I'm a member of a book club, and one of the club traditions is that for the October meeting, everyone dresses up as a character from any of the books we'd read in the past year. Well, time kind of crept up on me, tonight was the meeting, and I didn't have a costume ready.

Then I remembered one of the books had a character that was a mustered-out Vietnam aviation enlisted man. So I pulled out my old Marine working coveralls and steel-toes, tossed on my float coat and cranial, and I was good to go.

It had slipped my mind that the hostess's husband was a captain (or maybe first lieutenant) in the New York Guard. He was genuinely offended that I was wearing a uniform as a costume. And then more offended that I found his taking offense amusing. He may be an officer, but there's three strikes against him-- As a Marine I look down on the Army, as an active-duty veteran I look down on reservists who were never active duty, and finally the state guards are the absolute lowest on the hierarchy of military services.*

That said, he keeps asking if I want to join. I might, state guard duty is super easy from all I can tell...

*: The hierarchy is as follows: Active Duty Marines, Active Duty Army, Active Duty Navy, Reserve Marines, Active Duty Air Force, Reserve Army, Active Duty Coast Guard, Reserve Navy, Reserve Air Force. Then Air National Guard, Army National Guard. Finally Young Marines, Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts, then State Guard.

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Last  night I had to work late, came home and got five hours of sleep, and then went back in early for more work. So we decided to have our year-and-a-half old daughter sleep over at her grandparents' house. By all accounts it went well: she went right to sleep at her usual bedtime, and woke up and was cheerful.

The problem was at our house. The cat was very upset. She couldn't help but notice that the human kitten was missing and yet we were failing to do anything about it. Shouldn't we be searching for her? How could we be so neglectful, going to bed like nothing was wrong! She normally avoids the baby's bedroom but she refused to leave it, meowing urgently.

Poor kitty. The baby is coming home in a few minutes, and I expect in her grumpy way she'll be happy to see her again.

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