Flag Detail!!!

I can't believe this, but I guess belly is going to be hanging around under a colorful sheet with like 80 other people, mostly guys, frolicking around. THIS MAKES ME VERY ANGRY!!! HOW COULD SHE DO THIS?? ON LIVE TELEVISION EVEN!!!

HAH!! Okay, actually, 80 Marines, including my sweety, are going to be carrying a giant American flag during halftime of the Holiday Bowl in San Diego. She told me she was going to carry the flag at halftime and of course, I thought she meant a regular flag and I was all excited and told my friends and family to watch, but now I don't know if anyone will even see her haha.

Oh well, I'm just excited that she's going to be there doing something so unique and fun. However, if anyone tries anything under that big sheet, her hand to hand combat better kick in!!!

Current Lyrical Ramblings

I just want some one to say to me
I'll always be there when you wake
Ya know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today
So stay with me and I'll have it made

No Rain - Blind Melon

Journey To Iraq

Our journey to Iraq began as we flew out of a small airport on a 767 jet. Now, coach seating is rather tight, but just imagine adding to that a laptop bag, regular carry on bag, ballistic armor vest, and your weapon. Yes, that’s right, sitting on a commercial airliner, with regular stewardesses and flight crew, with your M-16 rifle right there beside you as you sit in your seat. Now, it was all our unit on board for the first part of the flight, so about 170 of us soldiers. Our first stop was New York City, and as we flew in the pilot banked the plane so we could see the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, and New York in general. For me it was really cool, because I’ve never been to New York (not that I ever really want to go there, maybe to visit, but even that I’m reluctant to do.) I called my wife upon landing, not knowing how often I would be able to call over the next few weeks.

Upon landing, we were instructed to stay in the terminal for the entire duration of our stay. It was rather humorous, because they strung out those ribbon movie-style barricades as a boundary right at the entrance to our gate, so that no one unauthorized could come in, and so we wouldn’t leave. So basically, it was like being animals in a zoo, with people in the airport walking by, taking pictures, some stopping to tell us thank you, others completely ignorant asking really stupid questions “What happened, why are you here???” as though there would never be a group of soldiers waiting at one of the world’s largest airports for their next flight.

After about two hours we were back on the flight. We picked up about 15 or so other soldiers heading back to the middle east after being on leave. They played several movies while we were on board the flight. Batman Begins, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, some really bad Herbie movie with that moron Lindsey Lohan, and Fantastic Four were the ones I was actually awake for at least part of. One odd thing about this flight, was that they served us meals like every 2 hours. Of course, I freaking kept falling asleep thru just about all of them, that was rather irritating, I’d wake up just in time for ice cream though, oh yum!!!

Now, it was difficult to keep track of just exactly how long we were in the air, or how long each part of the flight took, because we were losing time as we traveled along over the ocean overnight. I kept my watch on central standard time, if for no other reason than to keep track of how long it had been. I laughed at the people who were changing their watch time with every stop, because that seemed completely pointless. We landed in Germany at roughly 0900 in the morning, in Frankfurt. I hadn’t thought much about it while I was there, but it was the first time I’d ever stepped foot in Europe, and there I was in the land of my ancestors. There wasn’t much to see. They had security all over, and we were stuck in this place called a USO club, where we could eat crappy German cookies and buy phone cards to call home. Of course, I did call belly again, to let her know where I was at. After an hour or so, we were back on the plane and heading south over Africa.

On this portion of the flight I did the majority of my sleeping. It was a very long and boring part of the trip. If you looked out the window, you could see the desert, even from 35,000 feet, the long curves of the sand dunes, the occasional cities packed in tight next to any water supply you could find. We headed east then and crossed over Egypt and the Nile River, then over the Red Sea, and finally we made it to Kuwait and Kuwait City, our destination. The total flight time was about 22 hours.

We landed in Kuwait City at about 2200 local time. I was amazed at the traffic on the streets as we came in for our landing, you could see people driving around just as if you were landing in Chicago or Dallas or any other American City. I guess I didn’t know what to exactly expect, so to me that was interesting. We all boarded buses, windows completely covered up, and headed off to the northern part of Kuwait. Once we were out on the roads, you began to realize that Kuwait has some of THE worst drivers you have ever seen. They swerve in and out of traffic at probably 90 miles an hour, and every single vehicle is an SUV. Someone told us at one of our briefings that, because Kuwait is such a rich country, that when a vehicle breaks down, they don’t even bother calling a tow truck for a repair, a truck brings them out a new vehicle and they just drive off in that, leaving the disabled vehicle by the side of the road. I figured this had to be just bull, but there were sure a lot of Land Rovers and Toyota SUV’s all over on the side of the road, some really nice ones too.

When we arrived at the camp, we had to get ‘logged into’ the country, meaning we swiped our ID cards so they could verify each soldier had arrived. It was there that we realized we had gotten very lucky. The way that military pay works, it was the 31st of October, and regardless of when you get to your deployment site overseas, you get paid the hazard duty pay and other extra pay for that entire month, so even though it was like 2300 at night on the 31st when we swiped our cards, we got all the extra money from October. That was a pretty nice unexpected bonus. Then we had about 2 hours of safety briefings before we headed off in our buses to find our tents.

The tents we moved into were giant white 40 person tents. We had to squeeze like 50 people or more into them though. We all set up the standard military green cots and, because it was about 3 in the morning by this time, and because we were all jet lagged, most everyone crashed pretty hard. The next day most of us weren’t up till about 2 or 3 p.m. The tents had no windows and were pitch black inside, so stepping outside into the bright 95 degree sun, with the sand reflecting it back at you, was not very pleasant. Even with sunglasses on, it was very uncomfortable on your eyes, to the point were tears would stream down your face. Without sunglasses you were basically blind.

Two things basically describe what you most notice about the camp in Kuwait: constant sand and the smell of diesel fumes from the generators. That is the most memorable thing about that place. That first day many of us went exploring, found the MWR tent with the phones and computers, there was a Pizza Inn (pizza exactly like Pizza Hut), a Taco Bell, Subway (not very good), a coffee shop (with great chai tea), a horrible, and I do mean HORRIBLE Chinese take out place (this place makes La Choy Chow Mein in a can seem gourmet by comparison). That first 5 days or so, we basically didn’t have a lot to do, so people either stayed in the tents and watched movies on their laptops, played cards, or tossed around horse shoes. Late at night was the best time to try and use the MWR phones or computers, but the camp was overloaded with like 5000 more troops than would normally be there, so you had to wait sometimes in excess of TWO hours to use the facilities.

After that initial period of resting and getting used to the time change, we had a 3 day training period out in the dessert. We received refresher training in advanced weapons marksmanship, and also the most up to date convoy training responding to the tactics employed by insurgents in Iraq right now. It was very good training, much better than anything we received in our more than 3 months worth of time we spent in states.

It was during this time that a lot of people started to get sick, myself included. That last couple days of training we had it was getting really bad, my sinuses and upper chest were totally stuffed up. I ended up having to get like 4 prescriptions to try and knock the infection out. A lot of other soldiers were dealing with colds and sore throats and the like. It was not very fun because we all lived in such close proximity to one another in those tents, that if one person got it, most everyone also got sick.

Finally, after 10 days or so that seemed to last forever, we got word that we were going to be flying to our next destination, a place in southern Iraq. I had never heard of it, but then, most of us didn’t know much of anything about the places in Iraq, so this was all new regardless. We loaded up on C-130 planes and flew out of Kuwait, on our way north. I have never been on a military aircraft before, so this was a new experience for me. I didn’t ever feel nauseated, but woah did my ears suffer greatly due to the wild combat style landing that pilots are required to make inside Iraq. Basically they fly in and suddenly just drop, to the point of zero gravity inside the plane, and your ears are freaking popping and stinging. Due to this, it made my sinus infection even worse, and my ears weren’t right for a long time, I still am not sure it’s all cleared up.

The first thing you notice upon arrival where we are staying in Iraq, are the numerous HUGE bunkers all over the place. They were built for a variety of reasons. The largest of course used to house the Iraqi fighter planes and small bombers, protecting them from the Iranians during the Iraq/Iran war that raged on from 1980 till 1990. Of course, the U.S. smart bombed the crap out of them to take out the planes during the first gulf war. Also, according to one Iraqi engineer named Ali (I’ll tell you more about him later) the American’s had such good intelligence just before the first gulf war, that when the U.S. Air Force dropped a smart bomb on a building known as Building 1, they killed every more than 50 fighter pilots who were all in a meeting, basically rendering Iraq’s fighters completely useless (not that the old MIG Soviet fighters would have been much of a match anyway, but oh well).

Smart bombs are precision guided weapons that are guided in thru the use of cameras and penetrate many levels of concrete and other materials to explode in the center of whatever building or object you are trying to hit. Oddly enough, they did very little damage to the structure of most of the buildings they hit. Some however, are absolutely decimated, even to this day. The smaller bunkers are those for command centers and storage areas. We have explored a few of them and they are really interesting, sometimes a little scary. It’s hard to describe the size of them, they are absolutely huge. I’ll have to send a few photos out sometime, or just email me and ask me for some.

The camp itself is really really flat. There are no hills. When we first arrived, we had to live in tents in a place appropriately called Tent City for almost a freaking month, which sucked. They are supposed to be 18 person tents and we had like 25 people in each one. Of course, it was hard to get over a nasty cold when you are living with that many people in such a small area.

