Endings and Beginnings

Ryan is now officially on terminal leave from the Navy. For a few more days he is still technically on active duty but he has finished work. Overall he seems content, I was worried that he might be a little sad but the only tinges of that I have seen were during his farewell. I was able to get a babysitter so that I could go to the farewell last week and let Ryan be the center of attention not Than. It was really very nice. His command could not have been more glowing in the things they said about him. The speech included things like referring to Ryan as a "national treasure" and mourned the Navy's loss as they said that Ryan and his former boss combined knew more about torpedo defense than any two other individuals on the planet. They gave him a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and being the good bragging wife I will share the write up that went with it. It said, "For meritorious achievement while serving as the torpedo defense, evasion and mine-countermeasure operations analyst at the tactical analysis group of commander, submarine development squadron twelve from August 2007 to September 2009. Demonstrating outstanding leadership and personal initiative, he decisively led a multi-pronged effort to understand and solve the challenges of torpedo defense. Demonstrating superior technical acumen, he authored two ground-breaking torpedo defense studies and managed three weapon analysis facility torpedo studies which significantly raised the academic rigor of torpedo evasion guidance. Additionally, his perseverance and innovative ideas ensured extensive modeling, simulation and at sea operations were conducted in support of refining submarine force weapon evasion doctrine, greatly enhancing fleet survivability. His personal efforts were the critical factor in restoring computer modeling capability to the Devron Twelve staff, which provided the foundation for future in house simulation and doctrine refinement. His direct involvement in five submarine command courses and multiple open ocean torpedo exercises considerably contributed to improving submarine combat approach, attack and evasion tactics. Lieutenant Dropek's exceptional professional abilities, unrelenting perseverance and loyal devotion to duty reflected credit upon himself and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service."

Yesterday we went shopping for civilian clothes and today we are going to look at a few more houses in Rhode Island. We hope that after today we will have seen enough houses to be able to make a decision and put in an offer. The other big development is that we finally have an offer on our current place. The woman who wants to buy our place originally put in an offer on a new construction townhouse nearby, but something is apparently a bit sketchy about that deal and no one will approve financing on it. So she is trying to get out of that one and made an offer on ours that is contingent on getting out of the other one. We should hopefully know by late Friday, but so far it looks good and if all goes well we will close on November 6th. It would be really nice to be able to move forward, and to minimize the time that Ryan will have to do the long commute to Newport.