Life in Castle Gray Skull

The Holidays

2008-02-01T02:50:00.000-05:00

That’s right…my second installment. Forgive me for making it so short but here it is…what I did for the Holidays.

For Thanksgiving, I had my first thanksgiving dinner. Lady Fair and I invited over the upstairs neighbor, Her friend N and her American boyfriend H, one of my friends and his guest, and one of my subordinates without a family. We got ten liters of beer from St. Martin Brau (the brewery down the street), opened up one of our bottles of wine from Meran, and laid out an awesome feast. For snacks we had chips, tomato and mozzarella, brochette, and garlic bread. The first course of the meal was a spicy pumpkin soup provided by LF’s Co-breader, and then came the main meal…My first attempt at an Oven Roasted Turkey, which turned out perfect, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, cranberry sauce, mixed vegetables with a cream sauce prepared by LF, Stuffing, and pan gravy (which I burned because I left it on the hot burner while eating my soup). Other than the gravy and the Cranberry Sauce, everything was quickly devoured. Desert consisted of LF’s backed apples, stuffed with Marzipan, cinnamon, raisins, and nuts and covered in a vanilla-cream sauce. In addition, I baked (from scratch except for the crust) six pumpkin pies, and we had LF’s homemade egg liquor. It was a pleasant evening, and everyone enjoyed themselves…so much so that Anja, the neighbor upstairs, found herself a new boyfriend.

Christmas was more or less a three day event between Christmas eve at our house, Christmas day with LF’s mom, and the 26th at her dad’s with her sister; but the main event was Christmas eve. On Christmas eve, LF’s father and step-mother came over for dinner and I also invited a new guy to the company, TS David, who will be taking my old position at work. We had a very cool evening. LF’s father and I drank a bottle of my red Italian wine, and dinner consisted of “racklette”. More less, what it was, was a table top electric grill. LF and I had cut up pork, beef, chicken, and a larger variety of vegetables, and then everyone just puts on and cooks what ever they feel like. It’s good because everyone talks, eats, and sits at the table for hours. In the evening after dinner, in German tradition, the Wiennachts angle came to deliver presents…well more accurately, Rolf, LF’s father, took KS to his room and entertained him while LF and I moved presents under the tree and tied sparklers to the Christmas tree—yes, we really did have fireworks on a real Christmas tree. After words we opened presents and drank Fuer Zamboule, a hot spiced wine with rum and melted sugar. Much better than any gluhwein…this stuff tasted delicious and gave you a great buzz.

2008-01-31T04:03:00.000-05:00

Okay, okay…due to popular demand, I’m writing again and not going back on a promise I had made months ago…well, to make up for my inactivity here is the first, although short, installment of a rapid series of post intended to bring you, my massive audience, up to date on my adventures.

We go back, way back—to the first weekend in October…actually lets go back to the last weekend in September instead. It was the middle weekend of Oktober fest—the world renowned beer drinking festival in Munich—and I had planned a trip down with several friends. That is, until both Lady fair and I came down with some kind of stomach bug that kept us from straying too far from home.

Okay…now we can skip ahead to the next weekend. Having recovered from the sickness, we decided to hit up the last weekend of the fest…after all, this could very well be my last opportunity to attend before I go back to the States. Well, we drove down to Munich Saturday morning intending to meet Pudder and Kelly and to hit one of the famous beer tents. Well, running a little late, we got the call from Pudder while we were still parking, that he and Kelly had already made it into the Hoff Brau Tent.

Well, Lady fair and I parked the car and took the metro to the event and then walked about for a little while. To my surprise, and mild disappointment, Oktober Fest is nothing like it is portrayed to be in the movies. Mostly, it is a lot like a county fair, with Farris wheels, candy booths, carnival games, and bumper cars. All the bands, singing, and drinking, takes place in one of the beer tents. In turn, each of the tents have there own theme…everything from traditional Bavarian to Rock and Roll. Well apparently there are three ways of getting into a tent. 1. Get there super early (8-9 a.m) and beat the crowd. 2. Pay hundreds of Euros for a reservation almost a year in advance. 3. Wait in lines sometimes as long as four hours and still face the possibility that you won’t get in.

Of course, since this was my first Oktober Fest, I had to go to a beer tent—specifically the Hoff Brau which Pudder was already in. The problem was that I didn’t buy a reservation, and we were too late to beat the crowd. Lady Fair took me around to a side entrance to try and talk security into letting us in, but that didn’t work. After waiting about 15 minutes, I broke down and took a piece of advice that my friends from the week before gave me…I pressed a 20 euro bill against the window and signaled the security worker that I wanted entry for two. He then grabbed a buddy and the two of us were escorted past the crowds and inside.

The atmosphere inside was a lot like the original Hoff Brau Haus. Bavarian themed, they had hops hanging from the ceiling a band playing a random variety of music, and a crowed of patrons that sang, shouted and drank to their hearts content. Lady Fair and I eventually met up with Pudder and Kelly where we both had a couple litters of beer before heading back outside to buy some souvenirs and eventually head back home.

A Trip in September

2007-10-23T07:38:00.000-05:00

Okay, okay…I know. I have failed to live up to my promise—at least one posting per month. Well here you go, even if it is a little over due, enjoy…

It was Labor Day weekend and I had four days off, so after work I headed home to Lady Fair. It was a busy afternoon of packing bags and checking maps. Eventually, we ate dinner and I went to bed to snap a few hours of sleep. We got up some where around midnight and hopped in the car for the long drive through Bavaria, Austria, and into Italy. Our destination was Meran a quaint little city nestled in a valley in the Italian Alps.

Amazingly enough, the drive down didn’t take nearly as long as we had expected it to. So, as we pulled up to sunken church still hidden in darkness, he hopped into the backseat, wrapped up in my emergency blanket and stole another two hours of sleep until sunrise.

The sun came up and we leisurely made our way through the mountains to Meran. Now Meran is a unique place. I can’t think of anyway to describe it other than quaint. The whole valley was crowded by orchards and vineyards to the point that anyone walking down the street could pick their fill of grapes, apples, figs, or pears with out giving a pause. The valley was truly picturesque with a frothing yet tame river through the middle and orchards climbing their way up the towering mountains on three sides. Hidden amongst the apple trees were any number of farm houses mixed with pensions and gasthauses and more than a few restaurants. It was something out of a movie with an air of lazy contentment lingering everywhere.

So, Friday morning we arrived in town and stopped at three places before getting our room at a small bed and breakfast. We went to the backer for some fresh breads, the butcher for kamin wursten, salami, and speck, and finally to the dairy store where I selected three small blocks of cheese from large variety. With breakfast in hand, we moved on to our pension to settle in and then headed out to begin our weekend of hiking, eating, and drinking.

As far as hiking goes, that first day we bit off a little more than we could chew. We picked some trails that didn’t look too difficult on the map and made out to climb the Mutzpitze, a mountain roughly 2600 meters in height. Well I wasn’t kidding when I said climb. What started out as a leisurely hike, turned into and adventure near the top. The trail became treacherously steep, rocky, and to make things absolutely nerve shattering, there were shear slopes on either side of the trail. Once we made it above the tree line, my vertigo quickly set in. Tunnel vision for nothing but the ground and Lady Fair’s lovely ass was the only thing that kept me going, but even that quickly became insufficient once the wind started to blow by my ears. This far after the fact, I am having trouble finding the words to describe that absolute terror that gripped me on the hike, but I can tell you that the countless bombs, sniper attacks, and mortar fire I faced in Iraq raised about as much emotion in me as finding a quarter in the street after winning the lottery compared to the level of fear that mountain instilled on me. I had never been so absolutely scared in my life. I eventually made it to the top, but I reduced myself to hyperventilation and almost to tears. I was terrified. Eventually, we had to climb down the other side, which was even worse than coming up, when at one point my fear peaked. I had to make a short pause while hugging a rock when I felt myself get warm, stop shivering and my fear just seamed to melt away. It was crazy…I just stopped feeling fear and even thought the trail became unbelievably narrow at times, I was able to walk at a perfectly calm and normal pace.

The hike took us long enough that we missed the last gondola down to the valley and so had to walk the entire way. The end result was that our exertions from the first day left us exhausted and sore the rest of the weekend. The rest of our hike were much easier and much shorter. Still, I had a great weekend. Lady Fair and I enjoyed a variety of wines and foods, we drank beer in beer gardens on the mountains, and even threw pine cones at a goat. It was a beautiful place, both fun and romantic. It was a perfect spot for our romantic get away.

A Trip to the Ancients

2007-08-24T03:07:00.000-05:00

It was about 4 am when Lady Fair rolled over and hit the alarm clock, last Friday morning. Instead of lying in bed like we usually do when the alarm sounds, we both rolled pretty quickly to our feet. I dressed as she went to wake KS and before long we had the car packed and was on our way to Nurnberg. It was about a 45 minute drive to where we met Lady Fair’s cousin who showed us where to park before taking us the rest of the way to the Airport, and shortly after the sun rise, the three of us boarded the Airplane. We let KS have the window seat since it was his first plane ride, and after a short layover in Zurich we found ourselves in Athens by Mid-afternoon.

We didn’t do a whole lot on Friday. We walked around the tourists center of the city during the day, enjoyed the view of the Acropolis from our hotel, and a meal of some dry, over cooked lamp chops, and went on a night time stroll where we exchanged gifts commemorating our 6 months together (though our 6 month mark had already come and gone).

Saturday, we took the Metro to Port Pireas where we caught a ferry boat (KS’s first boat ride) to the island of Aegina. There we walked around the fish market, bought a painting, and spent the better part of the day at the beach.

The water was nice the weather hot…in all it was a great day for the beach and the picnic of fresh fruits and nuts that we bought at the market. Everything was beautiful right up until the time that Lady Fair and I were messing around in the water and she was stung by a jellyfish. As evening started to close in, we rented a little paddle boat. Lady Fair and KS paddled me around in for and hour as I tried out me rod (the same rod my dad gave me as a gift when we met in Hawaii last year). To my surprise, I caught a fish within the first 10 minutes of fishing and caught a second one soon after. Now, granted they were only tiny fish (see pic below), but I was still happy. I didn’t expect to catch anything. After my second catch I spent the rest of my hour trying to show KS how to use the rod. He managed to master the technique of holding the rod, but casting led to more time trying to untangle knots than actual fishing. As for reeling…”Langsam…ein bischen schneller…Langsam…stop,” he was starting to get it, but needs a lot more practice than the 20-30 minutes we had before having to return to shore.

Sunday was spent walking through the different historical sites of Athens. We saw a variety of ruins…and did a lot of walking.

Street Party

2007-07-28T05:34:00.000-05:00

So once again, my weekend started in Vilseck as I was attending yet another work related class (I’m hoping this will be my last one for a while). After class on Friday I headed to Kupferberg to meet Lady Fair at her Dad’s house. About an hour drive from Vilseck it was a pretty quick trip and much shorter than trying to pick up Lady Fair from her house. Anyway, Friday night we had a pretty quiet evening. Dinner consisted of a vinegar and oil salad, spaghetti with a mushroom cream sauce that her father cooked, and a small glass of wine. It was like every other meal I’ve had there—pleasant, if quiet, with me only picking up bit and pieces of the conversation (Lady Fair and her sister have pretty good command of English, but the rest of the family have a very limited vocabulary and so makes conversation somewhat difficult). After dinner we helped set up for the party (Straβe Fest) and then headed into Kulmbach where we watched Shrek 3. Now it seemed good enough, but I felt like the first two were a lot funnier. Then again maybe it was because I was watching it dubbed over in German and so probably missed a lot of the more subtle jokes. After the movie we the Zentrum and had a couple of drinks at a bar. I was surprised to find that Kulbach’s night life was almost non-existant. There was only a few night clubs, none very “happening” and seemed like everyone was teenagers. It was definitely nothing compared to the party scene I was used to seeing from Bamberg, Erlangen, or München.

Saturday, the two of us headed into Bayreuth, did a little window shopping, walked around the city and ogled at some Ferraris at the Ferrari dealer. Mid-afternoon saw us back at Kupferberg for her dad’s party. A typical, German street party, all the neighbors came over to Lady Fair’s Dad’s house and drank some of the local Beir (Dunkles or Hefe Weiβen) and gorged ourselves on roast pig, kraut, and other salads. Eventually, a couple of the younger neighbors separated themselves from the rest of the much older crowd and joined lady fair and me at some good old fashion American drinking games. First we played beer pong where Lady Fair and I destroyed the competition, and then since that wasn’t going fast enough we moved on to Quarters where both Lady Fair and I got a little more drunk than we intended, but since were spending the night again it wasn’t a big deal.

Sunday with only a mild headache, we started the morning off with a traditional Weiss Wurst breakfast, that made me feel pretty fabulous. Then Lady Fair, T, the two dogs, and I headed to a unique place to go hiking. The translation of the name is Rock Labryinth, and it was a trail through the woods that winded its was through a some really awesome rock formations. The hike involved a few steep climbs and a lot of ducking, crawling, and squeezing to get through, it was a lot of fun and there was a lot of cool things to look at. Then again…most of you know that I enjoy hiking even where there isn’t anything to see. After the hike, we made the drive back to Zapf, were we dropped off our bags and then headed straight to Roth were we had dinner in our favorite beir keller, were I drank what I consider hands down the best beir on earth and had my new favorite appetizer Zweibel Käse with my meal.