We all started getting into our duties, mostly what they call ‘details’, which are daily duties that have to be done around the base. Some are security related, some are construction related, most really are not fun. We were responsible for escorting Iraqi workers to their job sites and keeping track of them all day. As the NCOIC (non commissioned officer in charge) of the detail, I got to have my own HUMVEE, it wasn’t too bad a gig at all.

While we were living in the tents, as other units were leaving for home, a lot of us were purchasing refrigerators, televisions, desks, microwaves, etc, for pretty decent prices. The problem was, where to store all the stuff we were buying. Our tents started to look like we were all freaking packrats, but there wasn’t much else we could do, they kept changing the date when we could move into our trailers. When we finally got into our trailers, it was pretty nice. The trailers are like miniature dorm rooms, there are three rooms per trailer, each with it’s own door to the outside. There is an air conditioner/heater dual unit for climate control, and cable television (but wow the armed forces network can suck sometimes, they do have two movie channels though where all they do is put DVDs in and play them).

I purchased a giant desk with shelves, a headboard with shelves, a television, a refrigerator, a microwave, and a few other items. Along with them, I found a nice set of dresser drawers, an iron, a new set of sheets (unopened) and other really great items, stuff I would have probably never thought of, but that I would have likely had to buy. Rugs, hand sanitizer, singles of Wet Wipes (wow are those ever useful), permanent markers, lamps, folding chairs, 100 MPH tape, so much stuff, can’t even list it all. Basically, it was nice not having to go to the Post Exchange to buy much of anything.

They have a place called the MWR, which I believe stands for Military Wellness and Recreation or something like that. They have phones and internet computers there (if you like to wait in line for oh an hour or so haha), two television rooms, one for movies the other for usually live sports from the united states, two pool tables, foozball, several televisions with game systems like Xbox, PSII, and Nintendo hooked up to them. And there is a library. They have volleyball, horseshoes, basketball, and other activities outside of the MWR building also. The chow hall here is amazing. They have all sorts of food here, good food. I was all stoked about being able to avoid eating all that much while I was here and being able to stay in really good shape. But alas, the food is VERY good, the best chow hall I’ve ever been in, even better than the one I visited with my wife in Pensacola. I am not getting fat but I’m not getting myself into the best of shape either, let’s just say I’m hovering at around 190 lbs haha.

It’s interesting here how out of 170 or so soldiers, I’d say about 130 of us have laptops. Add to that people like me who have all this other stuff they either bought here or brought with them, and it’s unreal how we are such an electronic military now. I have the playstation II here (I play Need For Speed Underground II all the time, I just beat it last night) and my boombox with MP3 inputs and outputs for playing music from my laptop. We just recently got the internet hooked up, which is really good for me because on top of my other jobs, I’m responsible for the company newsletter and I’m unit historian for keeping track of what happens here so it can all be archived into a yearbook of some sort when we get back.

The unit we replaced was from California, and they were really messed up, I can think of some other words I would use to describe them but I’ll keep it clean here. Being a transportation unit, we have a LOT of trucks, 100+ trucks to keep track of. When we ‘inherited’ them from this other unit, probably 90% of them were completely unusable, and their maintenance department pretty much admitted that all they did for the entire year was replace tires, that is IT. They didn’t change oil, they didn’t fix problems like leaks or any of the little things that go wrong. Because the little things went unchecked, most turned into BIG things, things our company has had to spend a TON of time on to repair, because without our trucks we are basically battle ineffective.

Our unit has been getting a really great reputation over here so far. We have always done that though, not to toot our own horn but we aren’t the typical Army National Guard unit, we have great leadership and sergeants in our unit. We are still escorting Iraqi workers even now, and we’ve gotten a lot of praise for that part of what we are doing. It’s not all that hard, we meet a lot of really great Iraqi people when we escort them. One is Ali, who used to work for the number 2 man in Iraq, Saddam’s son in law. We hear the most amazing stories about what Saddam used to do, and regardless of what the media says, it was way way way worse under Saddam than it is now, yet the media just loves to talk about how BAD it is here. Trust me, it’s not that bad.

Ali is an engineer and arguably the most intelligent person on this post, American or not. He does not live here, he is in charge of projects that are being done, like building renovations, street paving, and motor pool paving (the motor pool is what we call our maintenance yards). I am learning a lot of Arabic working with him, and a LOT of history about Iraq. It’s hard for a lot of Americans to fully appreciate just how amazing the Iraqi history is. The United States has been around for about 230 years, and has been recognized as a world power for about 50 years of that. Iraq has had several civilizations throughout history that were world powers, from Ur some 5000 years ago, to the Babylonians, to the Sumerians, and others. The Garden Of Eden is rumored to have been just to the north in an area called the fertile crescent, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Even many of those who do not believe the Garden of Eden existed believe that man first walked the earth in the fertile crescent area.

Ali filled me in on the Temple of Ur, which I’ve visited a couple of times. Ur is an ancient civilization, many say the oldest civilization known to man. Ur was a port at one time, but that changed over the years as silt from the two rivers built up and pushed the Persian Gulf further away, until the point when Ur was no longer a useable port and basically faded away. It went thru three separate phases of existence, from 5000+ years ago, to 3000 years or so ago. Today there is very little left, there is no modern Ur. All that is left are remnants of the city on the hill. The temple itself is the oldest building of such size in the world, called a ziggurat, the Arabic word for ‘temple’. At one time it was three stories high, but now has weathered away to just one story, because the clay bricks were never fired in a kiln. Even at one story though, the temple is very impressive.

But most impressive to me about Ur, is the House of Abraham. Abraham is a central figure in all monotheistic religions (those religions who believe in one God). Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other religions all recognize Abraham as at least a prophet of God. The House of Abraham is where Abraham lived his life, and is located to the south of the Temple of Ur. The walls of the house have been rebuilt, because much like the temple, the bricks weathered away over thousands of years. But the floor itself is still intact with the same stones that Abraham himself walked upon so long ago. Walking around on that floor, in the same space that Abraham lived, was really moving to me. I have taken a lot of photos of Ur.

The Iraqis also have these little marts around where they sell stuff. A lot of what they sell would be best termed as ‘boot leg’, such as the dvd’s for 4 dollars, Rolex watches for 25 bucks, etc. None of them are the real thing, but there is little infrastructure in place in the Iraqi government yet to stop it. The US military at first didn’t allow it, but the Iraqi’s would set up their shops outside of the main gate, and soldiers would stop even though they were told not to, so finally for our safety, they were allowed to move the shops into an area just outside the inner gate, where they make a good amount of money selling their wares. If a movie comes out in the theater in the United States, within about 5 days it appears on DVD in Iraq, honest to God filmed IN the theater with a camcorder. It sounds hilarious, but the fact is, we can’t ever see brand new movies here so many of us will buy that crappy DVD for 4 bucks just to watch it.

So far we are really doing well, as you can see. I feel bad because I haven’t had the opportunity to really tell you all how things have been, I hope this gets you all up to date. This is a relatively safe place, but we are still in Iraq, so you always have to remain vigilant to what is going on around you. It is never 100% safe here, but when we all do our jobs no one should get hurt.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

So You will know the truth, too!
I'm not a comfortable liar,
Because my heart is on fire,
So others will not burn in the lake of fire.

Comfortable Liar - Chevelle

Went To A Concerto

So, last night at 1900 they had a concert here at the pavillion just outside of the Taco Bell. Now, I only know of one song that Drowning Pool sings, the "Let the Bodies Hit The Floor" song (which, I realized after putting up as my Ramblings yesterday, may not be the most appropriate due to my current circumstances). They also sing a couple of other songs I'd heard of. I realized though, that I'm really out of the loop when it comes to new good hard rock, due to the complete abscence of such stations now in Omaha. I have seen that there is a "World Satellite Radio" or something like that, that you can get here, I may look into that.

Anyways, back to the concert. The lead singer, who looks exactly like the lead singer from Lynard Skynard, mentioned about midway through the concert that this was only the second night he'd ever performed completely sober, the other being the night before for another show (Muslim law prohibits alcohol use, supposedly, so we try and honor that). The other band members also grumbled about that, which got a rousing cheer from the crowd, who I'm sure could have all used a shot or two of something a little harder than the O'Douls non alcoholic brew that is the closest thing to beer you'll find here (YUCK!!).

The band was really really good though, probably a testemant to NOT drinking or being all dicked up on drugs. God knows I've been to several concerts where that was NOT at all the case (Spin Doctors being the worst I've ever seen, don't even ask me why I went, it was a free college show haha).

The one thing I didn't much care for was the cigarette smoke, but then, if I'm at a concert I've basically entered a smoker's world so to speak, sort of like a few other areas that smokers consider hallowed ground; bars, concerts, their own vehicles, a couple other places. Of course, anyone that knows me knows my viewpoint on smoking, it being about the stupidest habit anyone can pick up because it's like slowly killing yourself.

Bah, getting away from what the topic of the post here. The concert was really good, I ended up getting to bed last night after a little PT and a shower, at about 10:30 pm or so, still getting my body adjusted to the time schedule here, waking up about every hour or so. Today we start actual training at about 1300, I'm actually looking forward to it, to be honest, something to do that actually involves our mission, after a couple of days to acclimate.

Well, time to go sit in line for the DSN telephones haha.

