Taking PBS to a new level

I wasn’t really sure I could continue my pointless ramblings for yet another night, but alas, our current lack of internet has given me a little freed up time (basically 23 minutes that I would have spent catching up on the world). Speaking of internet, let me introduce you to a little thing we on the Nimitz like to call “Internet Hours.” Here on the Nimitz, we are not blessed with 24/7 3G (oh 3G, oh iPhone, how I miss you so!!!). We have a limited amount of bandwidth, much of which must be used for work-related and tactical information. So, from 0900-1300, internet is only available for Navy-websites (anything with a .mil) address. From 1300-1500 is what we call “High Tiered Access”, which means only O-5 and above have access to any websites that they want, pure, unfettered, quick internet (and by quick, I mean, not dial-up speed). This is what we call in the military “RHIP” or “rank has its privileges” (unfortunately for me, my rank does not provide for me good internet speed privleges J) From 1500-1700 are “banking hours” which means you can only access banking websites. Then, from 1700-midnight are “open hours” aka- everyone and their mother tries to access ESPN and facebook and amazon.com and whatever else suits their fancy. However, with all of my 5,000 BFF’s trying to use the internet, it is really only quick enough to do ANYTHING from about 10:30pm until midnight. Midnight to 0200 is for banking hours and then 0200-0300 they take down the internet for “maintenance and updates”, which really probably means the IT’s in the radio shack are streaming live football games from ESPN.com. Then from 0300-0900, the internet opens back up again for all hands all access. I’ve heard you can surf facebook and online shop at amazon at like 4AM. My friend steve who has a nocturnal schedule due to the fact that he stands watch until 2am, swears by the 4am internet surfing.


So, yeah, like I said, I only get about an hour a day of internet that is at all reliable. Which I suppose is a marked improvement from the SAMMY B, where I got zero hours of internet a day. I suppose I should be happy for what I do have, right?


So anyways, that leaves me with our great and mighty news source- AFN (aka- Armed Forces Network). AFN, for those of you who are not familiar, is the military’s TV channels. Here on the Nimitz, we get 3 AFN channels: “primetime TV”, “news”, and “sports”- all of which are a mix of random TV shows of that particular variety, shown at random times. This results in people having to watch the playoff football (or any other big) game in the middle of the night (and then the next 2 days is the same game, over and over and over again on replay. No matter how many times I watched the National Championship College Game, Texas was always going to lose b/c their QB was always going to get hurt. Even by the 5th time it aired. And by the way, that is WAY too much than I have EVER known about football, only b/c it was on for like 24 continuous hours). I actually watch the “Today” show every “morning” at 4pm after I shower while getting ready for dinner. I think you can also watch Jeopardy at like 5am. Awesome. The other “great” thing about AFN? No real commercials! However, you don’t know what repeating commercials are until you have watched AFN! Corporate/capitalist TV channels actually have a plethora of commercial varieties compared to AFN. I swear, if I have to see the commercial of the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff and his wife (I think her name might be Barbara?) standing in front of their pretty Christmas tree and politely and cheerfully reminding me to get my flu shot this year, I think I might just lose it! (for the record, I got my flu, regular AND H1N1, in November, so don’t worry about me, ADM Mullen!)


In addition to the “don’t forget to get your flu shot” commercials, here are a few examples of the other great AFN commercials:

• The difference between general and special power of attorney
• How marrying a person from overseas might not immediately make them a dependent and how it affects your tax returns
• Ensuring you check with your legal department before changing your state of residency
• How gambling can affect your career
• Don’t drink & drive
• How to help get your children excited about a PCS (“permanent change of station”- basically a move. To use in a sentence “Last August, Dan & I PCSed from Mayport to San Diego)
• That there really is life after deployment, but you’ll come back a different person
• “Voices from Home”- which are “interviews” of people from various cities across America saying “Thank you for serving”- I get a little weepy when they interview people at the Baltimore Inner Harbor J

Speaking of “Voices from Home”, some of the greatest are when they interview “pretend” war-heroes. You know those people that dress up & do the Civil War reenactment? Well, basically that, but also from the Vietnam War, and WWII and any other old war. They video these guys dressed up in old-fashioned war get-ups at their little camp sites and they say things like “from our battlefield to yours- hooyah- thanks for service!” oh, it’s so cheesy. I mean, there are no words for the cheesiness.


Getting to the main point of this post (actually, let’s be honest, this post has no main point J)- they often have commercials from some random, small town in America. Usually it is some teeny tiny town in Arkansas or Minnesota or Kentucky- some town that no one has ever heard of. And the commercials looks like one of those ones that a local business does themselves, with a faint sound of guitar or fiddle in the background. It’s usually the Mayor, walking around saying “welcome to smalltownville [insert name of town here], USA!” and takes the viewer on a little walking tour of their rinky-dink “downtown” and whatever else they’re known for (Cheese, mountains, hiking, etc). Then at the end they take the viewer to their town’s local veteran’s memorial and say something like “here in smalltownville, we’re really proud of our veterans. So thanks for what you do. And if you’re ever in Kentucky (or Wisconsin or Oklahoma, or whatever), come on down and see us!”


