My fingernails are perfect.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I have been a “house husband” for the last couple of weeks, and it is starting to affect me. My fingernails, once battered, proud homes for tool grease and yard dirt, are now evenly cut and oddly whitish in hue. And that’s not all.

I know where all the dishes go.
I understand how to wring out a wet mop.
I can change a diaper – while eating a sandwich.

But my inexorable decline into metrosexuality hasn’t been without a few bumps.

Early on, I discovered that a dishwasher is not, contrary to common perception, a limitless box for dirty dishes. Eventually you run out of room and actually have to empty it.

I always thought that dirt disappeared into the floor after a few days. Apparently this is not true.

Despite eye-watering technological advances, we have not yet discovered a way to empty a kitchen trash receptacle without having a human in the loop.

The floor is further away for older parents than for younger parents. For me, each toy requires the formation of a bend-down-and-pick-it-up strategy…and more importantly, a stand-back-up strategy.

But the experience, however painful, has taught me a few things that I can use later in life.

For example, a dog will eat almost anything thrown on the floor.
All clothes can be washed together, if the final product isn’t that important to you.
If a dish is dirty but looks clean, it’s clean.
“Vacuuming” is a colloquialism for “picking up toys.”

Luckily, I haven’t yet sunk to the next level, in which you enter the the world of Oprah and eyebrow pluckers. Soon enough I will be free to return to my pre-house husband ways, and life will get back to normal. But I think this experience has been good for me. I have grown. I have matured.

And I have some fine looking fingernails.

What do Ping Pong and a comic strip have to do with a fundraiser to purchase laptops for wounded warriors?

A lot.

Because today I had planned on telling you all about Soldiers’ Angels, who are raising money to purchase high tech equipment for wounded warriors. Guys who can’t get out of bed easily need laptops. Those who can’t use their hands need voice controlled equipment. The Angels are holding an event called Project Valour-IT, running until Veterans Day, and they really need your support. (Click on the image and you’ll go right to the donation site.)

I have seen the Soldiers’ Angels in action, at military hospitals like Walter Reed, Bethesda, Brooke Army Medical Center, and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. They provide comfort to our troops and take my word for it, their name fits. They really are Angels.

I was going to tell you all this, but then I got a call from Stephan Pastis, creator of the popular cartoon strip, “Pearls Before Swine.” Stephan is a big supporter of our troops too. He has traveled with other cartoonists across three different continents to visit wounded troops and active duty personnel. His affection for the men and women in uniform is palpable. He is a friend and a patriot.

Here’s a picture of us flying to Kuwait.

See? We’re buds.

So it came as quite a shock when he told me to read his latest post, “Saddamapalooza, Day 3; or, Stuck Inside of Kuwait With the Baghdad Blues Again.”

Go ahead. Read it. I’ll wait.

I mean, this is one of the guys I flew to Southwest Asia with. We drew cartoons for over 1500 troops on our last trip. We were in Iraq together, for cryin’ out loud.

Pastis in protective gear

So it hurt to see his article. But I’m not a vindictive sort, and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Besides, I know the last thing he would want to do is interfere with a noble cause like Project Valour-IT, because they really, really need our help. The troops the Soldiers’ Angels serve sacrificed for all of us, and now it is our opportunity to give something back. (Click on the image to donate now.)

So even though, yes, he beat me in ping pong (Editor’s note – he did, in fact, lose three straight games to Jeff Keane, and did not win a game. Nada. Zip.), that’s OK, because I hope that by writing about it he will have given more people the chance to donate to the Soldiers’ Angels’ effort to help our wounded warriors. So feel free to send this article around.

And just to show there are no hard feelings, here’s a little something I threw together for my buddy Stephan. I hope he likes it.

The early morning sun cast an eerie glow over Baghdad as I lined up my shot. The conditions weren’t bad – it was warm but not hot, the air was still, and I had an unobstructed view of my target.

Over the fifteen years or so that I have played golf, I have found myself in many challenging situations. I have been in the trees and in the sand. I have lost balls and four-putted. But no matter how badly I played, I always knew I could make it up on the next hole, or the next time I played.

Not this time. This time I had one shot, and it had to be perfect.

I pulled out a six iron and lined up. I whispered to myself to watch the ball, keep my left arm straight and follow through. As I drew back and began to swing, a thousand thoughts shot through my brain, and none of them were about golf.

I thought of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The no-fly zones. The STARK. Operation Iraqi Freedom. All the men and women who gave their lives and limbs to fight a tyrant so self-absorbed that he diverted water from the Tigris River to create man-made lakes for his palaces, at the expense of local farmers whose fields went dry. A man who took pleasure in torture – the real, horrible, medieval kind.

