Neat Photo of USS Mahan Transiting the Suez Canal Near Ismailia, Egypt March 16, 2009

Photo Caption: Egyptian school children stand on a pier in the port town of Ismailia, 120km northeast of Cairo, as US guided-missile destroyer USS Mahan transits the Suez from the Red Sea towards the Mediterranean on its way back home after a six-month counter-piracy operation around the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Gulf, Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. On February 12, the Mahan helped capture nine Somali pirates after responding to a distress call from a merchant ship. The warship is coming from the Indian Ocean where it spent seven months as part of the anti-piracy mission Combined Task Force 151.


I copied this photo and captions from an email I received from Ronald this morning.

Mackinac Bridge

The simple things in life are often the most fun. We took a drive to the U.P. just to experience crossing the bridge and to look around up there a bit.


Want to take this trip with your family? You can see exactly where we are on the map...and out the front window.


After we crossed the bridge and drove around the U.P. a bit we stopped at a pasty shop for lunch. We all ate them the traditional way, with ketchup.


The boyz took plenty of pictures.


The ice was beautiful. It appears that an ice breaker came through and created a path.

Ronald and His Division Aboard the USS Mahan (DDG-72)

He's the happy one in the back.
He is also the tallest sailor in his division so he is usually pretty easy to spot.

Box of Family Photos

My dad recently gave me a big box of old family photos with instructions to take all the pictures I want then pass it on the my next sibling within two weeks. The goal is to allow all six of us kids to pick out the photos we want. I am having a difficult time picking which photos I to keep. I don't want to be selfish and keep too many, but I also don't want to pass them on and have them end up being thrown out. My solution to this is to scan every one that I like and create a digital scrapbook. Right now I am calling it "Serendipity: A Pictorial Definition" because nearly everything that has happened in my life has been a series of happy accidents and the things that didn't seem too happy at the time have turned out to be necessary in forming me into the person I am today, and I like who I am.
This is my favorite photograph. My dad took it of my when I was young.

Ronald at Work on the USS Mahan (DDG 72)

Ron emailed me the other day to let me know that his picture was posted somewhere on the www.nav.mil website and to do a search for "Mahan pictures".

There are thousands of pictures of the USS Mahan (DDG 72). I learned a lot about his ship and what they do. I will share more about that later.

I spent over an hour searching for his photo. I finally go the bright idea to use his name in the search engine (duh) and...BINGO! His picture popped up immediately.

So, here he is at work. I miss him a lot.