Grabfeld Rallye

2007-07-06T06:28:00.001-05:00

Okay…The last week has been pretty crazy, so I’m a little behind the curve for this posting. I’m writing about last weekend, 29 June through 1 July. I may have told some of you, but Lady Fair is a big fan of Ralley Car races. In fact, every year for the past seven or so years she has been working one race in particular (The Grabfeld Rallye). Over the years she has done a number of jobs ranging from document inspector, to Curb security. This year, she saw fit to include me, and so I was volunteered to help work the race.

So Friday, after work, I swung by and picked Lady Fair up and headed to the race headquarters. I worked until about 11 pm with Lady Fair handing out document kits to drivers and logging vehicle inspections. It may sound kind of boring, but it really wasn’t. I had the opportunity to check out just about all of the 180 or so Ralley Cars and saw some pretty interesting individuals. The real fun, however, came on Saturday. As luck would have it, my part of working the race was to drive the Last Car. So with Lady Fair as my Co-Driver, I was to drive the course behind all the other cars signaling the end of the Ralley and the opening of the roads to public use. What that really meant, was that I could drive as fast and as reckless as my car would let me without fear of police or other traffic. It was awesome!! We roared down narrow country roads, did power slides around corners, and had a blast that only 4-wheeling in the dunes of California can match. And what about after the race? Well, we went back to the main tent where the party was at and waited for the winners to be announced.

Rock im Park

2007-06-06T05:23:00.000-05:00

As promised…my first posting for June….

The time…All weekend. The place….Nurnberg. The event….ROCK IM PARK. One of the largest open air events in Europe with 35 bands and an expected 150,000 people to attend, Rock im park looked like it would be one party that I couldn’t miss. Especially considering bands like Good Charlotte, Megadeath, Korn, Linkin Park, Velvet Revolver, White Strips, Smashing Pumpkins, and Evanescence just to name a few were on the venue. Of course it wasn’t exactly easy, see I’m away working in another city for a few weeks and Lady Fair, currently without a car, had a dog show that she was to attend on Sunday.

Well, after work on Friday, I packed up the sleeping back and tent and headed to Nurnberg were I was able to meet with Lady Fair. After a short adventure trying to find parking spots, we finally grabbed up all our stuff and headed to the camping area outside the concert. Now you’ve probably heard the term “Tent City” before…but this was just ridiculous. For kilometers around the event tents were pitched practically on top of each other with various trash piles, grills, and kegs throughout. Drunk/stoned people were everywhere. We hiked through out the massive camp for nearly an hour before we found a clearing to pitch our tent in. With Dave and the rest of the gang still at work and such limited space, we knew that linking up with them in the tent area would be a nearly impossible task. Instead we decided to just set up camp and head to the event and leave the rest to fend for themselves or to call up when they got there.

Harrison, a friend from my time in Missouri that I just happened to run into in Vilseck, accompanied me down to the concert, so with three of us camp was set up in no time. Unfortunately Harrison didn’t have a ticket to the event, so before we could get in we had to set off to find some scalpers. I know it sounds shady, but I had a little experience with ticket scalping in the states and was pretty sure the process worked the same here in Germany. With Lady fair being a native speaker and my past experiences, I didn’t share any of the worries that she and Harrison held about being able to get in.

It was while I was negotiating a price with some dude that looked like a pedophile that the mixed blessing came. What had started as a beautiful morning and turned to a gray afternoon, soon became a drizzle while searching for a ticket and then turned into a torrential down pour. A nice looking couple in their thirties approached us and sold us their tickets for a good deal less than the original box-office price—they didn’t want to brave the weather. Well it was great that Harrison got his ticket, but unfortunately we were drenched in the process. The weather let up eventually and while Harrison and I who had suffered worse had no problem enjoying the event, Lady Fair was miserable. Cold, wet, and miserable like she probably never had been before, she was almost in tears. She wanted to spend time with me, but didn’t want me to miss the concert that I had so badly wanted to see and yet couldn’t stand being wet. In the end she braved it through Korn and Die Artze, and I walked her back to camp so she could get dry and warm. I had planned to come back later to catch Mega Death.

Saturday went much better. Though the morning was gray and we caught early showers, we stayed dry in the tent through the worst of the weather and by the time we headed to our first show the weather was starting to clear up a little. Our first show was Lez Zeplin…and no, I didn’t misspell it. Don’t feel too bad if you didn’t catch the “Z” in there, I didn’t either. Lez Zeplin turned out to be four broads playing Led Zeplin songs. To tell you the truth, they were actually very good even if I was rather disappointed that I had been misled. Other bands we saw that day were The Hive, Linkin Park, White Stripes, and Evanescence. All of the shows were fantastic with the exception for the White Stripes, who apparently only have one decent song and otherwise play shit and don’t bother talking to the crowd at all. They almost bored me enough to make me think about leaving…but Lady Fair really wanted to see Evanescence so we stayed and suffered through the shitty show.

After being up all night Saturday night, I headed to the Dog show with Lady Fair early Sunday morning. It was a little bit boring…but four cups of coffee, a piece of cake, a worst with brotchen, and coke (along with a good book) kept me from falling asleep.

Where I Was…and Where I am Now

2007-05-31T06:37:00.000-05:00

Okay…so I’ve been virtually non-existent in the blogging world—hell, I haven’t even emailed many of you (readers that I know personally) in ages. I don’t really have an excuse other than that life just sort of got in the way. Since my return to Germany from fiery hell, I’ve been in a blur. I wrote vaguely about my fishing trip, and my trip to Army-Navy…but have been largely silent. By and large, the time between November and the end of January I spent in a haze. I consumed unhealthy amounts of alcohol, spent most of my nights in Bars or clubs, did some traveling but mostly just pissed money away on nights of boozing and debauchery with my two bachelor roommates. Work was going okay…nothing to exciting...but in reality I had too much time that I didn’t know what to do with. My lifestyle though at first sounds fun, was not one that I liked anymore. I needed a change…and she came in the form of brown eyed girl that caught my eye while dancing in my usual watering hole early on a night I had planned to drink myself into oblivion…

What happened that night and the following weeks I’ll keep to myself for private conversation, but meeting this girl had a huge effect on my life and that of my roommates. While I didn’t change as a person, my lifestyle is now drastically different. Over the last four months many things have happened. But the end result is that I fell head over heels for my German fraulein. I still maintain my place with the guys in our house dubbed “Happy Hour” but I practically live at Lady Fair’s place (Zapf) averaging only about 3 or 4 hours a week at Happy Hour. My rate of alcohol consumption has dropped drastically as well, finding it less desirable to be drunk than to spend sober time with my girl.

Truly I couldn’t be happier. I spend minimal money on booze and clubs now, and instead my German sweetheart takes me on a different adventure through her native land almost every weekend. So far my adventures have varied from remote beir kellers and beir gartens, to old castles and Abbys to beautiful vistas. She has been a wonderful tour guide and in sating my thirst for adventure we’ve been to places that were new for her as well. So here is my pledge…

I’m going to start posting on my blog again…at the very least I will attempt one entry per month and these entries I will try to keep entertaining by focusing on aspects of German culture or travels that I experience, either by myself or with my girl (hence forth to be known as Lady Fair). And if in that month I don’t do anything blog worthy…I will share with you one of our past adventures, which I assure you are truly vast considering we’ve been together for only 4 months.

Runnin' out of Time

2007-03-08T07:19:00.000-05:00

That’s right ladies and gentlemen (all zero of you readers out there). I have decided to post once again. I know its hard trying to keep up with such a high volume of postings, but I think this is an important read so you should probably take note of it.

I bought this album a few months back. It was recommended to me while I was talking about music with a co-worker, and considering the fever with which it was recommended I figured I would go ahead and invest in the CD to try it out (my internet connection at home doesn’t exist so downloading it wasn’t an option). Anyway I present to you Rehab.

This band puts out a curious combination of metal, rap, and rock that, in my mind, epitomizes the very definition of alternative music. Anyhow, upon first listen I was only mildly satisfied. I thought the music was okay, but not really the rave that my co-worker made it out to be. Over time however, with multiple plays, it has seriously grown on me. This one song, the last song on the Album, I have a particular fondness for. I’m posting the lyrics because they, even more than the music, is what I like about it. Just the same, alone, the lyrics don’t do justice to the songs greatness. In the end, I like it because the song makes me feel mildly upbeat while still capturing the somewhat sad but uncaring emotion that I had been feeling a lot lately. I highly recommend listening to this song. Though I can’t relate to the events in the lyrics, the song perfectly captures my reoccurring mood.

Rehab – “Runnin' out of Time"

Bar tender I really did it this time
Broke my parole to have a good time
When I got home it was 6 a.m.
The door was locked so I kicked it in
She was trippin' on the bills
I think she was high on some pills
She threw my shit out into the yard
Called me a bum and smacked me real hard
And in my drunkin' stooper
I did what I should’ve never done
Now I'm sittin' here talking to you
Drunk and on the run

I'm sittin' at a bar on the inside
Waitin' for my ride on the outside
She broke my heart in the trailer park
So I jacked the keys to her fuckin' car
Crashed that piece of shit and then stepped away

You know mo I'll probably get ten years
So just give me beers til they get here
Yeah I know the sun is comin' up
And ya'll are probably gettin' ready for closin' up
But I'm trying to drown my soul
I'm tired of this life on a dirt road
And everythang that I love is gone
And I'm tired of hangin' on

She got me sittin' at a bar on the inside
Waitin' for my ride on the outside
She broke my heart in the trailer park
So I jacked the keys to her fuckin' car
Crashed that piece of shit and then stepped away

I guess it's meant to be
Romance is misery
So much for memories
And now I'm headed to the Penitentary
See me on T.V.
The next cop series
I am a danger
I guess I shoul've done something about my anger
But I'll never learn
Real things I don't concern
I poor kerosene on everything I love and watch it burn
I know it's my fault
But I wasn't happy it was over
She through a fit so I crashed that piece a shit nova

And now I'm goin' back again
Back to the pin to see my friends
And when we all pile out that county van
They'll ask me where I've been

I've been at a bar on the inside
Waitin' for my ride on the outside
She broke my heart in the trailer park
So I jacked the keys to her fuckin' car
Crashed that piece of shit and then stepped away

Time Off

2006-12-01T06:15:00.000-05:00

Well, I’ve been back in Germany for about a month now and damn it!! I really hate Telkom, the German Phone company. It took them four weeks to get the damn phone in my house reactivated. I came home from work the other day and found a note in my mailbox that my phone was activated and my DSL should also be working. Man, I was way excited thinking I would finally have internet at my house. Well guess what…that’s right, the phone was working but DSL wasn’t. So judging from the speed of service, I’m guessing it’ll be another three weeks before I get my DSL problem fixed. Bastards…

Anyway…my leave from work has been pretty good to me. I went to Hawaii for a little while where I met up with my parents. There, we did a fair share of drinking and my dad and I spent the bulk of our time out on the water fishing. My dad was bragging for a while about how great a fisherman he was having caught more fish than I did, but then I pulled in the prize. For the second time in my life I pulled in a Pacific Blue Marlin, this one even larger than the one I caught in Mexico. My dad was pretty upset nagging about how it should have been his fish. The way I figure it though, is that since he was sound asleep, when it bit on MY line, and I offered to let him bring it in anyway…he had no room to complain. So for the second time, I landed what for my family would have been a once in a lifetime fish.

Well, Hawaii was great and now once again I find myself in the airport. This time I’m on my way to Philly for the Army Navy game to meet up with friends. More to come later…if Telcom ever fixes my damn internet connection.

Rediscovered

2006-09-29T06:40:00.000-05:00

With out going into a lot of detail…I’ve been living without music for a little while now. It wasn’t by choice, it just sort of happened. Anyhow to make a long story short, events unfolded today that lead me back to rediscovering the beautiful world of sound and some amazing artists that I haven’t given a second thought to in years. One of those—a band called Ugly Kid Joe. One of the first CDs I owned, my big sister purchased their “America’s Least Wanted” album for me while I was in Junior High. Upon listening to it today ( I ripped it a long time ago and it came up on random on my Itunes), I discovered that while their remake of “Cat in the Cradle” may not have a place on MTV anymore, this album is far from dead. The band has produced some great music. “America’s Least Wanted” is filled with music with tons of replay value. Their sound, part rock – part metal with a punk inspiration to the lyrics, brings a fantastic mix of bass and guitar that will let you jam while still preserving “dance-ability.” In whole, the album is great for parties whether there is dancing or just drinking and bullshiting, or for a background while reading or studying. Still a favorite…Ugly Kid Joe is one band that shouldn’t have slid into the Musical Abyss.

