Brand new for 2011

Not much has happened since my last post...

-Christie and I got married! May 29th 2010 for all you who didn't know...

-We went honeymooning in Mexico...

-Went to Basic Training...

...And survived.

Marc and Family came out to see my graduation!

-We went house hunting and bought a house in Sherwood

I should probably write more but it's midnight on a work night...

I re-did the closet. Yes it's a rental, but I wanted to...

From this...

To this....

OK, fine

OK. After many harassing and sarcastic comments, here is my brand new post for 2010.

-I obviously never made it to Fort Benning, I made it all the way through MEPS into the next day. I got to where I get my tickets and SGT. Douchebag says "You have a waiver that didn't clear, you can go home. Do you have a car here?" To which I said "I'm supposed to be gone for three months, why would I have a car here?"

- I got put on inactive status for several months, if you're in for two years and never ship out, they discharge you. So by going inactive, it "pauses" that timeline...

-I moved. Christie and I live with another couple in a house in a familiar neighborhood.

-I got promoted at work to "Production Manager." Fancy way of saying "Keep track of all the paperwork, make sure the product gets out the door on time, but most of all listen to a bunch of people older than me piss and moan like a bunch of little bitches and make them feel better." In exchange, they fixed my car which had been broken down for nearly a year.

-I got engaged (to Christie). On Christmas. I'm superninjatricky so I lined a 6" square box with MDF (heavy wood) and put the ring box in there. After it was wrapped she even picked that one up and said "Oh, it's too heavy..." She had been subtly hinting that she wanted a ring... "Fits on this finger and has a diamond..." And other such hints...

-I got reactivated.

-I went to my first drill since being activated and broke two ribs. It was fun.

-I'm planning a wedding. Well, I'm agreeing with everything Christie says. It's complete insanity. (Weddings are a hustle created by the mob, I'm sure of it.)

-I went to drill again and stood there all weekend at parade rest because I had two broken ribs. It was boring.

-In between all this we've been laying people off left and right at work... About 1 1/2 to 2 years ago we had 68 people in the shop with two shifts. Now we have 14. Not so much fun as stressful.

-I filed taxes. That was fun.

-I got audited by Oregon. That was weaksauce.

- I went to drill and did paintball squad tactics. In two games I killed nine people and was hit once in the arm and once in the forehead. No helmet, right above the mask. That stung. I had to explain to a distraught Christie that if indeed they had been real bullets, it would have deflected off my helmet, and I would have killed the other person first anyway but the freaking wind sends your paintballs all over the place!! She is still not happy about it. We also rappelled off what they claim is the highest wall in the US. 66 feet straight down. THAT was AWESOME.

-I'm starting to do some estimating at work, I will eventually being doing that instead of Production Manager.

-Caden loves Star Wars and randomly hums the Imperial March to himself, also singing whatever he's doing to that tune... "It's time to take my clothes off and be naked and get in the bath, dun dun dun, dun dun dun, dun, dun dun..." All to the tune of Star Wars.

Ok, see y'all next year.

PG-13?

First off, what is PG-13 about my posts? But yes, I know I'm awesome...
So here it is, March 15 of 2009. I'm going to MEPS again tomorrow, I'll be checking in around 5:00. I than stay there until they hand me a plane ticket, which could be Tuesday or Wednesday. After that, I fly to Georgia. Than, as far as I understand, I have about a week to ten days of reception where I get my uniforms, dogtags, gear, undies, etc. At my last drill they told us about this part and one Sgt. said, "You will have the choice of BOXERS or briefs. Remember, you will spend alot of time standing at attention with other men in either BOXERS or briefs. So think about that before you choose BOXERS or briefs." I hope other people got the hint too... After that I will begin the actual basci training program. Lots of pushups and running, along with battlefield first aid and much weapons training. I found a small list of what I need to qualify with- M-16, M249, M240b, M2 .50, M203, Mk19, AT-4, LAW, and several types of grenades. What those are to you civilian types is- Standard rifle, two belt-fed machine guns, the fifty cal, grenade launcher, automatic grenade launcher, two types of rocket launchers. I will be done and back here the first week of July. Until than, my posting will be non-existant. I'll see y'all in July!!!

So after a month or so of a computer virus that Craig, being the doctor that he is, fixed a long time ago; I realize once again I'm the biggest slacker. So now that I'm a few months in to my Army thing, collecting GIANT paychecks of about $100 after taxes, I found that I have about 2 days a month to "myself." Really I have zero, but I like to think posotive.

So my first training almost killed me, literally hundreds of pushups, situps, and other painful exercises I didn't know existed. I did a mile run backwards which I'd never done before...

The most recent drill weekend I did was better, probably because I went into it knowing I'd die. It's all about your outlook, I realize 29 years later, I knew all this pain was a good thing. Many gay cliches (<-?) come to mind as I do my 322nd pushup- "pain is weakness leaving the body" "if you cheat, you only cheat yourself" etc. etc... I was pleasantly surprised to see my first 6-pack ever (on my own body that is) and feeling like a spry 28 year-old. We did a 7 mile force march (basically walking as fast as you can without jogging) with fake weapons and in a tactical formation. I thought it was pretty fun, I HATE running but I can walk forever. Randomly we'd stop and pretend to be looking for the enemy off in the distance or something. And randomly we'd get punished with pushups because someone wiped their nose or blinked funny. I did enjoy, about halfway through the march, overhearing two kids complaining about how they were too old for this and waa waa waa. One siad he was 24, the other replied "I'm 26, how do you think I feel??" To which I couldn't help but look back with a smile, keeping pace "I'm gonna be 30 this year, bitches." That was the last I heard of them whining. I was known as "old guy" or "old man" the rest of the weekend.

Anywho, it's pretty awesome and I can't wait to go to boot camp and come back a 155 pound stack of huge muscles.

My new title...

So last Monday I finally got a call from my National Guard recruiter I'd been talking to. My medical got cleared so on Thursday evening I went to MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station.) Here is a picture of the building...

I took the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) to see what I could do. I needed to score a 31 to get infantry, I scored an 88. It was supposed to take three hours, which I of course completed in about 50 minutes. I than went to a hotel where the military rents out the entire second floor and slept there for the night. Paul came and hung out for a while since he'd already been through it and knew it would be extremely boring. We played a couple games of pool in the bar, we were in there for maybe a half hour and three seperate groups of people tried to buy us drinks (Paul was in uniform.) He told me that always happens and people are always coming up thanking him... Lights out was at 10:00. Apparently the Army is strict, I heard someone leave a room at about 10:15 to go to his own. Some officer caught him and he was instantly kicked out.

The next day started with a 4:30 wake up. quick breakfast, and off to MEPS again for the longest day of hurry up and wait I've ever had. We took physicals, vision, hearing, blood, height, weight, fingerprints and tests to check range of motion.

After all that we got with a guy who went over what I qualified for. He was a little confused since I scored an 88 on the ASVAB, I could have done chemical weapons, counterintelligence, psy-ops (psycological operations,) and pretty much anything I wanted. But I wanted ground infantry.

Paul showed up to get pictures of me getting sworn in, but after waiting for 4 and a half hours he had to go do stuff. So unfortunately I have no pictures of it... But at about 3:15 I took the oath and was officially sworn in as a Private in the US Army National Guard. I could say more but it really reminded me of sitting at the DMV for about ten hours.

Ramone, Ramone, Ramone

Not wanting to be outdone by the previous felines owned by me, Ramone decided to go and get clipped by a car. At first I thought he tried to catch something that got the better end of the fight, scratches, "bit" tongue, bloody chin...

But after I took him to the vet, he ends up with a broken upper and lower jaw causing his eye to look retarded, his top canines are both broken (one got filled, the other got removed) the tip of his tongue is somewhere else, a chunk of flesh got ripped off his chin, and while taking blood they found minor liver trauma. So I said hell, can you neuter him too?

The vet called at about 3:00 this afternoon to say Ramone was doing good and he was a great cat to work with. Everything went well, he basically has braces and an expander right now wiring each of his jaws back together... He also said that he is very friendly and happy and was hanging out in his office talking to him, purring and getting pet. "A very nice cat" he says. He is spending the night there to get another antibiotic shot tomorrow, than he comes home.

Let's just leave it at that and not ask how much this is going to cost.