This weekend there will be changes of command ceremonies at several companies and formations for medals and awards. For me the weekend will be about logistics.
Will all of the change of command ceremonies be at the same time? If so, I'll have to figure out how to shoot as many as possible. They should all be at the armory, but if someone gets creative and uses an alternate location, I hope they use an alternate time.
Same with the medals. There could be hundreds of individuals receiving medals. If four companies hand out medals at the same time, I won't be able to get many pictures. And since the Army is socialist and all about getting fair treatment, which ceremony do I go to if they are simultaneous?
Then the real big logistic issue comes later. If I would by creative scheduling get pictures of each change of command and every ribbon and medal, how do I get those pictures to the soldiers in the photo? For security reasons, Army computers do not allow any USB devices to be used with them. If I have 400 high-res pictures, I will need to get them onto an Army computer where individual soldiers have access to them. The photos will have to be mailed or burned onto a disk, but who is going to do that?
And if we can resolve that, I have 5000 more photos from Iraq that soldiers may want and currently can't get to because they are on my USB external hard drive.
And you thought the Army was about guns and war.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Cell Phones on the Train and in Oklahoma
What do a pleading mother on a train and a young soldier trying not to get dumped by his girlfriend have in common? They both seem to be willing to let anyone within the sound of their voice know their lives are a mess--at least while they are talking on the phone.
This morning there was not a free seat on the inbound train to Philadelphia. In the middle of the car a woman spent 15 minutes on the phone telling her son that he could make breakfast himself and he had to go to school even if he didn't want to and much more. She made at least half of the other 50 people in the crowded car listen to half of her unpleasant conversation with her disobedient child. It is strange how holding a cell phone gives the caller permission to speak about things she would not say directly to a room full of strangers.
When we were in Oklahoma for training, some of the soldiers were already seeing their romantic relationships fall apart. When I was in Germany in the 70s and there was no email or cell phones, the relationships ended abruptly. A soldier would get a "Dear John" letter or, worse, spend the $1 a minute (when he was making $500/month) to call home and hear that his wife/girlfriend/fiance was dumping him.
But in the modern Army with cell phones, I could walk into the dayroom or down the hallway and hear the arguments that precede the breakup or the last efforts at persuasion. The otherwise proud young man would let everyone within his hearing know that he was dumped or getting dumped soon.
This morning there was not a free seat on the inbound train to Philadelphia. In the middle of the car a woman spent 15 minutes on the phone telling her son that he could make breakfast himself and he had to go to school even if he didn't want to and much more. She made at least half of the other 50 people in the crowded car listen to half of her unpleasant conversation with her disobedient child. It is strange how holding a cell phone gives the caller permission to speak about things she would not say directly to a room full of strangers.
When we were in Oklahoma for training, some of the soldiers were already seeing their romantic relationships fall apart. When I was in Germany in the 70s and there was no email or cell phones, the relationships ended abruptly. A soldier would get a "Dear John" letter or, worse, spend the $1 a minute (when he was making $500/month) to call home and hear that his wife/girlfriend/fiance was dumping him.
But in the modern Army with cell phones, I could walk into the dayroom or down the hallway and hear the arguments that precede the breakup or the last efforts at persuasion. The otherwise proud young man would let everyone within his hearing know that he was dumped or getting dumped soon.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Article on MREs
Last week I posted a video that went with an article on the science of feed soldiers in the field. Here is the article.
Looks like the article requires membership.
Here's the text:
Known as C rations, "the 12 main courses were ham and eggs, beans and franks, spaghetti, ham slices, and permutations of Spam," Gussman says.
He reenlisted in 2007 and, to his pleasant surprise, found that the green cans had been replaced with sleek tan packages stamped "MRE," for Meal, Ready-To-Eat.
"When I got my first MRE, I was in gastronomic love," Gussman says. Inside were crunchy crackers, brand-name candy, and a heating bag that gave off no smoke or light signature. Tactical eating no longer meant meals of congealed fat, he says.
But moving from cans of "green eggs and ham" to pouches of moist lemon poppyseed cake and hot beef ravioli requires a lot of scientific innovation. "Everything in the MRE involves chemistry in some way," says Jeremy Whitsitt, the Department of Defense's combat feeding outreach coordinator. From the packaging designed to withstand downpours and airdrops to the chemical heater that warms meals and beverages, the Combat Feeding Directorate at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development & Engineering Center (NSRDEC), in Natick, Mass., has spent years developing the modern MRE.