Take Heed my Word

2006-09-21T15:48:00.000-05:00

Take heed my word, oh Surrogate
For the way will soon close to me
And fresh souls must take up our task

A stony Heart, and Callous ears
These are needed, to stay your fears
Bite down thy tongue, and clench thine fists
For now we plunge, into horror’s mists

Though proceeded, by many men
Terror still floods, us like a Fen
Through Fi’ry storms, we charge ahead
Dire destruction, envious dead

Hidden killers, beneath the ground
Turbulent earth, eruptive pound
Excessive force, a crushing blow
Horrendous loss, ultimate woe

No time to rest, we carry on
Our task ahead, our Pantheon
Be wary still, of dangers less
But on the Ground we must Obsess

For these are killers, we must find
Men untaught, are surely blind
Blind men live, because we see
These lives a burden, carry we

Take heed my word, oh Surrogate
For the way will soon close to me
And fresh souls must take up our task

A Case of Need

2006-03-24T16:16:00.000-05:00

I read a book yesterday. That’s right, the whole thing. I started on page 1 as I went to bed at 6:30 in the morning and finished page 343 at about 7 am this morning at the end of my shift (yeah, I’m temporarily working a night shift so my concept of a “day” is a little backward even if it is still a 24 hour period). I didn’t just sit and read all day and night, I had a little work to do, but I did read most of the day and part of the evening simply to occupy my mind. You see, boredom had been starting to seriously get to me. Though I work, I don’t actually hold any official position, which means I don’t really have any responsibilities. Instead I just do busy work and things that others at my level don’t because their time constraints have forced them to prioritize their tasks. Well, I figured that since I already finished my book last night, I would blog about it tonight. I haven’t posted anything in a long time, and it should be a safe non-work related subject. The book was a simple paperback that was donated to some charitable organization second hand that then sent it to someone else long before I ever got here. Somehow the book found its way into a small pile on the floor in the back of a dusty shed at work. It turned out to be quiet good. The book was A Case of Need, Michael Crichton’s first novel.

The book is about Doctor John Berry, and his quest to vindicate his close friend Art Lee who has been arrested under suspicion that he had performed an illegal abortion on the daughter of a prominent and influential Boston surgeon that led to her death. Surprisingly, many of the reviews on Amazon.com were rather negative. It is true that some of the characters (and there are a lot of them) were rather under developed, but I didn’t notice the typos nor did I have any problem keeping the characters straight. As for the medical jargon footnotes, I found them helpful rather than distracting, but then again I’ve been known to stop reading mid-sentence and be able to come back a week later and pick up at the exact spot I left off with out losing my place in the plot. Really, I would say that the social issues discussed in the novel and the suspenseful, capturing plot made up for its “pretty bad” writing style. I’ve never been a big fan of Michael Crichton, I’ve only read a couple of his books, so maybe that’s why I enjoyed this novel—I wasn’t expecting anything spectacular. In fact, I was actually rather impressed with the amount of research that most have gone into writing it. I did not know until after I finished the book that Michael Crichton had actually graduated from Harvard Medical and served as an Intern before he decided to write, but as far as I know his novel still required a good deal of research.

So before I end this incredibly late in coming post, I will pose this question which I submitted to others in a letter I wrote recently…Should I keep the book as I do all the books I read that I am rather fond of? Or should I return the book to that dusty pile that someday another, like me, might find it and curb the painful progression of the boredom induced comatose of his mind.

More Stuff

2006-03-04T08:29:00.000-05:00

My housemate Dave has a blog, with some great pictures of our house and Posts about the night life. Check it out, we typically do the samethings...he just tends to post more often than I do.

How to confuse an Irish Girl

2006-02-21T06:14:00.000-05:00

“So, was this your first time in Dublin?” the cabbie asks on our way back to the Airport. We all answered in the positive. “Did you go to the temple bar district?” without waiting for an answer he adds, “ha, ha, you’ll be comin’ back. Everyone always comes back to Ireland, but I guess you boys must be going back to London.”

Presidents Day Weekend was a crazy one that was very well summed up by the Cabbie. How is it, that Europeans continually get confused by us? We are three Americans that live in Germany but on vacation in Ireland. One Irish girl at one of the night clubs refused to believe I wasn’t British because I was educated, was wearing a collard shirt, and wasn’t being obnoxious. KB (one my friends) is over heard telling one of her friends that we live in Germany, “oh...,” she says, “you’re German. You don’t have to lie, you should be proud that you are German.”

Same night, different bar, a British girl part of a “Hen” party (British for bachelorette) says to Dave “Ha…you’re as Irish as they come!” then turns back to KB “says you’re his flat mate? American my ass!”

The weekend was full of responses like this. After the first couple we started to make a real joke of it, and started throwing in fake Irish accents that got heavier the more we drank. It was a lot of full and for those interested, Saturday was Dave’s 25^th birthday with should explain why we were keeping tally on his arms. It was a rough night for him, but he did finally make it to 25 just before

Pros and Cons of European Living

2006-02-08T09:37:00.000-05:00

Incase you were all wondering…I haven’t posted for such a long time because I still don’t have internet at my new house. So much has happened in the last month that it would be ridiculous for me to try and talk about it…so instead I’ll leave you with this—the good and the bad I’ve experienced so far in Europe.

Things I Love about Germany

1. Hot German Fraulines

2. Hefe Wissen

3. Rouch Bier

4. Other German beers excluding Lederer

5. German Food

6. The way awesome house I share with two of my friends

7. Winning 50 Euros on a Super Bowl bet because Europeans don’t know anything about American Football

8. Having a boss that pretty much lets me do what ever I want as long as I show up in the mornings.

9. Having both German and American holidays off.

10. Running into old acquaintances from school and letting them buy me shots.

Things I Miss about the States (or things that suck about Germany)

1. Everyone in Germany Smokes (and they smoke everywhere)

2. Having to Carry Euros as well as Dollars and staying current on exchange rates

3. The basic assumption that everyone speaks English

4. The connivance of things like Walmart or other 24hr Stores (everything seems to close at 4)

5. Being able to call people without dialing 60 f’ing numbers

6. DSL at home

7. American TV

8. Being able to talk to girls without a translator or a page full of notes

9. A good bookstore (in English of course)

10. Having a Car

11. Being able to call friends back home without cutting into my sleep.

12. Taco Bell

Well, that’s about all I can think of for now. Later…

A Crazy New Year

2006-01-02T08:16:00.000-05:00

Wow, New Years was absolutely amazing…

I arrived in Germany a few days ago and spent most of my time learning the differences between certain beers and how to order both food and drinks in German. It turns out that an acquaintance of mine, Dave, showed up the same day I did, so we’ve been wing men exploring the town of Bamberg together. Up until Saturday, we’ve been hanging out with a guy that is fluent in German, so New Years eve was our first real test to see how we would get along on our own (especially since it was our first time walking around town in the day light and sober).

Bamberg is an amazing and very historic town. Nearly everything is picturesque, and the architecture gives the place a feel like that of an amusement park. Me and Dave walked several miles on Saturday exploring the city and finding the many pubs and breweries that we had already been to. As the day wore on to afternoon the streets were empty, and everything was closed. The town seemed abandoned except for me, Dave, and a nun we saw hurrying someplace from one of the Monasteries. Eventually we linked up with our boss, his wife, and our peers we met earlier and had a very nice German meal ( I had sauerbraten and rotkraut, since dad was raving about it back in the states, with a hefe weizen and a couple braun biers). After dinner we all grabbed several bottle of booze and headed up to St. Michael’s Cathedral and did some boozing under the cross overlooking the city. To my surprise, the nearly abandoned streets were packed with thousands of people like at a standing room only night club.

As Germany has no laws governing the sell of fireworks, it seemed that everyone had them. And I don’t mean the pansy ones sold in the States either. People were carrying around the big rockets that explode in the air with several colors and a huge boom. They also have a very different concept of safety since they would light them in the middle of crowds, throw them at people’s feet, or stand rockets in empty Champaign bottles. From just a few minutes before the count down for 2006 until nearly 0200 there was a non-stop barrage of fireworks creating so much smoke that some of the flashes were lost and the surrounding hills were invisible. It didn’t matter where you looked, you would see fireworks. It was a more impressive display than any July 4th I’ve ever seen.

Sometime after midnight me and Dave headed back into the heart of the city. Our peers wanted to go to a night club that had a 7 Euro cover charge, but as we got lower into the city, Dave and I discovered that it was a waste since there was a huge street party in the main square with loud music (believe it or not it was late 1990’s American), dancing, and venders selling half liter hefe weizen for a euro or gluhwein for 2. The square was as packed with people as any night club in New York with plenty of girls to dance and drink with. It was a wild party, probably the greatest party I’ve ever been to. My only regret was that my camera battery died while trying to get pictures of the fireworks from St. Michael’s.

As night turned to morning I said goodbye to the girl I hooked up with and walk toward where I knew I could find a Taxi home. The once pristine streets were covered with broken glass, used fireworks, and the occasional pile of puke from someone who drank just a little too much. These Germans went absolutely crazy with a massive party that could not be matched more than once a year.

More New Year’s pictures will be post at this Link once I get my picture host working again.

Alone

2005-12-23T16:49:00.000-05:00

Alone in a golden field nestled in a treeless valley in northern Georgia lies an earthen mound. It stands taller than a man with steep slopes and is blanketed in thick grass that apart from the pines on the hills beyond is the only green seemingly for miles. At the base of the mound is a wire fence with outward pointing wooden posts that enhance the feeling of aloneness that the mass and the Gazebo it bears exhibits.

I went to the tiny town of Helen with my parents yesterday. It is a small town in which every building is built with a traditional German inspiration to attract tourism. There are many shops and restaurants in the town and is usually over crowded with tourists and shoppers, but on this Thursday it was relatively quiet. We went to the town and had an early supper with a couple of beers without browsing though any of the shops. On the way back we passed this field. Unfortunately I was unable to capture the true picturesque scene through the window of a moving car.

Weekend in Florida

2005-12-14T11:56:00.000-05:00

Pictured above is a very brave pelican I saw when I went down to Florida to go fishing with my sister and parents. We didn't catch anything spectacular that day, but it was fun just having the line in the water and hangin' out with my sister again. The next day, Dad, Bill and I went fishing a little closer to shore and while I wasn't getting anything good, Dad caught a very respectable Jack. For me, the highlight of the trip was actually going to Johnny's Pub (our old watering hole) and drink cold beer from Iced mugs and eating peanuts while playing shuffle board with the old mad. It brought back old times and was very enjoyable. For more pictures from the weekend click the link on the Picture above.

Santa Fish

2005-12-07T17:15:00.000-05:00

Well, my time in Missouri is up and I’m spending the Christmas holiday with my family (and my marlin pictured above). Thanksgiving was nice. Keeping with my tradition (7 years running) I did something unique. This year I meet up with several of my close friends from school and had a thanksgiving dinner without any of our families and thus doing all the cooking ourselves. Devin smoked the turkey while Gen and I made pies for desert. We also had garlic mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, yams, squash, smoked pork roast, and my world famous pina coladas. While the holiday was a very happy one, it was a little sad as it is likely the last time for a long time that we will all get together since I’m about to go abroad and leave the country for a while. Well, I don’t expect anything exciting over the next few weeks, but I’ll keep you all posted if anything noteworthy happens.

A Poem from the Past

2005-11-26T20:33:00.000-05:00

Forrester’s Classic Poem…

My post 911 culture Valentine’s Day poetry:
“My Love for you is like a Patriot Missle system”

I love you so much.
My love for you is like a Patriot Missile system
Waiting waiting waiting…
Then I see you…
<>
…And I want to protect you From the short to medium Range ballistic Missiles of Your life.

I want to save you from Low-flying aircraft…
My love for you is it’s own Weapon of mass destruction.
…%n…I love you…%n…
…”If you knew, you would run from me”…

A Week That will Live in Infamy

2005-11-22T14:14:00.000-05:00

“Now I know why our predecessors do so well in the business world,” Jessica said Sunday night as we carried our gear from the car. “When the boss asks them if they can stay late they simply think—Do I have to piss in a porta-jon in 17 degree weather? Sure I can handle a long day being 12 hours”

Last week’s training was wild. It was by far the most intense training exercise I have ever done, with more wild stories than I can possible put in one post. The weather only broke above freezing for a few hours on two occasions forcing us to keep our water supply located in a guarded tent with a fire burning 24 hours a day to keep it from freezing. Before this, I thought I knew what cold was. Five years ago I damn near turned hypothermic on camping trip in the Appalachians that I did not properly pack for, but that was nothing compared to five nights and six days of inescapable cold I experienced last week. Besides the cold, the week was full of many other challenges. Our missions where highly stressful, physically demanding, and sometimes required individuals to carry as much as 90 lbs of gear. Add on the stress of being evaluated on your performance in leadership positions (everyone must pass at least one patrol eval in order to complete the course) and an OP tempo allowing me to get only 11 hours of sleep the entire week and you make for one hell of an FTX. Since I can’t begin to describe everything that happened, I will limit myself to 4 instances.

