The Salute...

There couldn’t possibly be more to our short trip to Florida last weekend, could there? Well, only if you count the real reason we went.

I had mentioned that my daughter is in town from New Jersey and my son just graduated from UTSA and commissioned in the Air Force. Well, my parents were planning to attend the festivities and such but my dad had some technical difficulties that made flying to San Antonio too much of an ordeal. I’m happy to report that he is recovering remarkably well, but travel is just not in the cards right now.

During the commissioning ceremony at UTSA, my daughter gave my son his first official salute. This tradition is especially memorable when the first salute is given by a family member, and several years ago, my son had asked my father, a retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant, if he would give him his first salute. Needless to say we had to go with Plan “B”, but I’d say my daughter was pretty thrilled to be the stand-in.

But there was still something missing, so we took the party to my parents’ house!

After arriving in Florida, we all headed to my parents house and suited up for some pictures of the big event. We took a lot of pictures but being there and seeing my dad’s eyes light up with pride was something pretty special.What he didn't know was that my son had a Silver Dollar to present him following his first official outdoor salute.The tradition stems from a time when officers were assigned an enlisted man to help them with their uniforms and such. The officer would pay the enlisted guy a dollar a month for the service. Now, it is a tradition that when officers in any service are commissioned, they give a silver dollar to the first enlisted member to salute them. So, my daughter got one during the official commissioning ceremony, and my dad got one for our home made outdoor ceremony.

And what did I get after paying for the trip to Florida?Well, I got the satisfaction of this picture that was taken while I was saluting my son, and I think this one will end up in a frame on a wall.

Whirlwind Week Report: And it isn't over...

I hope you can forgive my lack of exciting reporting coming from The Five-Oh in the past week or more but things have been quite hectic and rewarding on several fronts.

I shan't bore you with the Neighborhood Watch related issues that made big news, but I'll send you to this link regarding a tragic situation and leave it at that for the time being.

In other local neighborhood excitement, our board of directors (there are only four currently) figured out who would be the new Chair and vice-Chair. I'm not sure if it is public info or not, so I suppose we'll have to wait until the next meeting for the announcement. The really interesting thing to me is that one of our board members no longer lives in the neighborhood. In other words, someone who will not be impacted in any way by decisions of the board is helping (or in some cases, hindering) the things that impact me! I think that is wrong. What about you?

Okay, forget all that unpleasantness. So last night we were off to attend my son's commencement ceremony - he graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). Unlike many of his fellow graduates, he was on the 4-year plan as opposed to the apparently common 5, 6 and 7 year programs. You know, a lot of people go to college for seven years. I know, they're called doctors. Sorry.

Just as we were leaving the house, my daughter called and said that her flight from Philadelphia had been delayed and that now, she wouldn't be getting into San Antonio until Saturday AM instead of late Friday night. I know, you are probably asking yourself why I, as a good father, didn't volunteer to drive to Dallas, pick her and her husband up at DFW, then drive back to San Antonio? People, Texas is a big state. It would take me five and a half hours to get from my side of SA to DFW and and other five and a half hours to get back! And we still had to attend my son's graduation!

Luckily, she has a friend who lives just near the airport, so they got to have a nice visit and about 4 hours of sleep before taking a flight out this morning. Oh, and in case you are wondering, American Airlines didn't offer them a hotel room, or a pillow - and surely no coupon for a free flight or bag of peanuts.

But back to the graduation. This event was held at the UTSA Convocation Center. Not a bad place for a ceremony of this size.We are usually pretty good at picking out our kids from a crowd of people, but without binoculars or a telephoto lens, we spent most the ceremony fawning over some kid who looks like my son from half a mile away. I'm sure that kid will do well in life, but as soon as he got up to walk, we knew it wasn't our son. Bad posture. As it turned out, we were never in a position to see our son until he got up to walk to the stage. Perhaps that other young man's parents were in the audience and made the same mistake with our kid.

So, they have these things down to a science. The administration knows that you couldn't care less about the other 700 people graduating, you only care about your own kid. Speeches were short, there were no politically motivated anti-W comments and in general, once they started reading off names, it was like fine clock-work.

Unfortunately, they still go alphabetically, and with a last name starting with "S", we had a lot of waiting to do. And we did wait, very politely I might add. But funny, as the end of the commencement neared and as we began to get excited for our son (and apparently some kid who looked just like our son), we noticed that the people who have graduates with last names starting in the first half of the alphabet were starting to simply get up and leave.Hey, I don't care if you want to leave and not watch my kid graduate even though I gave a heartfelt golf-clap when your kid walked the stage, but please don't block my view of the stage as you exit your seat. How discourteous is that? And it wasn't one or two families. I'm talking half the place was emptying when there was literally ten minutes left.Well guess what suckers, when the commencement was over, UTSA brought out the Mariachis! How Purro San Antonio is that, to bust out orange sombrero wearing mariachis? And they were damn good. To all you people who left early - piss off!So it isn't over yet. My daughter and son-in-law got in this morning and shortly, we are off to my son's commissioning ceremony. I know a few of you have seen me around minus the mustache and goatee. I'm stuffing myself into my service dress uniform for the ceremony and had to shave to be in "regs". Hopefully there won't be a weigh-in. My daughter has come with her uniform and she will give my son his first official salute. Bust out your hankies.

We'll zip over to Florida shortly so my dad (who for medical reasons couldn't make it tonight) can slip into his uniform and provide another salute. As you might expect, our military family is pretty proud of our first officer in the family.

So, if I don't have more goofy pictures or updates on the latest restaurants for several more days or so, I hope you can understand. Maybe now is a good time to go back and read some of the older posts. You know you want to.