The unpredictable nature of military life means that battlefield meals must meet a set of strict criteria. MREs need to maintain their freshness for three years when stored below 80 °F, or six months when stored below 100 °F. "They must also be able to withstand rough handling conditions and airdrops from altitudes of 100 feet by helicopter, without a parachute, or 1,200 feet by plane, with a parachute," Whitsitt says.
An MRE's packaging presents the first line of defense in keeping it from getting beaten up during transport and in preventing oxygen, water vapor, and insects from infiltrating and spoiling the food. "It's a critical part of the overall MRE," says Danielle Froio, an NSRDEC materials engineer.
It's also the first thing you notice about an MRE as you pull apart the seal of its tough, tan meal bag made of low-density polyethylene. The food inside this bag is stored in two types of pouches, Froio explains. There's the retort pouch, which holds food that's been sterilized, and the nonretort pouch, which houses food that doesn't need sterilization.
Both pouches have a polyester outer layer that's easy to print on, so nutritional information is included with each of the MRE's components. Beneath the polyester is a layer of foil, which, Froio says, is the ultimate barrier to oxygen, water vapor, and light. A polyolefin layer also makes it possible to seal the package. And retort pouches have a fourth layer of nylon to make them durable enough to withstand the rigors of the sterilization process.
Researchers at NSRDEC are currently working to find a replacement for the foil layer in both types of pouch. "In low-temperature situations it can develop pinhole cracks that reduce the shelf life of the package," Froio explains. Although the group has examined many different polymers as possible replacements, all are permeable to oxygen or water vapor, she notes.
The researchers are now looking toward nanocomposite materials, Froio says, because their nanostructure "creates a tortuous path for the water and oxygen" to travel. They've had some success with montmorillonite- and kaolin-based nanocomposites, and a low-density polyethylene nanocomposite has been used as a meal bag in field tests.
Of course, the guidelines that govern MREs aren't limited to their durability. MREs are, after all, meals, and they have to provide enough nutrition to sustain a soldier engaged in intense physical activity. By regulation, Whitsitt says, each MRE must provide approximately 1,300 calories.
And then there's taste. Responding to the complaints about the old C rations—the ones Gussman describes as variations on Spam—NSRDEC has made an effort to create meals soldiers actually enjoy.
So how do you make cooked pasta and cake that can sit on the shelf for three years? "We build hurdles into these different food matrices to make it hard for 'bugs' to grow in them," Whitsitt says. Using acidic tomato-based sauces keeps the pH low, for example, thereby preventing bacterial growth. As for the baked goods, by tinkering with dough conditioners and adding iron-based oxygen-scavenging packets, the researchers are able to control pH and water levels to keep the breads and cakes tasting fresh.
All items packaged in a retort pouch are also sterilized by boiling. But certain foods simply don't hold up under the extremes of temperature and time—120 °C for 30 minutes—the military uses for this process. For example, says C. Patrick Dunne, the senior adviser in advanced processing and nutritional biochemistry for the Combat Feeding Directorate, "We have yet to get a really good mac and cheese out of the retort pouch."
To expand meal options and improve food quality, NSRDEC has been working on advanced processing techniques for sterilization that use microwave radiation and high pressure. "The challenge we have is to conquer the chemistry that happens during and after the sterilization process that will lead to degradation of quality," Dunne says. "You're not going to get fresh salads all the time, but we would like to give our guys something that goes beyond basic vitamins."
The novel microwave sterilization process that NSRDEC has developed in collaboration with researchers at Washington State University uses a microwave that operates at 915 MHz. This is a lower frequency than the average home microwave uses and penetrates the food to a greater extent. To keep the pouches from exploding, Dunne says, they are placed under pressure in a water bath. All told, the sterilization takes less than 10 minutes.
The one drawback to using this microwave sterilization process is that it doesn't work with the standard retort pouch. Its foil layer can't be placed in a microwave oven. Dunne says NSRDEC is looking into alternative packaging.
The military is currently testing MREs with chicken and dumplings sterilized via the microwave method. There are "benefits in taste, color, and texture" that come from microwave sterilization, Dunne points out. "You can make a salmon filet that tastes like the poached salmon you'd get in a restaurant. It does not taste like cat food."
NSRDEC is also working on high-pressure sterilization. The process places a food pouch under 100,000 psi for about three minutes. Heating is also used if the food being sterilized hasn't been pasteurized.