1. Early in the week I did something that will cause me to be infamous among OBC students. I became an NCO’s story that will be told for years to come. During a staged Riot outside our camp things began to get out of control. I was on guard duty and began to get very angry as I was being pelted with trash and rocks from the rioters. Eventually we were given permission to subdue the crowd. Running out of hand cuffs I was in the processes of using duct tape to immobilize one individual when I felt someone lunge and push me from behind. Being in intense situations allows a person to learn a lot about their nature. Your mind runs so quickly from sensory overload that you seem to act without ration and everything becomes a fight or flight scenario that your mind doesn’t grasp or understand until the situation is over. I found myself so caught up in the scenario that I no longer comprehended it as a controlled training mission but instead only perceived the danger of the situation and thus reacted quickly and violently in response to the attack from behind. In the space of a second I turned, pushed my attacker off balance and followed with a right hook that put my attacker to the ground allowing another of the guards to subdue him. As it turns out, my attacker as actually my commander dressed up and playing the part of rioting civilian. That’s right, I punched Captain Z, my boss. While I didn’t get in trouble (was in fact praised for my intensity in the scenario), I took endless amounts of crap for throwing that punch.

2. The second incident occurred when four of my fellows risked life and limb (literally) to salvage a piece of equipment. We were nearing completion of a night time mission, and as my platoon was in reconsolidation we realized that JW left a piece of equipment behind on the objective that he thought Brad would pick up. Concerned about loosing equipment, Davis told JW to take a security team and go get it. Little did they know the other platoon was preparing to destroy a munitions deposit using live explosives. Luckily, Cpt. Z stopped them entering the Danger zone and was able to run and tackle them to the ground just before the explosion saving them from what could have been truly dangerous.

3. I discovered my mind’s breaking point. Night four of the FTX, 40 hours without sleep, I was on my way to the vehicles ready to roll on our next mission. Me and Amy were talking on way down to the trucks and as I tried to mount the ladder, my mind snapped back to reality. I wasn’t standing in front of a truck, but in front of the metal connex and Amy was nowhere around (was in fact pulling TOC duty). I realized I had just hallucinated the whole conversation. Just where the hallucination started, I don’t know, but the trucks were getting ready to roll out so I know it couldn’t have been more and a couple of minutes. I decided that I would skip my next meal and try to snatch about 20 minutes of sleep instead. Sleep deprivation was definitely affecting me.

4. I know understand why Engineers are not the preferred people to conduct urban Ops. Despite being warned of civilian presence in the town, our final raid of the FTX produced a massive amount of collateral damage. We rubbled 6 of the 10 building we had to search and our fires tended to be a little less than controlled.

Well, that’s the big four in brief summary. Though I have a ton of stories about this one, I’m gonna limit it to this and wish you all a happy Thanksgiving as I prepare to depart tomorrow for the holiday.

Super Sapper

2005-11-14T19:03:00.000-05:00

Once again, I find it several days (hell, almost a month) since my last posting. We’ve been out in the field, actually earning our paychecks, lately running through various training exercises. To my surprise I qualified for the “Super Sapper” award during sapper STX. Since it started off with a 5 mile ruck march and I wasn’t feeling particularly motivated, I started the day off very slowly taking my time and just strolling along. A little while after the first mile I turned and looked behind me and to my surprise, I was the very last person with only the trail vehicle behind me. Well, not caring about one’s place or time is all good, but I was gonna be damned if I came in last, so I started to step out my pace a bit. While I still didn’t bother to run, as the trail started to go up and down some very steep terrain, I started overtaking people. I finished the route somewhere in the middle of the pack averaging about 15 minutes per mile. From there, I grabbed my map, compass, and scorecard, and oriented my self and my map in a roughly northerly direction (the direction to my first task station) and started my walk through the woods. I don’t really bother to use my compass in land navigation; instead I use terrain association with the map and rely on my natural sense of direction after initial orientation with the compass. This allows me to move faster through the woods (as my hands aren’t full and I don’t have to stop every few yard to recheck my azimuth) and so I was able to overtake a couple more people on the way to my station (only one in five of us had the same first point). Once I arrived at my first station I discovered that my task was to perform various charge calculations for different demolition projects given different kinds of explosives within a set amount of time. I finished my calculations a couple minutes early and turned them in to the lane grader with my scorecard where recorded that I received max points for completing the task with zero errors and was then given the grid coordinate of my next point. My next station was just under a kilometer away (as compared to my 4th and 5th stations that were 2.5 kilometers apart and another 1.5 kilometers from my end point) and I moved quiet briskly as I could simply follow the ridge line and not really fight the brush in either of the valleys below. I only got 7 out 10 points on my second station which was demolition emplacement, but I scored quiet high in my 3rd, 4th and 5th stations, Bridging, Fighting positions, and Land mines and obstacles, respectively. In the end, I don’t know what my final score was one the STX but I was one of the few to earn “Supper Sapper” which required a minimum of 325 points that was divide between task scores, time on the road march, time on each station, and total time.

Catching Up

2005-10-22T17:52:00.000-05:00

Well, a lot has happened in the past few weeks and since I haven’t been keeping up in my blog I’m just gonna run through a quick summary of it all. The weekend following Columbus Day weekend I went to a Nine Inch Nails concert with Dave, Chris, and Jamie. One of my favorite band, NIN put on an amazing show (the pic above is the only one that turned out any good) and we all had a real blast. Running a little short on cash that weekend, we decided to come back home instead of staying the nigh in ST. Louis—which means everyone was passed out in the car while I made the long and quiet drive back. Since it was really late when we got back I decided to sleep in instead of going to work on the habitat house on Saturday. Instead, I slept in, ran 6 miles, watched some TV, and then went to see Domino at the Movies.

The Critics rated the movie as a C, but I thought that it was pretty decent. I was in the mood for an action flick and this one rubbed me the right way. Now, the movie is supposedly “inspired by a real-life story,” but I would say “inspired” is the key word. I would doubt if any of it was true other than a couple of names. If you go see it, see it because you want to see some explosions and a bunch of shooting, oh yeah there is also a sex scene with some nudity.

Fast forward a few days and let me tell you about a very crazy incident. One night I was woken up by a knock on my door at 2 am. I know that it was 2:00 because as I typically get up at 4:30 I thought I had slept in and it was Jessica (car pool drive of the week who lives in the same building as me) coming to get me. I looked at the clock and realized that this was not the case. Mostly angry, but some what curious and still a bit groggy from sleep, I go to my door and open it.

“What the Fuck?” I say as I see some guy I’ve never seen before standing outside buck naked covering his balls with his hands.

“Dude, do you have any shorts I can borrow?” he replies.

“No!? Fuck!” I say as I slam the door shut and lock it. Who bangs on a stranger’s door looking to borrow shorts? My thought as I go back to bed was that he was probably some poor desperate bastard that got kicked out by some chick. Of course I wasn’t able to rest as I was awakened from sleep about 15 minutes later by some very loud pounding on my door. I start to get up when I hear a second set of pounding and realize that it isn’t my door being pounded on. I figure I’ll just check my lock and then go back to sleep when the third set of pounding came followed by “Police! OPEN UP!” I figured that this might be worth seeing so I go to my door. This time however, I was alert enough to look though my peep-hole instead of opening my door like a dumb ass. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see anything, so I went back to sleep.

Fast forward to Thursday morning…I took my horizontal construction exam (roads, ditches, airfields, culverts, ect.). I finished in a record hour and ten minutes (it’s supposed to be a 4 hour exam) and scored a 96% on it. That afternoon I started vertical construction and after only 12 hours of instruction I can already see how we could have done a better job on the room that me and Dad built this summer. Oh well, the experience of job has helped me learn and given me a leg up on some of my peers as I’ve at least seen some of the things we’ve talked about.

An Interesting test

2005-10-12T15:54:00.000-05:00

You are a
Social Moderate
(43% permissive)

and an...
Economic Moderate
(56% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Centrist

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Link from Mice

Constructive Criticism

2005-10-06T20:20:00.000-05:00

So a little while ago my company submitted peer evaluations. Basically, everyone was watched by their and evaluated on their performance, leadership, and potential. Here are a few of the comments I received:
*Quiet, but when he talks is insightful.
*Good all around.
*I don’t really know him.
*Smart.
Okay, so what the hell does that mean? Am I doing a shitty job? am I a typical performer? am I the best thing since sliced bread? What the hell does this say about my performance, potential, or leadership? I’ll tell you what—absolutely nothing. Apparently, this exercise was nothing short of a total waste of time.

Pin Point

2005-10-04T17:35:00.000-05:00

Woohoo!!! Bamberg, Germany is where I’m going. I just got the notice seconds ago. Man, I am so excited!! I will be finishing up here in the beginning of December, then I’m on my way to Germany. Man, I knew I was gonna be going for a while, but it hasn’t hit me until now when I finally got my notice from my new station.

Oh yeah…here are some pics form the habitat house from this past Saturday. I won’t be going back this coming weekend as I should be headed out to Georgia to visit with my Parents and my sister Susan, who I haven’t seen in a very long time.

A Weekend of Service

2005-09-24T17:45:00.000-05:00

So I guess the real question is whether I can now claim to have been a carnie. You see, Friday afternoon one of the local elementary schools held a carnival to raise money for the PTO, and I volunteered to work one of the booths. My company, in an effect to build good relations with the local community, believes strongly in community service and requires each section to conduct some community service project. My section chose to help out with the local school’s carnival. It was actually pretty fun. Jason and I worked the removable Tattoo booth that was located near the balloons and the eatable sand art (more like custom pixie sticks). The result was that we pounded down a lot of sugar and sucked down a lot of helium to attract the kids. We maintained a pretty steady patronage until the carnival closed. It was funny to watch all the little girls flirt with Jason as he gave them their tattoos, but he took it all in stride and was able to keep our lines moving with out missing a step. After the carnival was over and we finished cleaning up, I headed to what can only be described as a hick bar with some of my coworkers. Though the bar was in the sticks, it was surprisingly nice. They charged a $3 cover and had live music, free mechanical bull rides, and $3 pitchers of domestic draft beers. They also had a kitchen that was kickin’ all night long. We drank, danced, and had a good time. Around 2:30 in the morning I went home and crashed.

After a short 5 hours of sleep I got up, showered, and dressed. Chris, a close friend of mine in another section, asked if I would go with him to help out with Habitat for Humanity (his section’s chosen community service project). Well, I enjoy building things and a person can learn a lot about construction even by being a simple laborer on a project like this. Of course I said yes. So today from 8 to 4, I was at a construction site doing framing and other carpentry work. It was nice to help out. In the morning the air is always crisp and it is nothing short of enjoyable to be outside working. If I hadn’t helped out today I would likely have slept another 5 hours, then played some video games, and pretty much wasted the day. Instead, I woke up early, worked very hard most of the day, and will shortly be on my way out to eat dinner with my friends at a restaurant in a cave in the Ozarks. As a team leader at work, it is actually my team plus Chris (he’s in another section remember) that I’m going out with. I was very fortunate to be assigned to a team that was composed of my friends. Well, its about time for me make some phone calls to find out whose driving. But before I go I will say this…If you ever chose to perform community service, Habitat for Humanity is a fun and educational experience. It is a great opportunity to help those in need while at the same time bettering yourself.

Good to Quite Good

2005-09-19T15:01:00.000-05:00

Wow, what a totally awesome weekend. Friday afternoon after we all got out of work, Tom, Chris, and I headed out to St. Louis where we got awesome seats at an Allman Brother’s Concert. Well, I got some pictures that I posted, though because of the lighting they turned out pretty shitty, and I got a t-shirt. The concert was awesome. The opening band (I don’t remember who they were) wasn’t that great, but the Allman brother’s band was awesome. They even had one of their sons playing. The three of us rocked out and drank beer and had an incredible time. Afterwards we walked back to the hotel hitting up an IHOP on the way to wind down. Saturday morning consisted of relaxing before going the ST. Louis bread company for lunch and then picking up Chris’s wife at the Airport. Chris and Gretchen checked into their hotel room while me and Tom met up with KB and Brandon. The four of us headed over to Dave and Buster’s to watch Army play Baylor and when we got to the bar was surprised to meet up with about 15 other friends and co-workers that were also in town to watch the Cold Play concert that evening. Well, the gang of us watched the game then met back up with Chris and Gretchen and headed to the concert. Everyone had a good time, but it was hard to get into the concert after Friday night. We had lawn seats that weren’t nearly as good, the opening band really sucked, and while it was impossible not to rock out with the Allman Brothers, Cold Play (the number one contributor to my “Sleep” playlist) was pretty mellow. To top that, they stopped selling beer at 945, just 15 minutes after Cold play started. Honestly I was incredibly disappointed, but I didn’t want to say so and ruin the good time the others seemed to be having. All in all, the weekend was great, but Friday was incredible.

Anniversary of a Beat Down

2005-09-11T11:44:00.000-05:00

So football season starts today, and I’m pretty siked. I’ve got my crock pot fired up cooking some homemade chili and I’m typin’ this up while watch TV and waiting for the game to start. Friday night we had a company party. Toga themed, it started out as a BBQ and then just kind of kept going. Somewhere around midnight the MPs showed up and broke up the party because we were making too much noise. When the MPs showed up some of us headed over to the O club to keep the party going. And here I have to apologize. If any of you guys were there (I doubt it but just in case..) I apologize for my obnoxiousness. I had too much to drink and after me and Shams killed that bottle of Jim Beam I started acting a bit like an asshole. So, sorry.

