A-door-able

Every year at the holidays, Fred's unit has a door-decorating contest. This year Fred's office went for the sentimental vote. They decorated the wall around the door with pictures of deployed soldiers:



Adam, the son of Fred's deputy, played the part of a young boy dreaming of Daddy coming home from the war:



The office won the prize for Most Traditional:

Cinderella (and fella)

Here are a couple pictures from our formal last Saturday. This was taken at the beginning of the evening:



And this was taken later that night, after the official part of the evening concluded:



Fred is wearing a shirt I got him for Christmas but gave to him early. I told my friend Amy exactly what I wanted, and she had it made for him in Korea. Pretty cool, eh? A lot of the guys in Hawaii had shirts like this that they bought when they were TDY in Korea, and Fred always regretted that he hadn't bought one as well. No more regrets!

Before I forget to post today!

Today has been a crazy-busy day. I spent most of it in Louisville, where I bought fleece-lined Crocs for Mike (who had been envious of Annabelle's), SCORED on a new skirt for myself at Macy's, bought new makeup at Sephora, totally struck out on finding a new dress for the holiday ball that's coming up way too soon, and bought some last-minute goodies at Whole Foods. I also made yet another trip to Walmart to pick up yet another trial holiday photo, but I think I'm getting closer to resolution.

Fred was supposed to come home tonight. He has been in Vegas and Dallas since late last week. Last night, however, he called to say that he's having to make a quick stop by San Antonio on his way home. So now he's not getting home until tomorrow night, and this little change in plans means that he is now going to be flying on The Day Before Thanksgiving (may God have mercy on his soul). I hope his day isn't all "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," but I told him that he should prepare himself to spend the night in a roach motel with John Candy, just in case.

Picture this

I'm so sorry. I promised a recipe, didn't I? I just couldn't get it together for today though. I sent in my indexing project late last night, and I spent today working on our Christmas card photo, going to the commissary, and going to Walmart (twice--as part of working on our photo). I need to finish shopping for Thanksgiving and get this filthy house clean before Fred's parents arrive on Wednesday, plus I've still got a few weeks of school left this semester, and I really should get cranking on that last paper.

As I've been editing our holiday photo, I've been thinking a lot about a book I'm reading called The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz. Booklist says:

Who woulda thunk it? Here we are, in the early years of the twenty-first century, being driven bonkers by the staggering array of consumer goods from which we must choose. Choosing something as (seemingly) simple as shampoo can force us to wade through dozens, even hundreds, of brands. We are, the author suggests, overwhelmed by choice, and that's not such a good thing. Schwartz tells us that constantly being asked to make choices, even about the simplest things, forces us to "invest time, energy, and no small amount of self-doubt, and dread." There comes a point, he contends, at which choice becomes debilitating rather than liberating. Did I make the right choice? Can I ever make the right choice? It would be easy to write off this book as merely an extended riff on that well-worn phrase "too much of a good thing," but that would be a mistake. Despite a tendency toward highfalutin language ("the counterfactuals we construct can be tilted upward"), Schwartz has plenty of insightful things to say here about the perils of everyday life.

I'm in the middle of a section about 2 types of people: maximizers and satisficers. The quick and dirty is that maximizers agonize over making the best possible choice every time, while satisficers aim for the "good enough." Can you guess which group is happier overall with their choices? It's not the maximizers, and I'm afraid that's me, especially when it comes to my photos.

When I started planning this picture, I was determined to be a satisficer this time. This was not going to be a repeat of the time that I had a friend bury us to our necks on the North Shore of Oahu, stick Santa hats on our heads, and take our picture, only to not use the picture because it just wasn't as good as what I had in mind.



Instead, I wound up sewing a dress for Annabelle and a shirt for Mike, both out of the same Hawaiian print, and dragging them back up to the North Shore. I don't remember which of the photos on the 2 rolls of film that I shot made it as The Picture, but here is a representative sampling:







They look pretty happy considering they each cried at least once that day. Of course, they were probably scared of me. I vaguely recall throwing a hissy fit of my own and saying something about "If YOU don't care if your grandparents have a nice picture to look at on Christmas morning . . . " but it's all fuzzy after that. So I wasn't going to do that! I was gonna be a satisficer if it killed us all.

I started off so well. On the way home from Saturday's swim meet, I told the kids to shower and change into reasonably coordinating clothes when we got home so we could go take the picture and I could get an early start on the cards this year. I already had a location scouted out, just down the street at the credit union, in front of a pretty bush. We tossed a couple barstools in the van and took off for our photoshoot. Not even an hour later, we were back at home with some 50-odd photos to choose from.

And that is where I began the long, lonely slide from satisficer to maximizer. First I had to decide which picture (or pictures, because now some card formats allow for more than one shot) had the best chance of making the grade. I solicited opinions from some friends and family members who are privvy to a sneak preview and wound up even more confused than I had been, as there was no clear winner. Since then, I've spent quite a few hours performing light cosmetic surgery on images of my children, blurring backgrounds, messing with colors and lighting levels, consulting with my aunt the Photoshop goddess, etc., etc., etc. And then, because what you see on the monitor isn't necessarily what is going to come out of that nice, big printer at the store, I've made a total of 3 trips to Walmart (and I loathe going to Walmart!) to pick up trial prints.

