Dana managed to get home for four days vacation around the fourth.  Finding flights took him a bit of maneuvering as he wasn’t notified that his leave was officially approved until the last minute and the majority of available flights did not fit his schedule.  Finally, he got the flights online.  One from Pensacola to Boston and another from Boston back to Pensacola.

I asked him if he wanted to do anything special when he got home and he said he wanted to sleep and eat steak.  So, I got a large pile of porterhouse steaks (fortunately, they were on sale) and stocked up on soda and iced tea.

Derek picked him up at the airport about noon on Thursday since I had to work, and they did a little brotherly bonding on the long drive home through stop-and-go traffic.  It seems like only yesterday I would have to pry them apart because they were trying to choke each other to death in the living room (ironic) or putting their fists through each other’s bedroom doors.  Sigh.  Finally, they seem to have gained some respect and even admiration for each other.  Who would have thought? 

I had not seen Dana since his leave after boot camp when he looked pretty thin and run-down.  He’s looking better now, healthier and stronger, and older.  He is going to school now but he still has to get up at the “crack of dark” to have PT before showering and changing for school.  He generally skips breakfast because he says there isn’t really enough time for the shower and change and then waiting in line for chow.  He doesn’t want to risk being late for school. 

So far, Dana is still learning how to talk to the planes, how to recognize different aircraft, and which ones get priority.  He is doing pretty well in school, apparently, as he said he was currently second in his class.  He did complain about all the paperwork though.  The Marines don’t let you get away with skipping your homework.  He can’t wait for the part of school when they will let him on the flight simulator.  His former roommate told him that if you crash a plane near the tower, there is a fuel truck parked there that will blow up too!  Cool!  He wants to try and get a plane to fly right into the tower to see what will happen.  I would think they’d frown on that stuff, but maybe it’s good that they see what a disaster it would be if they make a mistake like that.

A couple of steaks on the grille and about 14 hours of sleep, and Dana was off doing some more brotherly bonding with Derek.  Dana came back late Friday night sporting a new tattoo.  He has been wanting one for a long time and has been working on designs for it.  The Marines have rules about where you can put a tattoo and how much of it can show and what it can look like.  Derek took him to his friend Drew’s house for the tattoo.  Drew is just learning to do tattooing, but I guess he must be improving because Dana got his tattoo for free.  Drew PAID Derek $25 to let him put a tattoo on him!  Oh well.  At least it is a nice tattoo, a dragon on top of a globe.  Just the outlines for now.  Dana will get it colored in later on in Pensacola.

Dana also snuck (sneaked?) over to his dear grandmother’s house to try and rescue his Camaro.  No such luck.  Apparently his father has been “fixing” it some more and Dana couldn’t get it started.  He had wanted to bring it back home and leave it here.  I’m not sure why it makes a difference which yard it is parked in while he is in the service, but I guess it does.

A couple more steaks on the grille, a movie with his girlfriend, a cookout at his girlfriend’s parents (I believe they are seeing son-in-law material) and a little more bonding with his brother, and it was time to get back to work.  I drove Dana to Boston on Sunday and dropped him off at the terminal.  I asked him if it was worth the airfare to come home just for four days, and he said, “It was worth it, just so I could use the GOOD toilet paper!”

I think someone is having WAY too much fun in the Marine Corps!  I was briefly awakened again last night by my phone beeping a text message.  My bleary eyes couldn’t make out the picture that came with the text, but I knew the source.  Dana was working the night shift again.

That’s Dana, on the left, and the text with the photo said “my latest disciplinary action as COG”

The part that puzzles me is, who does he find to take the pictures and are their mothers getting silly pictures in the middle of the night too? 

 I’m not complaining, of course, I’m very proud of him and happy that he seems to be enjoying his choice of careers.  People ask me, “Aren’t you afraid?” and after thinking about it for many months, I have to say “No, not at all!”  My son is kept track of by the Marine Corps.  He has to be in his barracks by 11pm on his nights off.  He has to get special permission if he wants to go out in town in jeans and a t-shirt.  He is not at some college party getting drunk with a bunch of other college kids, driving drunk, doing drugs, hanging out on street corners, or flunking out of college at my expense.  (Please! don’t send me hate mail!  I know that not all college kids are partying their tuition away.)

Dangerous?  Of course it could be dangerous.  He is entering training for Air Traffic Control, which sounds benign enough.  Actually ATC means that he will be responsible for managing air traffic in combat situations.  This also means setting up the locations for ATC which may be behind enemy lines, and where we don’t already have troops. 

I asked if if we didn’t have SeaBees for that purpose?  He said, “Mom, they’re Navy!”  Ok, but I meant WE as in the United States.  Aren’t the SeaBees the guys with the bulldozers and heavy equipment to build airstrips?  Patiently, he repeated, “Mom, they’re Navy.”  He said “The Marines will have to go in first and make the area safe before the SeaBees will show up!”

Oh well.  For now, at least, he is safe.  His training will last until Fall and then he will find out where he goes from there.

Am I worried?  Not particularly.  I think about the kid who was driving home from work with an ice cream cone and swerved into a telephone pole and died.  The ice cream was melting on the floor of the car when the first cruiser arrived.  Did he drop the cone and swerve trying to save it, or did it drop after he hit the pole?  Freak accident. 

I also think about the kid who stopped on the highway to help a stranded motorist.  Another car rammed the back of his, shoving it into the disabled car and crushing both of his legs between the two bumpers.  He lost both of his legs close to home.

I think about the senator’s daughter who died when she got kicked in the face and neck at a horse show.  It wasn’t even her horse.  It was almost time to leave when some kids had started a game of running up behind one of the horses and jumping on over his rump like they’d seen in some cowboy movie.  Unfortunately, when this girl tried it, she didn’t make a very good leap and the horse had had enough.  As she slipped back down the horse kicked.

 I guess the point is, that life is dangerous.  If you manage to go from day to day without being exposed to any danger, then you are probably not really living.

So while I realize that being a Marine can be dangerous, I also realize that my son is being trained to handle danger and he is learning things that can’t be learned at college.  He is also not wasting his time.  Plenty of time for college later. 

I only get one day off per week, now that it is swimming pool season, and I have spent most of it trying to figure out how to put a blog on our company web site.

I don’t have it there yet.  I started this one and put it on my own website so I could get the bugs all worked out before I put something messed up on the big site.  Who knew it would be so confusing?  I have made more websites than I can remember, and currently maintain six sites that I built from scratch.  Why is blogging hard?

 The other night I was awakened, briefly, in the middle of the night by a short beep on my cell phone.  I didn’t notice until later in the day that I had a text message.  I don’t normally get text messages, so I hadn’t associated the beep from my phone, and by the time I looked at it I was getting ready for work.

I saw that it was from my son Dana, and took a quick look at the photo on my phone.  For some reason, I thought it was a screenshot from Darkstone, the antiquated game I am playing on my dual core laptop.  Dana had laughed at me for dusting off the old disc and polishing it with Pledge to fix the scratches (try it!, it works better than those fancy disc polishing contraptions).  He said it was much easier to just download the game.  I guessed he had done just that, so he could also play the antiquated game he used to love.  It looked like he had taken a picture of the final battle of the game, at the entrance to Draak’s lair.

It wasn’t until today, when I looked again, that I saw that the picture seemed to be something else and I uploaded it to my computer for a better look.  HA!! It is really a picture of Dana sitting on some sort of missiley thing at the base in Pensacola.  He works nights at a post.  And works really hard, as you can see!