various thoughts

Just a mishmash of things...

I have a very hard time believing that upping our troop level by 21K in Iraq is going to be the ticket to Victory over there. It looks more like a desperate grasp of a president trying to salvage what will likely be his legacy. First off, I don't see much support at all for it...the House doesn't want it, the Senate doesn't want it, the Iraqis don't want it, I don't want it, and on and on. It was listed as a recommendation by the Iraq Study Group as an option that could help secure the region and for more our Armed Forces sake than Bush's I surely hope it does. This was not a war we should have gotten involved in and now it looks like there is no happy ending here. What a shame.

We only have a very limited amount of troops elgible for this additional deployment as our forces are streched very thin amongst our various conflicts and bases around the world. The number of overall troops available may be good, but the number of troops available "with combat training" is not, and those will be the ones called upon here. This also means that a lot of soldiers will be called on for a second, third, or fourth tour in Iraqi with very little recovery time at home, and that is not a good situation.

Bush stated in his speech the other night that 80% of the violence still occuring in Iraq was directly in and around Baghdad and these additional troops are needed to quell that violence so that Iraq may proceed in some semblance of normalcy...I sure hope so...

other stuff...

The UK wildcats have started out their SEC schedule looking great with a victory over Ole Miss and a trouncing of Auburn. Sure hope that continues when the tougher opponents come along, and the SEC is very tough this year (and most every year) with ranked teams like defending champ Florida, LSU, Alabama, and other traditionally tough foes like Vandy and Arkansas...Go Cats...

The hockey team I kind of inherited when I moved to Tennessee (since I get most of their games on TV), the Nashville Predators, are standing in 1st place in their division nearing the half way point; and while so many teams make the playoffs in hockey placement doesn't mean everything it's still nice to see. The front office over in the Music City have put together a team that isn't laced with superstars (well maybe Paul Kariya could count as one), but manages to play great together and get the W's.

I've been kind of keeping up with the various poker action going on via live blogs and such like the Carribean World Poker Tour Championship and The Aussie Millions. Glad to see Erik Lindgren take down the huge 100K buy-in event down under. Only the truly upper class of poker can afford a buy-in to these pricey events so with the likes of Ivey, Seidel, Negreanu, Hansen, Juanda, and more this is some good poker to watch. Lindgren is a top notch player and seems like a great guy on and off the felt. Kudos should definitely go out to the wealthy Japanese businessman Masa Aki Kagawa for hanging quite tough with the pros to finish in the money 3rd and for super star Eric Seidel for getting to heads up and taking down 2nd. Only the top three finishers got paid with Lindgren pocketing a cool million...nice! That should pay for plenty of golfing prop bets with Kid Poker, Ivey, and Doyle, although from what I hear Lindgren more than holds his own on the links.

Have been having trouble finding the time to update this here blog, but hopefully it's just a short term thing. Have fun, and more later...

Charleston, SC

Getting all of the travel behind us, a small sigh of relief was in order, with the thought that now I can just concentrate on our time together, relaxing, having fun, and most of all just watching the girls be themselves.

Right away both of them were nearly dying to spend the rest of their Christmas money, which had increased by $50 each when we picked my dad up at the airport. I had never been to Charleston, SC before so I had no idea where we might go to spend the money, but I got some luck...at least I thought I did. I noticed when we got off the highway to get checked in there was a road at another red light called Mall Dr. That surely sounded promising and gave the girls visions of Kaybee Toys, Toys-r-Us, dippin dots, EBs, Babbages, and just stores galore. So cruising slowly on Mall Dr. (even though malls are HARD to miss) we saw a giant Cinema-Plex that would usually be circumstantial evidence that a Mall was near, but the only other place resembling a mall was a gi-normous structure...easily the size of a mall. The only indication of what it might be were lighted signs proclaiming Verizon Wireless. That's got to be the biggest fucking cell phone store in the world I thought to myself. Now I live in a rednecky, wooded part of Tennessee, and the largest store in my town sells guns, knives, and hunting supplies in a building as big as a Wal-Mart, but this Verizon store was ridiculous...couldn't be, and as it turned out wasn't. It, of course, was some type of Headquaters for Verizon occupying the space that "used" to be a mall. The mall I was hoping the girls could shop in...minor set back.

