TheSaint

At one point when I first got on board the boat I was nominated to go down between the turbine generators and clean during a field day. Very hot (we were underway, so the engine room had steam in it), very nasty with leaked lube oil. The access was a very narrow panel in the deck, maybe 10 inches by 18 inches. You really had to squeeze through, and it had steam piping on either side of it. So I finished cleaning down there and was squeezing out of the hole, when one of the belt loops on my overalls caught on something, a pipe hanger or some other protrusion below the deck. My arms are above the deck, the hangup is below the deck. So I'm sitting there wiggling and squirming in this little hole, trying to get free. And suddenly I realize that the front of my overalls, just below the beltline, is pressed up against a steam trap, which is an uninsulated steam line. And it's starting to get warm. VERY warm. In a very sensitive area of the anatomy. I bolted up out of that access like a rocket. Tore the loop right out of my overalls, put about a six-inch rip in them. Everyone up top was laughing their asses off. Didn't care.

Something that you learn very quickly in the engine room of a nuclear submarine.

Like everything else he made, you either love it or you hate it. No in-between. I have one friend for whom it is her favorite movie of all time. So much so that she refuses to read the books. She believes that if she reads the books it will ruin her experience of the movie.

Two big ones this morning. (At least for me.) Bob Uecker, "Mr. Baseball", not very well known for his Major League Baseball career, but very well known as the self-effacing, wise-cracking announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers for over fifty years. Also a star of many commercials back in the 80s and 90s. Passed yesterday at 90. "I must be in the front row!" David Lynch also passed away yesterday, at 78. Directed every weird movie you've ever heard of. Eraserhead. Blue Velvet. Wild at Heart. Mulholland Drive. Twin Peaks. And, of course, the movie everyone loves to hate, the ill-fated 1984 adaptation of Dune. I remember going to see Blue Velvet in the theater in Westwood with one of my friends (who also recently passed away), and walking out afterwards thinking, "What the hell did I just watch?" But I guarantee you, I thought about it at least once an hour for the next week. RIP, Mr. Lynch. I hope the afterlife makes more sense than your movies did.

We do rib roast for Christmas every year, standing tradition. This year it was a four-bone standing rib roast, Yorkshire pudding, scallops, fondant potatoes, and balsamic-glazed Brussels sprouts. It was pretty outstanding, and then the leftover roast became French dip sandwiches the next night, which was also outstanding. This week, after we got back from California, I discovered that Fry's had rib roasts on clearance for $7 a pound, no limit. Must...resist...urge...to...overspend....

I want to spend Christmas with my wife and children. And have another fantastic family Christmas feast (which involves a four-bone standing rib roast). Honestly, I really don't care about anything after that. It's all downhill from there.

Everything is vaporware until, well, it isn't vaporware anymore. I thought that was understood by now?

One of my friends in high school loved Young Frankenstein so much she named her dog Abbie Normal.

Aw man, Teri Garr passed.

Space shuttle was supposed to make everything cheaper....

If your stupid plan works then it wasn't stupid.

Well, yeah, that's all part of the equation when it comes to "cost effectiveness". With a nuclear-powered vessel your maintenance costs go up, your crew salaries go up, your port fees go up. You're not allowed to discharge primary loop coolant overboard anywhere at sea anymore, so you have to store it onboard and transfer it in port to a decontamination facility, that's an added cost. Your midlife overhaul is now years instead of months, and that is downtime that the ship isn't earning money, so that needs to be calculated into the cost of ownership as well. It isn't just a simple matter of trading the cost of the reactor for the cost of fuel oil.