It’s Wednesday morning around 10:30 when the Oak Hill finally comes into view, its steel-gray bow peeking out from behind a grove of green trees at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek.
It’s been three months since the dock landing ship left home for Central America, and all of the usual fanfare is waiting to greet its crew: crowds of cheering families, toddlers dressed in sailor suits, and the lucky, excited woman who’s been chosen to take part in a time-honored Navy tradition – the first homecoming kiss.
In this case, that woman is 22-year-old Citlalic Snell. She’s a sailor herself, assigned to the destroyer Bainbridge, but today she’s in civilian clothes – jeans, boots and a stylish leather jacket. Watching pierside as the Oak Hill pulls into port, she absentmindedly twists the small diamond ring on her left hand.
As is usually the case, it was decided in a raffle. Gaeta bought 50 tickets at a dollar apiece. While she suspects her division might have bought a few more on her behalf, she says she knows of sailors who bought more than a hundred, so she was surprised to learn Monday that one of hers had been drawn as the winner.
An airline that lets Facebook users pick their seat mates based on their profiles? Yeah, I don’t see this going horribly wrong.
Using a new feature called “Meet & Seat,” KLM allows passengers to browse the Facebook profiles of other passengers in hopes of making each flight a bit more intimate. The romantic angle of the new option isn’t explicitly stated — and you could just as easily pick a potential seat neighbor based on their favorite TV show or other interest — but singles could definitely take advantage by turning a plane ride into a bite-sized date.
A new study finds that people are more likely to lie when texting. Keep this in mind when your relatives text you that lame excuse about having to miss the family gathering this year.
Lying via text makes intuitive sense. It’s what researchers call “lean media,” which means it doesn’t effectively transfer the rich emotional cues that might alert someone to duplicitous behavior. You can’t stutter over text, or twist your hands nervously, or dart your eyes.
On average men spend 81 minutes a day on personal grooming, including cleansing, toning and moisturising, shaving, styling hair and choosing clothes, the study found.
Women have their beauty regime down to a fine art and get hair, clothes and make-up done in just 75 minutes. The research, carried out for Travelodge, found that on an average morning men spend 23 minutes in the shower, compared to 22 minutes for women. Men then take 18 minutes on their shaving regime, compared to 14 minutes for women despite them having to trim legs, armpits and bikini line. Men take a minute longer – 10 minutes – on cleansing, toning and moisturising.
Choosing what to see isn’t necessarily the hardest part of a night out at the movies. Sometimes the bigger question is, where do you sit? On the aisles for easy access to Twizzlers and Diet Coke refills? Or do you map out the closest fire exits and plant yourself there, just in case? Do you sit in the front row because you enjoy the feeling of being swallowed by the film? Or do you chose the middle? There’s a reason that people sit in the middle, I’m just not sure what it is.
Google is helping searchers get into the Christmas spirit by offering a sprinkling of snow on their computer monitor. When typing the words “let it snow” into the popular search engine, a flurry of snowflakes trickle down the screen, followed by frost. You can wipe away the frost by clicking the left button on your mouse as an ice scraper or pressing the “Defrost” button, which appears in place of the blue “Search” button.
