Good evening, all. Well, today was the annual gathering of the First Class Association to compete for the chance to advance to Chief Petty Officer. After taking this years exam, I can assure you that I will never see these on my collars.

Nannette says that I say that EVERY year but since this is my last chance to advance before I retire, I am quite certain that the test contained enough off the wall BS about the most obscure stuff about the Navy that I had to guess at over half of the questions. No biggy. I expected it and had planned on retiring at or shortly after my 20 year mark regardless of advancing or not.
In other news, Madeleine will soon be the proud owner of her own FLUTE. I'm so happy that she's taken to playing an instrument so well. She's only been playing since mid September but she really enjoys it and wants to continue. Hope it gets here in one piece. I ordered it from Musician's Friend a couple days ago and it shipped tonight. I'm sure Madeleine will blog about it when it gets here. :-)