Random Lyrical Ramblings

She said she won't speak of love
Because love she's never known
She said it's moments like these
She hates to be alone

She Said - Collective Soul

Arrival

The flight over was so long, but to be honest, it wasn’t all that bad. They had several movies for us. That’s good, because 22 hours on a plane and you can start to lose your mind if you have nothing to focus your thoughts on other than the back of the seat right in front of you. Mr and Mrs Smith, The Fantastic 4, Batman Begins, and some awful Herbie movie with Lindsay Lohan in it. I slept through a little bit of each move except Fantastic 4, and slept through all of Herbie. I’m certain I didn’t miss much.

When we got into New York, we had a 2 hour layover at JFK International, so we all hung out inside of the terminal, but we weren’t allowed to leave the gate we were at. It was sort of funny, we were like zoo animals behind one of those belted gates like you see at the movie theater. People would walk over and ask us who we were, where we are going, etc, most of which we can’t really answer other than vaguely. After that it was an 8 hour flight from New York to Frankfurt, Germany. We spent about an hour off the plane there, hanging out at the USO building. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but there I was in the land of my forefather’s. We were back on the plane then.

The food on the plane was pretty good. I’d say they were serving a meal about every 2 hours, at least, it seemed like that fast. I actually slept through the last 2 meal, which had me feeling pretty hungry, but thankfully they did bring out ice cream bars from time to time, good ones, those Haagan Daas or however that is spelled. It’s hard to believe I slept as much as I did, it was so uncomfortable, every seat had a bag or two underneath, some spilling into the hallways.

Over northern Africa we went, then east into Kuwait. I was surprised at just how busy and lit up Kuwait really is, it’s a truly modern country. Even at 10 at night, there were thousands of cars all over the streets. We went in a convoy for a little trip to the base we are at now, had a couple of briefings, a late night chow, then off to bed for some, others of us walked all over the place, just checking things out. Surprisingly, some of the facilities are open for 24 hours a day. That comes in pretty convenient. I went back to our tent after breakfast to catch a little sleep that morning.

There is one set of lights in the tent. Either the lights are on or they are off. At about one in the afternoon, one SSG decides he wants to turn on the damn lights, and he wouldn’t turn them off, that got everyone pretty irritated. Oh well, we are only going to be here for about 10 days, so this shouldn’t be a big issue. With the lights off, it’s pitch black, if you walk outside from inside the tent after sleeping, without sunglasses, it’s like staring right at the sun. My eyes were watering, even with my eyes shut it was blinding thru my eyelids. After about 5 minutes of having my hands shielding my eyes as tears ran down my face, I was finally able to open my eyes enough while standing in the shade to see where I was at. Needless to say, I went back into the tent to get my sunglasses after that.

If you walk inside from outside, and you don’t have a flashlight, you are going to be one blinded son of a bitch. You can’t see shit, even with a flashlight it’s tough for about the first 30 seconds, as you stumble around feeling your way to your bunk. We have no shelves or dressers or lockers to put our shit into right now, so we are living out of our bags, which really blows. It leaves your entire area a real mess.

Outside of the tents, when you walk around the base, there’s a constant smell of dusty air and diesel fumes. The dusty air is obviously because of the sandy environment, a lack of moisture means that any wind stirs up the fine, gritty sand into a cloud of dirty air. The smell of diesel fumes comes from the countless generators, that are located outside of every building, to run the electricity for the air conditioning, lights, personal electronics, etc.

So far I’ve seen a Pizza Hut, Burger King, Taco Bell, Baskin Robbins, some goofy coffee shop, a Chinese food place, among other places to eat. The PX is sort of a joke, but what do you expect when you are 12000 miles from CONUS? The line to get out of the PX was about 30 people long, seems like that’s a typical expectation when you are trying to do just about anything here, you are going to end up waiting for quite a while.

The uniforms here are about an even mix of the older desert BDU’s and the newer digital camouflage uniforms. I was pretty surprised about that, I figured there would be a lot fewer DCU’s than there were. I still wonder if we are going to end up wearing them at some point, as in, we all get them here, but I’m not too concerned about it, if anything I would rather stick with the old uniforms because I’m not too keen on having another thing to learn about while I’m here, there is plenty to worry about without having to deal with something as pointless as how to wear a new uniform.

Thus far, the weather is around 95 at it’s highest during the day, drops to about 65 at night. That 65 degrees actually feels quite cool, really too cool for me at night to wear PT gear around. So far we are authorized to wear either PT gear or our desert camouflage, civilian clothes are a big time no go. We were told that was the way it was for everyone, but I’ve seen quite a few soldiers wearing civilian clothes, so who knows what the story is. You follow what your chain of command wants and that’s that.

As far as the weather, I enjoy the heat, so it’s not a big issue to me. For me, if it’s below 70 degrees, that falls under the classification of ‘cold’. 100 degrees to me can be uncomfortable, but it’s certainly not painful. The cold to me is painful. If you give me a canteen and a shade tree on a 100 degree day, and I’m in my underwear, I’m going to do just fine, lay back, drink water, and enjoy myself. You give someone a canteen and a shade tree on a 30 degree day, and that person is in their underwear, they are going to DIE. So show me how the cold can be better than the heat? I don’t think so!!

A lot of the guys are buying things they feel they’ll need while they are here. I haven’t spent one penny on anything in the last 20 hours I’ve been here. Damn, 20 hours and it feels like it’s been two days. I suppose that’s what happens when you get this damn jet lag. This is the first time I’ve been out of the continental united states. It’s sort of surreal, this first day, walking around on the opposite side of the earth. When I try to sleep at night, it’s sort of like cat naps. When I try sleeping during the day, it’s very heavy REM sleep, where I have crazy dreams and wake up all groggy wondering where the fuck I’m at. I guess that means I’m not quite where I need to be in terms of my body adjusting to the time change. It hasn’t even been one full day since touching down here though, so that’s understandable. We have one more day before we begin actually doing something, so we all have to really try to get ourselves adjusted, or it’s going to be forced on us.

The Kuwaiti nationals that work here on the base are very polite, but also very reserved. Because of this they are very quiet. It’s difficult to see if that’s because they are just being polite, if they are afraid of us, or if they really dislike us. Or perhaps it’s a mixture of the three. Whenever I deal with them, I smile and give them a slow nod, but almost always they end up breaking eye contact and looking away.

I wouldn’t mind at all getting to know a lot more about the Arabic culture, but I don’t want to insult anyone here in any way. If the mere idea of conversing with me is insulting to them, then I will cut short any attempts to get to know more about them and the way they live. If it’s because they feel they are insulting me in some way, I’ll have to work harder to show that I will welcome any opportunity to converse with them. As you can see, trying to decide which is which could be pretty tough. I’m still going to attempt to do so though.

I haven’t yet purchased a converter for the electrical outlets here. My computer and my digital camera are compatible with either the 110 or European outlets, but I imagine I have a few things with me that are not, so I’ll be buying the converter. Right now I’m leeching off someone else’s converter, but that’s alright, he’s working out and I’m watching his and his buddy’s weapon for them.

The chow here is a lot better than it was at Ft. Riley. I guess that’s why I haven’t really felt the need to spend any money as of yet. I hope to continue that trend, we’ll need all the money we can save to maybe get a house when I get back. When I get back… one million days from now? Heh, that’s one hell of a countdown. Let’s just say I ignore that until we are about 90 days away, because, the thought of 300+ days to go is a little overwhelming. If I start doing a countdown with about three months to go, I can deal with that a lot better. Once I’m to “89 days and a wakeup” I’m really going to be chomping at the bit to come home, I can only imagine haha. Tonite, Drowning Pool will be here playing a little music, hence the current lyrical ramblings!!

Current Lyrical Ramblings

LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR!!

Drowning Pool

Just To Address A Few Things, And ‘See You Later’

Tonite is the last night I’ll spend stateside for at least 8 months (if my leave falls when I’d like it to, July of next year). I don’t know if it’s completely hit me yet the magnitude of what is about to happen. Upon touching down, ‘boots in the sand’ sometime in the next couple of days, we will start in on 365 days, one whole year, serving our country in a hostile environment. This is following a two and a half month training period preparing for the task at hand, during which time we received accolades from our ASG unit that was preparing us and from full timers alike, as to our professionalism and motivation, that we were without a doubt the best National Guard or reserve unit they have seen, and that we perform right at the level of if not higher than regular army transportation units.

This is really no surprise to the NCO’s in our unit, the vast majority of us were trained as a primary MOS as 11B infantry at Ft. Benning, the premiere army training school, and spent many years training together doing combat tactics and related techniques. We beat up on regular army airborne units at NTC Ft. Irwin and regular infantry troops at JRTC in Arkansas.

So, anyone who has ever said “you wouldn’t understand” or “you are just national guard” can fuck yourselves. Here we go, right into the thick of it all, the second most dangerous job ONLY to infantry itself. We are your schoolteachers, your policemen, your farmers, your mechanics, etc. We all took time our of our real lives to serve our country, and we are God damn good at what we do. Also, you won’t see me coming back alienating my former friends, turning what I once found endearing about them into a flurry of insults in an attempt to lash out and hurt anyone.

I won’t use drugs or alcohol, not because of any fucking religious belief, but because it’s a pathetic crutch people use to get by, LOSERS, like some people who used to talk about how terrible drugs are and then use weed and justify it thru an ignorant pattern of self indulging denial. I pray that not one person in my unit is injured or killed, but in the unfortunate event that something like that happens, you won’t find me using that as a shield, an immature excuse to become a childish, pitiful jackass who judges everyone but myself, critical of others but failing to see my own inadequacies. No, that is NOT going to be me.

