army randomness...

so we spent the first 4 or 5 days on a machine gun range, teaching people how to shoot. that was a blast. long days out on the range, cycling people through, getting them zeroed and qualified. cold as hell. seriously. cold as a mutha. there was a day where with windchill it never got above freezing. that's fine when you're walking back and forth from the car to the office, but when you get out there at 6:00 am and stay out there in it til 4:00pm and you're not really moving a ton to generate body heat... miserable as we should've been, most of us had a good time. these guys needed ALOT of help. most of them listened and we got them dialed in. it was fun to work with the other coaches/safeties to get these guys to listen. tag-teaming them, playing good cop, bad cop on them. shooting SHOULD be the easiest thing in the world, especially when you have a coach. shut your brain off and just listen and follow really basic, really simple directions. but that's alot harder than it sounds. for myself included. i can't just point fingers at these people. i do it myself. the other thing that was kinda fun about it was seeing how much... stuff i've crammed into my noggin over the years. there was really good info up there, really good skills to train these guys with it. once again i have to tip my hat to all those who came before me, trained me and gave me the skills to turn around and train the next generation of guys.

the last three days have been wrapped up with building on those basic shooting skills. alot of advanced shooting stuff. which has again been rewarding, but was also alot of suck. over the last 3 days we've never been more than ten feet away from our vehicles. we were riding in the "trunk" of the hmmwvs watching guys inside of the vehicle and seeing how they operated. acting as "safety officers" to make sure they don't accidently kill one another and that they're learning good habits for down range. cold as hell riding back there.

all in all a pretty good 12 days, but some of it was a little discouraging. these guys are pretty close to leaving for the desert and their skill levels should've been alot higher at this stage in the game. we did as much as we could to get them up to speed, but they're going to need to take alot of personal responsibility and practice this stuff on their own. they're still good kids and they're doing okay. but they're with alot of guys who've been downrange before and should be passing that knowledge on. i'm not 100% sure where the roadblocks are. so it was really rewarding for us, but maybe it shouldn't have been?

we managed to get our hands dirty. these guys shot ALOT of ammunition. we were babying these weapons to keep them firing. and there were a couple times when we had a captive audience... that's me trying to get them to understand the "tap-rack'n'roll" method to clear a misfeed on a weapon. hopefully they'll practice it and remember it when they need it.

so it's over. fly home for denver sometime tomorrow and then back to work on tuesday. alot of pretty big changes happened in the office over the last couple of weeks while i was gone. hopefully for the better. we'll see how it goes. hope everyone else has been good!

still alive and kicking...

tired as heck though and a little screwed up. between the switch from colorado time and n.c. time and all the extra running around we're doing to make things happen the way they're supposed to.

i'm hoping to get out of here for a little bit to meet some people. i need to make some calls but by the time i get around to thinking about it, it's way too late. hopefully we've got some free time coming up soon.

it's cold as hell here. the next couple days should be pretty nice. but i'm seriously stiff and sore from shivering so hard today. but it's good stuff. we're doing some really good training and we're hopefully giving these guys some much needed confidence before they go down range.

don't click on this if you're not prepared to see the scariest thing ever. see? i'm still good. thanks for bugging me.

one down...

well, we made it through san francisco. actually had 4 hours out of the three days we were there to sight see. so i got us up to fisherman's wharf and we had dinner and were able to catch some photos. thursday i'm off to n.c.

we also got the news that we'll be gone before the end of the year. oh well. we got one christmas at home...

san francisco is definately warmer than denver. i might actually wake up early and run tomorrow. if the world stops spinning or hell freezes over, don't be too surprised, i warned you.

damnit. i totally shot myself in the foot...

people kept calling me over the last couple days asking if i could do this or that and i said "sure" without really thinking about it. plotting it out on the calendar i've committed to no days off for the next month or more. i'll be in s.f. this weekend for a change of command ceremony. that's somewhat a waste. then the 26th-4th i'll be in north carolina training soldiers getting ready to go to iraq. i'm totally okay with that, and i'm honored that i was asked. and if i can pass stuff on that was a total pain in the ass to learn so their lives/jobs are easier and safer it's a good use of my time. then the weekend after it's off to camp hale for winter operations training. here's hoping for a weekend that's frostbite free!

gotta learn to say "no".

heh.

done! well, kinda...

i've been to so many universities and have so many credits and still don't have my degree. i think i'm close to 155 credits now. i started at u of a right out of high school and it's just gone down hill... whoops, progressed from there. i was coming close to finishing it from university of phoenix and was actually surprised, because i was learning a heckuva lot more there than i thought i would. i've heard horror stories about it being a degree mill and what not, and i hated the group work in the first couple of classes until i settled in with a great group, but in hindsight alot of it has been applicable to stuff i'm doing everyday. and more importantly, once i finally got a good group, i learned a ton from those guys. anyways, before i could finish it off 9/11 happened and i was mobilized. i moved campuses with phoenix, but then word came down that i was getting deployed. so i switched schools again, this time to one that the military education center recommended for making distance education easy for deployed troops.

things have gone fairly well with the new school, but the whole "self paced" thing is an exercise in self-discipline, in which i'm severely lacking. the first couple semesters flew by. when i was in afghanistan i was with a 3 man team, and we were all fairly self-contained guys. we had no power and pretty much no distractions. it was in areas that i was comfortable with and i had to stretch some, but not tons. then i hit my first tough class. "data structures" which were defined with the aid of "c". not "visual c" but "c". a programming language that i'd touched very briefly over a decade ago and hated. all of a sudden my progress came to a screeching halt. i think i asked for 3 different extentions for that class. i had to teach myself the programming language so i could understand the examples from the text. and i was back in the states and distracted like crazy. i actually had to get deployed to iraq to be able to focus on it. those days when i hated everyone and needed to get away from them, i just found a quiet corner and chewed through the course.

this weekend i finished my trig/analytical algebra course. it's been almost 8 months in the working. the first couple chapters flew by. angles and stuff come up frequently in everyday life and i remember alot of that. but the end. *ugh* painful. trying to teach myself that has pretty much turned my brain to tapiocca. the text blew. i learned SO much more from the "algebra for dummies" "algebra II for dummies" and "trigonometry for dummies" than i ever learned from the text book. and all three of those books cost less than the official text. but it's done. (i think, i still haven't gotten all my coursework graded and returned). then a semester final exam, two more classes, another semester final and i'm done. the end is sight. of course it has been, for like the last 2 years, but life keeps interupting. as does my inclination to put the book down and step away when it gets to be too hard.

it's no huge accomplishment. people finish courses and get degrees all the time. but i definately think if i continue on for a grad degree i've got to switch back to a more traditional learning environment. the self-paced thing really requires alot of focus which i'm not known for and it's really nice to have an instructor readily available when things get tough. i've had some awful teachers over the years, and this experience hasn't changed my view of them. but i've had some great ones too, and i hope i let them know.

hope everyone had a great weekend!

some of the self awareness you get growing up sucks...

all my early dating life i ended up with "broken birds". i thought it was something about me that they sought out. that i was blind to it until it was too late. and couldn't figure out why it was happening. but i was always the common denominator. in hindsight i have to wonder if there was something about them that was attractive to me. low self esteem on my part? thinking that i had no shot with the normal girls? but the quirky/broken ones might appreciate my attention and affection? and if i fixed'em, i could keep'em?

oddball stuff

so, i'd like to think that i'm not rascist. i'm sure that i've said or thought some uneducated stuff over the years, but it hasn't been with malicious intent.

having said that, i heard something on the radio that to me sounded incredibly stupid this morning. a host of one of the local radio morning drive-time shows is a black female and had the producer of the new show "you're the one that i want" on. if you're not familiar with that show, as i understand it, it's similar to "american idol". they've got an open casting call for leads in a new broadway production of "grease" and they're turning it into a reality-based t.v. show. i think america might help pick the leads.

anyways, she was railing on the guy about whether or not he'd cast a qualified black man in the role and how there were no black applicants. he corrected her and informed her that there were actually three, and that if they're skilled, it was would be a very tough decision on whether or not to cast them. which launched her into a tirade.

i don't doubt that there are a large number of black, hispanic, asian and whatever else actors that can sing the hell out of a song and are great actors. but to me the role should be played by someone who can portray a convincing greaser from the 50's named "zucco". i wouldn't necessarily buy a california beach blonde in the role anymore than i would uh, myself.

the outrage that she had over this was what surprised me. it wasn't about the role and who fit the vision of the role best, it was about black and white. and made me want to call in and ask if they did a remake of "roots" and there was a eminently qualified white actor, if he should be denied the role of kunta kinte becuase of his skin color. no one is questioning the actor's ability, it's whether that is the actor that best fits the role. a role is more about skin color. people get denied roles all the time based on age, height, weight, body shape and other things that have NOTHING to do with their acting ability. this is a visual medium and it's as much about what the audience sees with their eyes as it is what they see with their minds, their ears, and their hearts. the other problem with this is that america already has an idea in their minds of what these people should look like. it was actually disappointing to me to see the commercials and see how much the actors are mimicking the danny and sandra dee from the movie. dance moves, hair and costumes, etc.. and my guess is, it's become such a classic that they won't be able to deviate too much from it and be successful.

