Home for a Year

It's been exactly one year since I left Kuwait and landed back on American soil. I can't believe how fast it's gone by, especially when I think about how slow the previous year felt. Being away from my family make every day seem like a month, but on the bright side, it gave me perspective; now I try hard to cherish every day I have with them. This time around with Sarah, I'll get to see her grow up from the get-go.
To celebrate, I'm going to take down the counter on the right side of the blog that has been tracking my days of "quality time" since I returned. It's (still) good to be home.

Cool Video

Check out this video of the space shuttle launching into orbit.
Be sure to stick around for the whole video so you can see the solid rocket boosters peel off from the shuttle and parachute into the ocean.

At the Movies

We took Sarah and Hunter to see the new Pixar animated film, Ratatouille, today. It was her first time at the movies and his second time. (Back before I deployed, Hunter saw Star Wars Episode III)
We almost made it through the whole movie, but Hunter only lasted about one and a half hours before he needed to run around like a madman. Sitting still for that long is just a bridge too far for him.
What we saw of the movie, we liked, though.
(btw, this is my 400th post on this blog in just over two years since starting it)

All American Girl

All American Girl
Originally uploaded by Rob Wooldridge.

Sarah was decked out in her red, white, and blue dress for 4th of July. We didn't do too much, just walked down to the park in the Village to see the band that was playing. The kids are too young to stay up for the fireworks, but that wil be a lot of fun in a few years.

The Glove

I read this article in Wired magazine a few months back and was discussing part of it with Rick and Cali today (which is Rick's birthday, by the way). Specifically, I was talking about "the Glove," developed by the two Stanford researchers shown in the picture holding the device. As this other article states,

The idea is to engorge confluences of arteries and veins located [in the the hands] by mechanically drawing blood into them. The technology was used by some athletes during training for the Olympic Games in Athens, and it may soon find its way into attire for military personnel and others who work in extreme heat.
"We literally cool the body from the inside out, rather than from the outside in, which is the conventional method," explains Senior Research Scientist Dennis Grahn, who developed the cooling device with H. Craig Heller, the Lorry I. Lokey/Business Wire Professor in Human Biology and Environmental Biology.
The device works by creating a local subatmospheric pressure environment, Grahn says. "We stick the hand in a rigid chamber with an airtight seal around the wrist, and then we draw a bit of the air out of the chamber," he explains. "This causes blood to be pulled into the hand. Then we cool the overlying skin surface of the palm of the hand [by circulating cool water through a closed system on which the palm of the hand rests], which cools the blood in the hand's vascular heat-exchange structures. Arteries deliver blood directly from the heart to these vascular structures, and veins then carry the blood from these structures back to the heart."

Pretty cool, huh?