Well, on a different note, today is the fourth anniversary of 9/11. And you know? I didn’t even realize it until this morning when I flipped on CNN to see what was going on in the world (which by the way I’ve realized that no one shows the news any more, they just like to talk about the hurricane and blame people for a natural disaster). So in remembrance of 9/11, I will relive where I was that day. About 50 miles north of the City I was in boxing class at castle gray skull on the Hudson. I had a bout that morning, and I got paired up with this guy who out weighted me by 15 pounds and had almost a foot of reach on me. That didn’t really bother me though, as I was always paired up with guys that were bigger and taller than me. What I didn’t know though, was that this guy was a golden gloves hopeful. The bout started and it was totally one sided. For three rounds I took the beating of my life. I landed a few punches, but it was nothing compared to the punishment I was taking. By the time the bout was over (we only went 3 rounds), my nose was bleeding profusely, my body ached, my jaw was throbbing, and my vision was so blurred with tears I was having a rough time walking. Class ended with me seeing the trainer so they could screen me for a concussion (I didn’t have one) and stop the bleeding from my nose. When the bleeding slowed to a trickle I began my slow walk to Psychology class. I was already late but, I was pretty sure the instructor would take pity on me. Getting beat up seemed like a good excuse for being late. When I got to my class my heart dropped. There was a note instructing everyone to report to the department conference room. That sucks, I thought everyone is gonna see me in pain and it would be harder to slip in quietly. I walked into the conference room just in time to see the second plane hit the twin towers. “What the fuck?” I thought in confusion. And then one of my good friends saw me and came over and told me was going on. In everyone’s shock about what was happening just 50 miles south of us, no one noticed the bloody rag I was holding or commented on appearance. That day was an all around shitty day. I took an ass beating, and so did New York, the pentagon, and a field somewhere in Pennsylvania.

Rude Awakening

2005-09-10T00:56:00.000-05:00

Well, it’s been an interesting week. I scored a 90 on my demolitions exam and while this is a pretty good score, I’m a little disappointed because it was a few very small errors that I shouldn’t have made that kept me from maxing the exam. After demo, we continued the lectures that seemed pointless as they didn’t teach anything I didn’t pick up though 10 minutes of reading. Lao continued with his candid-I-caught-you-sleeping picture taking and to try and occupy my mind I wrote a poem with Lao as my inspiration. Tell me what you think…

Sit and listen to the murmur
The dull droning sandman helper
On and off the lights do flicker
Eyes get heavy, blackness deeper
Swirling, swirling thoughts will scatter
Mines and demo gone forever
Sinking silence, dreams and wonder
Head is down the lecture’s over.
Click and flash and hear the humor
Mind alert to look and ponder
See the source of mind’s displeasure
Vicious Asian with the Camera

Ozark Trail

2005-09-05T20:07:00.000-05:00

My hike along the Ozarks trail was quite pleasant. The trail was narrow and very rugged, and while there weren’t any awe inspiring vistas along the 6 mile stretch that I walked, it was quiet, void of people, and challenging. The vegetation screened much of the view, but the wood was beautiful in its own way. It certainly wasn’t a trail often traveled as I continuously had to brush spider webs from my face. Eventually I picked up a fallen limb and used it to clear the spiders from my path.

Gateway to the West

2005-09-04T19:25:00.000-05:00

Who would have thought that doing work with demolitions would actually be boring? Well, it’s not as boring as some things but it certainly wasn’t as interesting as bridging. The week just sort of dragged on and on. Thank God it’s finally the weekend. Well, I’ve pretty much decided to stay local for the weekend and check out what the state has to offer. It’s kind of odd that despite the shitty driving of the locals, I’m actually beginning to like Missouri. Today I took a drive out to St. Louis where I walked around the waterfront listening to music at the jazz festival and stopped by the famous “Gateway to the West.” To my amazement, despite going on this little outing by myself and traveling more than 100 miles, I actually ran into a friend of mine from school and work (Chris). He was eating lunch on the patio of a restaurant on the waterfront with his new wife. Since its been about a month since they’ve been together, I kept walking and pretended that I didn’t see them. After all, who travels 100 miles to see his wife only to hang out with buddies? Anyway here are some of the pictures I took of the Arch and the surrounding park. Tomorrow I think I’m gonna head out to Johnson’s Shut-ins State Park and do some hiking.

100 Days

2005-08-23T19:28:00.000-05:00

“ Hey Tony,” Amy calls out with a smile as we line up for stretches in the morning. “Happy 100th day.”

Amy reminded me in good old West Point tradition that today marks 100 days until the end of EOBC. Today is special for that reason, but it is also special for another. Today for PT we ran 6 miles, and amazingly, I ran it in just under 48 minutes. That averages to about 8 minutes a mile which really isn’t that great, but I did run the first four in 26 minutes with is a better pace than I ran my 2 mile for my APFT 4 weeks ago. Also, today we started non-standard bridge classification which is infinitely more interesting than the crap I’ve been doing the past few weeks.

Guilt

2005-08-17T17:15:00.000-05:00

Have you ever had one of those days where you get this feeling like you’ve just done something bad? I don’t mean the feeling you get after a bad hair cut; I mean the kind of feeling you might get after killing a puppy. Well, today is one of those days and I didn’t even do anything wrong.

Events started taking a turn around noon when I got my lunch break. This weeks’ driver of my car pool, lets call her “J” asked me if I thought we would have time to jam out to the golf course club house to hit up the taco salad bar for lunch. Considering the golf course is about 10 minutes away and we had just under an hour, I told her I didn’t think so, not if we wanted to take our time to eat. Well, the car pool put it to a vote and I lost. We went out to the golf course. Unfortunately, everyone and their dog also decided to head to the golf course for lunch so we ended up leaving with only 6 minutes to get back. Well, J didn’t want to be late so she took a few liberties with the speed limit. Unfortunately, we got stuck behind a white Ford Taurus that didn’t want to drive the speed limit. The result was that J passed him doing about 50 in a 35 zone. Well, once we were around the guy followed up all the way back to work while talking on his cell phone. It turns out that the slow guy driving the Ford was the provost marshal (If you know anything about a military base, then you know that makes him kind of like the chief of police except he likely knows and outranks your boss) and he was calling the police. Needless to say he eventually caught up to J and told her he intends to see her properly punished for her reckless driving.

Fast forward three hours. At 4 o’clock I was released from work, except I have a problem. My entire car pool failed the land navigation test and has to stay late for extra training. That means I don’t have a ride home since I’m not driving this week and I’m the only one that passed the first time. Lucky for me, a friend (we’ll call this one “N”) takes pity on me and gives me a ride home. Well, just as we get to the stretch that J passed the provost marshal N sees the dreaded blue and red lights in his mirror. He got pulled over for failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. While N was getting his ticket I noticed three other cars being pulled over along the same stretch, and I can’t help but feel J is to blame. I wasn’t driving either time, but to be pulled over twice in the same day really feels like a close call. I was almost afraid to drive down to the corner store when I finally made it home.

My New Found Respect

2005-08-13T17:53:00.000-05:00

Well, yesterday I went to the M16 range, where I experienced my worst day of shooting since the first time I fired a rifle more than 6 years ago in basic training. For some reason I had a hell of a time trying to zero my piece of $*** rifle. It took me 30 rounds and I still don’t think I got it right. Anyway, as bad as I was shooting, somehow I managed to finish up before most and so I was tasked to be part of the advance party to the next range (qualification range). Well, it started pouring as soon as we got there and so I had to load ammo and prep the range in the pouring rain. Just as were finishing up and the rest of my EOBC class arrived, the rain stopped (go figure) and the sun came out in full strength. Well, sometimes it pays to have a name that comes early in the alphabet because I was lucky enough to be assigned to the first firing order. I fired my ten practice rounds and then my 40 for qualification. I was really impressed with the range (if not my shooting); the range was relatively flat and very open with pop up targets every 50 meters out to 300 meters and 15 firing lanes. Well I won’t tell you just how poorly I shot, but I did still qualify marksman on the first round. Since I qualified in the first round I had to serve as range safety the rest of the day. That’s where I earned my new found respect for Drill Sergeants. Standing out in the sun for six hours with the sun beating down from above and the heat coming up from the sand below, I was baking. My face and neck sun burnt, I stood on the range with my paddle squinting into the sun. I signaled to the tower when it was safe to go hot and then helped to spot targets for the shooters. It was a very long and exhausting day. To think that Drill Sergeants have do the same thing for three of the 9 weeks of basic training, I give them props. After dark, when the range was closed and our weapons cleaned, I headed back to my room (my new home). I was a little perturbed to see the Chemical class drinkin’ and grill outside my building on a Friday evening while I was coming back from work sweat drenched and exhausted with my ruck on my back. Jealous? Hell yeah! Why did I pick a branch that required such work on a Friday? Well, I showered, changed, and headed out for some Korean food with about 10 of my friends to Celebrate a belated birthday. Today, I slept in and am cooking up a pot of chilli in my new crock pot. Thank god for the weekend.

Happy Birthday to me!

2005-08-10T22:47:00.000-05:00

To quote a song by a band my eldest sister introduced me to…“Ha-ppy, Happy bir-thday to me”

Well, it wasn’t the best birthday ever, I had PT at 520 and then had to go to the Motor Pool to do PMCS (preventive maintenance, checks, and services), but then again I did have three girls take me out and buy me dinner. Too bad tomorrow is gonna be an early day.

blaaaaaaaaaaa

2005-08-07T17:35:00.000-05:00

I’d like to start by apologizing for seeming like I disappeared from the face of the Earth. Basically, OBC has been both stressful and boring. The classes (if you can call them that) are long and uninformative, while in between I seem to have a ton of stuff to do without a lot of time to do it. My typical day lately has been to wake up at 430 so I can car pool to PT at 5. PT doesn’t start till 545, but I found the only way to avoid being yelled at for being late is to be 30 minutes early (yes being 10 minutes early will get you yelled at). I come back from PT at seven, only to have to be back at Lincoln Hall at 8. Then its 3 hours of classes, and hour for lunch, more classes till 6, and then listen to dumb-ass announcement till 7 when I can finally go back, eat dinner, shine boots and go to sleep. Last weekend I narrowly escaped a car accident when some stupid bitch ran a stop light and after some swerving on both our parts barely missed slamming into the side of me. I did very poorly on the Land Nav course, which has been the most exciting thing to happen the last couple of weeks. I did so poorly that after 3 and a half hours I had only found 2 points and an hour and a half left to find 2 more and get back to the start point. I did manage to get my points and get back in time, but I was highly disappointed with my performance. Well, I’ve got a test on nothing tomorrow and it’s about time I made dinner. Hopefully I have some more interesting to say later.

There's a new LT in the FLW

2005-07-23T16:26:00.000-05:00

Well, tomorrow’s the big day, the day I have to report. I’m all checked into housing here at Ft. Leonard Wood and ready to go work. The nearly two months I’ve had off have been very good. I’ve been to NYC, Northern California, visited my sister Ann, I went fishing in Savannah, in North Georgia, and in Mexico, and I visited buddies in Ft. Bragg and Ft. Rucker. The BOQ here is pretty nice and has a broadband connection so I ought to be able to post more often. Well, I better get back to boot shining. Everyone wish me luck in EOBC.

Trip to Northern California

2005-07-11T17:15:00.000-05:00

Basically, my trip to California was interesting. I started out keeping a sort of journal, as seen below, but as I didn’t have access to the Internet I stopped writing entries. Click on picture above for some of my pictures from Northern California and read about my trip below.

30 June 2005 (2030 EST) So, here I am sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting on my flight. I laugh to myself and think about how this trip is truly going to be an adventure. I’m listening to “Last Dance with Mary Jane” and somehow the song feels appropriate. The plan was to catch a red eye into Sacramento so I would be there when my buddy Troy arrived so we could hitch a ride north together, but when I checked in the lady at the desk said that my flight was running very late and that it was likely that I would miss my connecting flight in Las Vegas. If that happens I might not get into Sacramento until almost one in the afternoon. Actually, I got to admit, I wouldn’t mind getting stuck there with a twelve hour layover. I haven’t been to Las Vegas since I was thirteen, and I haven’t really had a good excuse to go since I’ve been of legal age. I suppose if there is anyplace where an overnight layover would be good, it would be Las Vegas. I didn’t have to check any luggage so I would be able to leave the Airport and hang around town a bit. Man, as much as I hate it when my plans don’t work out, every once in a while I love the unexpected.