I think I have finally narrowed it down to just a couple of pictures and expect to make the final decision any day now. Then I just have to choose the best card format from the bazillion-and-one formats that are available. My inner satisficer is quietly weeping in the darkest corner of my soul, but the maximizer in me is hoping to have these cards out by Easter.

Jailhouse rock

I did a little time in jail today. You don't believe me? Well, it's true.

Turns out that there is a confinement facility right here on Fort Knox AND they serve T-bone steaks and shrimp for lunch for $3.75 on Fridays. Fred found out about it yesterday when he and some of his coworkers took a tour, so of course they made plans to return today for the food. I am nothing if not a cheap date, so I went along.

I was amazed by how many of our neighbors I ran into at lunch. Apparently the jail is the hot, happening, local lunch venue. They certainly served a full house!

The NCO who runs the show there is an amazing woman. She grabbed me in a warm hug when Fred introduced us, and she went through the crowd handing out hot dinner rolls from a basket. I don't think she could have shown greater hospitality had we been guests in her very own home.

The food itself was surprisingly good. I think I've discovered the secret to portion control though--plastic flatware. A plastic knife is just not a worthy opponent for a well-done steak. (Fred says it's especially hard to eat steak with a plastic spoon and plastic knife, as he apparently had to do on more than one occasion in Iraq. Support the troops--send forks!) I had no utensil problems, however, when it came to devouring the slice of Derby pie (yes, Derby pie! in prison!!) that I shared with Fred.

After we gorged ourselves, we gathered the office together for a group photo. I thought it would be funnier if we could put Fred BEHIND the bars, but that didn't work out:

Something you don't see every day

Tee hee . . . in going through my old photos to find the first-date shot for my anniversary post, I happened to find this picture:



It's from my summer as a JAG intern. I had borrowed a set of BDUs from one of the girls in the office just to see what it was like. Fred happened to be there when I tried them on, and I think he was having a very hard time not laughing.

Happy anniversary!

Well, today makes 16 years for me and Fred. As I tell him each year on our anniversary, I've never dated ANYBODY for this long before!

Speaking of dating, I don't believe I've every shared our How We Met story here. I had gone to Germany for my first summer in law school to work as an intern for the US Army JAG Corps. All interns were required to register at the Civilian Personnel Office in Heidelberg on the first day. I had completed my paperwork and was waiting for some friends to finish theirs when a handsome young captain came dashing through the door with an intern in tow. He escorted his intern to the registration room and returned to the hall to wait.

We started chatting, and he asked me where I was from. "Oh, I'm from a tiny little town in Florida that nobody has ever heard of," I replied. He said he was from Jacksonville, and I said, "Oh, well, then maybe you HAVE heard of DeLand!"

Heard of it?! Why he had spent 4 years going to college there. The rest of the conversation went something like this:

ME: "College? As in Stetson University? Hey, that's where I went too! I'm not really FROM DeLand though. I was actually born in Pensacola."

HIM: "No kidding? Me, too!"

So there we were, 2 Pensacola babies turned Stetson grads, flirting madly in the hallway of CPO, Heidelberg. Fred called me up at work the next week and asked me out on our first date, the burning of the Heidelberg castle. We went with some friends of his (who were also on their first date and who also wound up getting married--it was a VERY good date) and his intern (who had been filling out his registration paperwork when the sparks first started to fly) and spent the day hanging out on the banks of the Neckar river. Fred had brought along his Stetson yearbook, so we spent some time playing Did You Know So and So:



After the sun went down that evening and the flares and fireworks shone from the castle looming over us, it started to rain, which was the perfect excuse for snuggling in close together under an umbrella. We spent every weekend for the rest of that summer together and went on some really awesome dates: Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich, Switzerland, London . . . I returned to Germany twice over the next year, and when Fred was transferred back to the States that next summer, we were married in the chapel at Stetson.

Fast forward almost 2 years . . . It's January 1992, and I'm pregnant with Mike. Fred is in Kansas for 9 weeks, so I have gone to Florida to kill time while I wait for him. While I'm there, I go to spend a few days with Fred's parents. Fred's mom gives me his baby book. When I open it, his isolette card falls into my lap. I pick it up and read it and see . . . that we were delivered by the same doctor.

Cue the Twilight Zone music!

Hubba hubba hubby!

Fred is joining some sort of club where they dress up in tuxedoes, eat, drink, and smoke cigars. Tonight was his first meeting:



Quite the hottie, eh?

Scenes from the 'hood

We're enjoying a beautiful autumn here at Fort Knox. The tree that I posted about a couple weeks ago has long since dropped its leaves, but plenty of others are continuing the show, like this one:



Of course, with pretty leaves comes a whole lot of raking. The good news though is that we just have to get the leaves out to the curb, where a big vacuum truck comes along weekly and slurps them all up. The better news is that it has been quite warm, as you can tell by Fred's unconventional November attire:



While I was outside with the camera commemorating the raking, I decided to take a couple of neighborhood shots. This is what our street looks like:



And this is our house:



Not too shabby, eh? Of course, it would be better if we had FURNITURE. The new living room stuff is being delivered on Thursday (finally!), and Fred and I are setting out once again this weekend in search of dining room furniture. I'll post pictures soon.