Month: April 2011

From Alpha to Zulu

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Miltary Life from Alpha to ZuluWife on the Roller Coaster threw down the proverbial gauntlet last week with a challenge: outline your military life from A to Z — or in the phonetic alphabet, Alpha to Zulu. Mine grew somewhat in the telling from a list of words to a compendium of definitions that largely turned out to be specific to the Naval Aviation community. I had fun with it, and I can’t wait to see what other military spouses come up with for their abridged dictionary versions of military life.

Got your own list? Go forth and link up at Riding the Roller Coaster!

Alpha to Zulu (Naval Aviation Style)

Alpha is for airshows, which not only play a great role in military recruiting and awareness in the community, but also make for some sweet-deal cross-country flights.

Bravo is for Boat, what aviators call the aircraft carrier to irritate the shoes (see “Sierra” below) who think it ought to be called a ship.

Charlie is for Carrier Onboard Delivery, the mission of my husband’s aircraft.

Delta is for debrief, the post-flight play-by-play that includes, if you were landing on the carrier or practicing to do so, the grades of your passes by the LSO (see “Lima” below).

Echo is for EPs, the aircraft Emergency Procedures that must be memorized so they can be put into action at a moment’s notice. Many spouses of flight students become well-versed in EPs through quizzing their loved ones.

Foxtrot is for flight schedule, AKA the “Sked,” which rules each day of our lives and doesn’t come out for until the evening before.

GoshawkGolf is for the T-45 Goshawk, the jet trainer in which my husband made his first carrier landing.

Hotel is for Hail and Bail, a party during which we greet the FNGs (Fu… uh, “Fine” New Guys/Gals) and say goodbye to those moving on to the next assignment.

India is for IP, or Instructor Pilot. When you’re in flight school, you live and die on how the IPs grade you.

JOPA PatchJuliet is for JOPA, the unofficial Junior Officer’s Protection Association made up of the squadron’s O-1s, O-2s, and O-3s. JOPA must stick together under the occasional onslaught of “great ideas” of O-4s and above.

Kilo is for Kingsville, Texas, our first home as a married couple (and a place we would not have chosen to live without the Navy’s insistence that flight school take place in a part of the country with lots of empty airspace).

Lima is for LSO, or Landing Signal Officer. Also called “Paddles,” this is the guy or gal who stands on the platform to help pilots land aboard the carrier and grade their landings.

MeatballMike is for meatball, the Fresnel lens glideslope indicator that tells pilots whether they’re coming in for a carrier landing correctly. If you’ve heard someone talking about “calling the ball,” this is what they mean.

November is for NATOPS, the Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization program. This thick tome contains as much as it is humanly possible to know about flying a given aircraft, and it is often said to have been “written in blood.”

Oscar is for ORM, or Operational Risk Management, which imbues both our Navy and Civil Air Patrol activities.

Papa is for PCLs, the pocket checklists for each aircraft my husband flew in flight school that litter our house to this day.

Quebec is for the Q, whether it refers to Bachelor Officers’ Quarters, Bachelor Enlisted Quarters, or Combined Bachelor Quarters. We’ve lived in one Q or another whilst looking for permanent housing at a new duty station.

Romeo is for ready room, an environment in which one had better have a thick skin; aviators aren’t known to be Mister Rogers-esque paragons of gentleness in their speech or mannerisms.

Sierra is for shoe, short for “blackshoe” — a Surface Warfare type. Only aviators wear brown shoes in uniform.

Tango is for tailhook, without which carrier landings would be well-nigh impossible for fixed-wing aviators.

Uniform is for underway. Even when my husband is at home, he is busy flying out to support any carrier that is underway within reach of this coast.

Victor is for the VTs, as in VT-6 or VT-3, the Navy’s fixed-wing training squadrons. Contrast with the HTs, the helicopter training squadrons.

Whiskey is for Wings of Gold. Whether double-anchor (for Naval Flight Officers — think “Goose” from Top Gun) or single-anchor (for Naval Aviators, the pilots), earning one’s wings is a proud accomplishment following an arduous passage through flight school.

X-Ray is for the X. “Getting the X” means completing the syllabus flight, not always an easy task in flight school, when so many things are dependent on the weather or having an up (functional) airplane available.

Yankee is for “You fool!” — what you are if you expect military life to make sense all the time.

Zulu is for “zipper-suited sun god,” a tongue-in-cheek appellation for those who spend most of their time in flight suits.

Procrastination is Motivation?

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My subconscious must be just perverse enough to make it difficult for me to blog unless by so doing, I am procrastinating on something else.

Actually, I think that’s why having a double major worked out so well for me in college. When I had a programming deadline, I could write a religion paper. With an essay due date looming, I could lose myself in endless lines of code. See? Perverse. Or contrary, at the very least.

I have no children to wrangle or job responsibilities to juggle, so this deployment has given me Time with a capital ‘T.’ It sloshes about the corners of my house, unused, in temporal eddies that could probably be used to fuel a couple of Star Trek plots. Some of my readers are no doubt gritting their teeth as they read this, thinking, “How dare she complain about having too much time on her hands! I could use an extra four hours just to keep entropy at bay.” If I could figure out a way to reallocate some of my superfluous hours to you busy folks, I’d be happy to oblige — just as long as I could reclaim them when my schedule eventually reverts to “bursting at the seams” mode.

Right now, though, with all this Time floating about, I’m having trouble generating the necessary internal pressure to sit down and write. I have ideas for SpouseBUZZ posts sitting woefully neglected and unexpanded-upon. I haven’t yet told you the story of my triumph over the recalcitrant lawnmower. ENS Wifey’s faithfully-produced MilSpouse Friday Fill-In questions have gone un-filled-in for weeks. My poor blog is parched, and I chalk it up to a lack of non-writing projects on which to procrastinate.

The solution, clearly, is to give myself some other assignments, undertakings to make typing seem a rejuvenating process and prose a refuge. To that end, I just ordered a cackle-worthy amount of yarn and made plans to embark upon my first large-ish lace project. (Hey, no one said my non-writing task had to be unpleasant — it just has to be Not Writing.) If my self-assessment is correct, knitting the way I will need to in order to finish this gift in a timely fashion (read: until cross-eyed and fumble-fingered) will make “sneaking off” to bang out a blog post seem deliciously like getting away with something.

Am I the only weirdo who procrastinates her way into productivity? I’d love to hear about any little tricks you use to fool yourself into getting things done.

To the Nth Facebook Page

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Speaking of procrastination, Facebook reigns as one of the greatest time sinks of all time, as it has since I was in college (you know, back in the days before middle schoolers and your grandmother were on it). It was only a matter of time before I joined the “Facebook Page for my Blog” party: To the Nth is now officially likable, social-networking-wise. Let me know if you have a page you’d like me to come visit!