The result, Dunne explains, is greater variety of food that doesn't have the "tinny" flavor that comes from the current processing method. Mashed potatoes sterilized with this process have already passed the military's shelf-life and field tests.
Perhaps the most tangible chemical contribution to the MREs is the small chemical heater that makes it possible for soldiers in the field to enjoy the comfort of a hot meal and a hot cup of coffee. The heating technology, which gives off no light or smoke, makes use of the exothermic reaction of magnesium metal and water. The heater is composed of a postcard-sized polymeric "tea bag" filled with 9 g of Mg, which sits in a plastic sleeve. A solider adds just 1 oz of water to the sleeve, slips in the MRE entrée, and waits about 10 minutes.
The temperature gets up to about 60 °C, according to NSRDEC chemical engineer Peter Lavigne. "The reaction product, magnesium hydroxide, is essentially milk of magnesia, so it's disposed of without environmental concerns," he says.
The Mg powder pack also contains a little bit of salt and iron. These penetrate the magnesium oxide coating that tends to build up on the metal and prevents it from reacting. Chloride ions react with the Mg(OH)2 product to form MgOHCl, which dissolves the MgO coating. The role of iron is less clear, but it's thought to cause bimetallic corrosion that promotes the reaction between water and Mg.
Although the heater works extremely well, Lavigne says that there is concern about the hydrogen gas generated in the reaction. "We've always had an interest in eliminating hydrogen from a user-safety point of view," he says. NSRDEC is currently exploring heaters based on calcium oxide and phosphorus pentoxide exothermic hydration reactions, as well as Mg oxidation coupled with manganese dioxide to quench hydrogen generation.
"The challenge is to get at the heating profile that's safe to handle yet capable of heating a food product in a short time and is suitable for use with food," Lavigne notes.
As far as soldiers like Sgt. Gussman are concerned, any further improvements to the MRE are a bonus. "The soldiers who only know MREs sometimes bitch about them," he says. "Old soldiers who remember the canned rations know better."
Looks like the article requires membership.
Here's the text:
Chemistry Improves Battlefield Food
When Neil Gussman joined the Army in 1972, meals for the battlefield were served in little green cans. Open those tins, recalls the Chemical Heritage Foundation's communications manager and Army sergeant, and you were likely to find culinary delights like "gelatinous, fat-coated Spam slices" and "big wads of grease."Known as C rations, "the 12 main courses were ham and eggs, beans and franks, spaghetti, ham slices, and permutations of Spam," Gussman says.
He reenlisted in 2007 and, to his pleasant surprise, found that the green cans had been replaced with sleek tan packages stamped "MRE," for Meal, Ready-To-Eat.
"When I got my first MRE, I was in gastronomic love," Gussman says. Inside were crunchy crackers, brand-name candy, and a heating bag that gave off no smoke or light signature. Tactical eating no longer meant meals of congealed fat, he says.
But moving from cans of "green eggs and ham" to pouches of moist lemon poppyseed cake and hot beef ravioli requires a lot of scientific innovation. "Everything in the MRE involves chemistry in some way," says Jeremy Whitsitt, the Department of Defense's combat feeding outreach coordinator. From the packaging designed to withstand downpours and airdrops to the chemical heater that warms meals and beverages, the Combat Feeding Directorate at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development & Engineering Center (NSRDEC), in Natick, Mass., has spent years developing the modern MRE.
The unpredictable nature of military life means that battlefield meals must meet a set of strict criteria. MREs need to maintain their freshness for three years when stored below 80 °F, or six months when stored below 100 °F. "They must also be able to withstand rough handling conditions and airdrops from altitudes of 100 feet by helicopter, without a parachute, or 1,200 feet by plane, with a parachute," Whitsitt says.
An MRE's packaging presents the first line of defense in keeping it from getting beaten up during transport and in preventing oxygen, water vapor, and insects from infiltrating and spoiling the food. "It's a critical part of the overall MRE," says Danielle Froio, an NSRDEC materials engineer.
It's also the first thing you notice about an MRE as you pull apart the seal of its tough, tan meal bag made of low-density polyethylene. The food inside this bag is stored in two types of pouches, Froio explains. There's the retort pouch, which holds food that's been sterilized, and the nonretort pouch, which houses food that doesn't need sterilization.