1 July 2005 (0707 PST) Well, the unexpected happened as expected. My flight from Atlanta got into Las Vegas about 10 minutes after my connecting flight took off. After an hour and a half of waiting in lines and talking to people, I was rebooked on a flight to Phoenix at 1030 and then connect to Sacramento to finally arrive at 1500. The security guy at the Vegas airport was really cool, because the only lockers in the airport were on the gate side of security and he let me back through so I could lock up my bags for a few hours. At about 0200 I left the airport and headed for the strip. I started at the MGM grand then hit up the Tropicana, Excalibur, Bolagio, and Caesar’s Palace. I was gonna make a stop at the Sapphire gentlemen’s club, but it wasn’t where the advertisement said it was and I didn’t feel like taking a cab. Anyway, I gambled, drank, and stopped off in a nightclub in Caesar’s until dawn. All together the evening including Taxis cost me $50. Not bad. With how much I spent at the nightclub, I probably wound up breaking even in the casinos (though I am down $20 in roulette). At sunrise, I began to make my weary way back to the airport. I walked back to the MGM and caught a cab from there. Along the way I had to shake off two advances by a couple of hookers. The first one was easy (she was an extremely fat black woman) but the second, I admit, tempted me. A cute blonde in her twenties, she was very good looking, but I was overcome with pity that someone so beautiful could let herself become something so detestable. Some would say it might be a moral flaw of mine but I can’t help but feel like whores and rapists are the lowest forms of scum. Maybe I shouldn’t compare the two, but fucking cause you’re hard up for a buck is like violating yourself and self betrayal is the worst kind of betrayal there is. Anyway, its time to catch a few z’s before my next flight. After all, I am running on hour 27 without sleep.

11 July 2005 Flights from Vegas on were okay. There was no more delays and everything went fairly smoothly. Me and Troy met up at the Sacramento Airport with only a little waiting on his part (because he got bumped from his original flight). We rode up to Redding in the back of his Dad’s truck and then picked up his Jeep. We had to make a few repairs before we left, so it wasn’t until after 11pm until we left Redding for the coast. We got there pretty late because the Jeep started to overheat a couple of times and we had to let it cool off. Anyway the coast was fun; I rode the four wheelers until the blue one broke down and started leaking gas, went to the Trees of Mystery in the Redwoods, and lit fireworks on the beach. I came back to Redding on the 5th, and looked at all the new development that has happened since the last time I was there. I spent a day on Shasta Lake and even went and looked at my old house. Then Troy’s Jeep really busted (Overheated and wouldn’t drive for more than 10 minutes before overheating again). With his whole family working, we couldn’t get a ride to come back down south until the 9th. I only got to spend one evening with my Sister and couldn’t visit my other before I had to catch my flight. Now I’m back in Georgia and I’ve got to figure out how to lose all the weight I gained during my 10 days in California.

Going Away

2005-06-30T12:30:00.000-05:00

Well, June 30th has finally come and tonight I will be on my way to California. I'll tell you, today couldn't come fast enough. I finished the roof on the extension I was building with my dad (roofing is crazy hot work) and am pretty tired of working on the room. Actually, I'm begining to be tired of being home in general. You know...its kind of weird that I call this home. My parents moved up here to Georgia while I was in school, I don't know anyone here (except the girl at the pizza joint I've been talking to) and "my room" is decorated with my parent's stuff and I live out of my bags. Florida was kind of my home (at least that's were I graduated from high school), but New York felt more comfortable to me these last four years because that's where all of my friends were and where I spent most of my time. Oddly enough, the place that feels most like home to me is California. Not just Redding where I spent 10 of my 16 years there, but the whole state in general. I didn't notice, until I went back there last summer, just how much I missed the state. Last summer I walked off the plane in Ontario airport (someplace I had never been) and it hit me. There is just this certain kind of feel about the state that I've been missing since I moved to the atlantic coast. I've lived in five different states now, and though I loved Florida, California is where my heart is.

Anyway, I'll be sure to take lots of pictures, and if I can find an internet connection while I'm out there I'll be sure to post them. For my sisters, I'll call you guys when I get out there. There is still a little bit of logistics I have to work out, but I would like visit both of you. I didn't want to seem like I didn't want to see you W&M, but I figured you guys might be sick of me after your visit to New York. I would love to see the property soon to become Miceland.

What I did over the summer.

2005-06-24T16:55:00.000-05:00

So what’s new? Nothing. I’ve been just hanging around and helping my dad build the extension on the house. Nothing too exciting. I wake up, eat breakfast, work my ass off until about 4:30, then drink a few beers, eat dinner, watch TV and go to bed. I’ll be leaving for California on the 30th to visit a friend and my sister there that missed my graduation. Saddly, I'm already beginning to miss school, and my friends there. I’ll update again when I have more to say.

Back to back adventures.

2005-06-17T07:05:00.000-05:00

Sunday afternoon I got a call from one of my old friends from my enlisted days. Jeff went to AIT with me and was one of my best friends while I was stationed in FT Gordon. Anyway, he gave me a call congratulating me on my graduation and letting me know he finally got back from Iraq. Well, I was kind of board of sitting around my parents house so I decided to make the drive up to FT. Bragg to hang out with him for a day or so. I made the drive in my new car and though it took 7 hours due to some traffic and heavy rain, the drive went largely without incident. Finally I arrived at the base and met up with my old friend. He showed me around the barracks and introduced me around to some of his friends (mostly as Tony, we decided it was best to keep it on the down low that I was an O-grade). I realized then just how glad I was of my decision to become an officer. In the Army for 6 years now, he was living in a room about the same size as mine in AIT, and had to share it with two other people. Three people living in such tight quarters can't possibly be comfortable. After a while, we went to some sports bar in Fayetteville to play pool and drink a couple of beers. There I was interviewed by the local newspaper about my opinion on the Michael Jackson verdict (which was that I really didn't care one way or another). We thought it was pretty funny that I was in Fayetteville for less than a day and I already made the paper. Dinner consisted of hot wings and beer and eventually we headed back. To make a long story short the evening consisted mostly of drinking in the barracks and reminiscing about old times. We partied a little with his buddies that also just got back from the sand box until Jeff ended it when they started getting rowdy by saying, "Hey, you assholes need to cool it because weve got LT up here and we don't need to be getting him in trouble." I went to bed about 4 in the morning and went for breakfast about 9. I was invited to go to the beach with Jeff and some off his friends but I decided it was best to leave before there was an incident that could get me in trouble. Jeff was talking about getting out of the Army next year when his second enlistment is up. If he doesn't, it may be along time before I hang out with him again. I'm a pretty social person, but I realized that West Point may have institutionalized me a little more than I thought. I'm not the same person I was when I was enlisted and I didn't really feel like I fit in with the lower enlisted crowd anymore. It was weird being treated like I had a lot more to lose than they did (though in some ways I do and others I have less).

I got back home Tuesday evening and my dad told me that he decided to take the boat out to Savannah to do a little channel fishing. That said we left Wednesday morning for Savannah, GA with the boat. After a 6 hour drive, we did a little reconnaissance of the boat launch we would use and then got a hotel room for the night. Thursday morning we head out on the intra-costal waterways and did some fishing. The fishing was disappointing for the most part, as I didn't catch anything and Dad only caught three little sharks.

Cabo San Lucus

2005-06-08T21:12:00.000-05:00

Well, as promised, here's how Mexico went. We flew into Cabo on Wednesday and arrived in the heat. I'm gonna keep this short and just say that Cabo San Lucas was nice ( very touristy) but dad did nothing but bitch about everything. Everything was priced pretty much that same as here in the States (once you figured out the peso to dollar conversion) which surprised me, and I ate the local food (including raw dairy products) and drank the local water and didn't get sick. It was a beautiful place, and though I had fun, it probably would have been more fun if I was with my friends rather than my parents. For some reason I just feel strange talking to girls while I'm with my parents, (probably because Dad is turning into one of those dirty old men) so I didn't pick up on any muchachas. We went fishing twice, I caught a 87" Marlin one day, which put up a pretty good fight and was unfortunately the only fish we caught that day. I was gonna release it, but my dad talked me into keeping it to get mounted. We went fishing a second time, and though Dad caught a few bonitos and a couple of yellow tail, I didn't really have any luck.

Grad Week

2005-06-07T23:59:00.000-05:00

Well folks, I know its been a long time since my last post, but I've been very busy. Coming back from DC, I jumped right into grad week. That is the last week at school (no classes) before my graduation. My parents made it all the way up form Georgia to go, but instead of coming on Friday (my graduation was on the morning of May 28) they came up one Tuesday. So basically the week was full of trying to move out, trying to entertain my parents, catching up with family, saying goodbye to great friends, and going to award ceremonies. It was one of the most stressful weeks of my life.

Finally, Saturday came. I marched into Miche Stadium, waited until in was my turn to cross the stage, and then marched up and received my diploma shaking the Dean�s hand as I grasped it. I was feeling high, in a state of ecstasy. Sitting in the Second row, I got pictures of my good friends as they crossed the stage, and cheered them on. Then came the Alma Mata. The tears came even though I tried to hold them back, and as I thought back on the stress and moments of pure hellish torture I endured, and then on the good times and funny antics with my friends it was all I could do to keep from bawling like a little girl. Finally, the class was dismissed and I threw my hat. It wasn't like high school, when I gave my hat a little toss in the air and caught it to bring back as a keepsake as it didn't feel like that big of a deal; no, I tore that hat right off my head an gave it a powerful throw. Graduating from the academy was the greatest thing I have ever accomplished. I didn't even look to see were my cap went. I didn't care. Throwing the hat was like throwing an elephant that had been sitting on my shoulders for the last four years. I have never been so happy or so proud of anything in my life. I threw my hat, and hugged the guy next to me and found his eyes as wet as mine. I found my friend Devin, and hugged him, and Jessica, and then...any friend I could find I congratulated, hugging those close to me and shaking the hands of acquaintances. Eventually I made it my family. I shook hands, gave hugs, and finished my out processing and did my bar pinning. I wanted to get together is some of my friends, but we all had family to take care of, and never got to rendezvous before we all went our separate ways. My family had a little party that I went to where I saw aunts, uncles, and cousins I hadn't seen in years and I got to take my best friend from California out on night in NYC.

When the excitement of graduation was wore off and I made it down to my parents' house in Georgia I was no less busy. I bought a new computer that I had to set to my desired preferences and on the 2 June, I headed out to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Tomorrow night I'll post about that experience.

DC Trip

2005-05-23T23:04:00.000-05:00

Wow, for once nothing crazy happened. I had a peaceful, relaxing weekend. We toured DC a bit and I visited Arlington Cemetary for the first time. Here are some pictures. Well, the family should start comming in tomorrow so I imagine this will be a very stressful week. Don't expect another post until sometime after Graduation. I've got tons of stuff to do.

Last Student Road Trip

2005-05-19T06:52:00.000-05:00

Well, exams are done! I'll be heading off to Washington DC for a few days (special thanks to Mark's Sister for letting me stay at her place) to unwind before the real stress of outprocessing and moving starts. Only 8 days and a wake up until graduation, and then I guess I'll have to change the name of my blog. I'll post some pics when I get back, my weekend trips usally have good stories with them, so stay tuned.

Two Down, One to Go!

2005-05-16T16:17:00.000-05:00

Me and the Dean went for a double header today. I had my Telecommunications exam in the morning and my History of the Military Art exam in the afternoon. The morning exam was totally one-sided. I destroyed it, made it my bitch. It was open notes/open book but there was only two low point value questions that I couldn’t answer without referencing by notes. Since I finished a 3 hour and 30 minute exam in only 50 minutes, I decided to go back and check my answers against my notes. I even went back and reread an entire section of the book (the one about those two questions). I’m still not sure if I got them right, but I left at the two hour mark feeling extremely confident that I will keep my A+ in the course. On a side note I felt a little bad that I was finished and saw that some people weren’t quite half way when I turned in my exam.

Mil-Art, as I like to call it, went a little different. Once again I was the first person done with the exam, though this time there was another guy right behind me. This exam required me to write two essays where the other exam was design problems with a few short answer questions. I’m not typically a fast writer so when I’m in a time crunch, I’m concise and to the point. As an engineer, I make assumptions that the reader knows what I’m talking about. Unfortunately, my instructor is a History professor that likes things explained out in detail and doesn’t always follow my logic if I don’t explain how I arrived at a conclusion. I feel like I answered the essay questions, and I certainly didn’t have anything else to say, but I’m a little weary about the length of the product I handed in. My prediction…I’m probably going to get a C (maybe a low C) but nothing that will bring my grade down from the C I already have.

Round 3: Law goes tomorrow afternoon. After that, it will be a little packing in preparation for Graduation, and then a weekend trip to D.C. with some of my friends.

No more Classes!

2005-05-13T19:38:00.000-05:00

In honor of my last day of classes, I give you a little Alice Cooper…

Well we got no choice
All the girls and boys
Makin all that noise
'Cause they found new toys
Well we can't salute ya
Can't find a flag
If that don't suit ya
That's a drag

School's out for summer
School's out forever
School's been blown to pieces

No more pencils
No more books
No more teachers’ dirty looks

Well we got no class
And we got no principles
And we got no innocence
We can't even think of a word that rhymes

School's out for summer
School's out forever
School's been blown to pieces

No more pencils
No more books
No more teachers’ dirty looks

Out for summer
Out till fall
We might not go back at all
School's out forever
School's out for summer
School's out with fever
School's out completely

Being Hooah

2005-05-09T19:48:00.000-05:00

Some Pictures from the Weekend

The air was cool, maybe even brisk, and as the wind blew it was down right cold, but in the heat of the moment I felt none of it. My heart was pounding, more with excitement than exertion, and as I leaned out from the concrete bunker I fired a burst of 5.56 at the target moving towards me.