so. the serious business. they've gotten rid of the 24 months cumulative active duty rule. i've already been mobilzed for 30 months of active duty, so before yesterday for me to be deployed again, i would have to volunteer. not anymore. they can grab me. and it's not a big deal, i probably would've volunteered to go over again. but having the choice taken away from me is a little... something.

the question now is how to handle it. on the one hand, i'm an "in for a penny, in for a pound" kinda guy. if i'm in the military and i've volunteered as many times as i have and i have to go over again, i want to be in the thick of it. i want to feel as productive and useful and proud of my accomplishments as i did this last time. on the other hand i'm oddly superstitious about this. i've seen the shows of the dead and wounded soldiers and i have to wonder how many times can i roll the dice? i've already had 2 deployments, is the 3rd time the charm? and more importantly there's guilt. it's not just about me. there's people at home that would like me back in one piece. so i'm at a stage where i could make some career decisions that could decrease the likelyhood of my being deployed again. or if i were deployed, take me further from the danger. and i'm kinda ashamed to admit it, but there's a little voice in the back of my head saying to "do it". and it's trying to justify it to me. "it's not cheating. it's not bribing someone to get out of it. it's a legit path in the military that you could take to take care of yourself." "you're not the one who created the opportunity, the army did. if you don't take it someone else will." "you're not weaseling. these are important jobs and positions. they're just not the SAME jobs and positions you had before, and oh, by the way, they don't require you going outside of the wire." okay. not kinda ashamed. really ashamed. i'm scared. not of going over. but of going over and having something bad happen. because it's been close before. really close. and how many near misses do you get in life?

the hard part about this is that i already know i'll do whatever i'm told to do. and i know that there's the uncontrollable part of me that can't say "no" whenever someone asks me to do something, and that will volunteer for the next trip whether the little voice is there or not. but little voices just make you think more than you want to. and the fact that they exist makes me question my committment.

i am seriously craving golden graham s'mores for some reason.

so my newish big boss sent out an email yesterday that very bluntly said that the new documentation requirements/project management policies & procedures that he's put into place need to be adhered to or else it's going to reflect very negatively in annual reviews. he specifically made a point to say that some people are lacking in their documentation to date and that this is the warning to them to shape up.

now the problem that i have with this is that he didn't name anyone specifically. i just think that's a chickenshit way to handle it. if someone isn't performing to standard, you pull them aside and tell them. you don't wait until the year end performance review and then slam them.

the FUNNY thing about this is that i was out of the office when this email was sent. i was at another office all morning. but when i came back i got called into the "principal's office" and was asked why i had such a negative reaction to the email. "uh, what?" "well, i heard that you just started ranting and raving about it. and to be honest, on the one hand i don't care, because this is the way it is. but on the other hand, i'd like to know why this upsets you so" "i have no idea what you're talking about. i wasn't here all morning. i got the email and said "cool, makes sense"".

so. gee. stuff like that doesn't make you a little paranoid that someone's out to get you. noooooo.

now a couple weeks/months ago i wrote a post about how it irritates the hell out of me when people bitch about their lot in life but do nothing to improve it. i've been trying, honest. busting my ass to get the degree and the security clearance done because i've seen the writing on the wall here for awhile. i'd prefer to job hunt with both of those things in hand, because it'll open up so many more opportunities for me. and i've been interviewing when the right looking opportunity comes up. that's been fairly weird for me. i've had several interviews that i knocked out of the ballpark. phrases like "expect an offer letter later this afternoon" have been tossed about, and then they drop off the face of the earth. won't return emails or calls, anything. and this has happened more than once. and that's what kinda freaks me out. what happened to sending out a "hi, we appreciate your interest but we decided to go with a more qualified applicant/our requirements change/the position was filled internally" whatever form letter.

weirdness. did everyone drink the kool-aid while i was overseas?

so, i'm not trying to have a food-themed day today...

but i just got a free lunch at texas de brazil. absolutely amazing and all i want to do is nap now. oh my god was that good food!

comfort food

my two favorite cold weather/comfort foods are potato/cheddar/bacon soup (at least something good came out of the potato famine. and yes. i have ancestors who died in that, so shush). and melting a large chunk of velveeta into a can of stag steak/no beans chili andusing it as a dip for tortilla chips. mmmmmmm. especially because that takes like, two seconds to make. i only mention this because i brought a bowl of that to work and the greedy bastards scarfed the majority of it before i got back to my desk.

seriously? blogger is irritating. first i couldn't comment on anything because i was on the old system. now that i've migrated, it always defaulted to the old login and i lose my comments. and have to re login and retype. so, sorry. some of you haven't gotten comments lately because of my irritation.

interesting quote today. "Sometimes people put up walls not to keep others out... But to see who cares enough to tear them down."

upon reflection, i've met more than a couple people like that...

just a question...

a friend of mine gets amazingly pissed when anyone asks her when she's going to "settle down".
that phrase just annoys her almost to the point where her head's going to spin off her body. and her big thing is the word "settle". where 99.99999999% of the world takes that to mean when is she herself going to stop racing and chasing and want to slow down a little because she's found someone special that she wants to slow down with, she takes it to mean lowering her standards.

so. anyways. the question. we're talking about settling and someone else talks about being in long term relationships and how the secret of their relationship is that they don't say 90% of the things they want to. they pick and chose their battles... so, is anyone in a long term relationship where they don't feel like they're constantly biting their toungue? either because a) you both address any little situation as it happens and aren't fighting but just have a good communication system or b) are you're just THAT good of a fit for one another?

or do you constantly just censor alot of the little things. "christ, did we REALLY need to spend ten bucks on that?" "why can't you put the lid down? why?" "we both work, why am i the only one who does the....?" etc, etc?

just nosey. thank you for playing.

i live in denver. the broncos recently lost a football player to a violent crime. i do not mean to make light of that situation. many of his team mates are hurt and grieving. i don't mean to make light of their pain. i know they bonded with one another, they suffered physical pain together, spent long hours together in training and on the road. but they were interviewing one of the players today and he made the statement "we went to war together every sunday"

that just irritates the hell out of me for some reason. pro sports has bothered me for years, i stopped watching long ago. about the time the different assorted strikes started happening. i was tempted to watch a couple years ago, but then coaches started to get fired because players were making more money then them and they couldn't afford to have players benched. three or four years ago someone gave me tickets to a hockey game here. it was the first time i'd been to see one and i was expecting it to be the same experience i had at home, a quick paced match. i was surprised at how much they pause the game because it's being broadcast. that was another huge disappointment, seeing how money-centric the whole sport had gotten.

funny how some of these people forget that it's a sport. that they get paid an insanely large amount of money to play a game for a couple of hours every week. a game. the future of countries isn't decided on the outcome of that game. and usually no one dies. when the game is over, everyone shakes hands and goes home. i don't know why this bothers me so, for the most part i can ignore it, but every once in awhile the way-over-bloated sense of self importance that alot of pro atheletes have just gets under my skin. it's one of my few "hot buttons" right up there with public college education. one of my favorite movies is "the replacements" just because it makes fun of those guys. but to use those words, especially when the country IS at war and has soldiers, marines, airmen and sailor right in harm's way bugs the hell out of me.

it's my personal thing. i know it's small and petty. and to balance the negative, i have to say that i love professional lacrosse. it's the exact opposite of so many other pro-sports. most of those guys have to have a second job because they're not going to get rich playing lacrosse. they play for love the of sport. and they don't have over-inflated egos about it. the coach is still the boss. after a game they'll sit there for HOURS, signing autographs. they're so happy to HAVE fans who want their autograph. you go to one of their games and it's amazingly fast paced. and fun. and you don't pay through the nose to supplement their salaries.

and lets not even get me started on taxing me to pay for a sports arena that i personally don't visit. so that a team that i don't own and make no money off of can play. so my commute home on game nights can be totally screwed.

okay. i've vented. thanks.

what are your necessary luxaries?

what are the things that you refuse to do without? either real, tangible things or treatment/attitudes/etc? i was standing in line behind two AMAZINGLY young girls and one was telling the other how she dumping her boyfriend because he didn't treat her right. he didn't realize that she was worth gifts and wining and dining and had the nerve to ask her to help pay for something the other night so they could go out because he was broke. that got into a conversation about how poor and ratty he was and how she was glad to never have to go over to his place again, because it was just icky and how gross all guys were because they couldn't clean their bathrooms and never had bedding on their mattresses.

