A couple of weeks ago, we decided to use Labor Day to visit the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier that's been turned into a museum near downtown SD. The Midway was in use from 1945 to 1992 or so, and (among other exploits) took in about 7000 evacuees during the fall of Saigon. The self-guided tour was absolutely fascinating - a definite don't-miss if you're ever in San Diego. I have to say, though, that life aboard the Midway looked pretty rough. The highlight of everyday life appears to have been fruit loops in the mess. I work with a guy that used to be in the Navy. He said the hardest thing about the long deployements was living in a confined space with guys for whom personal hygiene was an oxymoron. On the ship, they had lots of different eating spaces - one for elisted men, two for officers (clean shirt and dirty shirt wardrooms), etc. The audio tour explained that the pilots tended to hang out in the dirty shirt wardroom so that they could sprint off to the flight deck if need be. I was talking with Jerome this week about our visit to the Midway, and asked if he remembered who was likely to be found in the dirty shirt wardroom. He replied - "the dirty shirt wardroom was usually used by pirates. Wait, wait - I mean PILOTS". We all had a good laugh.



On Friday, we went to the Sock Hop - a PTA fundraiser . We thought it would be a drag, but the kids had a blast. The kids just had a free for all in the middle of the room, bouncing around to Oldies, while the parents hung out on the edges and talked. Kai caused problems, though, since he seemed drawn, as if by tractor beam, toward the mosh pit at the center of the floor, where 5th graders 10 times his size were making merry with inflatable guitars and hula hoops. Oh, and he made numerous attempts to eat flattened pieces of popcorn off the floor.

On Monday we signed a new lease with our landlord. It will enable us to move somewhere else with 10 days notice, but will allow the landlord to show the home to potential buyers, and ask us to leave with proper notice if someone buys the house. For this, we negotiated $600 off our rent, so the longer we're here, the better. The reason our landlord has to sell the house is that he paid $690k for a $575k or so house in a shady real estate deal. Interestingly enough, the guy that sold our landlord this house was featured prominently on national newscasts a couple of weeks ago when he attacked an investigative reporter who was trying to expose his scams. Anyway, the mortgage is now upside down, and he can't make the payments anymore. A bad deal all around, because we would have been happy living here for a long time.

That's all for now.