickets to Se-re-nah". The ticket lady, looking mildly confused says, "Do you mean The Reader (new movie with Kate Winslet)?" He goes, "Oh, I thought it was Se-re-nah". She explains again, that, no, it is The Reader. This goes on for a few seconds until I try to talk Tally to throwing me in front of the little golf-cart security vehicle driving by so I will hopefully knocked unconscious and not have to listen to any more of that. She mumbles something about calming down, and we go inside to load up on popcorn.

As I mentioned, I loved the movie. As the closing credits are starting, I start to get up, then realize that almost no one else is. Oh, there's a little song and dance number, Bollywood-style, along with some of the closing credits. OK, I sit down. When that's over, I attempt to get up and leave again, but still not much movement. I realize that this is because we are near the front, and the average age of those behind us (comprising about 80-100 people--the small theater was pretty full) is approximately 137. I sit down again. When we finally get to the lobby, it's "negotiate through the fairly-large crowd of people moving 0.01 mph" all over again.

Don't get me wrong--I like Palm Springs. There is a lot of stuff to do there when things get boring in Yucca Valley (which is often). There are fun things, too, like a water park, good restaurants, and 12 million artificial hips. And,...I realize that I'm going to be old someday, too, and will probably move pretty slowly. However, the combo of creaking joints, rampant plastic surgery, and 70+-year-old women dressing and wearing makeup as if they look like (and I think they really believe this) they are in their 40s was just too much on this day. But, being the warrior that I am, I'll regroup and do battle again another day.

A couple of other things...

And, of course, I forgot some things. Tally graduated from her Master's program in Nurse Education from Nebraska Methodist College in December. She started it while we lived in Omaha, and it is an online program, so she was able to keep doing it when we moved. I'm very proud of her, and I guess she hasn't had enough, because she's planning on taking a semester off and then pursuing her Ph.D. I was at the Mojave Viper training exercise, so I wasn't able to go, but Tally flew out and her parents met her in Omaha, so I'll put some pictures up from that.

Also, right before we left for Christmas, we had what was reported as two-and-a-half feet of snow here. We are in the "high desert" which gets cooler that Palms Springs, and I think it's not uncommon to get a little snow here and there. However, this was pretty crazy, so I'll throw in a couple of shots of that.

Tally and John at the Marine Corps Ball

Christmas at Tally's house with Santa (the kids on the couch are Lexi and Gannon, our niece and nephew)

Long time, no blog...

Sorry for the extended absence. I guess it's been a perfect combo of being busy, gone, and, most of all, me being lazy.

We last left our bloggers in November with a visit to sunny Coronado Island near San Diego. After that, John started his 30-day training exercise with the Marines ("Mojave Viper"). He got to come home one day for Thanksgiving (sorry, no pictures), which was great.

About that time, Savannah (on of the "wiens") started getting sick with all of these weird bumps that would pop up that seemed like abscesses. I thought about putting a "medical mystery" type of thing on here, so you medical nerds (you know who you are, Dustin Little) could have some fun. It turns out that she most likely has a condition that is specific to dogs, so it wouldn't have been a very fun game to play. A vet down here figured it out--it's called "sterile nodular panniculitis"--so she's on steroids and is starting to get much better with treatment.

We were home for Christmas and got about three weeks, because it also doubles as my "pre-deployment leave". That was fun (but very cold). It was great to see everyone, and we got to snowmobile a little bit.

We were in Vegas about a week ago for our Battalion's Marine Corps Birthday Ball. The Marines (and the Navy, for that matter) love to celebrate (and I mean CELEBRATE) the anniversary of their formation (their "birthday") every year. Even though we are stuck out in the middle of the godforsaken desert, at least we aren't that far from Vegas, so we can head up there to celebrate. The normal birthday is on November 10th, but we were preparing to go to Mojave Viper, so we put it off until January. We stayed at the Wynn because we got a great deal on Hotwire there. If you ever get the chance to stay there, I highly recommend it. We were on the 58th floor and had a great view looking west over Vegas and south down the Strip. I tried to take a picture, but the window caused too much glare.

Now we're kind of just hanging out. I'm headed to Iraq in about 10 days or so, so we're trying to get stuff neatened up and loose ends taken care of. I think my mom is coming out for a few days, so maybe I'll have a few more pictures before I go. I should be able to still post on here from Iraq, but the primary responsibility will fall to Tally (ha ha). Sooo, if you aren't happy with the tinjblog service, you know you to contact.