Life in an Army Family
tqa | August 6, 2009
Yesterday, I took the kids to the doctor for their school physicals. I wouldn't normally subject you to an account of the day-to-day minutia of my personal life, but given the current debate about how we should handle health care in the United States, the details might be of interest.
We arrived - without an appointment - at a medical facility that we had not been to before. We did not have medical records with us, and the only paperwork of any kind that we had brought were the forms that needed to be filled out to enroll the kids in sports programs. When we checked in, the only thing I…
tqa | July 15, 2009
I just saw a shuttle launch! I haven't been this excited since Christmas Eve, 1985!
I would have mentioned I was going to the launch ahead of time here, but things happened kinda quick. Here's a condensed version of events:
As you might expect, there's extensive medical support at shuttle launches. One of the layers of support falls more or less into the "let's really, really, really hope we don't need these guys" category - medical personnel who support a rescue operation, if one is needed. Many of the doctors who work those standbys are military personnel, because the job description…
tqa | December 11, 2008
I picked up my copy of this book when it came out last year. My wife read it - and loved it - immediately. It matched what she saw whenever she went to the CASH on her base in Afghanistan. I've picked up the book any number of times since then, but I could never quite bring myself to read it. I was absolutely positive that reading the book was going to hurt. I read the book today. It hurt as much as I thought it would. And now I feel forced to do something that's probably going to sound a little strange.
I don't quite know how I'm going to do this, but I'm going to try to convince you to…
tqa | August 6, 2008
Don't get me wrong. Living on base has some huge advantages for military families. The kids are around other kids who also move a lot. My wife can bike to work (on days when she doesn't walk). There are good recreational facilities available close to the house, both for us and the kids. On the whole, it's a good deal - especially for the price.
But there are also some disadvantages. There are a lot of training programs here, and quite a few of the classes get to do their physical training together, as a unit, under the gentle direction of their instructors. Early this morning, a couple of…
tqa | July 1, 2008
It's a little bit loud at the new Authority Family residence right now. The guys in the picture are practicing right overhead at the moment. The dog's in the bathtub, and the cat just did a backflip.
As always, feel free to click the thumbnail above for the full size version. That picture was taken at one of last week's practices. 1/500th of a second at f/8 using a 180mm lens.
tqa | March 25, 2008
It's been just over 5 years since the start of the Iraq war, and we've just passed another of those morbid little milestones that get so much attention in the press. This particular milestone has a nice round number on it - 4,000 - which apparently makes it somehow more important, or significant, or something than less neat numbers like 2526, or 3981, or 1135. The media's spent a little while circling over the battlefield, waiting for the 4,000th American corpse to hit the ground. The milestone arrived and passed more or less on schedule, and the media will settle back down and wait for the…