These commercials are like 3-4 minutes long and I see at least 5 a day (I keep the TV on all the time whenever I’m in the room, anything to help try and cut the sound of those damn airplanes). Well, the other night, around 2am, I was laying in bed reading and I hear “Greetings from Havre de Grace, Maryland!” and I was like “WHAT!?!” and draw the curtains of my rack open in surprise. After months (well, years really) of AFN commercials, I have never even HEARD of any of the towns featured, much less grown up like 15 minutes from one! I was so excited, it brought tears to my eyes- I literally cried! The Mayor of Havre de Grace took me on a tour of HDG, a small town on the Susquehanna River, not 15 miles from my house growing up! I got to see the lighthouse and the Tidings Park and of course, what HDG is known for- their Decoy Museum of DUCKS! In fact, in 7th grade, we did a whole lesson on HDG and how to “Save the Bay” and the different types of boats that sail on the river and all about the ducks that they make decoys of at the Decoy Museum. I smiled as I thought about the “slideshow” my group did in 7th grade, a “lesson” about Havre de Grace. This was back when to make a slideshow, you actually drew the little pictures on teeny tiny slides with permanent marker to project up onto the screen. And we spent WEEKS practicing and recording the audio that went along with it. (during which one of the main characters, Chloe, the stuck up “popular” girl looks with disdain at one of the girls who is giving a tour of Havre de Grace like a travel guide by saying “Thanks for the history lesson, Mrs. Travel Guide!” in one of those bratty voices that was only a 7th grade girl could properly emulate. Katie and Amberly- I sincerely hope you are reading this, because literally all of these memories flashed through my mind as I watched this commercial on AFN!)

Anyways, so that is AFN. One of the many things to help keep me less bored. We have also been fortunate for the first time since the earthquake hit Haiti, to see news of what else is happening in the world. After watching about 45 minutes of the news, here is what is going on in the world/the US according to AFN. I sincerely hope that there really is more going on than this, that there is much more that we AFN watchers are not privy to:

• A GOP candidate won the MA Senator seat belonging to Kennedy (I saw his acceptance speech no less than 20 times)
• It’s raining in SoCal
• The economy sucks

Will someone please tell me there is actually more in the world going on that this?

Speaking of Haiti, and all of the great work that the US military is doing there (sorry had to give my service a plug!), please keep the Sailors and their families in your thoughts as well with the people of Haiti- one of our ships was about to head through the Panama Canal from a 6 month deployment who was stopped and is currently serving tirelessly off the coast of Haiti now, providing worker-bees on the ground, corpsmen, water and medical supplies. They were supposed to return home in 4 days, now there are out there for an undetermined length of time. And please remember those Sailors on the Bataan who just returned home from a 7 month deployment last month who were recalled and sent down there with a 48 hour notice. The work they are able to provide from the ocean with their medical personnel and helicopters is incredibly important to the mission there and I know I am so very proud of all of them. The destroyer, USS HIGGINS that is there with no sign of returning from deployment is one of the Little Beaver’s own from DESRON 23. we are incredibly proud of her work and mission and while I know all of her Sailors and their families were anticipating a happy reunion, they should all be so proud of the good that they are doing for people who so desperately need it. I read today that a women and her newborn baby are now being treated on the USNS Comfort- she was airlifted from Haiti to a carrier, where she gave birth to her baby son on the USS CARL VINSON, an aircraft carrier. One of the parachute riggers (a rating called “PR”- they sew all of the rescue and survival gear into the flight suits and airplanes) took a yellow flight deck jersey and sewed for the baby his first newborn outfit from the yellow jersey. The woman announced that she named her baby “Vinson”, which brought tears to my eyes. I kinda wish that we could be there helping too, but I know that the people of Haiti are going to benefit immensely from the hard work of the military, and all of the aid that is down there in Haiti. It makes me very proud to be part of a service that can deliver so much (firepower, maritime security, airstrikes, close air support, supplies, humanitarian work and rescue medical services) all over the world with so little time to plan.


Well, on that note my friends, it is time that I return to my night routine of reading. Today I swung by the library and checked out my 2 allotted books (you can only check out 2 books at a time, for one month). I always get 1 “educational” (aka- non-fiction) and one for-fun book. I’m already bouncing back and forth in between one of the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell and Flags of our Fathers, an outstanding non-fiction book about the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima during WWII. I think it’s a movie too, but so far, the book is outstanding.


I sincerely hope at least someone (other than Dan who posts this J) is back to followig, and I haven’t lost all of my loyal readers after my 3 week hiatus from blogging. My good friend Amanda just emailed me, saying that I seemed happier when I was regularly blogging and she glad I figured that out again. She’s right too- even when I am in a bummer mood, blogging is fun, as I write narratives of my day or random things about life on a carrier. As I write, I quietly chuckle to myself, thinking how funny or clever I sound. (I don’t think I will ever cease to crack myself up, something which is always well summarized by one of Dan’s favorite quotes: “Molly Harris is the funniest person in the world, according to Molly Harris” J Thanks Dan!)


Speaking of Molly Harris, it was brought to my attention just how long I have been gone, so long in fact, that apparently my own mother has forgotten that I got married & changed my name, as evidenced by the fact that when I received her registration form for Tiger Cruise, she listed me, “Molly Harris” as her sponsor. While I know my own mother did not REALLY forget my name, it is evidence to the fact that I have not spent but 3 days in the US as “Molly Laufer”, none of which were around any friends and family other than Dan, so I think no one is used to saying it. Haha, I REALLY need to come home.


Well, off to my only other friends, my books J I miss you all so very very much. I can’t promise a daily blog (besides, tomorrow I need to get caught up in my internet-ing, if it is working for once) but I will do my best to go off in search of something on that carrier that would be considered interesting and blog-worthy for my readers. Maybe I’ll even try and get a few pictures too. Til then, goodnight!