What I will do is be open to my friends, my family, about my experiences, I will remain the same caring person that I’ve always been, I won’t turn my back on those I care about, bash them, or treat them with a particularly vehement disrespect in order to make up for own low self esteem. Why do I say all this? Because I’ve seen it, and I don’t like it, it’s REALLY pathetic to project blame. Have I made mistakes, yes, I most certainly have, but I move past, I let go. Let’s just hope that everyone can learn to do the same. Even those who completely disrespected me, if I had ever cared about them, I still do, I’m not so shallow as to turncoat that way.

With that said, in one year, I’ll have the car I’ve wanted for a couple of years now, and hopefully, belly won’t be deployed when I get back, but that’s always a possibility, and if that happens, then so be it. We will deal with those changes should they arise. We signed up for this, it’s an obligation, there is no reason to bitch and whine about fulfilling something that I SIGNED my name to do. I plan to use this to better myself, to take this time to use my training and lead those troops below me, excellent troops, along with this unit that has been validated in 100% of every task that was put before us during our training, thru this mission. It will not be easy, that is for sure, but you can either be a pathetic crybaby about it, or you do your job and you come back in one piece and be a better person for it. That’s what we are going to do, for our loved ones, our state, our country, because I BELIEVE in what we stand for!!

So for now, I say goodbye to all that is familiar, and head into a place that, while having spent a lot of time learning about, will most certainly be a culture shock. But I’m excited, I love the heat, and I’ll have every opportunity to enjoy it there I’m sure. Oh, about the title, this isn’t so much a goodbye, but the See You Later, because I’ll be back!!

Current Lyrical Ramblings

I wanted to be like you, I wanted everything
So I tried to be like you, And I got swept away
I didn’t know that it was so cold
And you needed someone, To show you the way

All You Wanted – Michelle Branch

Time Is Drawing Close

Our unit is rapidly approaching our departure date, and interestingly enough, belly's graduation date looks to be very shortly following the date in which we hop on the big plane. This is unfortunate, for if things would have worked out, she was going to stop by here on her way from Omaha to Phoenix (to see her parents for a few days) then onwards to San Diego and Camp Pendleton.

It looks like we'll be under a two week 'communication blackout' once we leave Ft. Riley. As I understand it, this isn't even because of security measures (although that's a little part of it), but there just aren't phones or other ways to communicate with your loves ones from the first place we go to.

We've done a lot this past couple of months, so much training, gotten a lot of new gear that will help us complete our mission (or cause me to collapse from even trying to carry it on the airplane) and we've bonded together fairly well (there are still a few rough spots but they seem to be working out.

The last 3 or 4 days have been rough, with a series of nasty surprises, financial, housing, etc. I was able to work through all of them, stressed but plugging away non the less because time is short, but on this last one I think we are simply shit out of luck. The Marines aren't going to let belly have married housing, not just NO upper NCO housing that recognizes my rank, but NO married housing at all. Either she has to live in the barracks or she has to find an apartment. Long story, but basically the Marines have rules that state if the couple are both in the active military and one is not stationed at Pendleton, they can't allow the spouse to live in married housing. I'm not really sure I understood why this is, but it's something to do with my not being there, and oddly enough, if I were not in the military it would not be a problem at all *GRRRR*

I called out to Pendleton to see what the story is, and I'm still not completely sure I understand it. So now belly is stuck finding an apartment completely on her own. I don't like this, but there isn't anything I can do now. It's incredibly frustrating to be unable to help out more. I just don't want her to be stuck in some craphole of an apartment in a really bad area of town. I imagine when I get back we will move on post and get housing there to save money and also have more living space.

Today we have our final financial, medical, and legal checks, and the next couple of days before we leave are pretty much locked down, including the last day we are here, where we are completely locked down in the barracks. Internet service ends on Thursday night, after that it's going to be awfully damn boring around here. I'll still have the cell phone though, so that will be okay.

I know that belly will do fine without me, but I also know there are probably a few things I have forgotten to set up so they will be taken care of while I'm gone. She's going to be responsible for getting all of the little necessities set up in the apartment/condo (whichever it may be) once she gets to San Diego sometime in the middle of November.

She's been on her own before so I know she'll do just fine. I just hope she gets in with a good group of people to work with and gets a decent placement within her air wing, if that's what it's called? Not sure heh, but I have a lot of time to find out more about the Marines once I get back. Still doesn't help though that I'm not there now to experience it with her, it's like I'm missing out on 1 year of our life together because she was unable to be with me, and now I'm about to miss out on another year of our life because I am unable to be with her : (

This is the choice we made though, so we are dealing with it. I know in the long run that we will become stronger for it, and look back on these days as part of what made the foundation of our marriage even more fortified.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

For What It's Worth - Buffalo Springfield

Cherry Point, North Carolina

So I went to see belly this past weekend at Cherry Point, NC. I left out of Ft. Riley on a shuttle service that took me to Kansas City. This shuttle service was not all that great, to be honest, but it got me there. Flew out of KC International to Charlotte, and from Charlotte flew into a really tiny airport at Jacksonville, NC (notice, that’s NC not FL).

The Enterprise car rental place in Jacksonville sent a runner in with a van to pick me up from the airport. Now, for plausible deniability, let’s just not say who drove the rented vehicle, which, in this case, was a free upgrade to a Chevy Avalanche pickup truck, because another customer wanted the Nissan Altima so bad that Enterprise was willing to let me have a better vehicle.

The Chevy Avalanche 4 door pickup, an interesting engine, an inline 5 cylinder. White truck, very bland, they didn’t include the automatic lock keychain, and oddly enough there was NO outside keyhole on the passenger side. I’ve never seen that before. Normally I like to unlock belly’s side of the vehicle and let her in, guess I just like being the gentleman. Well, no possibility of doing that, especially without having the automatic keychain to unlock the door. I’m not going to complain much about that, considering the vehicle itself was pretty nice.

The room wasn’t too costly, 25 bucks a night. The rooms themselves were not all that great. The bathroom design was really ridiculous, but hey, for 25 bucks a night, who am I to complain? I find myself looking back at these times as the times I’ll always be fond of though, when we don’t have much money, and it’s mostly just she and I working our way thru the world (of course with our parents’ help), being really thrifty and in all reality enjoying one another’s company so much, doing things that don’t cost much money but are certainly a lot of fun.

I stood out on the balcony of my 3rd floor room and watched belly cross the parking lot after I got into the Marine base. I always find myself smiling like a goofy schoolboy with a crush when I get to see my baby again, which is just fine, because looking at her, she’s just the same way. After a big hug and a smooch just outside the doorway, she showered and we went for a drive around the base and she showed me around, then back and parked the vehicle and walked down to a bar and grill on base (Andy’s? I think? Can’t remember the name haha) where we had some beers and ate a little greasy food, then back to the room for some sleep.

Now, I don’t know if there is anything more wonderful than waking up all groggy, that first few moments of not knowing where you are at, and as everything comes back to you, you realize that one person you would rather be with than any other in the world is laying there right beside you. That’s when you take a deep breath and sink back into the bed, wrap your arms around that person and thank God for every moment you have together.

We went and had breakfast at the chow hall, 4 bucks for me haha. Then off we went to drive around the area. Now, Havelock is a real dump of a town, to be quite honest. The movie theater looked like something out of an early 1980’s era community. Worse yet, there are like 4 communities all within about an hour radius of one another, roughly the same size, and all have really crappy accommodations. We stopped at the Dodge dealership, looked at a few cars. Then off to the Military surplus store, where belly got dog tags. We drove all the way into New Bern, NC, then got in a silly argument because I got lost and I didn’t want to listen to her directions, and later it turned out that she was right, and I was wrong, but I didn’t admit it, I’m still not admitting it, for the record haha!!

We went to the mall, I bought belly some new clothes for her birthday. We ate at the Texas Steakhouse, and it was delicious. We drove by a fair of some sort, with a midway going on, and we had plans to go back but those fell through later on, as we got a few movies and hung out in the room and watched them and snuggled. We again went out to the bar on post, this time playing pool till about 11 or so. Then it was off to good ole’ Taco Bell, to ravage our digestive systems with some real delicious cheap crappy food. Then back to the room and watched another movie and went to sleep.

Sunday we got up late (is 9 all that late? Haha) and watched another movie, then we went off to a little Mexican restaurant and stuffed ourselves silly. Then we went and saw Flight Plan, with Jodie Foster. It was an okay movie, but there were too many inconsistencies in the movie, stuff that was left unexplained. After the movie, we drove down to visit the beach along the Atlantic Ocean, just to the east of Havelock. We went out on the beach for a few minutes, then took a bunch of photos. Afterwards we headed out for a drive up a long lazy highway for a spell, then on the way back I saw a little hole in the wall entry to the public beach, with a long wooden path thru a wooded area. That made for some excellent photos also.

Then we headed to Baskin Robbins for some ice cream, and then drove back to the base and rented a movie and watched it. Being Sunday night, we had to be in bed early, because we had to be up at 0500. It was pretty hard that night, knowing it will likely be more than 6 months before we see one another again. In the morning we headed over to eat breakfast but then never ate, rather just sat in the vehicle and enjoyed that last 45 minutes together. Then she was off to formation and I headed off to deliver the vehicle back to Enterprise and get a ride to the airport.