Both pouches have a polyester outer layer that's easy to print on, so nutritional information is included with each of the MRE's components. Beneath the polyester is a layer of foil, which, Froio says, is the ultimate barrier to oxygen, water vapor, and light. A polyolefin layer also makes it possible to seal the package. And retort pouches have a fourth layer of nylon to make them durable enough to withstand the rigors of the sterilization process.
Researchers at NSRDEC are currently working to find a replacement for the foil layer in both types of pouch. "In low-temperature situations it can develop pinhole cracks that reduce the shelf life of the package," Froio explains. Although the group has examined many different polymers as possible replacements, all are permeable to oxygen or water vapor, she notes.
The researchers are now looking toward nanocomposite materials, Froio says, because their nanostructure "creates a tortuous path for the water and oxygen" to travel. They've had some success with montmorillonite- and kaolin-based nanocomposites, and a low-density polyethylene nanocomposite has been used as a meal bag in field tests.
Of course, the guidelines that govern MREs aren't limited to their durability. MREs are, after all, meals, and they have to provide enough nutrition to sustain a soldier engaged in intense physical activity. By regulation, Whitsitt says, each MRE must provide approximately 1,300 calories.
And then there's taste. Responding to the complaints about the old C rations—the ones Gussman describes as variations on Spam—NSRDEC has made an effort to create meals soldiers actually enjoy.
So how do you make cooked pasta and cake that can sit on the shelf for three years? "We build hurdles into these different food matrices to make it hard for 'bugs' to grow in them," Whitsitt says. Using acidic tomato-based sauces keeps the pH low, for example, thereby preventing bacterial growth. As for the baked goods, by tinkering with dough conditioners and adding iron-based oxygen-scavenging packets, the researchers are able to control pH and water levels to keep the breads and cakes tasting fresh.
All items packaged in a retort pouch are also sterilized by boiling. But certain foods simply don't hold up under the extremes of temperature and time—120 °C for 30 minutes—the military uses for this process. For example, says C. Patrick Dunne, the senior adviser in advanced processing and nutritional biochemistry for the Combat Feeding Directorate, "We have yet to get a really good mac and cheese out of the retort pouch."
To expand meal options and improve food quality, NSRDEC has been working on advanced processing techniques for sterilization that use microwave radiation and high pressure. "The challenge we have is to conquer the chemistry that happens during and after the sterilization process that will lead to degradation of quality," Dunne says. "You're not going to get fresh salads all the time, but we would like to give our guys something that goes beyond basic vitamins."
The novel microwave sterilization process that NSRDEC has developed in collaboration with researchers at Washington State University uses a microwave that operates at 915 MHz. This is a lower frequency than the average home microwave uses and penetrates the food to a greater extent. To keep the pouches from exploding, Dunne says, they are placed under pressure in a water bath. All told, the sterilization takes less than 10 minutes.
The one drawback to using this microwave sterilization process is that it doesn't work with the standard retort pouch. Its foil layer can't be placed in a microwave oven. Dunne says NSRDEC is looking into alternative packaging.
The military is currently testing MREs with chicken and dumplings sterilized via the microwave method. There are "benefits in taste, color, and texture" that come from microwave sterilization, Dunne points out. "You can make a salmon filet that tastes like the poached salmon you'd get in a restaurant. It does not taste like cat food."
NSRDEC is also working on high-pressure sterilization. The process places a food pouch under 100,000 psi for about three minutes. Heating is also used if the food being sterilized hasn't been pasteurized.
The result, Dunne explains, is greater variety of food that doesn't have the "tinny" flavor that comes from the current processing method. Mashed potatoes sterilized with this process have already passed the military's shelf-life and field tests.
Perhaps the most tangible chemical contribution to the MREs is the small chemical heater that makes it possible for soldiers in the field to enjoy the comfort of a hot meal and a hot cup of coffee. The heating technology, which gives off no light or smoke, makes use of the exothermic reaction of magnesium metal and water. The heater is composed of a postcard-sized polymeric "tea bag" filled with 9 g of Mg, which sits in a plastic sleeve. A solider adds just 1 oz of water to the sleeve, slips in the MRE entrée, and waits about 10 minutes.
The temperature gets up to about 60 °C, according to NSRDEC chemical engineer Peter Lavigne. "The reaction product, magnesium hydroxide, is essentially milk of magnesia, so it's disposed of without environmental concerns," he says.
