I'm still here

Dear Blog,

Sorry I've been gone for so long.  It's been an interesting month.  Yep, I'm back on Chemo.  One more week to go and then I'm off of it for 4 weeks.

But, inspite of that I've still been busy.  After I went to the Blogger shoot, Robert and I went to T-Town (Teutopolis, IL) to see family one weekend and then Peoria to see some of the folks I had served with in Germany.    More on those later.

In fact, I've been typing alot.  Just not on this computer, but on the laptop.  It's pretty much stream of consciousness on several different topics.  All of them are fuzzy and messy and desperately need re-write and editing before they get turned into electrons on the interwebz.

The other thing other then it being summer and being outside and busy is that I've been doing more reading, not just other bloggers and the interwebz stuff, but real dead tree books.  Between War and Peace: How America Ends It's Wars is a series of essays examining the end and aftermath of America's wars, how they ended and the reactions thereafter.  And the consensus is that we are great at winning wars.  We're reeeeaaaallllllyyyyy good at kicking ass and taking names.  However, we pretty much fail after we spike the ball in the endzone. The only time we had anything that even almost, kinda, sorta, maybe had a plan was WWII in Germany.  Although Mr. Morganthau's plan of turning Germany into a land of non--mechanized, peasant farmers quickly fell apart with the start of the Cold War and there were as many "terrorist" attacks in post-war Germany as in Iraq after Gulf WarII.

In GWB's Decision Points he explains the circumstances and the processes he used to arrive at his decisions, and agree or disagree, he sought out opinions, advice and guidance before making decisions, including some that were unpopular.  But I will give him this.  He made all of them based on his principals, not political gain.

There were a couple other books, but nothing worth mentioning.

And I've been sleeping.  These four weeks on suck.  One more to got and then 4 weeks off.

I can't wait.

In the meantime, meet my new hero.  Ron Swanson: