Listen Here You Dog Faced Pony Soldiers!
Friday, May 26, 2006
Getting Back Into The Swing Of Things
Transition is a difficult thing sometimes and this is no exception. I traveled back to the United States on about a 24 hour plane ride, then stayed for 2 weeks, then back over to Iraq after another 24 hour plane ride. I am back running the night operations crew out at our unit's operations center. My body seems to be punishing me now because I cannot get any substantial amount of sleep to speak of. Yesterday was the best I did, with about 6 hours perhaps? Today I'm working on 3 hours of sleep. I really don't think it has anything to do with working at night either, it just seems like I can't seem to get into any rhythm. But that's what happened when we arrived here the first time so I expect things to get back to normal.
I have yet to play a new game that belly bought me. The Godfather for Playstation II, some of the other guys here say they have heard it's a kick ass game, so I'll have to take my playstation out to the ops center some night to play it. I drew a couple more mazes out there in the last couple of days. Needless to say, at 0300 in the morning it can be very quiet and also boring as hell. It's hard to stay awake out there too. Oh well, I have 5 hours yet till I have to be out there tonite, I may try and get a couple more hours of sleep before I go.
Running has really sucked lately, I never thought it would get to this point. I'm tempted to start running sets, quarter and half miles, but I think it's my chest that is making it hard on me, it's like I can't get my breath, and it hurts to try to breath deeply. I need to figure out what this is, an infection or virus or whatever I've had for 2 and a half years, but there are no specialists here in Iraq and as most people know, I dropped probably 10,000 dollars on civilian doctors and didn't find out shit. Seems it's worse when I'm tired, stressed, or sick, in fact, worst of all when I'm sick, even a light cold now just seems like death. My chest burns like hot lava when I get a cold. I will see a specialist when I'm back home, I have 90 days following deployment to take care of medical issues.
Let's see, other than that, I'm next in line in Nebraska to get an E-7 Sergeant First Class slot. Let's hope one comes up, I think it would be wonderful to get my E-7 rank while over here, the only problem I can foresee is trying to find a decent slot in California to take when I move out there.
Well, time to take a nap. Dreams about belly coming up :) IF I can get to sleep that is!!
Current Lyrical Ramblings
Now your pictures that you left behind
Are just memories of a different life
Some that made us laugh, some that made us cry
One that made you have to say goodbye
Always - Bon Jovi
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Two Weeks Too Fast Gone
Once again, I sit on a transatlantic flight, headed for the sandy box that has been my home for the last 6 months or so, cramped in with my elbow cocked forward so as to be able to type on my computer. It’s about 2200 Pacific time, and although I didn’t complete get over my previous jet lag, here I go again, certainly to completely goof up my internal clock once again.
What a vacation! I’m guessing I gained about 10 lbs, but it was worth it, it just means I’ll have to really work my ass off (literally) with running and pushups and situps galore oh my!! I must have eaten steak like 8 times haha, and it was totally worth it. We spent 4 days in Las Vegas, at Sam’s Town. I have to really give a thank you out to belly’s parents because without their help the rooms would have likely been at least twice what we paid, which wasn’t much at all.
We went to see the Amazing Jonathan, who bills himself as a magician but in my opinion he is more of a crude comedian who uses a few little tricks but hardly any magic to get his show going. It wasn’t too bad, but I think maybe we should have chosen the Blue Man Group, even though the price was rather high to go to that particular show. We also checked out a really kick ass car display, got really trashed drinking these two tall margarita/daiquiri drinks (half a yard they call them), although I think I got the worse end of that one by finishing belly’s drink off for her.
We saw the Star Trek Experience, because, for those of you who do not know this already (and you must live under a rock if you do not know it) belly and I are big time nerdy trekkies. Of course I damn near got motion sickness, due to my complete inability to handle enclosed rides, or any rides that shake you laterally for that matter. We did a LOT of walking around, and a little bit of shopping, along with about 4 h ours or so of gambling. All in all it was pretty fun.
On the way back we stopped at Calico Ghost Town, which was really neat. It’s sort of amazing how they took a deserted old mining community and rebuilt it, but you can see they don’t make near the money they need to keep type place up the way they should. I suppose that’s because they have kept the place intact, without adding gaudy shows and modern roller coaster or action rides, and that’s a hard thing to maintain when people are always looking for thrill and adventure and they find ‘merely’ history here. I say that not about myself, I really enjoyed the town, it was quite entertaining.
I bought some new clothes, 3 new pair of jeans, 1 pair of khaki carpenter pants, a pair of leather sketcher shoes that look almost like old fashioned football shoes. I also bought a new pair of running shoes. SURPRISE! I went away from Nike for only the second time ever. I bought a pair of New Balance. I’m interested to see how well they work for me. They are supposed to be quite a bit better for pure running, longer distances, like I’d like to do, slower pace for longer distances, as I’m getting a little older now heh.
Let’s see, we dropped off the truck to get it fixed, drove a Chrysler 300 around for a few days, then picked up a Chevy Cobalt (what a cheap pile of crap) for my wife for the last few days they are fixing the truck (they extended the amount of time it will take). We saw a few movies. The Davinci Code, interesting, worth seeing in the theater, but not likely worth the hype. I’m sure all the fundamentalist Christians will be screaming about it and out to get people’s scalps, despite the fact that the author of the book admits it’s based on fiction.
We are almost halfway through our flight. So far, two movies have been played, we made sure to suggest action movies, if any. The first was a sports drama called Glory Road about the first all black basketball NCAA team to win a national title. It was pretty good. The second one was King Kong, a remake of the classic. It was quite long and drawn out and it really lost a lot of it’s charms with the overwhelming amount of unrealistic computer generated action scenes (although, of course, there is no 10 ton ape in reality anyway, so how real can I expect it to be?). How can one ape fight off 6 T-rex dinosaurs? Well, thru a lot of crazy computer imagery, that’s how. I didn’t really care too much for it, although they did capture the humanity of the ape fairly well.
Oh, and of course I purchased something else, but I’m not going to tell you all what that was, you’ll have to find out at a later date, but I’m excited about it. My big thanks go out to midas for that one, he’s been very helpful, even in the face of some real ignorance from those we were working with, bah!!
I hope belly isn’t perplexed by how things went at time, I had a lot of trouble sleeping and I was grouchy quite a bit, but our situation is so different from what a lot of people go thru, even other military, considering that I was staying in a place I had never been, trying to dig thru boxes to find stuff that was repacked and unsure of what was where, not ever finding some things, finding other stuff seemingly out of wack, and doing a TON of laundry (wow storage units stink up the clothing). Things will be different when I come home for good. The only problem is that belly may end up getting deployed, but if that happens, so be it, we’ll deal with it, just like we always do, it’s what we signed up for, our obligation to our country : ) I LOVE YOU BABY!!!
Well, landing in Ireland now, might see if we can get ourselves some internet access there and post this shizzlenits!!!
Current Lyrical Ramblings
As you search the embers
Think what you've had, remember
Hang on, don't you let go now
You know, with every heartbeat, we love.
Ask The Lonely – Journey
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