I thought of the magnificent troops we had met, stationed a million miles from home in hostile territory, yet still capable of flashing a smile and deflecting any praise directed their way.

That swing – at least to me – was for all of them. As I connected, I watched the ball sail straight and true, plopping harmlessly in Saddam’s lake.

It was a perfect shot.

You have probably taken the test – or something like it – in a military leadership class during the course of your career, and it is always interesting to see in which category you fall.

But I don’t need a test to tell me I am an introvert. In a crowded room, my preferred position would be in the corner, facing the wall. After a big event, all I want to do is sit in a dark, quiet place and recover. When you tell an extovert, “When I’m with you, it’s like being alone”, he or she will take that as an insult. An introvert sees it as the ultimate compliment.

My wife is an introvert too. When we get back from church, we crash on the sofa and relax until our energy gets replenished.

But not my daughter. She is an extrovert. In the Myers-Briggs format, she wouldn’t just be an E, she would be an E! Extroverts get energy from crowds (introverts get their energy sucked out of them), and after church she is on fire. Her eyes are ablaze and she needs to burn off all the vitality she gained by being in contact with her people. She does this by running laps around her parents who are busy sitting on the couch. The combined introvertness of two adults is too powerful for the extrovertness of a 20-month-old, however, and eventually her energy subsides – much like an oil fire is smothered with a layer of AFFF (aqueous film-forming foam).

My test said I was somewhere between ISJT and INTJ. According to the personalitypage.com site, I am responsible, dependable, and I have, “…an exceptional ability to turn theories into solid plans of action.”

It also says I have little interest in the other people’s thoughts or feelings, that other people may have a difficult time understanding me (a little distressing to a cartoonist), that I am doomed to work long hours and that I can be, “…unwittingly taken advantage of.”

So if I’m reading this right, I don’t like people, no one gets my jokes, and when I put in a lot of time on a project, no one will care.

It’s enough to make me want to stand in the corner and stare at the wall.

Predicting weather out at sea is an extremely hard task. Imagine a cross between discovering the cure for cancer and aligning all those colored squares on a Rubik’s Cube. It takes years of education and experience to understand the temperature variations and lapse rates at the different altitudes, calculate the rate of absorption of moisture compared to the amount of solar radiation, and to align the resultant variables into their proper chain reactions and determine basically “if this occurs, then that will happen.” Of course, when your forecasting location keeps on moving (or deviates from its planned route) – that changes everything!

Ever since man first took to the water, one of the most critical environmental elements needed to be understood was wind. Where would Columbus or Magellan be without knowing how to determine the wind patterns? Our modern Navy is still very dependent on wind. Wind speed and direction will determine sea wave heights and direction, whether or not fog can develop or dissipate, and for the carriers – the launch and recovery of the aircraft.

Do you happen to know that a carrier normally needs 30 knots of wind on the bow to launch or recover a plane? In over 20 years as a Navy meteorologist, I have had numerous discussions (okay – one way conversations) with my Commanding Officers on what their wind requirements were. You ever try to stay in a 30NM box in the Adriatic with light and variable winds? That forced the ship to steam at 25 plus knots toward the corner of the box to create the wind on the bow and launch the aircraft, then scramble back and run at it again to recover the previous cycle of planes, all the while staying in that confounded box. The Skipper even threatened me with a Big Chicken Dinner (B.C.D. aka Bad Conduct Discharge) that day if I wasn’t correct on my wind forecast.

One sunny day out in the Atlantic, I was having a tough time determining how the winds were going to change in the next 24 hours. I asked my observer to calculate the true winds (relative wind speed and direction as compared to ship’s course & speed) and he was having a difficult time in providing me with an answer. When I inquired what the problem was, he told me that the ship kept turning in circles. It wasn’t a constant turn but enough to throw off the reading of the instruments. There wasn’t any flight operations or drills going on at the time so I was a bit puzzled why the odd maneuvering. I turned on the flight deck camera display and quickly analyzed the situation. It turns out that our very own OA Division Officer was standing duty as the Officer of the Deck while the Commanding Officer was taking a quick break to jog around the flight deck – guess who was offering him a little “tail wind” assistance?

Oh – I never did get that Chicken Dinner as promised – do not know if he was joking or not as my forecast hit the mark (that day at least!)

Editor’s note: Any similarity between the OOD in this story and any Broadside cartoonist – living or dead – is purely coincidental.