Since I'm not the typical male, or the stereotype often given to the typical male, I had no problem stopping at a mini-mart and asking where I could find a mall that hadn't turned in to a corporate headquaters. As it turned out, I could find one just 8 or 9 miles north, so away we went...

As a reminder that my babies won't stay young forever they chose to buy some clothes with their money rather than just toys like always in the past. A definite (and scary for me) sign they are creeping towards teenage.

Next day we hit the beach on the Isle of Palms. It had been a long time since I had seen the ocean, and I find that first look still holds some awe. Even after spending 5 years of my life virtually living on the beach in Tampa. The girls absolutely went nuts and ignored the fact that it's DECEMBER. The wind and water were both cold, brrrrrrr cold, but still the little angels splashed and splashed. It was a beautiful day in the mid 60s, so I indulged them for a while, and then finally had to call the clock on them for fear they might get sick. So I packed the waterlogged darlings back in the heated ride, and went back to the hotel, where...they chose to swim (indoors) and play in the hot tub...much better. The hotel swims, whirlpool, and fitness room were used at least once every day while we were there, sometimes 2 or 3 times. I sure would like to have all that available all the time. It's easy to get plenty of fitness in your life if the pool and the fitness center are under the same roof as you, and available 24/7...

Time just flies when I get to spend it with my daughters...we ended the trip by hitting the SC Aquarium down town Charleston, and finally we stormed Fort Sumter. The Fort tour was awesome. You could just feel the history oozing from every nook and cranny of that place. Way back in 1861 the Civil War began at that very Fort. For 2 days the Confederates shelled the Union soldiers until the Fort and with it Charleston Harbor were surrendered to the South. The once 3 story Fort was bombarded down to the 1 story that still stands. Over 44,000 rounds of shelling, and still Sumter survived. The biggest miracle to come from those long hours of decimation...not one death through it all.

Riding in cars, with kids, with toys

Day 1: travel

Finally back from a wonderful visit with my beautiful daughters. The day after Christmas I picked them up early, the weather was nice. I had asked my ex to pack as much entertaining distractions as possible for the long, long eight to nine hour ride to Charleston, SC, and she glady obliged. Darling daughter number two fell asleep not long after the journey began. As it was still fairly early in the morning and they, like kids everywhere, stay up late...especially when school is out. Darling daughter number one though is more of a morning person so she settled in with her fully charged PSP and commenced racing, wrecking, punching, kicking, stealing, shooting, and all manner of video gaming actions. Those PSP's have some sweet graphics. So the trip was off to a wonderful start.

Darling daughter two awoke in a couple of hours and busted out her Video Now Player (Hasbro) to watch some cartoons, but soon discovered that the Player wasn't working. She put the disc she wanted to watch in and hit play, but the screen would only light up for a second and then go dark. Sound continued to work though, but as one could imagine cartoons pretty much require video to go with audio for it to entertain. I wonder if kids back in the day really "got" comedic radio broadcasts...before even my time. Anyway, I asked her to let me have a look at the Player, but after fiddling with the brightness/contrast slider, there wasn't much left to try. It was officially broken.

Since I was in no great hurry to make it to Charleston that day, and being the day after Christmas it was quite busy on the highway, I decided for an alteration in plan. I would drive until the darling daughters just got too bored and restless, then stop for the night, and get them up early the next morning so they could opt to sleep the 2 or 3 hours remaining of the drive. We stopped around 5PM in a fairly large town just outside of Charlotte...Mooreville I think it was...I only wanted it to have a movie theatre and a Wal-Mart, which it did.

The darling daughters wanted to hit the Wal-Mart to spend some of the Christmas cash that was aching to be spent, and I certainly wasn't going to get in the way. So we bought some more toys and play things on top of what they had gotten for Christmas, went back to the hotel to stow the bounty, and were off again to catch the "new" live action Charlottes Web (which wasn't bad). Just like the old animated version I grew up with only with real (or at least computer generated in Charlotte's case) animals and people. A wonderful drive and evening behind us...sleep.

Hindsight...never did get the Video Now Player to work, so upon our return I looked up the problem on Hasbro's customer service site, and it turned out that it only needed batteries. The thought just never occurred to me that all of the power juice could possibly have been drained since she only got it for Christmas the day before...such is life...

more to come...