On the flight from Jacksonville to Charlotte, it got a little hairy. They couldn’t extend the flaps all the way out on one of the wings, so the pilot got on the intercom and had everyone be sure that their seatbelts were really tight, and that we were going to have to land at a little higher speed than normal. Well, yah, like more than twice the normal speed. Talk about your heart in your throat, all three sets of wheels seemed to touch down at the same time, a tiny bounce, then when the pilot hit the reverse thrust on the engines, woah, THAT was why he wanted the seatbelts tight, it was like hitting a wall.

The flight was about 15 minutes late getting in, so I had to truck on down to my connecting flight a good mile away in the terminal. I got there to find out that the flight had been delayed by about a half hour. So I didn’t have to run, but then you never know. So when I got back to Kansas City, it was 10 after 2, and the 2 o’clock shuttle had already left. That stunk, I had to wait till 4 to get a ride back to Riley. And the ride, woah, the guy drove like a complete maniac, tailgating everyone, then spending like 20 minutes at every stop gabbing with everyone. I was worried I wouldn’t make it back on time for the 2000 formation. Thankfully, I walked right in the door at 19:55 and was there to fall in with my platoon.

So basically that was my weekend, I would guess that I’ve dicked up the timeline somewhat, but you get the idea of what we did overall. It was really wonderful to see belly, I hope we get to see one another before I go but I don’t see that happening. But let’s look on the bright side, the sooner I get going, the sooner the clock starts ticking till when I get back.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

If I needed you so desperately
To come to me and talk to me
To take my heart and hand into your comfort zone
Where I'm not alone or lonely
Well would you take the time to be my friend
Cause in the end that's all there is
There's love the eternal bond between us

Would You Be There – Blessed Union Of Souls

More Hollywood Rubbish

This time disguised as a news article. I was catching up a little bit on the news and came across a movie project that Hollywood has decided to work on. It’s going to star Kirsten Dunst, as an American Citizen who went to work in Iraq to get aid to war victims. Now, let’s look beyond the obvious disturbing ignorance in making a film about a war that is STILL GOING ON, with our military members STILL FIGHTING, and visit some of the more idiotic parts of this editorial so thinly disguised as an article.

“The movie, to be made for Paramount Pictures, will tell the remarkable story of Ruzicka, 28, who ran a non-governmental organisation that lobbied for financial compensation for civilian casualties of war, Daily Variety said.”

Ohhh, ‘remarkable story’ now, is that how we describe non biased news these days, with adjectives implying good or bad? Interesting, now let us look at some other parts of this ‘article’ that are misinforming.

“Ruzicka, through her organisation Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, worked extensively in Iraq and in Afghanistan to document the exact number of civilians killed or injured by US forces.” UH, WRONG!!! Way to doctor the facts. This campaign was not aimed at those ‘killed by US forces’ it was aimed to help ANY civilians harmed during this war, by either side. Why do you think she was targeted and killed by a suicide bomber? Well, there are those that believe her investigative work was working against the insurgents by putting exact numbers killed by both sides up from an impartial source. So certainly if it were just ‘civilians killed or injured by US forces’ , that would work FOR their cause. Way to get the facts WRONG. But hey, it’s being produced by MTV films, which should really say a lot. MTV can’t even put music on a stationed named after music, how can you expect them to put up factual information in a serious movie? Oh, and related to editing, something this article obviously didn’t receive, way to misspell organization.

The article goes on to talk about how the Hollywood is lining up films about the ‘three year old conflict in Iraq’, listing several titles, and stupidly includes "Jarhead," starring Jamie Foxx and Jake Gyllenhaal, which is set to open on November 11. Wow, way to do your research, considering Jarhead is about the FIRST Iraqi conflict, Desert Storm, more than 15 years ago.

Interestingly enough, the article is not attributed to any author, instead listed simply as LOS ANGELES (AFP). I wouldn’t want to put my name on this garbage either, considering the inconsistencies and one sided viewpoints that are inferred within. Just another attempt by the half witted non educated Hollywood types to try and sway political opinion concerning topics they know nothing about.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

Bend and shape me, I love the way you are
Slow and sweetly, Like never before
Calm and sleeping, We won't stir up the past
So discretely, We won't look back

Doesn’t Remind Me – Audioslave

Hey There Four Eyes!!!

Well, it’s official. I now wear glasses. For the first time in my life I have prescription eyewear. The military has provided me with BCGs (birth control glasses), one pair of clear and one pair of sunglass tinted. They also gave me a pair of regular stylish civilian glasses. The first time I tried them on, I proceeded to fall down the stairs in the barracks. Needless to say they take a little bit of getting used to. I guess it’s actually pretty amazing to where them around, especially that first couple of days, and you realize just what you’ve been missing.

Your normally lose your eyesight so gradually you don’t notice just how bad it’s gotten, then you put on a pair of glasses and it’s like “HOLY SHIT!!” and you suddenly notice how crisp and clear trees appear in the distance, how the leaves are no longer a mass of mushy green but are now a myriad of separate greens all interlaced together.

What I really purchased them for though, was to drive at night. I found myself squinting so hard sometimes to read street signs, exit signs on the interstate, etc. Oncoming traffic seemed like a giant hazy bright light, I was always wondering if people had their bright lights on or what the deal was. I still haven’t driven at night though, but tonite I am riding in a shuttle from Ft. Riley to Kansas City to the airport, and that’s a good 3 hour trek. I should get a pretty good idea how they work at night.

I’m really excited about seeing my belly baby, this last couple of months has been really strenuous, thankfully our unit is doing REALLY well, as evidence by the accolades that we keep getting from both the full time Ft. Riley staff and the reserve component training division that is here to mobilize troops. We are outdoing even the active duty components in a lot of our training areas, and that’s really what we aspire to do, being the best of the National Guard is not enough, Title 10 puts us on the same level as active duty soldiers so we have to perform accordingly.

So I get to see belly for the weekend, and we are going to spend as much time together as we can, because this is maybe the last time we will see one another at least for 6 months (if I can get some leave wrangled out of this whole deal to come back mid-tour). I can’t wait to see her!

Current Lyrical Ramblings

Everybody has a face that they hold inside
A face that awakes when I close my eyes
A face watches every time they lie
A face that laughs every time they fall

Papercut – Linkin Park

Happy Birthday To My Baby!!!

I was still in the field on my sweety's birthday, but I wanted to take a moment to say Happy Birthday to her now, even if it is a little belated!! In related news, I have a plane ticket and I will be visiting her this weekend, lovely way to take advantage of a 4 day pass : )

I'm pretty excited. Last week, we did field training for a week in which we simulated what life and conditions would be for us in a base in the middle east. We had guard towers, guarded gates, tents, all sorts of fun stuff. The week started out with temps in the 95 degree area but by the end of the week we had reached 35 degrees at night, nothing like a 60 degree shift to throw you out of wack. I HATE THE COLD!!

So now our unit has been basically certified to head overseas, and we will probably have a lot of boring days ahead. I expect that I'll also have more time to write here. As for now, I'm preparing to see my wonderful wife this weekend, and spend some time getting to know yet another marine base haha.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

Callin' out your name
I'm dreamin'
Reflections of a face
I'm seein'
It's her voice
That keeps on haunting me

Send Her My Love - Journey

Crawl, To Walk, To The Run Phase

We’re into our hardest two weeks of training here at Ft. Riley in Kansas. This first week consists of how we are to drive our trucks and react to the bombs that are being left on the roadsides and also to insurgent attacks. Because I have a wealth of 11B infantry background, I don’t have too much trouble doing any of this because it’s basically like applying a bit of polish to a slightly rusty area, it all comes back to me pretty quick.

The last couple of days we have been working on hand to hand combat, room clearing techniques, and individual movement techniques. This, again, is some of the bread and butter of the infantry, so I’m loving it. As a truck driving unit we really don’t get a chance to do too much of it, and as a squad leader I find myself frustrated when I’m trying to get my young guys to do these tasks because, while it may be second nature to me to execute a button hook maneuver and enter a doorway in an urban environment, with the weapon at ready, eyes on sights, it’s a pain in the ass to teach it to someone who has never done it before.

The nice thing about our unit, is that while we are technically a transportation unit, nearly every E-6 SSG and above has at least 5 years of infantry experience, and was trained at boot camp at Ft. Benning at the infantry school, so this wealth of experience is now being put to work to get our younger guys up to speed. The young soldiers really seem to be enjoying what we are doing and picking up on it really fast, even the instructors comment on this, how it’s hard to believe we are a truck driving unit when they see a private doing specific techniques that they shouldn’t really know how to do, except that the NCO’s are teaching them how during our rock drills and sand tables.

Next week we will spend the entire week in the field at a makeshift base camp, simulating one in Iraq. There we will take everything we have learned thus far and turn it into one fluid movement, so to speak, where everyone is working together like a well oiled machine. We expect a few ‘breakdowns’ so to speak, but here is the place you want to work on that, not over ‘in the sandbox’, because over here you can correct your deficiencies without loss of human life. That just isn’t the case over there.

One thing is for sure, I do NOT envy what the actual infantry and MP units are doing in the middle east, because it’s not exactly the jobs they are meant to do. You have a lot of the infantry doing police work along with their usual jobs and geesh the MP units are getting totally overloaded with the infantry tasks along with their usual police work. We heard some real horror stories about what one particular MP unit that was tasked to the Big Red 1 (1st Infantry Division) had happen to them, I felt really bad, like you wanted to be there, to do something for them (I do miss the 1st and 2nd 134th Infantry MECHANIZED of the 35th Infantry Division, both of which I was with during my 12 years of infantry).