that kinda got me thinking, because clean sheets are something i refuse to do without. in iraq i used to change them out every 3-4 weeks. i'd buy new ones whenever the px had them and stock them up so that i could just take the old ones off and pitch them and put a brand new pair on. the laundry over their sucked so badly that having them washed and putting them back on wouldn't be the same. in afghanistan i slept on a cot and it was too freaking hot to deal with sheets and covers but i shook the cot out every morning and put my pillow and sleeping bag in a watertight case to keep dust from settling on it during the day. today i love the feel of high thread count, clean sheets. i WILL kick someone out of bed for eating crackers. and it's a special kind of hell for me if the bed is unmade. i don't mean hospital corners, pillows tucked under made, but if the top sheet comes untucked or if one of the corners of the fitted sheet comes undone in the middle of the night i have to get up, get out of bed and remake it.

i love the look of hardwood floors but after so many years in dorms and barracks with linoleum floors i have to have carpeting. i love walking barefoot on new, plush, clean carpeting and i cringe when someone comes into my house with muddy boots on and won't take them off before stepping on the carpet. or when they want to eat/drink over the carpeting and they're messy about it.

alot of my quirks come from a combination of my mom and my dad and the army. we always moved so often that homes were an investment, so we kept them really, really clean. and dad and mom BOTH grew up dirt poor so they took good care of their stuff. and it was a sign of respect for them. if they worked their asses off to be able to buy a nice house, nice car, nice clothes, we sure as hell were going to take care of them. i didn't appreciate that "niceness" until i lived under such crappy conditions in the dorms and in the military. sleeping in a hammock or a bivvy sack or in the back of a humvee and waking up and putting on the same nasty uniform for days on end makes you appreciate a soft bed, clean sheets and a hot shower. and a porcelin bowl and tp. years ago i was living with a high school friend. we'd go in together on some stuff and one of us had forgotten to buy toilet paper and we ran out in the middle of the night. rather than use a box of kleenex or whatever was at hand, i was more than happy to drive to the grocery store at two in the morning to make sure the stocks were replenished.

i've gotta have two cans of soda a day. one during the day to fight the after lunch nap attack, and one in the evening before bed. gotta have my motorcycle. absolutely, positively MUST have a book to read before going to bed at night. preferably something engaging, but that's not a requirement. gotta have music. i can live without it in small doses but it really makes the work day/drive/workout/whatever go faster and makes me much happier. gotta have crisp white t-shirts to wear under almost everything. a knife in my pocket. GOTTA have a belt and watch or i feel naked. i can go camping and have done the outdoors thing long enough that i can be comfortable, but i'd much rather go for a hike and end the day with a shower and a bed.

i'm a pretty quiet guy, and i used to avoid confrontation like crazy. but over the last couple of years i've gotten a little more of a sense of self worth and i do demand a little more respect and attention when i go out. i used to wait tables and work retail so i used to cut those guys alot of slack and tip big. but alot of service has been SO sucky lately that it's started to irritate the hell out of me. so i've started becoming alot more vocal in stores and restaruants if someone is being snotty. i've worked hard to get where i'm at (which isn't that spectacular a place, but damnit i'm here) and i'm not going to let someone ruin my shopping or dining or whatever experience when they're getting paid to provide good service.

so what about you guys? what are the things that admittedly are luxaries, but their ones that you refuse to do without?

in response to my last post law girl said something about needing to write it. and i guess she's right. i did. i remember reading a (don't laugh) trixie belden book a million years ago and something significant happened and her little brother kept repeating the story to anyone who would listen. and it annoyed the hell out of her, and she had to be reminded by her parents or older brother or somebody that it was just his way of processing it. i haven't told everybody this story, but people know about it. and it happened along time ago, but i still just had to get it out there again. i probably didn't need to share it with all of you and maybe that's not fair to put it out there in a public forum, but it helped hearing (although i'm sorry they went through it too) about other people's experiences.

my sister and i talk about the difference in my mom and dad. originally she was breaking down and he was the stoic one. he still is, but we were thinking that would help her "get over it faster", whatever that means. a year later we're much smarter about the whole affair.

anyways, thanks for letting me get it out there and for the responses. it was a quiet christmas. being snowed in and what not really just let me catch up on some "me" time.

hope all of you had a good one and got everything you wanted.

christmases past...

i really can't remember the last time my whole family was together on christmas. the first year i was in the military i flew home for christmas, but i can't remember if both my sisters were there or not. i couldn't make it home the next couple of years because one year my sister had just gone through some serious chemo treatments and they thought she was too weak for us other kids to come home. she had no immune system and they were worried we'd bring home bugs. the other years i had various military obligations that prevented me from making it home. two christmases ago we were finally going to do it. it was going to be a huge family thing, my mom was incredibly excited to have her whole flock together again.

so two years ago my dad went to see his doctor. he'd had a quintuple bypass a couple years before and he wasn't feeling 100% right again or he had some questions or something. so he talked to the jackass and the guy basically put it in his mind that he was dying. now every one of us starts dying the instant we're born, the question is "when". and this guy made it sound like it was fast approaching for my dad. he and mom had a trip to thailand planned over thanksgiving for months and had bought the tickets and everything so they went ahead and went.

while they were there, he couldn't stop obsessing over the news from the doctor so he came home early and made an appointment to go to the mayo clinic. when he got home he got the word from my sister that she had gone to the doctor about a persistant headache and the word came back that it was a tumor. they thought that she should go to NYC and see a specialist sooner rather than later. dad called mom and got her moving back home quickly. they went in through her nose and cut the tumor out of my sister's head. there was alot of concern because she was a photographer and the tumor was near her optic nerve. they thought she might lose eyesight and possibly sense of smell and taste. they got most of the tumor out and sent her home with instructions to come back for a checkup. when she went to the hospital in s.c. for the follow-up they found out that the tumor had come back and was now growing at a pretty incredible rate. they sent her back up to NYC for an immediate operation. by this time my mom was back and she rushed up to NYC to be with her, and my little sister went out there to help take some of the strain off my mom and to arrange alot of the little details.

a couple days before christmas they cut the top off of her head and dug around in there and got what they could out of there. the night before christmas things started to go bad. fluid was building on the brain and causing pressure and the drain they'd put in her skull wasn't working quite right so they were going to have to back in. my dad couldn't go to new york because the monday after christmas he was supposed to go to mayo for an angioplasty to check his heart out. he thought he was dying and was hoping they'd find something out to give him a couple more weeks or months or years so he could be there for my sister and the rest of the family. but it was killing him not to be there. christmas eve mom called me and asked if there was anyway i could make it to phoenix to sit with dad and to take him to his appointment. it was too late to get a flight home and it's only a 12-14 hr ride so i decided to get a good night's sleep and start driving the next day. i took off and had a fairly catastrophic break-down at the new mexico/colo border. i had no idea what to do and needed to get home, so i left the car and started hiking down the street to a state weigh station. i was hoping to get a ride to the next town to try and rent a car or something. while i was in the weigh station i called my dad and asked him if he could start calling around to try and find me a rental car in albuquerque. the very first trucker into the weigh station after i got there was going to phoenix. i'd never hitched a ride before in my life but figured that must be a sign. two weeks before i'd been in a military school in seattle and had met up with a friend. i'd left my cell phone in their car and was literally lost without it. i didn't have a chance to call my dad to tell him i had a ride to phoenix before the trucker pulled out. so for about the next ten hours he had no idea where i was or what was going on with me.

i finally got into phoenix and had my dad come pick me up. stepping into that house was one of the saddest damned moments in my life. mom had decorated the whole thing. it had never been like that before. stockings everywhere, the works. dad didn't have the heart to tear it all apart by himself so we started to take some of that down after i got there. he's since said that without a doubt that was one of the worst moments of his life. he thought he was dying, he had no idea where i was, he thought his oldest daughter might not make it through the day...

dad went through the procedure at mayo and they told him a totally different story than his normal doctor did. yes, he was having problems and there was some blockage but it wasn't unfixable. it could be treated with medication and if it got worse it was possible that they could use stints. he wasn't going to die that day, and his heart wasn't going to fail on him anytime soon. two days later, against medical advice he flew out to new york to be with them. there was a slight possibility that the change in pressure from flying might've affected the plug they put in his leg from the angioplasty apparently. my sister pulled through that patch and made it until october. there were some rough weeks at the end, but she had a great spring and summer. so last year was their first christmas without her and i was in iraq. i'd made it home on emergency leave when we lost her in october so i couldn't come home to be with them that christmas, so on top of the pain of losing her, they were worried about me. to be honest, i had it easiest of the whole bunch. my sister and i had parted ways years before so the loss didn't hit me as sharply and i was able to throw myself into work. we had alot of kids over there who weren't getting mail so i was rushing around trying to arrange gift packages for them on top of my normal duties and was just really able to drown out alot of those feelings.

in the buddhist religion there are some things that have to be done on the year anniversary of someone's death. my parents have taken some of my sister's ashes back to thailand this year so that my grandmother can honor some of those things. it's hard, but in talking to my little sister who went with them, apparently this season hasn't been all doom and gloom.

past christmases have kind of sucked lately. mom still doesn't know about me hitch hiking and probably never will. i'm the only person that dad talks about the sadness of that christmas with. i'm sure that mom and my little sister were having a similar experience in nyc. she never got her hope of having all of us kids under one roof again for another christmas. but it sounds like they're healing and hopefully christmases will start looking up, beginning with this one.

i hope everyone is safe and happy, or at least content and at peace. i hope everyone can look back on the last year and find something to be thankful for.

merry christmas ya'll.

gift certificates...

