Stan in the sand box

For those of you who don't know my buddy Stan, let me give you the run down:

I met Stan in the Fall of 2004 on a Saturday morning while shoveling sand onto a part of the Ranger Challenge obstacle course at USU. Stan's kind of a shy kid who smiles a lot, but I managed to find out that he spent his summers working as a river guide. He was also a newlywed who had managed to overcome his shyness enough to successfully woo Georganne, whom he had met while river guiding. I got to hang out with these two quite a bit over the years and I was pretty sad when Stan commissioned and left Utah.

Now Stan has been deployed and as luck would have it, he gets to do what he's always dreamed of doing - lead troops into combat. It's kind of funny to see one of your friends in a role that seems suited to John Wayne or Mel Gibson, and yet Stan is more inspiring than than any actor, because he is "real life" as opposed to being "larger than life".

I still have to give him a hard time since due to operational security, Georganne hasn't been able to reveal where he will be deployed to or what he's doing. Since Stan has now achieved legendary status in my eyes - doing classified thing and is now a freaking ninja - I hereby award him the status of "Secret Squirrel" - don't worry Stan, your patch is in the mail - I hope you'll wear it with pride!

PS - as an elite secret squirrel, I trust you to learn from my mistakes and be careful not to lose any of your nuts.