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