... so. gift certificates get a bad rap. i'd like to say something though.

my little sister is one of my absolute favorite people for ONE simple reason. she gets me what i want for every event where gift giving is appropriate. i frequently ask everyone who asks me for gift cards. they really are what i want. i'm not trying to save them trouble. i'm not trying to not be a pain in the ass. i really, really want a gift card. get me a card from barnes and noble, target, the harley davidson store, lowes or any of a couple resteraunts that i like going to. why? because i frequently won't buy dvd box sets or cd's or hardcover books for myself because of guilt over spending the money. but for some reason if i've got a gift card it's different. so when that new hardcover book comes out that i really, really want i don't have to wait another six months for it to come out in paperback. and there were some lean years where a target card got me through some tough spots. or when i'm CRAVING the mongolian beef from p.f. chang's it is a wonderful present to me.

my mom drives my dad insane. she collects alot of clutter. they actually own two houses. this big house that used to hold the whole family but now only holds the two of them but is still filled with decades' worth of crap. and a new house that they plan to retire to someday. dad would absolutely love to just sell the old house with everything in it. EVERYTHING. and it's going to kill him to have to pack up alllllll the junk from it and move it into their retirement house. he loves the simplistic feel in the new place. so for years they've asked that no one get them anything for christmas. and he really means it. if there is something that they need/want they go out and buy it. they have no secret desires for trinkets. all the stuff that people give them just adds to the clutter. so my little sister and i started giving them gift certificates as well. for nice resteraunts and for movie theaters and concerts and stuff. and that's perfect for them. because they both work conflicting schedules they don't get alot of time together. so that's all stuff that they can do but because they're somewhat frugal might not normally pay for themselves.

so. don't immediately assume that people would be offended by them. they're not impersonal. and it really is better to get someone a gift card than to get something that's completely unwanted.

i was tagged...

This is a Christmastime assignment from LeeLee. She tagged me, with the following instructions:

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123 and go down to the fifth sentence.
3. Post the text of next 3 sentences on your blog.
4. Name the book and the author.
5. Tag some people.

Ok here's mine:

tortured. it was one of those words that could rip right through the soul and make kidnapping sound almost benign. jack lowered his eyes.

it's from "got the look" by james grippando.

i'm not going to tag anyone. this is a voluntary tagging. if you read this and want to do it, just let me know so i can come read your blog.

there isn't much i hate more than "mandatory fun". don't have christmas parties, etc. and expect me to be there unless you're going to pay me for my time. otherwise leave me the hell alone. not that i'm anti-social or anything. and i'm talking "work" parties here vs. "parties thrown by friends". but we had to have a little organized fun this last weekend for the military. i didn't really mind this one so much because we've got some people going down range again and this is probably the last time i'll see some of them before the leave.

i rarely a) get dressed up in my class "a" uniform and b) want to have a picture taken. this was one of the rare times when both happened, so of course there was no-one around. so yes. i took my own damned picture.

it might be the headcold. but this cracks me up for some reason.

i'm a bad blogger...

sorry there hasn't been much from this corner lately. i've wanted to reply to alot more than i have, but blogger was being difficult because i haven't switched to beta yet. i haven't written alot because i've just been swamped. job hunt, car hunt, school, work, army obligations and army guilt-trips, etc, etc.

hope everyone is having a great time getting ready for the holidays.

i've always loved motorcycles. convertibles or jeeps were the next best things. but i've also been known to be doing 80 down the interstate and stick my head out the window while driving if i was in a sedan. i've always hated being enclosed in a normal car. when i was wanting a road bike dad and me got into a huge argument. so i got a jeep as a compromise.

i'm not quite sure why, but for some reason i got made the operations NCO for our company and our detachment in iraq. i also did alot of the planning and training for the detachment. when we first got into iraq, four of us took off on this whirl-wind tour of iraq. we had to go to all these remote sites around the northern half of the country to inventory the equipment that we'd be taking over from the people we were replacing. we set out in trucks and the rest of the guys flew out later. the very first night after we got there when we first left the wire we got shot at. because we racked so many miles up so fast and had the experience we were the ones that turned around and trained the rest of the guys in the det. i used to obsess before a mission. i'd be lucky to get 2 or three hours of sleep because i was just constantly trying to play possible scenarios out in my head and how we'd respond. i'd try to remember all the planning that we'd forgotten so i could do whatever needed to be done in the morning. whenever something bad happened to convoys i'd look over the reports, talk to as many people in similar positions as me, just trying to sponge up all different sorts of tactics and procedures. i'd take all of this stuff and train out guys. we were constantly refining our operating procedures, up til the last minute before we left the country. i think some of my guys hated me, they didn't understand my paranoia.

i spent a year trying to come up with every possible way to destroy a humvee or lmtv and then tried to come up with ways to avoid that. or if it happened to figure out how we'd respond to save as many lives as possible and keep from losing any more. it's kinda silly, but i can't turn that off now. i hate riding in a car now. i didn't love it before, always felt confined, but it was at new levels when we first got back. i still don't want to wear a seat belt. feels like i can't get out of the vehicle fast enough if something happens. i'm not a nervous wreck or anything, i can do it and have a pleasant little conversation with whoever is in the vehicle with me, but there's definately a nervous little itch that i can't get rid of. blah. silliness i know. i just wanted to explain why i'd rather ride a motorcycle when it's 26 degrees outside than ride in a car.

randoms

-me and the motorcycle had a run in with black-ice the day before yesterday and lost. in true bonehead fashion i sacrified my body for the sake of the bike. we're both fine because it was a low speed accident involving me and the ice and accelerated by the UPS truck that didn't see me and started to turn in front of me causing me to jerk while on the ice. i probably would've lost control on the ice anyway, that just sped it up a little. really starts the day off wrong though.

-spent 5 hours yesterday on the motorcycle yesterday. that was a good way to get over any possible insecurities caused by the spill the day before.

-this last weekend while scraping knuckles on the galaxie and trying unsucessfully to get ahold of the guy i've been trying to get who's supposed to be a mechanical genius and was supposed to work on my oldsmobile i decided "screw it, i'm getting a new car". originally i started out looking at wildly expensive new stuff, then reigned myself in. i have no idea what's going on with my job, etc. i don't need a new car, don't really want one, and it's not a wise move. so i started looking at used.

-i've absolutely HATED looking for used cars just as much as I hate looking for new jobs. i've been just a few minutes late on a couple perfect cars several times in a row now. and my wants keep shifting. one minute i just want the bare minimum. just what i need to get back and forth to work on days i need to carry something larger than the motorcycle can handle or on snow/ice days. then other days i want a bigger truck or a nicer old camry or something. right now i've got my mind set on an isuzu amigo, even though you can't find them here in denver usually.

-i was having a talk with an army buddy the other day. he's convinced that PTSD is manifesting itself in him and alot of guys we know as a lack of energy/motivation. not quite depression, but an inability to do anything other than the bare minimum. these guys who had all these big plans are having the hardest time just waking up and dragging their butts into work. i can see this in alot of them. i'd like to say it's in me so i'd have an excuse. but i was lazy as hell before the deployments. i'd rather read a book or sleep than do homework or anything so i don't have to do the work. there are two things i need to do to really help myself on the job hunt. finish my security clearance paperwork and finish these last two classes for my degree. easy right? not-s0-much. someone want to come tutor me on this trig? and by "tutor" i mean pretty much do it for me?

damned taggers!

julie tagged me, so here goes.

"According to the rules, each player of this game starts with the title "Six Weird Things About Me." People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own six weird things and state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose six people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says, 'You are tagged!' in their comments and tell them to read your blog!"

1) i hate the use of the word "meme" in alot of cases. i don't think a list of things about me in particular constitutes "cultural information". but maybe i'm wrong.

2) i regularly watch cartoons. so much so that catch-phrases will work their way into my vocabularly. from "jinkies" (velma/pup named scooby doo) to "please and thank you" (kim possible).

3) i can pretty much sleep anyplace/anytime except for in bed at bedtime. because of this i must live in the batcave. dark as can be, door closed, fan on RIGHT next to the bed so it both provides white noise and vibrates the bed a little. removing external distractions only helps a little bit.

4) i'm incredibly phobic about revealing too much info on the internet and becoming a target of opportunity. either identy theft, someone who's anti-u.s. and picks me or my family or friends because i reveal something too much and they know i'm military or whatever. and yet i blog and spill my guts frequently.

5) for a period of about 7 years i shut down battery operated watches. wear one, it'd die. take it off, it'd start back up. and it'd usually die at the same time every day. so i got addicted to automatic watches.