SEALs can freeze you with one look.
Computer guys can freeze up your laptop with one click.

SEALs use high tech equipment to wipe out their enemies.
IT guys use high tech equipment and sometimes wipe your hard drive.

SEALs can insert themselves in hostile territory and kill their adversaries.
Computer guys can insert a code and kill your ability to watch YouTube.

SEALs can ruin a bad guy’s whole day.
Computer techs can ruin all your files…which also ruins your whole day.

Both of them use passwords and have their own language.

When called, you never know when either of them will show up.

…And when they do, bad things usually happen.

Just to clear the air and avoid (a) being “eliminated” or (b) “infected with a virus”, let me just say that I have the utmost respect for both of these communities, and admire their knowledge and skills. They are professionals who contribute tremendously to our national security.

And I sure hope I didn’t offend eith

[Microsoft has encountered a problem and needs to shut down.]

I received this great story from Raul, a Navy veteran. If this isn’t a Broadside Moment, I don’t know what is.

Back in the mid 80’s I was the Damage Control Assistant (DCA)/R-Division officer of my ship, and we were responsible for fixing all the problems related to CHT (Collection Holding Transfer), i.e., toilet problems.

One early morning I picked up the phone and the person at the other end was none other than the XO. He was laughing and he said, “DCA, I need you to come over to my stateroom.” He hung up. I jumped off my chair and poked my head in the CHENG’s office (Chief Engineer) to asked him if he knew what was going on. He said he had no clue and wished me luck.

When I got to the XO’s stateroom, he was all smiles. He pointed to his shower area and told me to talk to my guys. As I approached them, I saw a CO2 bottle on the floor with the hose connected and the exhaust side modified. Instead of a horn at the end it had a small half inch diameter tube attached to it. I knew then and there I was in trouble.

My ship was over forty years old, and there were sections of CHT piping as old as the ship. Due to the age of the vessel, sometimes we came across some weird welding jobs that were not documented anywhere.

The XO’s toilet had been giving us problems now for a whole week. It kept clogging. The last time that happened, I told my guys, “The next time we have a problem with the XO’s toilet, FIX IT! I don’t care how you do it.” Well they did. A CO2 bottle with a modified tip can produce over 800 psi at the end of it when activated. No amount of gunk can stand that kind of pressure. It was not an approved way to unclog the lines, but it worked. I had been warned by my boss to stop my guys from doing that.

I asked the First Class Petty Officer to tell me what happened. He told me to go to LT Harris’ Stateroom and take a look. Lt Harris was one of the saltiest, meanest LDOs I ever had the pleasure to meet. When I opened his stateroom door I could not believe my eyes. On three sides of the stateroom, starting about 4 feet off the floor and going upwards there was a light brown color. Spots were sprinkled all over the bulkheads. And in the air was just a wonderful smell of – well, you can guess.

It turned out that someone in the past had welded the “gray water” line from the sink in LT Harris’ stateroom to the CHT line coming off the XO’s Stateroom. When my guys used the CO2 canister to “flush” the line, everything came out at the point of least resistance – the sink in LT Harris’ Stateroom.

Everyone in the Wardroom got a laugh out of that one for a long time – except LT Harris and me.

Thanks for the sea story, Raul!

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I don’t care what anyone says. There is no such thing as a “natural born leader.” Leaders are made. Leadership is taught in the school of hard knocks.

Allow me to illustrate.

As a young Ensign fresh out of Surface Warfare Officers School (SWOS), my brain was stuffed full of theory, diagrams, and rules. I was raring to get on with it.

One of the theories pounded into our heads was to rely on the Chief. He would train me and keep the division running smoothly.

Except we didn’t have one.

So I did what junior officers have done since the beginning days of our Navy. I made about a million mistakes, all by myself.

One of them had to do with football.

The ship had a flag football team, and the games were a good way to burn off some steam and get some exercise. Most of the players were enlisted Sailors, and in the huddle they always called me, “Mr. Bacon.”

“Mr. Bacon, you go long. Mr. Bacon, you block.”

Confident in my weeks of experience as a Naval Officer, I told them, “Hey, on the field, call me Jeff.” And they did. Somewhere in my fading memories of SWOS was the stern warning to maintain your rank. The Chain of Command exists for a reason.

What a bunch of hooey. I could handle it. Besides, I didn’t want them to think I was a jerk.

From then on, while we were on the gridiron, we were all one team. No ranks, no wardroom – just a group of buddies playing football. On the ship, we put the uniforms back on, and order was restored.