“Shit! Tony, across the street!” Josh yelled from his concealed position inside the bunker.

I turned and saw a fire team of four moving through the woods to flank my position. Damn! I forget about the RTO I was firing at and I started shooting one handed wild shots at the four enemies advancing on me as I try to fumble for my smoke grenade. I didn’t feel it on my LCE and was about to look at the ground (in case I dropped it) when I remembered that I gave it to Dan to use earlier. All this happened within seconds of Josh’s warning, and I started to race for cover. I make a quick turn, my body goes one way and my knee another. I twisted the knee I injured this winter skiing and I dropped to the ground. I was out of the fight, and few minutes later the National Guard was on the objective and was searching Josh for PIR.

This weekend, after a busy week of school work (projects day was highly successful), I went to Camp Smith as I have for the past three years were I helped out my old First Sergeant by playing OP4 (opposing force) for his National Guard unit. Going out there is a lot of fun, I get to beat up on some National Guard guys, give them some learning points and retrain them so they can turn around and beat my small team of OP4. Saturday, after being harassed all night by sorties of OP4, six squads rotated trough a series of STX (situational training exercises) lanes. In my lane I and 3 others were defending a command and control site that the squad was tasked to secure and look for intelligence. The event I described earlier happened when the 5th squad came through my lane and thus the 6th squad should have had an easy time with us since I could barely limp around with the help of a walking stick I found, but instead they chose to come exactly where they were warned not to. We eliminated them to the man, caught in the field of fire of our SAW (a machine gun) with our OP sneaking around their left they didn’t have a chance even though they caught us by surprise and I was immobile.

Sunday morning the Six squads came together to attack an Urban site defended by all the OP4 from the different STX lanes. Together we were about the size of an undermanned platoon, and thanks to the Concertina wire Devin and I found and emplaced at the last minute (I was actually hobbling around with the wire when we got the warning that the assault element was coming over the hill) and a ton of smoke and grenade simulators, about 6 of us managed to hold out in the last room of the second floor of the building until the controllers called an end to the exercise. After that, we all exfiltrated (us and the National Guard) on some Blackhawk helicopters. The Pilot we had gave us the greatest ride I have ever had. I’ve said before that a roller coaster has nothing on Blackhawk moving Nap of the Earth at high speed, but this ride was all that and more. At points in the ride we couldn’t have been much more than 15 feet off the deck because we actually had to pull up to make in over some power lines. We hit 0 G a couple of times and there were several times where the Gs were enough to make you clench your teeth. It was an awesome ride.

Update

2005-05-02T21:40:00.000-05:00

My new found Love: Pepperoni Pizza and Taco Bell hot sauce
Biggest Worry: Projects day on Wednesday
Greatest Recent Accomplishment: Coupling unpolorized light from a high power laser into a fiber to drive the "street camera."

If I can make it to Friday, I'll be set up to coast into finals with no worries.

And if you were wondering, I had a good time in Boston this weekend. Sorry no pictures. I still haven't figured out why I can't post them.

Also for those local, I'll be set up at Table 5 in the West Point Club Ballroom for Projects day. (630-1200) Come see LDT in action.

The Busy Weekend

2005-04-27T22:12:00.000-05:00

I have had a very busy past few days. Friday I went to a party welcoming me to Army corps of engineers. It wasn’t anything too exciting. I went with my good friend Chris, (who is also going in to the corps of Engineers) had a couple of beers, listened to two Generals talk, and then had several more. SAME and the AEA were certainly generous providing free beer and some very nice pens to the hundred or so of us that would be entering the Corps. It was a good time because after the big wigs left, I was able to get drunk with a few of my friends and my old psychology instructor (yes, he’s an engineer too).

Saturday was a little more interesting. I got up early because I had to work, and I wound up standing in the rain for 6 hours. Then I went to the mall and had lunch (nothing spectacular). That evening, I went to yet another party, this one much more formal. You may or may not be familiar with Army “Dinning ins” but they are usually a fantastic time. I was invited to this Dinning by the New York National Guard OCS, as a special guest (Dinning ins are usually only for members of the unit) as thanks to the training and support I and some of my colleagues have provided them. I’ve served as a safety diver while they went through water survival, I was a pace man for one of the 12 mile road marches, and served as a primary or assistant instructor for a couple of their classes. This event had an open bar, and while I did take part of both it and the “grog,” I drank mostly water as I had to be someplace early in the morning.

Sunday morning I got up bright and early. I and six other students met up at 8:00 to begin movement south for our Boondoggle (what we call a short assignment that is more of a vacation or perk than it is work) to Baltimore. We drove to Baltimore, checked in to our hotel, watched a movie, and then hit the town. The night life in Baltimore, at least on Sunday night, wasn’t very exciting, but we still had fun. Of course it would have been more fun if one the guys (the guy driving) wasn’t 20 years old. He couldn’t get in any of the bars or clubs that weren’t also restaurants, even when we told the bouncer that he wasn’t drinking. Okay, being the DD sucks so usually you find someone underage and by him a meal so he’ll drive you around. The bouncer looked absolutely appalled at the Idea of putting a big X on his hand and holding his license till we left like many places will in NY, CA, or FL will. Well, the reason that we got to go on an all-expenses-paid trip to Baltimore is so that we would be able to report to the NSA building at 8:00 and begin to see the principles of engineering used on the very cutting-edge of technology.

I got back to school on Tuesday only to discover that not only have I fallen behind on one my design projects, I also had to update my shots. I got MGC (meningitis I think) and round three of Hep B. Two shots, not too bad. The line even moved fairly quickly. It did remind me however, of and incident that happened when I go my MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) shot a few years ago, but I’ve already written enough so I’ll save that story for another time. Anyway, yesterday after I got my shots I went to the range and fired 150 rounds of 5.56. Then at 8 pm, I and my roommate headed up the AOG building for a party trying to raise money from alumni for the school. We met former Chief of Staff General (ret) Eric Shinseki, pictured above, and got drunk on wine (why I didn’t post this last night). Let me just say that apparently wine (or maybe it was the mix of wine and beer) will give you a horrible hangover, because I was in bad shape this morning. Not good when you have to work with high intensity lasers that can seriously burn you at 7:30 in the morning.

Going to the Dentist

2005-04-21T15:06:00.000-05:00

I went to the dentist today. I needed a cleaning, two cavities filled, and an old filling replaced. So I spend an hour and a half at the dentist and they give me a cleaning, replace the old filling, but only fill one of my cavities. WTF? I’m already sitting in the chair numbed up with Novocain, why can’t they do the last filling? There’s only two things I hate about going to the dentist. The first part is the needle before the Novocain, the second is the waiting. I’m a fairly patient person, but I hate to waste time sitting around a doctor’s office 30 minutes after my appointment time (though today they did see me right away). Having my last filling done today could have saved me both. I was already in the chair, so I wouldn’t have to wait, and I was already numb so I wouldn’t have to face another needle. So now I have to go back to the dentist in three weeks (the earliest I could get an appointment). That really ticks me off.

HKN

2005-04-18T19:30:00.000-05:00

Today I was inducted to the Iota Phi chapter of Eta Kappa Nu (HKN). I don’t have any pictures because I couldn’t find my battery charger for my camera. Anyway it was one more milestone on my way to graduation. God, I wish I didn’t have so much work left to do. I took the FEE on Saturday, and after the 8 hour test I went out with a friend and got hammered. Now I’m suffering because I had a ton of work that I really should have done instead. Oh well, it’s like my motto… “If you finish it before the day it’s due then you aren’t challenging yourself.”

I Guess I Do Care About Politics

2005-04-11T15:11:00.000-05:00

I know it seems long, but read this article. It is actually relatively short, and if you are anything like me, you will find it disturbing.

CongressDaily AM
April 8, 2005
POLITICS Conservatives Push Judicial Change Christian conservatives and a core group of congressional supporters are launching a significant new push to restructure the federal judicial system to reflect a more explicitly biblical world view, in the hopes that these changes will pave the way for broader social and political changes, leaders of the movement said.
Some of the most prominent conservative leaders in the country -- including Vision America's Rick Scarborough, Coral Ridge Ministry's James Kennedy and the Free Congress Foundation's Paul Weyrich -- launched the effort Thursday in Washington.

Members of the new coalition said they would immediately focus on bringing an end to Democratic filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees before pushing Senate Majority Leader Frist to enact sweeping changes in the judiciary.

They also warned that Frist and other politicians who have thus far been reluctant to force a confrontation with Senate Minority Leader Reid over the nominations would be held accountable if Democrats continue to block conservative judges.

Participants at this week's Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration meeting said the group also will focus on forcing Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against any judge who does not conform with their biblically based interpretation of the Constitution, as well as permanently curb judicial authority over matters of church and state, marriage and governmental acknowledgement of a Christian deity.

"What it is time to do is impeach justices," Texas Justice Foundation President Allan Parker extolled a crowd of a hundred or so conservative lobbyists, attorneys and activists. "The standard should be any judge who believes in the 'living constitution' should be impeached."
Don Feder, one of the group's principal organizers, said the council has decided to focus on the courts before a broader push on changing the U.S. political system because, he said, judges have stacked the political deck against them.

"The problem is the courts have created a playing field that's anything but level," Feder said.
According to Feder, a group of 50 leading conservative leaders met early Thursday to draft a five-point plan they will eventually deliver to Congress for judicial overhaul.
The council will then circulate the document among religious leaders and post it on their Internet sites to gather signatures from "average Americans" before it is formally delivered to Congress.

According to Feder, the manifesto will call for a plan to begin impeachment proceedings against federal judges; remove judicial jurisdiction over issues key to religious conservatives, including marriage and the separation of church and state; limit courts' jurisdiction over the establishment clause of the Constitution, which has been used to enforce the firewall between religion and government; initiate a process for defunding courts that defy these new rules and continue to overstep their authority and eliminate the ability of Democrats to filibuster Bush's judicial nominees.

The manifesto is based in part on legislation introduced early last month by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., known as the "Constitution Restoration Act."
Their bill would limit federal courts' jurisdiction and would enshrine a recognition of God in federal law -- a provision the bill would make nonreviewable. While the battle lines are still being drawn, several Republican leaders -- including House Majority Leader DeLay, Senate Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas -- are aligned with these groups because of a shared world view that emphasizes conservative Christian beliefs.
By John Stanton
_______________________

Crap like this really pisses me off. I hate to think free, rational thinkers would let zealots take control of this great nation. The establishment clause of the Constitution states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” By the letter of the Law, such a “Fire wall” must exist. If religion cannot be wholly separated from the Government, we should at least respect the three prong test as laid out in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), and Lynch v. Donnelly (1984). Laws passed by congress involving religion should be for secular purpose, the principle effect should not be to advance religion, and they should not entail excessive government entanglement.

Here is another thought. How can a Judge be impeached for “believing in a living constitution?” According to Article II, sec. 2 of the Constitution, they can only be “removed from office on Impeachment, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” If not recognizing God is a high crime, then it might be time to move.

White Bunnies

2005-04-10T17:06:00.000-05:00

This is a animation about white bunnies with a pretty catchy tune. Funny, being in a school with a 1:8 female to male ratio, I feel the same way sometimes.

A real Bummer of a Friday

2005-04-08T16:23:00.000-05:00

Today I had to demo my prototype for my senior design project. We (DS, DM, and I) have been workin’ our asses off all week. Each of us spending two hours a day in the Lab, and some evenings, trying to build the piece of shit, and when we demo today, nothing worked! Not even the damn remote that we built and tested months ago.
In case you don’t know what we’re building, my group, commonly referred to as LDT, is building a home theater surround sound system. We are trying to build a 6 channel receiver that can be competitive with commercial receivers, as far as sound quality, and that transmits to the surround speakers wirelessly using free space optics instead of RF. DS is responsible of the Optical portion of project (laser driver, LEDs, photo receiver, ect.), DM is responsible for the Microcontroller and LCD, and I am responsible for signal processing (channel splitting, D/A conversion, Amplification, ect.) and power.
Anyway, last month for our subsystem demo we had a working LCD with user interface, remote control, Laser Driver circuit, and audio possessor and amplifier. Since then, we have been integrating our subsystems and working on other circuits (I’m trying not to get into specifics). I don’t know what happened, but this morning we turned on the power and nothing worked. The code for the microcontroller wouldn’t save to memory so we no longer had volume control or a working LCD. We burnt out the laser driver (forgot to put the heat sink back on) when we tried to transmit our signal to the speakers, and when we tried to replace the optical link with a wire to carry the signal we discovered that our receiver circuit did not work (the printed circuit board didn’t get back from the fabrication lab till this morning so I didn’t have enough time to troubleshoot it before the demo). And to top it all off the batteries in the remote must have died because not even that would put out a signal. We were fucked! I’m not sure I really want to see what our grade is gonna be. Thankfully, we still have three weeks before Projects Day (final submission). I spent another three hours down in the Lab after the “Demo” trying to troubleshoot my receive circuit with no success. What a shitty way to end a rough week. Thankfully it’s the weekend. Too bad I have to work tomorrow and I have a Law paper due on Monday (yes, that’s right, an electrical engineering major taking Law). Only 49 more days.