6) i like sharp cheddar cheese on apple pie.

i think i'm going to tag new reads with this. of course they might hate me and never read again. so maybe i should go with old. hmmm. no. new. fun to learn more stuff about them. i was going to tag that damned irish, but she's on hiatus.

i think we'll shoot for erika, amy, crystal, celeste, (not new but i've never seen him do something like this before) jl4, and to make sure she's still kicking, law girl.

i'm going to hell...

i've got nothing against homosexuals. a person's sexuality really doesn't affect me at all unless they're shooting me down or continuing to pursue me (yeah. cause THAT happens) after i've said "no thanks". i'm such a walking disaster area in so many ways that i'm WAY too busy worrying about myself and getting myself out of trouble to worry about someone else and their likes or dislikes.

so i realize that they're a minority. and i should be sensitive. especially as a kinda-sorta-not minority myself. (no, not the computer geek minority. the half-thai one.) but i can't stop saying "gay". "that's so gay". "gay it down". "gayness". "don't be so gay". must. stop.

women continue to confuse...

i worked retail in high school. the youngest assistant manager in the history of one fashion retail company at the time. i really liked it, and fed off the energy of dealing with people and thought i'd make a career of it. i really enjoyed the fashion retail stuff and started to take some fashion merchandising classes and retail management and design courses in college. then alot of stupid stuff happend and i did a 180 and was a machinist and lab technician in a r&d lab.

so once upon a time when i was getting huge discounts and cared i was fairly fashion conscious. then i had to start paying full price. and THEN i turned into my dad. "what the hell am i paying these people so much money to advertise for their business?" and then i started dressing for comfort and dependability . my current fashion tastes are what i like to call "boring-rugged-casual".

why do you need to know all of that? you REALLY don't. but you're stuck here and i'm telling the story and now you've read so much that it's pretty silly to back out without knowing where i'm going with all of this right? i was just laying some ground work. while i don't dress to impress now, and while i really dislike alot of current male and female fashion, i could metro up with the best of them if properly motivated. i can accessorize and color-coordinate. i know what periwinkle and coral are. and more importantly? i'm a guy. i've spent the better part of 33 years checking women out, noting what gets a positive and what gets a negative response. i've had thousands of in-depth discussions with other guys. i'm an expert on what looks good on a woman.

so with all of that, why do women listen to other women before they do a guy? i've always found this funny. with the exception of a couple girls who've gone shopping with me and know my dirty little fashion-sense secret most girls i know will listen to other girls first. who's attention are you trying to get? i told someone the other day that i wouldn't wear the combination she chose. i was trying to be polite by saying that it wasn't really flattering to her figure. the truth was it made her ass look huge. huge i say. HUGE. but i was instantly laughed at and told that my opinion didn't matter because she'd received several compliments from women about her jacket. hey, i don't care. if you want to look like you have a huge ass when you're already self conscious about your weight, go ahead and wear whatever you want to wear. and you're right. the jacket does look cute. but the really fitted waist on it only makes your hips look like they swell like crazy. and that just draws attention to the cut of those jeans. and when you wear them with those really high heeled boots it just makes your legs look extremely narrow, which again... draws attention to the hugeness of the assness. i would've been more than happy to point out that a different set of shoes or wearing the jacket with a similar shade but different cut of jean would be a much more flattering combination but after the immediate laughter...

i'm all about dressing for comfort. if i tell you "hey, that doesn't look so hot" and you say "yeah, but it feels great so i don't care". amen. carry on with your bad self. or if you've got a weird style you like? go for it. but it's always amused me when girls who are hunting for guys still ask girls for their opinion. when i'm trying to impress a girl, i ask another girl who i think has similar tastes to the one i'm trying to impress for imput.

of course, i've never understood why on most men's magazine covers, we have a woman. we ooh and aah over her and that's why we first pick the magazine up. after we flip through it we may find other reasons to purchase. rarely is it a guy on the cover unless it's a fitness mag and that's the ideal to work up to, or unless it's such a great story about the guy that we're interested. but the female magazines tend to have the "ideal" woman on the cover. i frequently hear the stories about how men impose these incredibly unrealistic expectations on women, but i sit back and see alot of self-imposed expectations. sure, huge breasts grab your attention like a car wreck, but that doesn't mean they're every man's idea of perfection. i see women buying barbie's for their daughters and snatching those magazines off the racks. i know i'll never look like the guy on the cover of men's fitness, so i rarely buy it. weirdness.

"i do whatever pops into my head. i'm like a monkey."

this made me happy.

more happy feet

i needed happiness after the other thing. so here's more feet. i love reef sandals. they're absolutely comfy after a long day (or week) in combat boots, a hard run, fighting the crowds in the mall christmas shopping, whatever. a week in shorts and reefs on the beach puts my head back on straight. when i was in iraq i came across another reef lover. the picture HAD to be taken.

show off your happy feet!

i just got a spam for child porn. i reported it to a child abuse hotline but i still feel queasy. i need a shower.

when the adrenaline dumps...

julie had a post the other day about her drive home and her almost accident. in amazing clarity she rattles off the various thoughts that ran through her head in the instant before her car was almost hit.

i love the "atticus kodiak" series by greg rucka. go. buy this series now. anyways, in the second book he talks about "stupid things that go through your head when the adrenaline dumps". he does a great job writing believeable characters. they're people you know even though they're in fictional, over the top adventures and what goes through their heads is similar to stuff that has usually gone through my head. anything from "oh shit, this is gonna leave a mark" to "lordy, i'm glad i've got a good job with health benefits."

i had JUST read and commented on julie's post and was leaving work to go home. the temperature had dropped and the snow had come in. i was driving down the interstate when a car next to me lost it and started to spin and nudged me and made me spin. just as the spin started i cursed the lack of a good, self cleaning old-school willys jeep treads on my truck. not so great on ice but last night might've worked against the slushy, tread clogging snow. as i continued through my spin i was wondering how much my insurance rate was going to hike and was muttering "son of a BITCH!" as the car that nudged me righted itself and drove off. as i came to the stop of my spin with the nose and cab of the truck in the lane next to the one i started in and saw a huge semi truck coming at me i started laughing of all things... "if i thought i had an unhealthy phobia of being inside a car before..."

oddly enough i got myself righted and out of his way (and he swerved and braked enough) before he flattened me. it still amazes me how many thoughts can go through your head in such a short period of time.

happy feet...

so they're FINALLY shipping the new lines for my galaxie. hopefully it'll be back up and running soon. however it's supposed to snow off and on all week, so no motorcycle for me. so this morning i was getting dressed for work and was reaching for my boots when i saw my old skools out of the corner of my eye. "why not?" i asked. no reason to wear the boots if i'm not riding the scoot. sure i'm pushing the limits of our dress code, but sometimes you've just gotta be a rebel. that's me. damn the man! me and my badass vans.

i love my vans.

the end.

so i love visiting my parents. definately a good thing, but i hate leaving. it's weird. much like the weekend ending. the last day or two are still fun, but there's that feeling of the last week of summer vacation. knowing that you've got to go back to school in a couple days, dealing with the jack-ass teachers, bullies, my parents when i wasn't making straight a's... not an anxiety attack, but just feeling the stress pile on again.

so i'm having a great time with them, but the real world starts up again tomorrow...

i hope everyone is having a great thanksgiving. whether you're with loved ones and doing the whole she-bang, or whether you pulled the covers over your head and slept way late, i hope you had a good time doing whatever recharges your batteries and took a few minutes to appreciate all the good things in your life.

i'm with my parents in arizona. always a wonderful time for me. i don't know why, but this place always puts me at ease and makes me feel relaxed on levels i can't reach anywhere else. i don't know if it's my parents, or the house or arizona and the heat or what. no idea.

i think about where i was last year, sitting in the dining facility in iraq, with all the crew. totally different experience but not a bad time at all. two totally different days but both were days full of reflection and gratitude.

i had a great weekend. i'm exhausted, we worked our asses off at times. but a great weekend.
i frequently am at work until long after sunset. it's great to be outside from dawn til dusk.

i was talking to someone the other day and they told me that i was the most closed off person they'd ever met and that they don't understand how i got to be this way and that it must just hurt to be me. i had no response, still don't really. i'm just me. it doesn't hurt. i don't know anything else. i normally don't spend much time thinking about it. then a few days later i was telling someone about applying for the antartica trip. they looked at me funny and said that most people they'd blow off when they said that, but that they thought it'd actually be a pretty good fit for me. that i was very internalized, that i could work well with a team or a group and not screw up group dynamics but that they'd known me for years and still didn't feel like they knew me.

i still have no idea what to think of either of those comments. when i was a kid we moved around alot. my parents were very careful with their money and i spent time in a private catholic school and a private college prep school with kids from wealthy families. i was a part asian kid in really small towns that hadn't seen alot of other asian kids. not a terribly traumatic childhood, but early on i found it was much more comfortable inside my own head, be it just watching movies that i wrote, directed and produced on the insides of my eyelids or reading books. in my early teen/before the driver's license years my parents moved into a house in the middle of nowhere. not a farm, just a house with the nearest neighbors a ways down the road. that lead to tons of time spent walking around in the woods doing whatever.