Until one day on board the ship, as I bent over the drinking fountain, one of the players leaned over and quietly said, “Hi, Jeff.” I froze there, the stream of water quietly splashing off my chin. The familiarity of the playing field had leaked aboard.

I was at a Terminator moment.

I could see the future. More and more Sailors would call me by my first name. Instead of “being tough but fair”, I would just be “that jerk Jeff”. Unpopular decisions would be taken personally. The Captain would eventually find out, I would be counseled and maybe even brought up on charges of fraternization. Then one day machines would rule the world and try to wipe out the human race.

I had to do something. I had to go back in time and make things right.

Swallowing my hubris like a half-chewed piece of steak, I announced to the team that forever more I must be referred to as, “Mr. Bacon.”

I could see it in their eyes. They thought I was a jerk.

So don’t tell me leadership comes naturally. It has to be learned. It has to be shoved down your throat. You have to be hit between the eyes with the sledge hammer of experience every once in awhile before it starts to sink in.

And one day, after the pain subsides, after the humiliation has faded and the scars have healed, you will finally have earned the title of natural born leader.

Six hundred dollars for a toilet seat? Peanuts. I paid almost $800 for a six dollar pipe, and I don’t even work for the government.

My water stunk – the water coming out of my faucet smelled like rotten eggs. In the Navy I would have just called Public Works or talked to the Damage Control Assistant and someone smart would have fixed it.

But I’m not in the Navy anymore. I had to call plumbers. Each of them came out and every one of them said it was my hot water heater.

But the smell only came out of the cold water side.

Each of them asked if I had a well. I don’t.

They all rubbed their chins, said something philisophical like, “Hmmm,” then handed me an estimate to fix the problem. Some wanted to replace all my pipes. Some wanted to install filter systems. None of them had a clue why.

So I called the city. He walked around, suggested my problem was the hot water heater, asked if I had a well, and then he flushed out the fire hydrant down the street and left.

The smell was still there, so I decided to find the source. I started with the little pipe under the sink – the one that connects the sink to the water supply – and there it was. It took about five minutes and six bucks to replace it the and now the water is perfect.

But while he was at my house, the city guy noticed I needed a backflow protector on the sprinkler system, and he gave me a deadline to fix it, or else.

This was my bill:

Install backflow protector: $650.00
Inspector fee to certify the system: $ 70.00
Permit Fee: $ 71.40

Total cost: $791.40

For a six dollar pipe.

So now I have a little more empathy for the guy who bought the toilet seats for the government, and for the poor sap who paid way too much for government screwdrivers. I think I understand what happened.

The whole thing has made me wiser, though, and the next time something crops up I’ll know how to handle it.

I’ll sell the house.

According to the Department of Labor, the first Labor Day was celebrated in New York on September 5, 1882. The holiday is a “…national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”

That is government-speak for a day off.

Which is ironic, since I, like most Americans, scheduled a ton of work to do around the house. This weekend I planned to “fix up the lawn”, put wood preservative on our shake shingles, fix a leaky bathtub, and clean up the studio.

As of this report, I accomplished none of those. But I did get in a nice hike.

What made the hike so much more enjoyable was knowing that I was skipping out of the work I should have been doing.

A long time ago I was a fresh-faced kid in Deck Division. I had been assigned the job of cleaning the Captain’s gig, but was convinced to sneak out and hit the Enlisted Men’s Club (that’s what they called it in those days) by a saltier and more savvy Sailor. We drank, swapped sea stories (I didn’t have any, but that’s beside the point), and completely enjoyed the afternoon knowing that we were skipping out on work.

That all ended when we returned to the ship. I was a Midshipman, and my Coordinator was waiting for us at the brow.

“Where the $@&% have you been, Bacon? You’re supposed to be on a tour of the aircraft carrier with the other Middies!”

I was doomed. I hadn’t been in uniform long enough to stammer out an excuse – any excuse – and besides, lying wasn’t exactly in my resume of skills. My young career was over before it began.

So I said nothing. I just stared at him and awaited my fate.

Then, from out of nowhere, my salty, savvy, and somewhat inebriated shipmate said, “Oh, you have to be kidding! I just took him over to the (nearby cruiser), and got him a tour there! Why didn’t you tell us?”

To my astonishment, the officer actually apologized to us. Then he let us go.

So today, the day after Labor Day, if you didn’t accomplish everything you set out to do, that’s okay. Enjoy the memories of the fun things you did, and don’t beat yourself up over the things you didn’t get done.

But it can’t hurt to have a good excuse in your hip pocket.