The Mg powder pack also contains a little bit of salt and iron. These penetrate the magnesium oxide coating that tends to build up on the metal and prevents it from reacting. Chloride ions react with the Mg(OH)2 product to form MgOHCl, which dissolves the MgO coating. The role of iron is less clear, but it's thought to cause bimetallic corrosion that promotes the reaction between water and Mg.
Although the heater works extremely well, Lavigne says that there is concern about the hydrogen gas generated in the reaction. "We've always had an interest in eliminating hydrogen from a user-safety point of view," he says. NSRDEC is currently exploring heaters based on calcium oxide and phosphorus pentoxide exothermic hydration reactions, as well as Mg oxidation coupled with manganese dioxide to quench hydrogen generation.
"The challenge is to get at the heating profile that's safe to handle yet capable of heating a food product in a short time and is suitable for use with food," Lavigne notes.
As far as soldiers like Sgt. Gussman are concerned, any further improvements to the MRE are a bonus. "The soldiers who only know MREs sometimes bitch about them," he says. "Old soldiers who remember the canned rations know better."
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Back to Racing--First Time Trial
This morning I rode the first time trial race since before deployment. The French call this race contre la montre, against the watch. It is my least favorite kind of racing--alone, curled up into the smallest space possible and suffering at the highest speed you can maintain.
This time trial was short, just 11 miles. It was very windy. The course was South-North out and back along a road that parallels the beach on the Chesapeake Bay near Delaware City. The wind was above 20mph with gusts out of the west. It was a side wind in both directions sometimes turning into a brief head or tail wind when the road twisted.
It was very cold and I got up late so I did not warm up very much--about 10 minutes. I should warm up for a half hour and some of my best results came with an hour warm up. I don't know where I finished, but I feel bad enough at 9pm tonight that I know I tried very hard.
No racing next weekend, I have to play Army. It will be a whole weekend of change of command ceremonies and awards, so I will be taking pictures for the entire weekend.
This time trial was short, just 11 miles. It was very windy. The course was South-North out and back along a road that parallels the beach on the Chesapeake Bay near Delaware City. The wind was above 20mph with gusts out of the west. It was a side wind in both directions sometimes turning into a brief head or tail wind when the road twisted.
It was very cold and I got up late so I did not warm up very much--about 10 minutes. I should warm up for a half hour and some of my best results came with an hour warm up. I don't know where I finished, but I feel bad enough at 9pm tonight that I know I tried very hard.
No racing next weekend, I have to play Army. It will be a whole weekend of change of command ceremonies and awards, so I will be taking pictures for the entire weekend.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Emergency Leave
One of the stories I did not have time to write was a process story about how our unit handled emergency leaves. From the week we mobilized till the last weeks in Fort Dix, New Jersey, soldiers in Task Force Diablo got a visit from their commander and first sergeant to deliver a Red Cross message. In fact, for soldiers who knew the procedure, seeing a company commander and first sergeant together, walking to someone's door, both looking stone faced, almost certainly meant bad news for someone in that room.
The soldier at the center of emergency leaves was Sergeant First Class Lori Burns, the NCOIC of the battalion S-1--the people who handle the paperwork. When the brigade received a Red Cross message, they passed it to our Operations (S-3) section who notified the battalion commander and command sergeant major and Lori. She started the paperwork and the very delicate process of determining whether this emergency was actually an Emergency Leave or not. An official military emergency leave is for immediate family--parents, siblings, children, and spouse. But some soldiers are raised by their grandparents.
As some of you may remember, I was one of the soldiers who received a Red Cross message that did not qualify as an actual emergency. My mother-in-law died on Mother's Day last year, just a week after I arrived in Iraq. Because there was space in the leave schedule at the time, I could have gone on emergency leave, but my wife thought it would be better to keep my leave as it was scheduled because we already had plans made.
But other guys who fell into the "not emergency" category that I was in really wanted to go home. And most got to go home by giving up their scheduled leave. The company and battalion commanders as well as the first sergeants and command sergeant major all would get the soldier home if they possibly could. And unless they were off base on a mission, LTC Perry and CSM Christine were woken up and briefed on every Red Cross message. The company commander and first sergeant delivered the message.
We had more than 50 Red Cross messages during the year of deployment and most of them got home one way or another. Two soldiers lost newborn children during the tour. One sergeant who lost his father went home twice. The first time his father rallied and recovered, the next time was for the funeral.