Our job will still be dangerous enough on it’s own. These explosive devices they are planting on the roadways are absolutely treacherous, there isn’t any real way to completely avoid them, sometimes you just have to hope for the worst and really use the armor and gear that they give you and work hard to keep your armored up vehicle up to date with the best of equipment. I just don’t want the people who care about me to worry all the time, with good training and vigilance we can really eliminate a lot of the threats we might come across. We’ve never been the ‘typical’ guard unit, something we hear a lot from our trainers, something we’ve always been used to hearing. “Your unit is better by far than any regular army transportation units we’ve worked with”. Well, that’s because we still remember being infantry and we still hold ourselves to that same high standard.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be travelling on, now,
There's too many places I haven't seen

Freebird – Lynard Skynard

This Is Wolfpack 3, Repeat Last Transmission, Over

If you’ve:

Ever worn dark colored pants with a long sleeve button up dark colored shirt, on a 97 degree day…

Called your dark colored, long sleeved shirt a ‘blouse’…

Taken off your dark colored pants and shirt, so soaked with sweat and dirt and sand that they could stand up in the corner all by themselves…

Put that same clothing, dirty and stinky as hell, back on your body the next morning…

Divided the number of days you will be in the field by the number of clean socks, underwear, and shirts you have to come up with how many days in a row to wear each…

Slept in a sleeping bag, even though you had a mattress…

Eaten Chili-Mac out of a pouch…

Screamed with joy at finding the pinnacle of culinary delight in your lunch bag, the Lemon Pound Cake…

Yelled a progressive stream of 4 letter vulgarities at a 175 meter target that you have been shooting at all night that will NOT go down…

Uttered the phrase “18 days and a wakeup!!!”…

Eaten a meal with chicken in it for more than 14 days in a row…

Spent more than an hour digging sand out of your ears, hair, and ass crack…

Ever done 35 or more ‘side straddle hops’, 4 count, in a row…

Done a stretch called ‘the hamstring stretch standing’, with it’s horrible use of grammar…

Had to recite your social security number more than 40 times in one day…

Fallen asleep while riding in the back of a loud, 120 degree, bouncing, dirty, armored personnel carrier as it careens across the desert…

Gotten hit in the face with a Dragon anti-tank missile launching system that broke away from it’s mount, as you slept, inside of the armored personnel carrier careening across the desert…

Done pushups to get mail…

Hidden an apple in your ‘cargo pocket’…

Referred to baby powder as ‘my best friend’…

Considered baby wipes as ‘a shower in a box’…

Spent time in the ‘gas chamber’…

Seen the statement “SP from the AA at 22:00 and meet at the FOB for Co. PT and CTT to follow” and actually know what it means…

Gone to church to get away from other activities on a Sunday…

Then you are probably a current or former member of the military. I’m certain there are many other things that we military people have done that other military personnel would recognize, feel free to comment on it.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

Once we were standing still in time
Chasing the fantasies that filled our minds
You knew i loved you, but my spirit was free
Laughing at the question that you once ask me

Do You Know, Where You’re Going To – Diana Ross

Pleurisy Is The Diagnosis, For Now

Part of our preparation for deployment involves medical screenings, and with this immunizations. Last week, on Tuesday, we received the small pox vaccinations, which basically involves poking you in the arm several times with a needle that has been dipped in a culture of cow pox. This particular vaccination ends up leaving a large pimple looking spot on the arm, about half the size of a dime.

Most everyone has gotten this sore, it begins oozing and must be kept under gauze and tape to avoid infecting other areas of the body and to avoid contact with other soldiers. Some soldiers have exhibited other symptoms such as extremely sore armpits, red splotchy areas that follow the veins away from the vaccination site, flu like symptoms, and respiratory/sinus infections.

My culture actually took a little while longer to swell up and take on the look of a large zit, a couple days longer than the average I would guess. Yesterday however, I started having a lot of trouble breathing in the morning. I didn’t think too much of it so I let it go, but all afternoon it got worse and worse, until the point that I couldn’t breathe at all without stabbing pain in the left side of my chest as I came back from evening chow.

Now, something I need to point out here, I’ve had this pain in my chest for nearly 2 years, since October of 2003, following a PT test I took during really cold weather. I dealt with it for the longest time, but upon hearing the news that my unit was going to be deployed, I felt I needed to find out what was wrong before I got to Ft. Riley. We spent 3 months and a lot of time trying to get something diagnosed, and despite my objections, my doctor’s diagnosis was acid reflux. I just got done taking a 30 day supply of an acid inhibitor and that did nothing to stem this pain.

So last night, I sat around for a little bit in the barracks then, after discussing it some with belly, decided it would be best to go to the emergency room and figure out what the hell was going on. I got a ride with a fellow SSG up to the hospital and following some discussion with the doctor, about the tests and medication I’ve taken on the civilian side, he settled in on pleurisy , an inflammation and swelling of the membrane that surrounds the lungs. The doctor described what I was feeling as similiar to the feeling of a collapsed lung, that you cannot get your breath, and you try to force your breath but it hurts so bad that you can't, lots of pain. It was extra painful yesterday due to the small pox causing an attack on my immune system, which is normal, but the inflammation was greatly increased and caused massive pressure on my lung.

Upon reading the symptoms and conditions of this particular ailment, I’m a lot more comfortable than I was with that idiotic acid reflux diagnosis. Now I have a lot more to work with, to try and find out what is not allowing this to heal correctly (viral or bacterial infection that hasn’t ever cleared up, or if this is actually a symptom of a more serious condition, which I pray it isn’t.)

There is really no guarantee that it even ISpleurisy, but this gives me something else to work with, which is what I need. The bad thing about this diagnosis is that it’s called ‘diagnosis by exclusion’, meaning, if every other possible cause for the pain has been checked out, whatever is left over, must be what it is, and that’s where we are at right now. So currently I’m on an anti-inflammatory medication, hopefully we get somewhere with it.

If someone who is reading this knows more about this condition, or wants to comment, or has questions themselves about pleurisy, please feel free to comment or email me. I really want to find out as much as I can about it, especially if someone out there who had it long term like I seem to have had it, has actually gotten past it and cured it.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

I pray for you, baby blue
In the name of love I reach for you
In the darkness comes the evil of the night
Think about it

You Better Wait – Steve Perry

Staring At Lapels

It's interesting how, on an army post, you don't look people in the eye when you are walking down the sidewalk, you stare intently, as hard as you can, to try and see their rank, because you have a split second sometimes to see the rank, and to address the person coming towards you, such as "Hello there master sergeant" or worse, having to salute some stupid officer.

Anyways, today, I saluted a specialist. Yep, I looked up at the last minute and saw her as she passed, that damn desert camo uniform, all I saw was the orange round thing and so I saluted, much to the giggling joy of both females, probably around 22 years old or so. I turned and "You aren't an officer, are you" and she replied "No sergeant". I just laughed and kept going. Hey, even NCO's make mistakes sometimes.

In other news, we had the small pox vaccinations. It's actually 'cow pox' as they call it. So far, despite seemingly everyone else getting a scabby build up under the gauze that we have to wear for 3 weeks, I have no build up, nothing much at all. I am wondering if it has something to do with my being around every imaginable ailment a cow could possibly have over 20 years or so of milking them. Who knows?

If I do end up having a strange craving for milk, or suddenly feeling sexually attracted to cattle, I'll be sure to run in and get this checked out. I'm not really sure what the side effects are, we were just told we have to get it done. Oh, I declined the anthrax vaccinations, WITH AUTHORITY, because I have heard bad things about it.


Current Lyrical Ramblings

Hello my friend we meet again
It's been awhile where should we begin?
Feels like forever...
Within my heart of memories,
a perfect love that you gave to me
Oh I remember...

My Sacrifice - Creed

Saturated Yellow Journalism

I’m tired of 24 hour coverage of every unfortunate event on the planet. I think 9/11 was the overload point for me. I think I watched the news for like a week straight, because I, like 250 million other Americans and untold numbers of the rest of the world, wanted to know ‘who the hell did this’ and ‘why’. The news media overloaded us on coverage before 9/11 but for some reason, after that, it was beyond reasonable.

Yellow journalism means to sensationalize the news beyond it’s true meaning in order to increase the number of viewers, and I’d say that the media today goes above and beyond that, looking for every sick and disturbing angle of current events, anything that will take the shock value to another level and get John Q Public’s mouth gaping “Oh my God!” The media rarely ever focuses on anything good these days, instead working hard to insure we are daily saturated with the worst aspects of the human existence. Is it any wonder we have school shootings, children committing heinous crimes at such early ages, when they turn on the television and even the news is a barrage of violence?

Everyday now I get to spend 3 half hour sessions with CNN at the chow hall, and it sickens me. Do I feel bad for the people affected by hurricane Katrina? Yes, of course I do, but I do not need to be inundated, deluged, literally immersed into it day after day after day, in fact, I think at a point the human aspect of this tragedy is lost because we become immune to what we see at some point.

Then of course, to make this particular news event even more ‘yellow’, you have lame brain dipshits like Wolf Shitzer on CNN asking questions like “Do you believe the response to the hurricane would have been much faster had Katrina hit a city populated by predominantly ‘white’ people?” He posed this incredibly racist and ignorant question to a black congressman, and this congressman of course showed his racist side by jumping right on the question, stating that of course the response was slow because the majority of New Orleans is populated by low income African Americans.

