Five Things on a Friday: Joining The Peace Corps

Happy Friday, friends. 

We had a busy week at Casa Cabeza. Among other things, we sent our oldest child off to the Peace Corps on Monday morning. She is now serving our nation overseas! 

As you can imagine, we had quite the emotional scene dropping her off at Westchester County Airport, only to see all her would-be flights get cancelled throughout the day until she finally wound up back at home just after 8 pm Monday night. She was then up all night trying to rebook her flights, which continued to get cancelled throughout the night and into the following morning. Thank you American Airlines! She finally made it to staging in Miami over thirty-six hours after we'd initially dropped her off.

Needless to say, she was a tough combination of exhausted and frustrated by the time she joined her cohort. But her follow-on flight went better, and once she finally catches up on all the sleep she missed over the course of those disastrous travel delays, I'm sure she'll be fine.

Sally and I are proud but also sad this week. What can you do?

1. Cover work on The Return of Dr. Necropolis

We started work on the cover for The Return of Dr. Necropolis this week. I wound up going with Natalia from Dawn Book Design based on a recommendation from my friend and former plebe roommate Sean Smith. This same company did the cover for his book, Even A Dog Enlists, Why Not You?

As I've mentioned before, I love this cover.

With that said, my book's cover looks nothing like this. But it's always better to get a recommendation in situations like this, and here we are.

I can't show you anything yet, but it's been pretty exciting so far.

2. 40th Annual Swim Across the Sound Marathon: July 31, 2027!

The Swim sent out a Save the Date email this week, setting the day for next year's Swim. I took this year off but have every intention of doing the Swim again next year, so consider this your Warning Order. I'll be coming to you looking for donations to help BEAT CANCER in maybe six months or so.

3. 2026 Week 4 College Football Predictions for Every Game (Bleacher Report)

They've got Army & Navy both winning this weekend, which makes me nervous. They've also got Texas winning a tight game at Tennessee. We'll see about that as well. I took Tennessee and the points at home on this week's College Football Roundtable podcast. As an aside, I was really happy with this week's Roundtable, so definitely give that a listen if you haven't already.

Fun fact: Bleacher Report runs a TON of AFF Articles on their Army page. I don't know if they've got some kind of RSS feed hooked in, or if it's just an intern or whatever who happens to like our stuff, but we got a TON of traffic from B/R last year. Not a lot this year, alas. Not sure how many people are really reading B/R's college football coverage, honestly, based on the drop-off in referrals, but it's still cool that they found us somehow.

4. I Did The FAFO Podcast Yesterday

Facts. Truth. No BS.

This isn’t a safe space—it’s a real space. The FAFO Podcast is where uncomfortable truths get said out loud, weak excuses get exposed, and reality hits exactly the way it’s supposed to.

With that name and tagline and a host calling himself "Big Daddy Storm," you'd think this was the most MAGA podcast to ever MAGA. With that in mind, I wasn't sure I was even gonna do this show. But a casual glance at their recent interviews revealed that the show isn't remotely MAGA, at least not in its execution. It's just a decidedly macho front-facing brand. 

More to the point, combat infantrymen have been arguably the best audience for my book, so I figured I should maybe lean into that and try to reach macho men where they are. 

As it turned out, the interview went really, really well. I enjoyed it, and Storm made me feel good about myself, which is a good trick for an interviewer. I gotta say, too, that he has an amazing radio voice. He does local high school football play-by-play and has probably the best sounding show I've ever been on.

As usual, I have no idea when my episode will release. But I think you'll like it. We talked a lot about the actual writing process, which was nice. We even talked a little D&D! 

Everybody always wants to talk sports, and while I love sports, that won't sell my book. Plus, I get tired of having to be the same person all the time. I also write, y'know?

5. We asked pro athletes: What’s the one thing a leader said that helped you most? (The Athletic)

"Believe in your preparation, and you have to believe in what you see.”

[Former Steelers LB Levon] Kirkland said those words gave him “all the confidence in the world” as a football player. In his next three seasons, he made two Pro Bowls and twice finished the top six for Defensive Player of the Year...

“I really believe that when you find out your identity, you are able to reduce anxiety,” he said. “You understand your place in this world. If you can do that, you can do anything. The outside won’t get to you. The coach yelling at you won’t get to you. You know your purpose. I really believe that’s trusting your eyes.”

This was a shockingly good article from The Athletic on what it feels like to be a high-level athlete and what it takes to both succeed and stay at the top. Not a lot of sportswriters get this side of it in my experience because most writers are strictly Non-Athletic Regular People (NARPs). This one, though, is really worth your time.

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That's all we've got for Week Four of this new reinvention of Five Things.

As always, if you want to keep up with all the happenings on Dr. Necropolis, go ahead and sign up for my new mailing list. I'm just sending out one email per month, but that's still the best way to make sure you're in the know.

Have a good weekend!