Happy Armed Forces Day!

Today is "Armed Forces Day" -- one of those holidays where it sounds like it should be a big deal, but it turns out that you only get the day off because they have it on Saturday. The 3rd Saturday in May was designated as the day to honor all the Armed Services after re-alignment in 1949; before that, there were individual days for all the Services. (Navy Day was at the end of October, for instance.)

How are you planning on celebrating Armed Forces Day this year? Here in the Boise area, we'll be celebrating by having record high temperatures and going to the Armed Forces Day Open House at the Idaho Military History Museum. For those not lucky enough to live in the Treasure Valley here in Idaho you could engage in these other activities:

1) Check out bothenook's Bubbleblogger Roundup over at his place for recent posts from the entire pantheon of submarine bloggers.

2) Check out all the new pictures of submarines they've recently posted over at the newly-redesigned navy.mil site; you can get to them by clicking here, then selecting "Pictures" in the dropdown menu and typing in "ssn", "ssbn", or "ssgn" ("ssn" has the most), or you can click on the links I'm providing below:

Pictures of USS Dallas (SSN 700) last week pulling into Diego Garcia: 1 2
Pictures of USS Oklahoma City (SSN 723) leaving on deployment from Norfolk: 1 2
Pictures of USS Albany (SSN 753) pulling into Souda Bay, Crete: 1 2 3 4 Newly-commissioned USS North Carolina (SSN 777): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
USS Hawaii (SSN 776) returns from her maiden "deployment": 1 2
USS Montpelier (SSN 765) returns from deployment: 1 2 3 4 5
And the picture of the last few weeks, associated with USS Pasadena's return from deployment, is this one, of a Pasadena Submariner proposing to his girlfriend right after the boat pulls in:

BZ, ET2(SS) Gibson! Your romantic act gives hope to long-suffering submarine girlfriends everywhere that, yes, eventually the guy's going to marry you!

3) You could read some submarine books. I'm currently reading "Scorpion Down", and when that's done, I'll start reading a new submarine book I just picked up called "Escape From The Deep", about USS Tang (SS 306).

4) You could even do something having to do with another part of the Armed Forces, but I don't see why. Personally, I'm hoping to go to the Military History Museum, then go see a movie, and then maybe write a blog post making fun of the new "plastic retention" program our submarine crews are having forced upon them. I'm sure there will be lawn work involved as well.

Happy Armed Forces Day!