Captain's CornerLove is a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

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Any way, I’ve had a couple nicknames myself over the years… My dad called me “Monster” when I was a kid. When I got a little older and my mom realized how much like my dad I was, she called me Junior for a while. By the way, my name is Kevin Bryant Dooley, which, last name aside, is nothing like my dad’s Allen Delano Dooley. Junior came from the fact that my ornery father was sometimes lovingly (though with slight annoyance) referred to by my mom as “A**hole”. NOTE: This was all done in fun, after all, Dooley men take pride in their ability to live up to that particular name. One day my dad and I were in rare form and after a particularly witty and blistering comment by me, my mom pointed out just how much I was like my father, and that people might as well call me a**hole, junior… Junior stuck for a few years, especially whilst I entered the extremely ornery years called “adolescence”. During high school athletics I was referred to as “Doogie” or “Doogie Howzer” once it got out that I had skipped 7th grade. And finally in college due to the complete disaster that is Marriot collegiate catering, I got the nickname, “Captain” due to the fact that I ate one particular type of cereal at nearly every meal.

But, I dish out as much as I receive. I seldom refer to my beautiful bride as Ann… more than likely I call her “honey”, “sweetie”, or my personal favorite, “Pretty Lady”. This is, of course, derived from much the same complete bewilderment of a portly, goofy guy who somehow ended up with a beautiful woman as seen in “Knocked Up” when Seth Rogen’s character drunkenly said, “Whoa, you’re prettier than I am.” Most of my friends have nicknames (ummm… this may only exist in my head, but trust me… whether I call you by one or not, I’ve probably given you one). For instance, through his own actions, my buddy Frank now goes by (in my head at least) either Frodo, Merry, or Pip (Samwise being way too long of a name, and Sam not being hobbit-esque enough). Just to make sure we’re clear… I have called Frank this to his face, which is why I shared his particular nicknames. I also give nicknames to people I don’t know. I mean, how else do you describe people you’ve never met before when you’re out people watching? Sure you could say, “Hey, see that gangly, awkward teenager over there?”… or you could say, “Take a look at Ichabod.” You could say, “Did you see that guy of medium height that looks kinda like a biker and has a big beard,” or you could much more easily say, “What’s ZZ Top doing over there?”

So, back to Lilybeth Erin… I’m sure I’ll end up calling her something other than Lilybeth, Lily, etc. Anyone want to place bets as to what it will be?

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Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining… Seriously, I didn’t mind. Twice a year I have it rough… not like my friend Jeff who runs his own coffee shop (Texas Roast, if you haven’t tried it, you should!), who works 14-16 hour days every day. So I really don’t mind the long hours, and I loved the hectic traveling and shooting… that was a blast.

But the point of all this is that I really, really missed my wife. Most nights she was in bed fast asleep when I got home, and I generally slept through her getting up and leaving in the morning (except for when I got up and left before her…). So it wasn’t long before I started getting a little grumpy. Now, to my credit, I tried to belay some of my grumpiness with humor… but that doesn’t always work. So, like all the other times I’ve found myself longing for my wife’s companionship, I found solace in a song. This time it was “In Your Eyes” by the great Peter Gabriel. Previous songs used for this purpose have been Bob Dylan’s “Man in Me”, Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mama, I’m Comin’ Home”, Golden Earring’s “Radar Love” and the Foo Fighter’s “Miracle”. But this isn’t about those songs, it’s about “In Your Eyes”. The song talks about utter longing and a completeness found only in the source of that longing. Listening to it, made me realize that while I’m a talented and sometimes humorous fellow, with out the woman that God gave me and created for me, I’m only a fraction of what I am meant to be. She is not my everything, nor the totality of my world, for only God can be that… but she is one of the most important and integral parts of my life, and I can’t stand who I am without her. But enough of my babbling, here’s the complete lyrics to the song:

Love, I get so lost sometimes
Days pass, and this emptiness fills my heart
When I want to run away
I drive off in my car
But whichever way I go
I come back to the place you are

All my instincts, they return
And the grand facade so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

In your eyes
the light the heat
In your eyes
I am complete
In your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
In your eyes
the resolution of all the fruitless searches
in your eyes
I see the light and the heat
In your eyes
Oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes

Love, I don’t like to see so much pain
So much wasted, and this moment keeps slipping away
I get so tired of working so hard for our survival
I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive

And all my instincts, they return
And the grand facade so soon will burn
Without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

In your eyes
the light the heat
In your eyes
I am complete
In your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
In your eyes
the resolution of all the fruitless searches
in your eyes
I see the light and the heat
In your eyes
Oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes
in your eyes in your eyes
in your eyes in your eyes
in your eyes in your eyes

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…at the airport because she finally made it home! For those of you who don’t know, Ann flew up to Peoria, IL for a funeral last Wednesday and was supposed to return Thursday… then weather happened… Ann’s flight was delayed, cancelled, rescheduled, cancelled again, and finally she just rode with her best friend to Kansas City and flew out of there because it was faster than flying out of O’Hare and it’s 2 days of no flying back log…

I don’t think I’ve ever missed my wife quite this much, probably because I wasn’t prepared for her to be gone so long… But she’s back now and I can quit singing “I’m So Ronery” from the Team America soundtrack to myself…

Anyway, here’s a pic I snapped as she walked up to the car @ the airport:

Ain’t she beautiful?

Also, for those of you waiting on a baby update, we haven’t been back to the doctor yet, but tomorrow (Monday) we go for the big appointment… we’ll get a sonogram with a baby that looks like more than a bean, figure out what the insurance will/won’t pay, find out what hospital they’ll want Ann to deliver at, and get some kind of gift basket… so I’ll give a big fatty, boom-batty update tomorrow night!

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For those of you who don’t know… I enjoy firearms. I enjoy heading out to the range with a toolbox full of ammo and a variety of different rifles and pistols. I enjoy the challenge of putting holes in paper, bottles, metal at various ranges. I enjoy the noise, I enjoy the kick of the fire arm (that’s right… I enjoy the bruise my Enfield .303 gives me!)… there’s just nothing quite like it.

Unfortunately Ann has been a little leery of firearms and has never understood why I enjoy it. In fact, buying ammo has previously been hard to justify. I’m sure I’m partially to blame… after all I took Ann shooting for her first time while we were dating (HEY, we’d been dating a year or so… it wasn’t our first date or anything…) and I made a few mistakes… I took a pistol that had an aluminum frame (ie: more kick) to a local indoor (read: LOUDER) shooting range, and didn’t ensure we had some space between us and the other shooters (in other words, lots of noise all around us)… so Ann shoots, screams, drops the gun on the counter and leaves… waiting in the car until I had packed up my stuff.

Six or seven long years later we go on vacation to Kerrville, TX where they have an official Olympic Training Site and Ann tells me to bring a gun along, because she’ll suffer through an hour or so of watching me shoot. So I take a long my Hungarian SA-85 AK (yes, that’s a variation of an AK-47 you see in the pictures above… Yes, it’s semi-automatic…). We’re outside this time, the AK doesn’t really make much noise, nor does it kick much. I set Ann up with the foam kind of ear plugs and I give her my over the ear muffs so she’s got double protection from the noise and I get to work. After a while of punching holes in paper at 100 yards I start to move my stuff over to the 25 yard range a few feet away. Ann asks why I’m moving and I tell her it’s she can hit the target easier since she’s never shot a rifle. At this point she laughs.

After a few minutes I talk her into taking one shot. I start by explaining the rules of firearms… Go ahead and ask her… she’ll probably remember. Then I show her how to load the rifle, chamber a round and put it back on safety. Then I hand her the rifle and explain to her how to hold it, how to sight it in, etc. She does as I instructed and fires one round, stops and asks if she hit the target. She did, so she tells me she’ll try one more. She fires and again, asks if she hit the target (she did), and says again she’ll shoot one more. A few minutes go by and there’s a distinct click (instead of the normal boom). Ann looks around kinda spooked and asks me what she did to the gun. I laugh and tell her she’s shot all 30 rounds… the magazine is empty. She looks at me kinda funny and asks if I want to shoot… so I load her up and do some shooting standing and about as fast as I can and still stay on target. About 45 seconds to a minute later, I’m reloading the gun and Ann says, “Hey, this is fun… mind if I shoot again?”

I of course let her. She shoots another magazine, the last that I brought on the trip and we start to pack it up. Turns out I needed to get her into the right environment for her to enjoy it… So now she keeps bugging me about when we’re going shooting next.

Anyway, we did a lot on vacation, mostly a lot of relaxing (read: nothing), but one of my favorite parts was getting Ann to enjoy something I enjoy…

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