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Living Aboard Ship

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  • Dungarees. Sew back pockets to the front of your pants.
  • Electrical Boxes. Mount all power switch and outlet boxes on the outside of the wall at a level that will guarantee that you bang your elbow or snag your clothing on them.
  • Electrical Items. Once a month, have an electrician certify as 'safe' and hang a tag on every electrical appliance you own.
  • Engine Room
    • Install humidifiers throughout your house and fill them with a mixture of half water and half motor oil. Remove the muffler from your lawn mower and bring it into the house. Turn the heat up to 120 degrees and run the humidifiers and lawn mower constantly.
    • Lighting off the Engines. After starting your car, sit and watch the gauges, and let it run for four hours before going anywhere to ensure the engine is properly "lit off."
    • Sit in front of your kitchen stove for six hours. Look at nothing but the stove. Maintain a log entry of the position of all the knobs. Have your son randomly report to the kitchen "conditions normal" in the house. Have him randomly ask permission to turn on various appliances in the house. Grant him permission to start half of them, and have him immediately report the condition of the each appliance.
    • Sit in your car and let it run for 4 hours before going anywhere. This is to ensure your engine is properly "lit off.”
  • First few weeks of a deployment. Buy six months of food and supplies for the family and pile it on the on top of furniture, fixtures, and the floor in the bedrooms, dining room, kitchen, living room, basement, garage, and along the sides of all the hallways. 
  • Flight Deck
    • For a FOD Walk Down, assemble the family at one end of the yard. Have them line up side by side to the full width of the yard and then have them walk slowly across the yard, heads down with no talking, and pick up every twig or pebble. The purpose of the walk down is to prevent the lawn mower from sucking something into the blades that will damage them.
    • Assemble your neighbors in the street with push brooms. Turn on all the garden hoses available and use extra strength dish detergent to wash the street. When half-done, open fire hydrants drench everyone.
    • ark all of your neighbors’ cars in a seemingly random order along the street. Change the order 3-4 times a day while other cars are speeding down the street.