If questions like that are acceptable, then how about THIS question? “Do you believe the looting, rapings, beatings, and shootings would not have happened had Katrina hit a city populated by predominantly ‘white’ people?” OH MY, fraNk, how could you say that? Wait, now hold up, BOTH questions are equally unacceptable, what amazes me is that anyone who would call themselves a ‘journalist’ would bring up either question. Race did NOT play a part in the hurricane response, it’s so lame brained an idea.

The ENTIRE infrastructure of New Orleans was GONE, the first responders are normally the city, then state. THEN the Federal kicks in. In this situation, city and state were basically powerless due to the destruction of the infrastructure, no roads, no hospitals, nothing left. So the lack of immediate response shouldn’t fall on the Federal government, it shouldn’t fall on anyone, it’s just the nature of this particular beast, this disaster was beyond what was expected.

But back to my previous topic, about the lootings and rapings, or the response being slow due to the people being ‘poor blacks’, why does race have nothing to do with it? Because let’s say the majority of people left in a city decimated in such a way had been low income whites, those in the trailer parks with the rusted pickups. They would have had the same lawlessness, the same types of crimes being committed. As far as the response being slow, well, I’ve addressed that, and anyone who is still stupid enough to believe there is a racist issue behind it, or even stupider, that the white house didn’t care because they were African Americans, go ahead and wallow in your disgustingly racist fantasy land, you aren’t fooling anyone but yourself.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

I built my life on a rigid frame.
So nothing bends it only breaks into pieces and pieces.
I waited for hope to arrive but it never came.
Leaving me with only pain inside.

The Deep End – Crossfade

“Trainin’ Trainin’ Trainin’”

Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted here. We have been so busy though, getting our mobilization up, doing our WTT classes, qualifying on ranges. This past weekend people’s families were allowed to come down, from 1600 Saturday till 2000 Sunday (that’s 4 pm Saturday till 8 pm Sunday, for you civilians out there). Belly couldn’t come because she needed to give them a specific amount of time notice before she would be allowed to leave, and they didn’t let us know until too late. But truthfully, paying probably 600 dollars or so (plane ticket, car rental, hotel room) for one day probably wouldn’t have been all that good, so we are going to try for one of the longer visits later, maybe a three day? *crosses fingers*

So, how goes things? Well, so far so good I guess, things are really a clusterfuck sometimes, but we are making it work. All in all I believe we have a good group of people who are all gelling together very well. Today some of us were doing land navigation while the rest of the company went and fired at the M249 SAW and .50 Caliber range. I was with the land navigation group, I spent about the last 20 minutes cleaning branches, leaves, neddles, dirt, etc, out of my shirt, crotch, pants, and hair. Not to mention the scratches all over my legs from the tangle foot and thorny bushes down in that little marsh we had to navigate to get to one of our points. But honestly, I enjoy that sort of shit, because that makes me feel closer to my infantry roots. HOOAH!!

I am in a room with 2 other SSG’s, and we are packed in here like sardines when you add in 3 duffel bags, 2 foot lockers, a ruck sack, and a personal bag, EACH person has this much stuff. Soon we have to send our foot lockers and 2 of our duffel bags into shipping containers to be sent over to the middle east by boat, so now the tricky part is trying to decide what we can live without for 2 months and putting it in the foot lockers and 2 duffel bags (they send all that stuff early so we have it when we get there, but the problem is that we can’t have it obviously for the next 2 months).

We have a little bit of internet, but we won’t have our actual good connection until Friday. Right now we are ‘piggy-backing’ off someone else’s connection, and it’s not very reliable at all. Also sometimes there are probably 30 or so people on that one connection and it’s just overloaded. All wireless of course. I can’t wait till we get a GOOD internet connection.

I get time to message belly back and forth using Yahoo messenger each night, which has been nice. I don’t really know what I would do without her in my life. There are so many ways in which she enhances my life, I give thanks everyday that I was lucky enough to find someone like her, and even luckier that she was okay with marrying a dork like me : )

Well, probably need to get a couple of things done around here so I’m going to keep it short, we are perpetually busy these days, hoping it starts to slow down sometime. Hope to keep you a bit more posted as to what is going on around here.

Current Lyrical Rambings

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.

Shine On You Crazy Diamonds – Pink Floyd

10 X 20 Feet Of Everything We Own

DONE, finally. The apartment is empty. Let me tell you, I really don’t care much for moving. I must say this much, we will NEVER live on anything other than the first floor of any apartment building, ever. This became apparent on around my 500th trip

Up

Down

Up

Down

Up

Down

Up

Down

those three stinking flights of stairs. I got some help from my family on Tuesday. I thought I would be done moving out on Saturday night or Sunday morning. Interesting how that didn’t work out, we just have a lot more stuff than I thought we did. My sisters, mother, and a family friend stopped in on Tuesday, along with Andy (he helped me move the big stuff, thank God for him).

Everyone left around 11 Tuesday night and I think that’s when it really hit me, I was all alone. My sisters took the cats over to their place to watch them for the next three months. I looked around the apartment and thought about everything belly and I had experienced there. Our first night in the apartment in front of the fireplace on the inflatable bed. Watching movies sitting on that crazy old hide –a- bed. Tossing that old ouch off the balcony. Our first year together, arguing late into the night, always finding ourselves coming through on the other side, stronger than ever. Papa John’s pizza, late night Chinese food, jogging together around the lake. So many memories during our roughly 925 days in that apartment. It was so sad as I packed up a lot of the last items, all by myself. But I know we have so many experiences left with which to build our memories, together.

I went to my parents house at 3:30 in the morning finally on Wednesday, STILL not completely finished moving everything out. Then at 6 in the morning I was up and heading off to drop my grandmother off at the doctor’s office, then headed back over to our apartment. One more load of stuff over to the storage unit, and then back for one final walk through the apartment, to check and make sure nothing was left. Then I dropped the keys off at the apartment office and headed off to my parents. I left the truck there with the more important financial papers and got a ride to Lincoln from my mother. Stayed at my friend Andy’s place till about 8 p.m. and then Spc Wadas gave me a ride to Wayne.

I was incredibly tired, but also relieved the next morning, standing in formation. With everything leading up to that moment, I was just glad to finally be done with it all. Now we get ready to spend the next 15 months or so doing what we have trained for so long to do.

Well, more on that at a later date.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

Now you know they're gonna come for you.
and drag your silly name into the mud.
If the mother bears your children without tears
and without the usual costs of labor

Freaks - Live

Someone told me this earlier tonite:

"You know you both have the perfect relationship, you act like a dumb ass and she doesn't care if you do."

Hah, well, that pretty much sums it up.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

Where's the space I fill
Where's the sympathy I killed
I need to find a meaning
I'm useless, I'm useless
Trapped inside my own web

Waffle - Sevendust

Ultimate Cheapness!!!

This is a complete cheapskate. I just saw a car parked by the side of the road, broke down or not I do not know. What stood out and screamed ‘ultimate cheapness’ is the fact that the car had ONE tinted window, the driver’s side window, this on a four door sedan. I had to laugh when I saw that.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

Some say a comet will fall from the sky.
Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves.
Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still.
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits.

Ænema- Tool

I'll Take The Whole Pie

I have never really gotten into the ‘downloading’ music phase on the internet. I guess for me the reasoning is more than just the idea that I’m stealing from someone, because quite frankly, I could give a damn less about artists who make millions of dollars a year bitching, because God knows I’ve spent 18 dollars a cd on probably 100 of my cds before the price finally went down.

No, my reasons are a little bit different. Take the cd I’m listening to right now, Default, The Fallout. There are two fantastic songs that were hits on this cd, but there are several other wonderful songs, such as Sick And Tired which I’ve highlighted below as the song currently playing. Another fabulous song is One Late Night, and these are songs that, had I just taken the two hits off the internet, I would have never known I liked.

There are so many examples of this. The newest cd I have purchased is Breaking Benjamin, We Are Not Alone. I love this cd, every song is fantastic, and in all honesty, in this case, I like the songs that are NOT hits more than any of the hit songs. The entire cd is lyrically well presented and sounds great.

This is the reason why I don’t like to get my music off the internet, plus I’m a bit of a purist, to answer those who would say “why don’t you just download the entire cd.” I like having the real thing so to speak. Anyways, this has been brought to you by “taking a break from packing” so it’s time to get back to busting my ass ahahaha.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

I feel this, this tension inside of me
Pressure is presently pushing down on me
The first time it starts with just you and I
Repeating myself but you don't hear me

Sick And Tired – Default

The Time Is Near

15 months is a long time. I mean, I say it, I know how long it will be, but it really hasn’t hit me yet. As I sit in this apartment, with boxes stacked all around me, paperwork strewn across the living room floor, a list of ‘to do’ close to 2 pages long, I don’t really have the time to really comprehend what I’m about to embark on in 5 short days.

As odd as this sounds, I think Wednesday is going to actually be a relief when it finally arrives. Everything leading up to that day has been so hectic, a lot of it very stressful. When I walk thru the doors on Wednesday and show up for first formation, it’s going to like breathing a big sigh, ‘finally’, because of all the work that has to be done to get ready, even now of course. A lot has been done but there is so much yet to do.

Basically everything we own is going into storage. Except the cats of course, which my mother will watch for the next 3 months. I have to get all of my mail sent to my parents until belly is situated, at which point we may FINALLY have a permanent address. Until then though things are still going to be a little hairy, because we have to coordinate bills and mail thru my family.