Sin City: No Mark, it's not about Vegas.

2005-04-05T15:34:00.000-05:00

I watched the Movie Sin City the other night. I’m still not sure what I think about it other than that is was well worth the $7.50 I paid. On seeing the trailers for the movie, it struck me how much it reminded me of playing Max Payne (an awesome game). It was the link I made between the trailers and the video game that made me want to watch it. Having never been into Comics, I didn’t even realize that is was based on one. Basically, the movie follows three separate, but loosely linked, story lines that take place in a dark and morally corrupt city. I would probably rate the movie B+. It was very entertaining, had lots of action, and there was a plethora of hot women showing good amounts of skin. The negatives come in the form of bad acting on the part of Bruce Willis’s partner (the guy who played Mr. Blond in Reservoir Dogs), and the lack of an overall plot to solidly link the story lines together.

Which OS are you?

2005-03-30T16:59:00.000-05:00

Found this one on miceland. Fun!

Which OS are You?

Easter and Zombies?

2005-03-29T23:25:00.000-05:00

I don't often pose question (mostly because no one ever leaves comments) on my blog, but I'm curious about this one. An atheist asked me this and I'm curious what you all think.

"If Easter is about the resurrection of christ, why don't people dress up and go trick-or-treating? After all it's a holiday about zombies and the undead just like Halloween, right?"

I have to admit, it thought is was funny, and it makes and intresting point. What do you think?

Tired of working? Me too!

2005-03-29T23:10:00.000-05:00

Nothing too exciting my way other, than school. I finally got my History paper done ,which means I'm only two term papers, two lab reports, and a senior capstone design project away from finals. So here's what a student's desk looks like when he takes a study break from the papers and problem sets.

Happy Birthday Scott!

2005-03-24T23:49:00.000-05:00

Tonight was Scott's 21st birthday. He didn't make it to 21 shots but he didn't do to badly considering we have a meeting with the boss at 7:30 tomorrow morning and he still has a paper to write for school. Well, happy birthday Scott! And don't worry, I'll come by early in the morning to make sure your ass is up and ready to go before "the man."

Spring Break 2005

2005-03-21T16:59:00.000-05:00

Wow! I'm back from Spring Break in Puerto Rico, and man was it awesome! The week was incredible and so full of memorable events that it would take almost another entire week to talk about them and share the 200 odd pictures that we took. Instead, I'm gonna beak into five general parts and describe the experience holistically instead of going into details. These parts are: The Beach, Vieques, Culebra, El Yunque, and the Night Life.

The Beach

2005-03-21T16:58:00.000-05:00

P-ray's condo over looked the beautiful beach at Isla Verde . The water was easily seventy-five or eighty degrees and made for excellent swimming. We spent a good deal of time just chilling out and drinking beer on the beach, but we also did some surfing, snorkeling, swimming, and of course climbing for coconuts to make Pina Coladas.

Vieques

2005-03-21T16:26:00.001-05:00

Tuesday, we headed out to the island of Vieques which was very third-world like. Refusing to pay the $25 per person for a tour to Bio Bay, we waited till well after dark and made the hike on foot and then went swimming. Well worth the four mile hike, it was amazing to swim there, even if I did get stung by a jelly fish, and one of the guys turned belligerent drunk. Since we were in the mood to save money, instead of getting a hotel for the night we bought a case of cheap local beer and stayed up till 4 am when we caught a quick nap on the floor of a restaurant that we found left open before catching the 6 am ferry to Culebra.

Culebra

2005-03-21T16:25:00.000-05:00

Wednesday morning be hit the Island of Culebra. Having been up all night, we spent most of the morning sound asleep on perhaps the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. By noon, we were all energized enough to take advantage of the beach and while Hitch and Ben were off puking somewhere (Ben from drinking, Hitch from something he ate) the rest of us did some intense body surfing and wished we had brought the boards

El Yunque

2005-03-21T16:22:00.001-05:00

Some time during the week (I don’t actually remember), P-ray, Mikey, Jeff, and I went to El Yunque rain forest and then visited with P-ray’s grand mother in Luquillo. The rain forest was awesome. We climbed a huge water fall, did some cliff jumping (off smaller ledges), and learned a lot about the local flora from P-ray’s uncle.

The Night Life

2005-03-21T16:14:00.000-05:00

Though we spent a few nights drinking on the beach or on other islands, we spent most nights in old San Juan. In Old San Juan, we hit the casinos, walked along the old battlements, explored city squares, and did a fair amount of drinking. Senor Frog's was one favorite that we made sure to hit for ST. Patty's day. The night life was excellent. I drank I danced, I kissed girls, I gambled, I played pool, I had good times with friends. To sum it up, this year's spring break was the time of my life.

Semiconductor Physics?

2005-03-09T22:04:00.000-05:00

I've come upon this link before, but for some reason it came up on my google search again tonight. And Once again, I couldn't resist sharing it. This link is great for a laugh, but the truely funny thing is that it served me as a fantastic study guide while taking semiconductor electronics last semester. Now if only I could find "Tera Reid's Guide to Photonics" or "Natalie Portman Explains Signalling."

Controlled Pairs

2005-03-06T23:01:00.000-05:00

I was pissed off at first, but I got to admit I was feeling pretty good two hours later when I was done. I went down to the Indoor range today and worked a little on my reflexive fire. In two hours I fired just over 200 rounds with a Colt M4 gas operated, air cooled carbine, very similar to an M16. I came to the realization today, that many people, probably most people, live their whole lives without ever squeezing a trigger. Firing a gun can be a huge stress reliever. Counter intuitive to some, it can actually be quite relaxing. On the call of “Ready, Up,” your sights come up, noise and everything else goes away. There is only you, your sight post, and the target. Muscle memory makes you release the safety without thinking and in the natural rhythm of your breathing there is a pause between exhale and inhale. In that pause you squeeze the trigger. Suddenly the world comes alive and in quick succession there is bang, recoil, and your sight picture comes back. Then the acrid sulfur scent of spent powder. Not many people get to do this again and again, firing “controlled pairs to the chest” and lower. “Controlled pairs to the head,” and lower. “Hammer to the chest,” and lower. “Hammer to the groin,” and lower. Firing a gun can be at the same time exhilarating and relaxing. Being able to rapid fire more than 200 rounds, makes it that much more so.

2005-03-04T15:33:00.000-05:00

Engineering week was come and gone. Here's a picture of me and my classmates attending an ASME sponsored dinner for professional engineers.

Scotty Doesn't Know

2005-02-28T17:29:00.000-05:00

So this was 100th night weekend, though really we are down to 88 days and a wake up. I didn’t do much on Friday, because Devin and Dan, my good friends, didn’t get done with the range until 7:00. After a lot of running around, we finally went to Applebee’s for dinner, had a few beers, and hit the movies. Along the way Dan bought a pot at Wal-Mart and started giving me crap about the “Pot-O-Booze” (Long story that involves me, Ty, a pot, a house party in New Hampshire, and a variety of liquors). Saturday we just hung out until the Banquet. Devin didn’t have a seat, cause his company is a bunch of (Insert expletive here), but I had an extra seat so he came over to my company’s area. Dinner was okay, the speaker was decent, and the Wine surprisingly good. The real highlight of the weekend though, was after the dinner at the 100th night show, "Scotty Doesn't Know". The show was kind of long, they had some problems with the microphones, and the plot was full of holes (more a loose collection of skits than a story), but man was it funny. The singing was great even if the dancing needed a lot of help, and the writers certainly pulled no punches when poking fun at people. For those of you that missed it, don’t feel too bad. Most of the jokes were of and inside nature and would have been lost on anyone who has not walked these hallowed halls. It is a shame though that it was a one time performance that will never be repeated.

92 days and a wake up

2005-02-24T10:04:00.000-05:00

Germany!! Shit yeah! The stress was high and the choice hard, but in the end, when my name was called, I stood and opened my mouth. "Germany" came out before I could even think of how to form the word. And so seals my fate. Well, as my dad says, the land of "blonds and bier" has to be a good time.

Choosing my Fate

2005-02-22T17:04:00.000-05:00

I have a dilemma. Tomorrow night I have to decide where I will go after school. Yes, it has to be tomorrow. I know that I am sick of living in the North East and would like to return to the west coast or to Florida. Basically, this narrows my choices to four locations: Ft Irwin, CA; Ft. Lewis WA; Ft. Bragg, NC; and Germany.

I long to be back on the west coast, and my time spent at Ft. Irwin, and other locations in California this summer made me realize just how much I missed it. I love the dry, desert climate, and the state just has a feeling of home. The problem with Ft. Irwin, however, is that I have family there. I love my family, but I don’t really want to crowd them (if that makes sense). My brother-in-law is good person, but Ft. Irwin is a small community and I’d rather not have my career overlap his, if I can help it.

Ft Lewis, though way up north, is also on the west coast. It is a larger community, 20 minutes from Olympia and about an hour from Seattle. My friend promises that it is a fantastic place to work. The problem is that once again I’ll be in a cold climate. I’m really into outdoor sports, which Washington is good for, but I’m tired of living where it snows every year and the rivers freeze over. Good and bad, is that I would be going someplace highly deployable. That means I will be spending time (about a year) in either Iraq or Afghanistan. While this is good for the career and hazard pay is quite nice, being in either place has the potential to adversely affect my health.

Ft. Bragg may not be in Florida, but it is in the south and with a sunny and warm climate. I have several friends there, all claiming to have a fantastic time. But not only is it extremely deployable, it is light. Airborne operations means that I will get another monthly bonus to my paycheck, and have the fun of jumping out of airplanes, but being a light unit means that I will have to travel by foot and carry all of my gear, instead of being able to mount up on vehicles.

Germany. Cold winters, but exotic as I have never been to Europe but always wanted to go. Mechanized unit means I won’t have to do as much walking, but instead I’ll have to worry about maintenance. Germany offers many opportunities to travel through Europe, but it is also highly deployable. With units moving back to the US, this might be my last opportunity to go to Germany, but it also means that I may have to leave early and won’t get to choose where I move too.

Well, I can only pick one, and I have to choose at 7:45 tomorrow evening. Unless something drastic happens to make up my mind, I imagine I’ll end up closing my eyes and pointing—letting luck choose my fate.

Sideways: A sleeper

2005-02-22T02:06:00.000-05:00

So I watched the movie Sideways. Would you believe that the Critics rated it with an A? If you watched it you certainly wouldn’t. Just incase you still want to watch it, I won’t spoil it for you. Instead I’ll tell you that it was a lot like Swingers, except that it wasn’t funny (which is a very important quality in a comedy) and that the main character was even more depressing. The movie, though only two hours, seemed very long, drawn out, and rather boring. I don’t ever think that I checked my watch so many times during a movie.
Definitely targeting an older audience, the movie makes an attempt to be sophisticated with its talk of fine wines. Though important in making the metaphor about the main character’s life, much of the talk made the characters seem more like wine “groupies” than connoisseurs. It seemed to me that a lot of the conversation could have been summed up using Jack’s (Church) words, “Hmm…tastes pretty good to me.”

Basically, if this is a movie you really want to see, I would advise waiting for it to come out on DVD and then pick it up as Blockbuster or Netflix because it definitely wasn’t worth the $10 I paid to watch it.

Teenagers, I would advise you to staying clear all together unless you want a make out movie where you won’t really miss anything. And don’t be lured by the R rating for nudity. There are two brief scenes with man-ass, and that’s about it.

In summary, Sideways is a waste of time and money. I would rate it C-, and that’s being generous, because the acting was good, the characters are believable, and there is an occasion laugh.

My First Entry

2005-02-21T02:29:00.000-05:00

So, here I sit behind my computer watching the snow fall out my window. I have mixed feelings about the snow. Born and raised in California, I am a skier, but I am used to having to travel to go skiing. I love to ski. To experience the adrenaline coursing through my veins as I shift my weight and carve with my edges, always yearning for more speed, is an exhilarating feeling. But three weeks ago I took a bad spill and twisted my knee. Without skiing, the snow is a menace. This time of year, the New York Hudson highlands are a bleak and gloomy place. The sky is gray, the trees hold no leaves, and the patches of frozen ground not covered by ice are dull and brown. With the snow, will come the salty, muddy slush that sticks to everything and finds its way inside no matter how one tries to keep it out. Last week it began to turn warm, and I began longing for spring’s return. Between California and Florida, I have spent most of my life in warm climates, and though this is my fifth winter in the North East US, I am still uncomfortable with the long dark winters. But as I said, I have mixed feelings for the snow. Though I thirst for spring, I have been nursing my knee. Ever the quick healer, I dared to try my still recovering knee on a snow board this weekend. It held up quite well and after only a few hours of falling on my ass (it was my first time on a snowboard) I began to get pretty good. This storm tonight will bring fresh snow to the slopes, and though I fear to try my knee on skis just yet, I look forward to continuing my boarding lessons.