i was always one of the "doesn't meet full potential" kids. always in advanced classes, but never getting a's. this bothered my dad, so i would spend the time in between reports cards on restriction. restriction meant no t.v./radio/computer. just me'n'the books.

i can remember coming home in the third or fourth grade and being frustrated by social interactions at school. no sad or hurt, but just frustrated, so much so that while trying to explain it to my dad i started crying. he was really great and comforting to me. then he went out and talked to mom and said stuff about me. i don't remember what, and as an adult with an adult's comprehension, it was probably nothing bad. probably just called me "sensitive" or something. but at the time i took it as betrayal and his compassion as acting. i tried hard to never cry again.

in dating i frequently attracted the broken birds. people who'd been raped/abused/molested. i still don't know why. i'm sure the first couple people i dated i was just giddy and open and like any other goofy teen. but handling some of those bigger problems really made me careful of what i say. definately minefield walking. i came to not rely on relationships for happiness or fulfillment.

do all of those things and a little genetic makeup come together to make me "closed off"? who knows. do these people give me a little too much credit for being "complex" or 3-d? i think i'm a fairly flat, 2-d guy. are they looking for something that just isn't there?

the weird part is that i think i'm a little too open. i frequently feel like i bore people at work or wherever with my stories. i do this blogging thing, but it's really written for me to just sort stuff out and get it down. i love the feedback, and kinda like to ham it up for an audience which i normally wouldn't do as much in person. are "shy" and "closed off" the same thing?

i think people adapt to situations. i'm not talking about faking or lying or anything, but i think most people have different sides that come out depending on who they're with and what kind of environment they are in. is that what happens? a little more open with some people you trust and a little reserved with some you don't on some level?

who knows. it was just something interesting to think about for several hours this weekend when i couldn't sleep. there's probably a... not quite a sequel to this but a tangent post in future.

i've got to go play g.i. joe for the next three days. being the super geek i am, i actually will be carrying my internet access along with me, but i might not have the time to use it. or i might. who knows. just in case, no one do anything exciting or entertaining until i get back.

i love reading and i love sharing good books. so. if anyone wants any of the books from my list of books i read in october let me know and i'll be happy to send it to you. the only caveat is once you're done, you need to attempt to pass it along to someone else. doesn't have to be through your blog. lemme know.

in addition, i'll go through my stack of books at home and try to add more to the list. i saw this going on on someone else's blog for another book and thought it was a good idea.

real men...

a couple days ago i was reading someone's blog and they had their list of what constituted a "real man". one of the bullets was "real men don't bake". i was running errands today and it made me think about that. i had to get 9mm and .308 ammo to go shooting with a friend, i stopped at the dealer to talk about upgrades to my motorcycle, i bought some stuff to finally finish off my desk project and i stopped and bought a new stand-up mixer because i was tired of using a hand mixer to make frosting for a cake decorating class i'm taking. why am i taking a cake decorating class? because everytime i saw a cake i kept wondering how the hell they make the flowers and stuff and because for the life of me i could never ice a cake and make it look normal. most of mine looked like they'd dropped on the floor or something. so i took the first class and had fun and am now taking the second. it's interesting to learn how they do all the intricate stuff, the teacher is an absolute hoot and so are the students. they're a pretty wide mix of people. the added responsibilities kinda help keep me focused as well. i have to spend a couple hours every sunday getting ready for the class and it actually pries me away from the office one night a week. and it's just completely different from everything else i normally do.

frequently when i pull into a place with other bikers around i get razzed for riding a sportster. "hey, you know what real men say about sportsters?" "uh, i'm not gay. i don't try to pick up men with my motorcycle. so no, i don't know and i really don't give a shit. hey. wait a minute. why do YOU care so much?"

doing a search on the internet i find that apparently real men:

-wear kilts
-cook
-have depression
-are tax deductible
-do yoga
-exfoliate
-are not media representations
-love flowers
-cry
-cheat
-don't cheat
-are promise keepers
-point and laugh at promise keepers
-wear pinstripes
-are real
-want bush
-don't click
-don't play GURPS
-wear flannel

just to name a few... who knows what a "real man" is? anyways. it's funny, i'm 33. i couldn't call myself a man until recently. like, in the last couple of years. when i thought of a "man" it was my dad or my uncles or a couple other people i really respect. calling myself a man was an insult to them. it wasn't me, i was still a kid. i don't know what changed, when i decided things changed, when i could take myself seriously to call myself that. or maybe i never could, but everyone else did and i finally stopped fighting it. but i don't remember ever wearing a kilt...

this is how i'm going to celebrate veteran's day. you know, there are alot of solid movies that portray different aspects of war realistically, but alot of them skip over the boredom and the downtime. alot of them fail to acknowledge that for every soldier out there doing the gung-ho stuff there are a ton of airmen, sailors and soldiers who have a very unexciting, monotonous life far away from home supporting those few guys who are doing the normal rambo stuff.

i have a friend who i went to high school with who got back from iraq just as i was headed over. unlike me, he was stuck in a support role on the same base and hated his entire year deployment. he had an awful chain of command that didn't instill a sense of purpose in the troops. they didn't give them a "big picture" view of what they were doing over there and how they were supporting other guys and so to him, that was a year wasted.

i was largely support as well, but i was supporting tactical teams at the company level and i farmed myself out to other units as well, so i did get to go outside the wire and meet and greet locals and dodge bad stuff and lead some combat patrols. i was plugged in enough to get the big picture as well, how what we were doing affected what was going on in our region of the country.

this movie does a great job catching that boredom and the despair of wanting to contribute and feel important. and it's as true for thousands of soldiers fulfilling logistical roles in iraq and afghanistant and kuwait and other places around the world today as it was after WWII.

i got nothing...

i wanna have stuff to write about, but it's the same 'ole, same 'ole...

trying to go to korea next month, but because some jackass couldn't be bothered to do his job properly while i was in iraq my security clearance has lapsed. i'm not sure that i can get it going again in time before the trip.

i'd love to apply for a 4 month job in the antartic but i'm probably going to wuss out of it because of the uncertainty of life after the job. i'll try to line up a job and i'll check it out, but i can't go down there and then come back here without something to slide into. that's okay though, it's nice to play "what if" about some stuff sometimes without actually going all the way through with it.

so my world traveling plans aren't working out quite as well as i'd like. but other things are going well.

the heated jacket liner kicks ass. if any of you are struggling for a christmas present for a motorcycle rider, let me highly recommend the warm'n'safe products. i was doing 70 mph when it was 22 degrees the other day and arrived to work in a non-seansicle format. it was great.

i finally got a new radiator that fits in my galaxie. apparently it was an oddball and was one of a very small number that was built with a certain type of radiator. it was such a rarity that it took the girl about a week to find the right part and then it had to be custom built. the bad part is that in the process of taking the old radiator out i had to shear off the automatic transmission lines. so now i'm waiting for replacements to get shipped here.

that's it. all the news that is fit to print.

books i enjoyed in october:

"school days" by robert b. parker
"shopgirl" by steve martin
"not a good day to die: the untold story of operation anaconda" by sean naylor
"delta force" by col. charlie beckwith (retired)
"inside delta force: the story of america's elite counterterrorist unit" by csm. eric haney (retired)
"never have your dog stuffed: and other things i've learned" by alan alda
"about a boy" by nick hornby

not as many as i would've liked, but it was a busy month and i was actually trying to knock out some homework...

sometimes i get a tiny little bit overextended...

this last month has freaking flown by and it doesn't look like things are slowing down anytime soon. i'm no busier than anybody else, but i keep saying "yes" instead of "no" when people ask for that little bit extra and that's what kills me. instead of one weekend of reserve stuff this last month i did two, to help out. ran a leg in the denver marathon, helped some people move, put in alot of after-hours time at work, silly stuff like that. next thing i know october is gone....

part of the problem was this post though... when i wrote it, i meant to follow it up, especially after i got some comments. so much so that i was awake all freaking night because i couldn't get my brain to shut off. did i get out of bed and start typing away though? no. that would've been way to easy. two days later when i finally got a chance to start typing it out, i hated everything i wrote. all the stuff that seemed so clear in the middle of the night wasn't... i probably spent another 3 or 4 days trying to figure out what i wanted to say and then life interupted again.

oh well. i'm back on track now with other stuff. here's photos of the marathon fun. two weeks before the marathon some folks approached me about running. not a helluvalot of advanced notice. i agreed but said i wanted to run short legs. i'd run multiple legs, but damnit, they'd better be short. turns out the transitions weren't geared that way, there were going to be two 8+ mile legs, a 5+ and a 3+. i agreed to the 3+. no problem. i could gut that out. the morning of one of the other guys was worried, he thought he'd broken a bone in his foot. so with about 30 minutes notice i took one of the 8s. i figured it was all varying degrees of suckage at that point.

