My husband

My husband showed some serious devotion today. Last night he decided he wanted to read an old favorite, the Illuminatus Trilogy, but he looks through our very crowded and not at all organized bookshelves to no avail. he can't find it. so last night he went to bed disappointed figuring in our recent move it ended up somewhere weird and hasn't been unpacked yet. he spent all day looking for it. all day. this of course speaks to the fact that our house is a mess and there are a lot of boxes (especially in the garage) that haven't been unpacked, and that a lot of things dont yet have permanent homes. but anyway. since he was going through everything in the basement, i decided to try to get those last several boxes of toys unpacked. not yet unpacked because there is no place to put the toys. we have an almost 400 sq ft basement, which we decided to use as a fun room, meaning the computer, the video games, the toys and our library. we can't fit everything in the room! we need to pare down, seriously. but anyway, i actually wanted to talk about my husband, who loves to read, and loves his own stuff so much (he has not even considered buying another copy) that he spent his whole saturday trying to hunt down one particular book. (we probably have 300 books he could read instead) it was good though, i lot of stuff got unpacked. (course, most of it is now in the wrong place...and wouldn't have needed the stuff until december when the baby was born =>) i love him!

another thing that is going on with my dh: force shaping. congress dictates the number of people allowed in the military. armed with that number, the pentagon or air staff decides how to split up manning, so how many pilots, mechanics, etc. I think, but I'm not sure, that the air force has been over manned for the last several years, allowed by congress because of well, everything. either they have decided that they want numbers back down or they want to cut numbers, or possibly the air staff has decided to save money on paychecks to put it towards new airplanes. that seemed to be indicated recently by a open letter from the secretary of the air force. anyway, im rambling, whatever the reason--they are taking officers in their 3rd year, so before they make captain, and the board racks and stacks them by whatever criteria, against the other people intheir same career field and then someone else, unconnected to the board, draws a line under the number of guys they want to keep and the bottom however many lose their jobs. they only have to pay severance for guys who have been in for 6 years, so they don't owe these guys anything, and they get 3-4 months until they are separated from the service. right now the numbers for his job and year group are as follows 63 people, 12 over. so the 63 will be ranked 1-63 and if the numbers remain as they are, the bottom 12 will lose their jobs. this will possibly happen in 08, but more probably in 09. so my husband is trying to figure out what his strategy is, should we find out he nolonger has a job. dh has always been inthe top couple of people in his training classes and won numerous awards. i don't think he is going to be in the very bottom. but he figures probably no one thinks that about themselves, and is figuring out alternatives. right now most viable, although not the best is the blue to green program, where he switches over into the army. so i think he feels better because he is going to talk to someone who did it, and possibly tentatively talk to a recruiter. i think this shows a lot of growth on his part. a few years ago, i don't think he would have done anything but bite his nails or figure that i would figure a way out. but he is shouldering this possibility (unlikelihood, imo) with a really adult outlook. no woe is me, just how am i going to take care of my kids? i tell ya, i love him.