the clueless american

I got this from my sis-in-law today and it made me laugh:

Apparently, one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mom or my dad, or maybe my older brother Colin or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I'm pretty sure it's Colin.

We're off to Lanzarote tomorrow in the Canary Islands. The weather isn't going to be that great, but hopefully it will be better than here. Fran's got a triathlon on Saturday, and he invited us to come watch him compete. We generally don't get vacation during the school year, but the PTB gave me the go-ahead.

From the friday five:

This is the end of the Friday Five. I know most of you have seen this coming and I appreciate you humoring me. I haven't enjoyed it for some time now and because of that I can no longer justify the bandwidth. I'm not going to give it away or sell it or bring anyone on to help; Two-and-a-half years is a good run. Let's let it go.

Thank you to everyone who has participated over the past 2+ years, for taking this silly little idea and running with it. Thanks again to the donators for their generosity and thoughtfulness, and those of you who have emailed me notes of support and encouragement over the last few months.

I'm sorry I only got into it the last month or so of its life. Now what will I do every Friday if not ignore my F5 reminder in the calendar?

This is just a friendly reminder to everyone that it's is one of those funny things we call a "contraction" (in big Dr. Evil quotes). It means it is, and in no way demonstrates the possessive. If you want to show possesion, please use its.

That is all.

Well, the final countdown starts today when the new gringos come into town. We're picking them up at the airport this afternoon and taking them to Rota Monday to inprocess.

We can't believe that 2 years have flown by so quickly and that we're now the ones sponsoring a new family. I've managed to coordinate our HHG move and the BMW shipment this week. While I'm at Rota I'll see about setting up our travel back to the States in just eight short weeks!

Well, we got the big news this morning. And I mean BIG!

The doctor confirmed e's suspicions (and one weak test result) with a blood test. We're going to be parents early next year! The doc's first guess at a due date is 21 January, but we'll just have to see.

Wow. Even though we were trying, I think it's fair to say that I'm completely stunned.

Trying to think about what to say today, my thoughts are filled with the continuing stories of what happened not only in the Abu Ghraib prison but in other Iraq locations and in Afghanistan as well.

I'm not going to defend or deny; I hate when you have clear video evidence of a crime and the family members go on TV and say, "That's not my Johnnie! Nossir, he would never do anything like the video you're watching of him!" The sad fact is that the military has people in it who commit crimes.

What I will say is please take a breath and don't think that this small element represents all of us. I guarantee you that the vast majority of military members, some of whom were working close to if not in the abuse locations, are just as surprised and shocked and ashamed and disappointed as the average person. People around the world are using it as an excuse to say that all US citizens are evil. A lot of US citizens, failing to see the irony, are saying that they shouldn't be stereotyped but that these abuses mean that the whole military is immoral.

All that aside, this mistreatment raises some serious concerns. As an Academy grad and even more so as a C-130 pilot, I've spent most of my military career hearing about Vietnam. The one conclusion that always jumped out of those stories was that WE WOULD NEVER TREAT PRISONERS THAT WAY. Now it seems that we may have taken the first several steps down the road to being just as bad as the bad guys, and that doesn't sit well with me. We need to flush out everyone who thinks it's OK to mistreat POWs, even if it means firing a lot of otherwise "good" generals, CIA agents, and presidential staffers. We need to punish everyone responsible for the wrongdoing, not just sacrifice a few scapegoats, and then reclaim our place among the nations who do not, under any circumstances, abuse prisoners.

Yeah, that's me, apparently. Cindy thinks I must have some sort of anxiety that's throwing Lulu off, because lately I can't seem to ride her. Lulu is the horse I started riding back in January. I got very confident on her and even had a solo ride on her in February. Then, after a short break for one holiday or another, I got back on Lulu and everything had changed. She gets very agitated when I'm on her and only wants to do either a stuttering trot or stop. Walking is just about impossible. After this happened to me a few times, Cindy told me that Lulu was getting a little scatty with everyone and might need some time off, but every time we saw another rider at Cindy's, Lulu looked just fine.

Cindy wound up schooling me on Bonnie a few weeks and then switching me over to Sorpresa, a larger, more powerful horse that I'd only ridden once before. Riding Sorpresa has been going fairly well; I cantered on her twice this week. When I went out on Thursday it was threatening rain, which meant we wanted to stay in the school close to the stables. That also meant I was on Lulu because Sorpresa doesn't do well in confined spaces.

When I first got on Lulu she was very agitated and walking fast. After about 10 minutes we decided that the saddle needed to be adjusted, and when I got back on everything was better. Lulu gave me a great walk and a few steady trots. When Cindy took away my stirrups to help me practice my balance, Lulu went nuts again. Every time I walked her on she immediately broke into a trot. When I gently tugged the reins a little to slow her, she abruptly halted. I tried sitting back more, taking away the reins, even closing my eyes and thinking relaxing thoughts (Cindy's idea) to help calm Lulu down. Nothing worked, and after 15 minutes Cindy jumped on Lulu and spent the next 15 minutes trying to calm her. At the end of 15 minutes Lulu was a little calmer but still tried to break into a trot every few seconds. I was glad to see that it wasn't only me, but I wish we didn't have to go through this in the first place. It's hard for me to comprehend that now I can't even do a supervised walk with the horse that I took out by myself over 3 months ago!