Wednesday starts a 4 day process of paperwork and packing at our home station in Wayne, from there we drive to Ft. Riley in Kansas on Sunday. At Ft. Riley we will spend roughly 3 months, gearing up and training up, doing all the things that need to be done to bring the unit up to speed and proficient for deployment to Iraq. We send the majority of our gear over to Kuwait in shipping containers by sea. Sometime in early November, roughly the 8th or so, the unit will fly over to Kuwait, and link up with our gear.

This is tricky, because we have been told that there are more than 100,000 shipping containers located in Kuwait, so they use GPS tracking locaters on the containers themselves, with tracking devices that we get to locate the containers within the mass of boxes on the ground there. You have to be absolutely sure to install new batteries however, in order to insure that your tracker doesn’t go dead, or you’ll spend up to 2 weeks checking each individual container’s numbers by hand so to speak.

Back to the present time though, to look around our apartment. This is where we first lived together, shared so many experiences, exciting highs, devastating lows, it’s going to be difficult the day I click the lock and walk away from the door, especially doing so alone, because I know belly wants to be here too, to help me get all of this done.

Exciting, frustrating, glum, enthusiastic, my feelings are running thru a gauntlet today, I hope to have the apartment completely empty by Sunday night, save for my gear going to Wayne and maybe the laptop and a chair. So much to do though, so much. I best get back to it.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

She packed my bags last night pre-flight
Zero hour nine a.m.
And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then
I miss the earth so much I miss my wife
It’s lonely out in space, on such a timeless flight

Rocket Man – Elton John

DISASTER AREA

Packing sucks. How far am I into it? Who knows? I have 9 huge boxes, along with another 5 crates, all packed up so far. I want to be done moving everything out by Sunday, with just maybe the television and phone left in the apartment, so that I’ll have a full three days to work on JUST getting ready for the deployment. Oh and everything I’m taking with me Wednesday to Wayne to report for duty will also be here I’m sure.

Here’s the basic plan. My mother doesn’t think she will have any problem watching the cats, which was a HUGE relief. Up till now, the plan had been to find an efficiency apartment to put all of our stuff into, but the last few days have shown that, the idea of having 3 cats in an apartment without people around, well, landlords are quite leery of that. So when talking to my mother, she has decided that she wouldn’t have a problem watching the cats, as long as we pay her for their care, which seems fair to me.

So all of our stuff can go into a storage unit, which will actually work out a lot better. I’ve probably been overloading the boxes, but oh well, just hope the movers are strong people, if that’s how it ends up getting moved to wherever belly is going to be stationed. That’s the difficult part in all of this, I have to pack everything up into boxes and store it, then she’s going to be the one unpacking everything later on, with ‘who knows who’ going to do the actual moving of our belongings.

I’m marking all of the boxes with numbers, then I have a master list of ‘what’s what’ in each of the boxes, that way there is nothing written on the boxes themselves to give any thiefy type person any ideas if they were to see see ‘dvd player/cds’ written on the side of a box. Then I’ll map out the storage unit so that belly will know exactly where everything is. I need to write down all phone numbers and addresses of credit card companies, banks, cell phone company, etc, so that she can handle any problems that may arise. I’ll also need to set up all of my accounts on auto pay while I’m gone, so that the money will be automatically taken out of my checking account to pay the bills.

HAHA, SO much to do!! I can’t allow myself to get too overwhelmed, that is for sure. Speaking of that, what the hell am I still doing here? I need to get going and check out two storage unit facilities!! MORE LATER!!

Current Lyrical Ramblings

I can transcend you and mentally bend you
But I can't handle the shit that I'm into
I have been blinded and always reminded
Of the things I've wanted but I never could find

Starless – Crossfade

The Pensacola Experience

Before the trip I had planned everything out, except one thing, my accommodations. Naval Air Station Pensacola has a really nice housing facility called Bachelor Officer Quarters available to military personnel, but it’s normally so booked up that the only available way to get a room without orders is on a ‘walk in’ basis the day of your visit. $17 dollars a night sure as hell beats trying to bid for any available room in the surrounding area for $100 or more (workers in town to clean up and rebuild after the recent hurricane had snapped up all the cheaper rooms). So I walked in to see if any rooms were available, and thankfully there was a wonderful lady working there who heard my story about visiting my wife, and how I was going to be deployed, and she let me have all 7 days I was going to be there.

That was AWESOME, because the BOQ was within easy walking distance of both belly’s classroom and her barracks, and the eating facilities on base. The mess hall was actually pretty good, and for $1.90 breakfasts and $2.50 lunches, even Taco Bell can’t touch it. I never did find out how much dinners were there, we always ate off base for dinner.

The temperatures in Nebraska have been insanely hot for pretty much the past month. This is good for one particular reason, because of what the weather is like constantly in Pensacola. Omaha doesn’t have nearly the humidity that Florida has, but the blasting heat in the afternoon is actually worse temperature wise in Omaha. However, it’s debatable as to whether or not that is worse than the humidity in Pensacola.

In Nebraska, you can expect a pretty decent break from the heat in the early morning hours, usually about 70 degrees or so. Not so in Florida though. Unless there is a storm or cold front, the temperature in the morning is going to be about 85 with drenching humidity. I ran most mornings I was there, and the humidity was unreal. One lap around the training area was 1.5 miles, and by the time I would get about one lap around, my shirt would be soaked with sweat. I alternated 2 laps and 3 laps daily, if for no other reason than to make up for the really bad eating habits I had while visiting NAS.

We visited the Pensacola Beach twice. The Gulf of Mexico is rather salty, I don’t know if that qualifies me for swimming in the Atlantic Ocean, but it is the first time I’ve ever swam in a body of water that big. At 2 years old my parents dipped me in the Pacific, but I certainly don’t remember that. We took a whole host of photos at the beach, of which belly has the majority of them.

They certainly have some interesting places to eat along the beach. Of course the resounding theme of the area is ‘seafood’ and here’s me, a rabid red meat lover. I feel kind of bad as I look back on it, but the only seafood I had the week I was there was the crab dip with chips at Crabs restaurant. The waitresses all had shirts that said “WE HAVE CRABS” on them, I found that to be really funny. I’ve had friends telling me now that I should have gotten them one of those shirts, well, sorry, too much was going on to think about that : ) . Oddly enough, we ate Mexican food more than anything else, they had a really great Mexican restaurant there, except for one thing. An all you can eat buffet is not ‘order all you want as we spend 30 minutes making each thing you order before it gets to you’, that was irritating, but other than that the place was delicious.

We also went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I had to ask myself this while we were watching the movie, well, had to ask myself TWO questions really. First, why in the hell is it colder than a meat locker in this movie theater, and second, why is Willy Wonka’s character modeled after Michael Jackson? Don’t believe me? Well, go see the movie, I can give you many reasons why this is true.

Both are incredibly reclusive and live in unrealistic surroundings, Willy in the chocolate factory, Michael at Neverland. Both have real difficulty relating to adults. Both have completely inept abilities when picking out clothing to wear. Both try to entice children into liking them. Both talk with a squeaky weird voice and make silly comments that make no sense or put them in a really bad light. If you haven’t seen it, don’t go to the theater, however, it’s worth renting I think. The musical stuff is pretty funny, but the movie overall is sort of lacking in terms of plot.

Belly and I got a lot done in a short period of time. Name change completed, went to her bank to get both of us on the account, helped her study for a really hard test. All in all it was a really wonderful week. She spent every night with me in the BOQ except for one. Technically I don’t think she was supposed to be spending the night with me, but I almost wondered if her leadership knew about it but also knew our situation (my being shipped out for 15 months) and let it slide, especially considering that she finished so high in her class performance wise.

So basically we had a mini honeymoon, with periods of classwork for belly. We had so much fun. Oh, and I got a laptop at the Best Buy, because I’m rather devoid of hardware knowledge and she knows a LOT about it. I hope my two weeks leave midtour will be this nice, I can’t wait to see her again.



Current Lyrical Ramblings


When I find out all the reasons
Maybe I'll find another way, find another day
With all the changing seasons of my life
Maybe I'll get it right next time

Estranged – Guns N’ Roses

Omaha to Pensacola

Thank God for the decision to wear blue jeans versus shorts, considering that these airports seem to be kept at roughly the same temperature as oh, I’d say a meat locker. When you do end up getting on the plane, there are certainly plenty of interesting things to make note of. “USE BOTTOM CUSHION FOR FLOTATION”. Yes, all those stories we hear of those amazing life saving seat cushions that help crash survivors keep themselves from drowning when the plane makes a pit stop in the ocean or river.

“We’d like to remind you that this is a ‘non-smoking flight’. As opposed to the smoking flights they have these days? “Oh, geesh, I think I’ll wait for the next ‘smoking flight’ if you don’t mind”. How ignorant is that? There are NO flights that allow smoking (thank God) so why not just say “No smoking on any flights, light up and you will immediately be killed.”

I rode in seat “E” from Omaha to Memphis. Oddly enough there was no seat “C”, I guess that seat fell off during an earlier flight at some time. I was fortunate enough, as cramped as the seating was, to be crammed in between two female passengers, both probably around 20 years old and both pretty cute. Yes, I know “HEY, you are married”. Actually being married is nice because it lets you off the hook as far as conversation, it is no longer a prelude to flirting or anything else, it’s just blabbing haha.

I wonder if they ever wash those blue blankets? Hmmm, I just won’t think about it I guess, considering I used a blanket on both flights from Omaha to Memphis and from Memphis to Pensacola.

Current Lyrical Ramblings

La la la la la la la la la

BYOB – System Of A Down