once upon a time i was going through some training being taught by l.a. county swat guys. we'd long since done room clearing and were working on clearing 2 story buildings and city blocks. we were getting pretty good and so these guys were mixing things up. i was first through a room door and one of them was standing in one of the blind corners with a hand grenade in one hand, the index finger on his other hand looped the ring of the safety wire, ready to pull. i started yelling at him to put the grenade on the ground and he just stood there. i really had NO idea what to do and lowered my weapon to ask him what the right thing to do in the situation was. we talked about the scenario for a few minutes and he told me that he had no idea what the RIGHT thing to do was, but that i did the wrong thing by stopping. In his mind anything would've been better than nothing. I could've shot him, and continued through the room and out the window if he pulled the pin as he died, or back out of the room and hit the ground in the hall. or kept trying to talk him into giving up the grenade.

we frequently train and train and mess with one another. we'll never be able to prepare people for every situation. that's not our intent. our intent is to get people to think. and to expose them to as much as possible so that when things go south their intincts will lead them in the right direction. and we're repeatedly told that there is no WRONG decision when you're in the middle of it, as long as you make some decision and keep moving through the situation. outnumbered and out of ammo? fix bayonnets and charge. the bad thing is freezing under the pressure and doing nothing.

there's a song out right now that makes me think of this frequently, "if you're going through hell" by rodney atkins. the refrain goes:

Yeah, If you're going through hell

Keep on moving, Face that fire

Walk right through it

You might get out

Before the devil even knows you're there

Yeah you might get out

Before the devil even knows you're there

Yeah.

i was reading "delta force" by col. beckwith. he talks about the failed mission by delta force to free the hostages from the u.s. embassy in 1980. the ground force was on the ground and the helos had come in to pick them up and take them into iran. the spare helos had failed and they didn't have enough to lift them into iran so the mission was being scrubbed. the troops were loaded on the c-130's and were ready to take off when one of the helos hit one of the planes, catching it on fire. i'd like to share a passage:

But his surprise was nothing compared to that of the Blue Element operator who had dozed off on the C-130 just before the helicopter crashed into it. At the explosion, he had awakened and joined the line of guys exiting the plane through one of the hatches. There was smoke and fire. The engines were still running and the aircraft was shaking violently as the chopper continued to cut into it. The operator evidently thought that while he was dozing the 130 had taken off and was now airborne. When it was his turn to leave he automatically assumed a freefall parachute position and jumped. He landed spread-eagled on the ground. Afterward his mates asked, having jumped, what he was going to do next without a parchute? "I don't know," he answered. "I was just taking one thing at a time."

i don't know if i can take it to that extreme yet... but i do believe in the concept. i don't know why, but for some reason i've been the guy that a couple people are calling way to regularly to gripe about the problems in their life. and to be honest their issues really aren't so bad. they just need to suck it up and get through it. tighten the belt, kick the cheating girlfriend/boyfriend out, tell the boss to kiss their ass or get serious about the job hunt. they're in these awful situations but aren't taking any steps to get themselves out of it. sometimes it's important to distill stuff down to the basics. these are those little things i have to remember when I'M the one in the crappy situation.

i try not to get into politics...

but i've just got to say... just because we stop fighting them doesn't mean they're going to stop fighting us.

http://www.army.mil/terrorism/read.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/

the wonder years...

i used to watch "the wonder years" alot as a kid. i guess i kind of grew up with it. kevin arnold was roughly my age, give or take a couple and things that happened to me usually happened on the show, or vice versa. sometimes he was a little ahead of my time and sometimes i grew up before he did, but the shared experiences were there. i think i was probably a little older and graduated before he did, but it moved in a little more of a compressed time frame. we moved so much i didn't have a huge circle of close friends, so things like that helped a little. nice to know you're not the only weirdo out there, you know? i think one of the really neat things about the timing of the show in my life was the narration. daniel stern was there as the adult looking back on his life to let you know that maybe you never forgot the crap that happened to you, but you learned to deal with it, the pain got less with each passing day and life goes on. my dad isn't a big t.v. watcher, but that was one of the few programs he could stomach, and it was kind of the same with him. there was such a commanality about the show, so many can and could relate to it. it'd remind him of something he had done or been through as a kid and he was able to talk about it as well. kind of helped us communicate.

one of the episodes dealt with sons realizing their dads aren't superman. it was funny, this really didn't happen to me until much later in life. i mean, i knew my dad made mistakes but he was always my hero. when it got weird was later in life, when i was a young adult, making some decisions based on morals. my dad is a good man, but he grew up in a different time than i did, and definately in a much harsher environment. a dirt-poor farm, a one room school-house. bread and butter sandwiches because there was no money for anything else to put between the slices. hand me down everythings, from books and clothes to musical intruments. up before dawn to do chores and bedtime when it was dark because of no t.v. and no money to pay for alot of lights. he hated the farm with a passion and couldn't wait to get away from it. he did this and that for awhile and ended up eating cereal the last couple days before the paycheck came. where i joined the military out of a sense of obligation and and adventure, he joined strictly for the college money. he didn't go to vietnam to fight for god and country, he went because it was the only way to get the extra money for school. huge difference between the two of us. he's a realist first, and an idealist second, i'm probably an idealist first and a realist second. funny how much of a gulf that difference in priorities can create when you're in your early 20's and making some serious life decisions.

we spent a couple years where we had very little contact with one another. not because of any problems, but my whole family is fairly autonomous. we'd call once every couple of months to check in with one another and that was good. there were supposed to be christmas visits, but my older sister was home recuperating with no immune system and so our visits could've been deadly. other times i had military obligations and life just kept going on.

in recent years we've become significantly closer. i'm not sure what happened. i'd like to say it's because i've grown up, and i'm sure that's a part of it, but i don't think that's all of it. i think dad comes from a different age, where providing for the family was the most important thing ever. and he was in the partnership with mom. she took care of us in her way so that he could travel and do his thing and take care of us in his. he missed alot of birthdays and soccer games because he was on the road traveling. but he always told us he loved us and he was a great dad. he doesn't have alot of imagination. he had problems playing pretend games with us. and that hampered our ability to connect with him when we were really young. but as i've got older i went to him more and more for advice because he's just the smartest person i know. he's got an amazing ability to detach himself from a situation and look at it from all angles. i would've loved to see him as a military leader. i think as all the kids have moved out of the house and the retirement fund was fairly well topped off, dad started to take alot of time to enjoy life more. the weight of responsibility was off of his shoulders and he was able to breathe a little. that made him alot more fun. and for some reason we all sold him short. thought of him as a little more rigid and closed minded than he really is. i think there was "dad, the father" who had to be somewhat strict and overbearing and "dad the person". now that he's not responsible for our rights and wrongs he's not preaching and lecturing so much. now that we've shown we can stand on our own two feet he's more open. it's been neat getting to know more about him.

i think we all grew up alot with this last year. losing my sister brought us all alot closer together. we say things we said before, but we say them more often now. dad surprised the hell out of me the other day. i got a very nice letter from him and a box with a beautiful book about fathers and sons and a good luck charm from a recent trip to japan. we're different, both from each other and from the way we were years ago, but this new phase in our relationship is really exciting me. he still disappoints me sometimes, especially when he listens to what he hears on the news about iraq and the middle east instead of me, the guy who's been there twice... and i know not alot irritates him more than me riding the sportster every chance i can. but we've gotten over the silly little battles about silly little things.

one of my worries in the blog thing is repeating myself. there are times when i sit down to write and get part way through an entry and it sounds so much like something i wrote before. whether that's just because i was THINKING about writing it before while i was running or driving or doing whatever...

trouble had a post the other day that started out kinda rough (the situation, not her writing) but ended with a warm and fuzzy. she defines "home" in a way that clicks with me and my definition of the term. when i was in jr. high or high school i brought home "platoon" to watch. alot of people at school had talked about it and i wanted to see it. my dad and i had watched some other war movies and he'd opened up about some things and at that point we weren't communicating as well as we could be, so it was nice to have that way to bond. i thought platoon might be another good experience. about 30 or 40 minutes into it dad shut the movie off. the next day we were doing yardwork and he talked to me about it. it wasn't that it was bringing back any memories or anything like that, it was the cursing and violence with the rest of the family watching. he said that if i wanted to watch that by myself, or with him when my mom and sisters weren't around, he'd have no problems with that. (i should say here that in 33 years, i've never heard my mom use a curse word stronger than "darn" or "shoot". she's worked in resteraunts and retail, so she's very much aware of them and exposed to them, she's just decided that she is not going to use them.)

i asked my dad why, and he went on to say that he wasn't stupid. he knew us kids were exposed to stuff outside the house, and he was sure that we all probably cursed and did things we shouldn't when we weren't around him and mom. the thing is, he felt that a home should be sanctuary, a place to escape the ugliness of the world. we always moved, we've got a white-as-white can be father and an asian mother, we all inherited my dad's clumsiness and what not... we were all picked on in school. no worse than anybody else probably, but at the time it always felt like the spotlight was on us. he knew this, and wanted home to be that place where we could come, be ourselves and know we were loved and accepted. we fought and had our disagreements but at the end of the day we were still family. not watching a movie like that with everyone around was one of the ways he felt he needed to protect that. my mom and sisters didn't necessarily want to watch "platoon" in the first place, so i was forcing that ugliness on them.

