All Saints Day, 2005

Happy Feast of All Saints! I hope All Hallow's Eve was a pleasant experience for you all, especially those with ToT (Trick or Treat) aged kids. I'm looking forward to hearing how it went in Algiers. Ariel, the mermaid princess bride must have been cute! Can hardly wait for pictures of that.

Our Halloween was quiet and nice. Linda had talked to her sister in NY for hours Sunday night, and one of the things they talked about was how we should get out of the room and go walking to get the old endorfins going. So, taking her advice to heart, we decided to go mall walking. We walked from our hotel to the chinese restaurant in the little mall behind us. We had a very nice dinner, with our now customary glasses of plum wine, but didn't get our usual waiter. Still, when dinner was over he came to our table with a fried ice cream dessert, as promised at our last dinner there. It was DELICIOUS!!

The following link is to a pretty good article about life in Algiers today. Makes us really wish we were back home with the kids. Looks like we may be sitting on some prime real estate! Hopefully Algiers will gain a little more recognition that it's had in the past. We've been kind of the red-headed step-cousin of East Bank New Orleans. Perhaps that will change, and for the better if you ask me. Anyway, here's the link:
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/113083051713840.xml

Our Houston son started work today! Yeah!! As mentioned before his job is to take stuff Hewlett-Packard makes and break it. They gave him something to work on while he was learning his way around. It took him 2 minutes to break it! I think he's going to enjoy this job.

Our middle son, who works at the Navy Exchange in New Orleans, in loss prevention (security), caught a shoplifter today. Good work!

For all you computer saavy folks out there, the Navy has consolidated its IT under the Navy and Marine Corps Internet (NMCI). This has some benefits, like, I can log onto any NMCI workstation anywhere and get my email, and work on stuff I've saved on network drives, etc. But, it also has some drawbacks. Apparently there was a security problem that has caused the powers that be to decree that all stateside NMCI users will change their login passwords. The change must be witnessed by a "trusted agent" at each command. As it turns out, I am the trusted agent for our command's persons in Millington. All the people are divided alphabetically by first name into one-hour increments. Then, each increment is given a password which, when entered at the appropriate time, forces a password reset. So, my days are being spent going from desk to desk providing the passwords and witnessing password resets. What fun!! Especially when the person is not there, or the password doesn't work, or the new password they choose isn't accepted by the NMCI workstation. I've definitely had some hair pulling moments the last two days, with at least two more to go. Gotta love NMCI.

Did I mention what a pretty dog Maynard is? He really is a good looking boxer. Good choice DeeJ! Now if we could just keep him off the bed when we're at work...

Any reviews yet for "Prime"? Any other movies? Let us know if you've seen anything lately that you'd recommend to others, or would not, for that matter. We could turn this into a movie critic blog and gain national attention with our sharp criticisms and biting satirical reviews. Or not.

Take care everyone. Life is short, the length of it is a mystery, so live and love to the fullest extent possible! God bless you all with continued good health and happiness.

Dean