On the Road This Week

Leaving a little later today for a trip to Newport, RI, where I will undergo three and a half days of grueling indoctrination (heh) designed to make me into a passable "Professor of Joint Maritime Operations".  I will be teaching a class on Thursday nights this year at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, for those "non-resident" students of the Naval War College interested in pursuing their studies.

My usual lodgings in Newport are full-up while I'm there, so I decided that this time I'd stay in Jamestown, just across the bridge.  I have a few friends there, and it is a quaint little place very different from the hubbub of summertime Newport.  Its expense exceeds the sum Uncle Sugar allots for my lodging, so I'll kick in a few sheckels each night to enjoy a little better QoL than I would at the Bates Motel in Newpawt.

I'm looking forward to teaching this class, even if I am somewhat infamous for my dissertations on the evil of excessive "Jointness".  While I am very happy to no longer be in uniform, I do miss the interaction with bright young whippersnappers, and I imagine this will land me squarely back in that briar-patch.  I shall pattern my instruction after Robin Williams' character in "Dead Poet Society"......



That part of the summer is upon us in which the Kitten begins to fret about not having accomplished all she wished, the Kittens are moaning about school, and frenetic activity abounds in an attempt to wring the very last bit of magic from the season.  I have been amazed at how lovely the weather has been, so nice in fact, that the annual series of running gun battles with the Kitten over the use of AC has been rendered moot.  We've kept the house open much of the time, and the week ahead looks like more of the same.  My lawn--which be this time in past summers had begun to turn a brownish grey, is still quite green and full.  All in all, it has been a wonderful summer.

My only regret is that another summer has come and gone without me spending a week on the Outer Banks.  I have a need deep in my bones to get back out there...perhaps next summer...