KITTERY, Maine (AP) - Workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard will be exempt from the Defense Department's plan to furlough about 680,000 of its civilian employees for 11 days through the end of the fiscal year.

According to a memo obtained by The Associated Press, the Pentagon will allow the Navy to avoid furloughs for tens of thousands of workers at shipyards, including the approximately 6,000 workers at the shipyard in Kittery, Maine. Civilians make up the bulk of the workforce at those facilities and are key to keeping production lines going and preventing major backlogs in the repairs of ships and combat vehicles.

The Congressional delegations in both Maine and New Hampshire had pressed the Pentagon to exempt the shipyard workers from the requirements to take unpaid days off.

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Things I Should Have Been Doing Yesterday:

1. Laundry

2. Cleaning

3. Going for a training run

Things I Did Instead:

1 Drink coffee.

2. Read Leanne Shirtliffe's Don't Lick the Minivan

3. Howl with laughter.

"Remember the show Survivor? That's what parenting is like. We need to outwit, outlast, and outnumber our kids." (p. 95)

"Parenting tip: Lazy parenting creates kids who are self-starters" (p. 117)

Amen, sister.

Poor F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Kicked out of Princeton.  Saw his early literary stardom go down the drain.  Wife Zelda committed to various mental institutions.  Dead of drink at the age of 44.  And now director Baz Luhrmann has even taken away his authorship of one of the greatest American novels.

It’s true.  As the new movie take on “The Great Gatsby” ends, we see the title page of the novel of the same title, attributed to the fictional character of Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire).  No wonder Dorothy Parker commented at Fitzgerald’s funeral, “The poor son of a bitch.”