Good morning, and welcome back to the post-vacation edition of your Kansas City Star Magazine. I&rsquo;m happy to report that with most hands back on deck, several regular features will resume their regular weekly or biweekly appearance.</p><p>Architecture: A-Z is back from summer break today with &ldquo;N.&rdquo; Look for new installments every other week. </p><p>The Mag Interview returns to weekly status with a bang next week, as Willie Lanier Jr. talks about his famous dad and his sports entertainment company.</p><p>My own column will appear more frequently heading into fall &mdash; bad news for fans of the Remember When reader commentaries that otherwise fill this space, and good news for fans of Cindy on Sunday who have kindly phoned and sent e-mails urging me to quit slacking off so much in summer. </p><p>To them I can only say, well, I do love summer, and I enjoyed this one immensely. The Kansas City part and the beach part at my home-away-from-home &mdash; Souter&rsquo;s Resort in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Fla., the best dive beach in North America. Snorkeling over live coral reefs in 88-degree water is as close to heaven as it gets for me, what can I say?</p><p>Now that I&rsquo;ve burned through nearly all my accrued vacation time, I&rsquo;m happy to get back to banging the keyboard. </p><p>It&rsquo;s tempting to add that regular readers of this column should know by now that &ldquo;work hard, play hard&rdquo; is my M.O. &mdash; and I believe playing might be the more important bit in the long run.</p><p>That&rsquo;s why Rear Adm. Deborah A. Loewer and Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody are my heroes. </p><p> Loewer was the first warfare-qualified woman to achieve the rank of rear admiral in the U.S. Navy. </p><p>Gen. Dunwoody was the first woman in the U.S. military to achieve four-star officer grade. Their historic achievements have opened up new possibilities for American servicewomen, including the ones featured in today&rsquo;s profile by Rachel Skybetter.</p><p>When I was a freshman in high school, my father, then a captain in the Navy, told me he thought I would make a good admiral &mdash; perhaps I could even become the first female chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. </p><p>I was flattered by the suggestion and imagined myself in dress whites with four big, fat gold stripes on the shoulders. But I never seriously considered a military career for the simple reason that I have serious difficulty waking up in the morning. I was afraid I would embarrass my father by getting kicked out of the Naval Academy for missing reveille once too often. With surprising clarity for a teenager, and a tiny bit of remorse, I recognized that I wasn&rsquo;t as tough as my father. He and my mother had provided me with a soft and happy existence as a child, and I liked it.</p><p>That is all the more reason why I feel a deep sense of admiration and debt to the military servicewomen and men who work hard, endure extreme personal sacrifice and put themselves in harm&rsquo;s way. </p><p>It is only because they&rsquo;ve stepped up to do the tough, dangerous work that I am at liberty to pursue a fun job with flexible hours, modest pay, generous vacation time and few job hazards beyond taking calls from readers who really, really dislike the new crossword puzzle.</p><p>To those readers, I&rsquo;m sorry to say the old puzzle continues to be retired and unavailable and the current one is the closest we could find to the difficulty level of the old one. To the rest of you, I admire your fortitude in soldiering ahead with the slightly more challenging replacement. </p><p>Thanks, too, to the readers who have contributed Remember When and Mailbag commentaries in response to articles. We continue to welcome submissions to <a href="mailto:starmag@kcstar.com">starmag@kcstar.com</a>. Put &ldquo;Remember When&rdquo; or &ldquo;Mailbag&rdquo; in the subject line.</p><p>Now that I&rsquo;m back hard at work, all of you to get out there and enjoy the last two weeks of summer.