Life seems on hold during the year of deployment, but life goes on back home. The people who handle the emergency leaves have to deal with the reality of tragedy back home through the entire tour.
The soldier at the center of emergency leaves was Sergeant First Class Lori Burns, the NCOIC of the battalion S-1--the people who handle the paperwork. When the brigade received a Red Cross message, they passed it to our Operations (S-3) section who notified the battalion commander and command sergeant major and Lori. She started the paperwork and the very delicate process of determining whether this emergency was actually an Emergency Leave or not. An official military emergency leave is for immediate family--parents, siblings, children, and spouse. But some soldiers are raised by their grandparents.
As some of you may remember, I was one of the soldiers who received a Red Cross message that did not qualify as an actual emergency. My mother-in-law died on Mother's Day last year, just a week after I arrived in Iraq. Because there was space in the leave schedule at the time, I could have gone on emergency leave, but my wife thought it would be better to keep my leave as it was scheduled because we already had plans made.
But other guys who fell into the "not emergency" category that I was in really wanted to go home. And most got to go home by giving up their scheduled leave. The company and battalion commanders as well as the first sergeants and command sergeant major all would get the soldier home if they possibly could. And unless they were off base on a mission, LTC Perry and CSM Christine were woken up and briefed on every Red Cross message. The company commander and first sergeant delivered the message.
We had more than 50 Red Cross messages during the year of deployment and most of them got home one way or another. Two soldiers lost newborn children during the tour. One sergeant who lost his father went home twice. The first time his father rallied and recovered, the next time was for the funeral.
Life seems on hold during the year of deployment, but life goes on back home. The people who handle the emergency leaves have to deal with the reality of tragedy back home through the entire tour.
Friday, May 7, 2010
First Time Trial Coming up
On Sunday morning I will ride my first Time Trial since 2006. It is not my favorite event, I don't have a TT bike. For this event, I don't even have the special handlebars, wheels or helmet real time trailers use. But I do have a nice new Main Line Cycling/Bi-Kyle team skin suit. So if I don't ride well, I will at least look like a real bike racer!
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Who Fought the Iraq War: Coming Home the Hard Way
About once a month, I would run into Chief Warrant Officer Tim Blosser on Tallil Ali Air Base. He is a funny guy in a very dry way. We would occasionally have serious conversations, but mostly we made rapid fire bad jokes then went back to whatever we had been doing five minutes before.
Last weekend I called Tim up just to see how he was doing. He is the sort of guy who can make the best of any bad situation and I expected him to be back into a comfortable life and having a good time.
He's not.
Tim came back to primary custody of his two high-school age kids and a job that disappeared while he was in Iraq. The people who rented his house while he was in Iraq left a big enough mess that he is renting an apartment until the house can be repaired. Worse still for someone who spent a year away from his wife, he only sees his wife two days each month. She lives in Maine, has two high-school-age children also. She will continue to live in Maine until they graduate. Tim wants his kids to graduate with their friends, so he will continue to live in Pennsylvania.
Tim said parenting is about sacrifice. He and his wife knew when they married that they would only have occasional weekends together for the first four years they were married. He said that an arrangement like this really makes him appreciate the time he has with his wife. He even said they plan to continue to have special weekends together when they live in the same place.
He got a job, but it is with a small company and he is the new guy, so he did not sound really secure in his prospects. But he talked about how the company is expanding and if everything goes well, there could be real growth.
Tim is an amazing guy.
Last weekend I called Tim up just to see how he was doing. He is the sort of guy who can make the best of any bad situation and I expected him to be back into a comfortable life and having a good time.
He's not.
Tim came back to primary custody of his two high-school age kids and a job that disappeared while he was in Iraq. The people who rented his house while he was in Iraq left a big enough mess that he is renting an apartment until the house can be repaired. Worse still for someone who spent a year away from his wife, he only sees his wife two days each month. She lives in Maine, has two high-school-age children also. She will continue to live in Maine until they graduate. Tim wants his kids to graduate with their friends, so he will continue to live in Pennsylvania.
Tim said parenting is about sacrifice. He and his wife knew when they married that they would only have occasional weekends together for the first four years they were married. He said that an arrangement like this really makes him appreciate the time he has with his wife. He even said they plan to continue to have special weekends together when they live in the same place.
He got a job, but it is with a small company and he is the new guy, so he did not sound really secure in his prospects. But he talked about how the company is expanding and if everything goes well, there could be real growth.
Tim is an amazing guy.
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