My hus­band and I real­ly enjoy watch­ing NCIS togeth­er, a sim­ple plea­sure born of the days when we were very depen­dent on stay­ing at home and watch­ing tele­vi­sion as our main source of enter­tain­ment. Some­how in the past few years we’ve become attached to the cast of char­ac­ters who’ve per­me­at­ed the show over its nine year run. 

Who can’t love ‘Ducky’, the nick­name for the med­ical exam­in­er Dr. Mal­lard, played by David McCal­lum, also known to some of us as Illya Kuryakin, the Russ­ian secret agent in the series The Man From U.N.C.L.E.?

Abbs, Gibbs’ affec­tion­ate nick­name for the quirk­i­ly dressed foren­sic sci­en­tist who works dili­gent­ly in her lab, Tony (the good look­ing one) and Ziva (the clear think­ing ex-Israeli oper­a­tive) spar with each oth­er, and let’s not for­get Tim, the youngest of the team and res­i­dent com­put­er geek. 

Leroy Jethro Gibbs is their esteemed leader, played by Mark Har­mon. Gibbs loves his NCIS team. His life has had so many emo­tion­al ups and downs it seems ‘the team’ and build­ing the next love­ly wood­en boat in his base­ment, are all he has in life. (Would you believe in tonight’s episode, just to prove me wrong, he’s build­ing a chair?)

Since it’s a Tues­day I’ll give you a few exam­ples of Gibbs’ Rules. 

In no par­tic­u­lar order, oth­er than they have res­onat­ed with me in the last two weeks:

Rule #11 — When the job is done, walk away

Rule #39 — There is no such thing as coincidence

Rule #1 — Always work as a team

Rule #8 — Nev­er take any­thing for granted

Thanks to Gibbs and the team!