now i'm weird. i'm just now starting to plant roots. i've actually lived in the same city and worked for the same company for 7 years. i kind of like it here. but between the army and being a nomadic family growing up i have never really felt like "home" was some region of the country that i made trips back to. "home" is just wherever the hell i drop my bags and pass out for the night. all i really need nowadays are my cellphone, laptop and a book or two to read. i love to travel for business and have been trying to find a 100% travel job. i get into a routine wherever i'm at and i'm happy. one of the things that makes this possible is that i'm comfortable in my own skin for the most part, and i do things my way, just the way i like them. this makes cohabitation a total battle for me. it's not "my way of doing things" anymore. it's "our". i'm not the only one that decides where to put stuff or how to do things in the house, and it's amazing how much stress this creates and how much it takes away from the sanctuary of the home. and it's amazing how vulnerable that comittment can make you. you take what used to be good hearted joking around to heart. no one can hurt you so much as the people you let into your heart. you're not just giving them the run of the house, you're giving them free reign in your nogin... they push the furniture around up there and go digging through your mental closets looking for skeletons. i'm not sure how long it takes to sync with someone and get over that stress. my parents did it so amazingly and made it look so simple. in some ways their "perfect relationship", while a great example for what love can and should be also set us kids up for failure because they made it look so easy. we didn't see the compromise and give and take that are necessary in a good working relationship.

my dad and trouble really know what the idea of a true "home" is, the problem for me is figuring out how to get there sometimes.

i'm being a lazy ass tonight. eating chips and dip on the couch while watching stupid t.v. shows. the dip tastes kinda funny. but i can't stop eating it. if a couple days go by and you haven't heard from me? send the police to my house in case it really was bad.

thanks.

p.s. i bought it from albertsons. sue the hell out of them for me.

the poor old galaxie...

it's the little things in life...

i went for a ruck tonight. for some stupid, stupid, stupid reason i felt so good after i took the ruck off (60lbs lighter, insta-diet when you include all the water weight i lost, heh) that i decided to go for a run. so two miles later i decided i REALLY earned a beer and was sitting down on the couch flipping through the channels when i come across an "according to jim" where courtney thorne-smith chases kimberly williams around the living room, pushes her over the arm of the couch, jumps on tops of her and starts wrestling with her. see? sometimes there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

yes. i am a pig.

oink-oink

i am NOT on my way to D.C.

when i was a fresh graduate from basic training and had just showed up at A.I.T. i got some great advice that served me well throughout my military career. basic is where they break you down and build you back up. "soldierization" is what they call it, turning a group of civilians into a group of soldiers. A.I.T. is your "advanced individual training" where you get your training to perform your specific job in the military. but it's also the transition from the tightly controlled environment of basic training where you're watched closely all the time to the more relaxed life of the everyday army. when you're not deployed and you're not out in the field training, it's not much different from a 9 to 5. and alot of young soldiers are fresh off the bus. they've never lived alone before, etc. so A.I.T. is kind of a safety net.

anyways, the drill sergeant had us all in formation and told us that we'd have no problems while under his tutelage or in the army if we could follow two basic guidelines. "be where you're supposed to be, when you're supposed to be there" and "pay attention and do EXACTLY what you're told to do, no more, no less". you don't have to be in the military to know how important timeliness is to us. heaven forbid you don't show up on time for first formation. heaven forbid a group of soldiers doesn't move out on a mission on time.

my company commander was former active duty tabbed out infantry. so everything i just said about being on time went double. definate fits of rage if we weren't hitting the road on time. when we got to iraq and were doing our transition with the unit we were replacing the people we were replacing told us that they didn't get so hung up on time. that things happened at a slower pace in iraq, and that if you were a couple minutes leaving, to just take it in stride. our bosses didn't like this. but on our third or fourth mission with these guys we were slow getting started. about an hour down the road we came up behind another u.s. convoy that was slowing down, then stopped. they'd spotted an i.e.d. on the road. just a few minutes after we stopped, we started taking incoming mortar rounds. nothing close. they'd been targeting the area where we would've stopped had we hit the i.e.d. and didn't really adjust well to our new location. they just fired off a couple rounds really quickly then got the hell out of there. had we left on time, we would've been in front of the other convoy and probably wouldn't have spotted the i.e.d. in time to not get hit by it. over the first couple of weeks in country we had several similar "situations".

needless to say, we were converts. we still set a mission start time, and still tried our best to meet it, but if something happened we just kinda assumed it was for a reason. we didn't yell and scream and chastise someone for screwing something up and making us late. that was because we took it as God or "fate" intervening on our behalf and because we wanted people upbeat and positive before we went out the gates, possibly into combat. we wanted everyone to think he was a heartbreaker and a life taker, a real badass. we'd undermine that if we chewed on him for awhile and called him a shitbag for forgetting where his gear was or for not setting up the vehicle right.

it will probably rain here this weekend and might snow. because of that i decided to drive to the airport instead of ride the motorcycle. i figured i'd leave the scoot tucked in safely in the garage. it's been awhile since i'd driven the galaxie and it's about 30 minutes to the airport so i thought that'd be a great chance to get her out on the road. about 1/3 of the way there the radiator blew a seam and the vehicle overheated. i called someone to pick me up and they showed up early enough that there was a good chance of getting me to the airport on time to catch my flight. we set off and got most of the way to the airport when i confessed that i was freaking out a little bit. between everyone bailing out, their replacements bailing out and then the car it just really put me in the iraq "maybe someone's trying to tell you it's okay to be late" frame of mind. so i decided we needed to turn around and get the car and i came home and called it a night. i called the airline and can't get another flight to d.c. until late sunday night. basically i'd get off the plane for a couple hours then turn around and come back. so now the weekend in d.c. is canceld and i feel kind of foolish.

anyways, that's the recap of tonight's adventure.

well, i had this really long post in draft form about changes that MIGHT be happening and decisions that might be faced with. turns out i was putting the cart in front of the horse. one of the projects i was hoping to work on got canceled before it ever got started. so life goes on.

going to d.c. this weekend. i'm kinda excited and kinda not. hopefully i'll see alot of really good friends and catch up with them. but my traveling companions bailed out, so now it's kinda becoming a pain in the ass as well.

i love my body...

this isn't a tmfi-selflove post, don't worry. totally "g"rated stuff here. well, okay. maybe "pg" but only because of the possibility for adult language.

i added another ten pound plate to the rucksack tonight. i was running really late, and it was about 10:30pm before i found a clean pair of dcu trousers, got my boots on, got the music keyed up, etc... because of the time i thought i'd only do 2 miles or so. to make up for the shorter distance i figured i would drop another plate in. so i set off with 60-65lbs. it killed me at first. i was wobbling like a drunk. it felt like i couldn't bend my right knee, i couldn't get a full stride, the shin splints started kicking, the works. after about a mile and a half i was seriously debating with myself whether to kill it at 2 miles, or try and force myself to do a third. huffing like an old steam locomotive. then i started fiddling with my earphones. pushed them in all the way. got the bass to resonate in my skull. turned the music up to force my brain to shut off. "nearly lost you" by the screaming trees came on, followed by "good thing" by fine young cannibals and "plowed" by sponge.

my body took over. it's been doing this for over a decade. i stopped fighting myself. i straightend up under the load so i could start sucking in full, deep breaths. my arms started pumping and my legs followed suit. my right knee was still not giving me a full range of motion but everything else started compensating for it. before i knew it i was finishing my 5th mile and i was making decent time. really good time. light-fighter time. sure it's not a 3 day combat load of batteries, bullets, my share of the demo bag and my personal gear but it was okay.

i'm old. the body's got a lot of mileage on it. and alot of damage. but i'm not ready for a dirt-nap yet.

you guys are the best freakin cheering squad a fellow could ask for. but that's not always what i'm looking for out of blogging. i'm not fishing for compliments or anything. i should probably keep a journal or diary as well as this, but to be honest, i'm much to lazy to annotate stuff twice. as always there are random thoughts floating about and i find that getting them out there helps me figure out what is going on in my head. fleshes stuff out more, makes me think things through and helps me make better decisions. the other thing i like is being able to go back and see what was going on. not enough time has really passed to fully appreciate this benefit, but already i've flipped back to the beginning to get the frame of mind from iraq to help decide whether to go again or not.

anyways, the long and short of this is that in the near future i might write some stuff, but i might turn comments off on some posts. it's not that i don't appreciate the feedback, but the way some of it's written might sound like i'm fishing for "attaboys" and pats on the head when i'm really not. some of this is my own freakish paranoia. i see someone doing something i don't like and i'm super paranoid of doing the same thing. i just don't want to lose anybody because they think i'm always trying to paint myself in a certain light in order to get responses.

thanks for reading!