To Embellish

I suppose it's high time for a post about my life, mainly for my mother and my sister - my mother, who I haven't called in a while, and my sister likewise. The thing about this job is you can only say so much, and then that sort of bleeds in to the rest of your life, like mud spreads. And all of the sudden your life is a gray mesh of classified information.

This is where I am.

I moved to a new squadron. So far I've been made to go on to a shift that's nights...which is awesome...but that includes a 4 hour shift on Saturday - which is decidedly not so. And I was volentold to do some duty at 6 am on a saturday. And I took part in a squadron-wide piss test in order to root our columbian drug lords or some other such nonsense. Welcome!

I hate it.

I'm trying to not be so negative. I remembered, from some previous "I can't talk about this" sort of training, that I had a nervous smile. I don't think I have that anymore. I have a nervous frown, and a calm frown, and a happy frown. Let's not go that far, but we're getting there. I tend to complain. I tend to whine. I should stop that, but then I'm looking for something really good - really good in my life. There are plenty of things I just have to grab hold of and shake and squirm like one of those tube blob things you can't really get a hold of. I'd rather not explain.

Otherwise...not much.

I read less, I write less. Here is a hilight. I'm taking drum lessons and practicing a lot. I've wanted to do this since I was young, but then, we always had guitars around. I play my electronic set and I do drills and etc. It's not ideal, but it's a light, for sure.

Side note. I remember when I used to go to church, in high school, in youth group...we were trying to come up with a new name for the youth group, rather that YOTM - Youth on the Move. My suggestion was B.U.T.T.E.R - Bound Undeniably To The Everlasting Rock. The one that ended up getting voted in to power was Luce or Luchay. The Italian word for light. Pronounced Loo-chay. It wasn't universally accepted. So a few of us painted the podium to say stuff about butter, and had verses about butter, etc. I really enjoyed that time.

Butter.

I'm trying to spend time with people, and I'm getting back in to creativity - being interesting - transcending. There are definitely bright points in my world.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Two percocet, some cotton soaked in clove juice, an upset stomach, and about twenty starburst jelly beans later, and I'm writing a blog entry at one in the morning. It was dry socket, I'm out of pills, and I have no ambition.

Hemingway was the man's man of writers. He used to tie himself to his chair, get drunk, and go until he passed out I guess. I may do the same tonight. Lewis Carroll's drug of choice was LSD, why can't mine be prescription?

Today I discovered that I can feel the hole in my lower left gums, and my upper right one is starting to hurt. It may degrade into dry socket like my lower right. I suppose I can stand the pain, and it's odd, but one of the main things I take into consideration when delegating my hope is whether it will get me out of work or not. This may, so I'm crossing my fingers for it.

I don't know if it's the sitting in a room with the same people, the sense of no direction, or the knowledge that I'm forced to take part in a system I don't believe in and am not interested in, like a minaret that hate's disco forced to perform Saturday Night Fever, but on the days I don't go to work compared with those when I do I find it's the difference between trying to spot a zebra in the serengeti or in a polka-dot pillow sale. That is, I don't feel quite at home. That is, I feel like an entirely different human being that thinks he wants things, and wants to appear certain ways, that the me laying on my floral patterned couch wearing a floral patterned bath robe would never even consider. That wasn't suggesting I'm hiding something like Heath in Brokeback Mountain was, it's a throwback to the camouflage analogy.

To keep this from getting too heavy (I was told that "ism" don't make for good crowd interaction in a place that ends in .com) I'll clarify that yes, now I have gotten dry socket in one tooth. They packed it with some kind of cottony looking stuff that is supposed to act as "scaffolding" for the gums to repair themselves. Apparently the scaffolding my body provided took a long union break, then went on strike, or went to protest the damage being wreaked on the liver, or something. Except there were no scabs to bring in this time: pun intended. This cottony stuff was soaked in an oil that smells like cloves and tastes like digested and crapped out cloves, and ended up making me feel high and nauseous by the end of the night. I said, "My feet feel far away."

I'm reminded of Shawshank Redemption. "You know, the funny thing is, on the outside I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook." I was a good high schooler, and it took me joining the military to get me tripping the light fantastic, kissing the sky, etc. Going to the square dance. That's an LSD reference.

The professor has been very sweet lately. I need to put seed in the bird feeder outside my window. My hair is even more red looking since I tried to bleach it. I still don't have a camera. Licorice tea is delicious, but somewhat hard to find. Why must emotions nearly always skew relationships for the worse? I'm very satisfied with my last round of shopping. The joy of intellectual stimulation is something akin to sex and I don't know how I get along when I'm not having it. A new office is on this Thursday, I think. Happy Birthday Amy, I'll give her a more proper post tomorrow, when I also buy her gift. Chinese is a useful skill, like when the seamstress only speaks chinese, and gives you a huge discount when you chat with her in it.

This is where I sleep, little whiskered ones.

"A cat may look at a king. I've read that in some book, but I don't remember where."

Interrupted

I used to live in a suburban city in Southern California. With the exception of an Uncle and Aunt and cousins dodging fires, after 19 years of life there, I have no reason to go back - not in any sort of permanent basis at least. The rest of my family and some friends live in the desert capitol of Arizona, and I was born there, but it's also not my home. No where and at no time will I return to the same high school friends up to the same old antics, and I'll probably never frequent the haunts of my childhood.

It seems romantic to be free with no ties, but it's also very strange.

These Are

Some pictures you've probably all seen, but they're just up here cause I'm trying to post them somewhere else so I need them to be hosted.

So Delivered

Atop Mt. Evans
At the campsite at the dunes.

Madness
Retribution.
Assertion


The Journey


Some fools in a raft

The 4th

Took place at the base lake, near Offutt, from 1 pm till about 10. Then it took me a good 45 or an hour to get home, shower, and over to Dom's house. I didn't actually meet Dom, but I've heard good things about him. People like to go over to his house - was a nice place. Drank some nasty drinks, jammed a bit, went home.

The Reason I Only Talk About My Cat...

Is because I have no life.

That said. I went out Friday night with people from my class to a bar called Double Down. It's sorta like a sports bar I guess...there's a deck outside and sand volleyball courts...but that's kinda it. Everything else is just sorta thrown in to make it sporty, it seemed to me. Wednesday was Tucker's birthday, so that's why we went. Redbull and vodka is a decent drink - cause I gotta not drink smirnoff ice - I am getting REEEMed for it.

Then yesterday I slept till about noon, woke up...took my laundry to the korean lady, went grocery shopping (it's been a good...month and a half), picked up my laundry...went home...fell asleep till 9 pm. Got up, played some video games, read some harry potter, fell asleep at about 3 am. Then I just woke up at about 2 pm cause the Professor came in, making a weird meow. It's cause his mouth had a big cricket in it he had found somewhere. I encouraged him so he'd keep killing the bastards.

The other day my friend Jason Copp came over and brought his new puppy. They're naming him Rudy, but I thought he should have been named Gyro.

On An Unrelated Note

I have a man crush on Andy Serkis.


I think that brings it to three:
Eddie Izzard:
Paul Bettany:
Andy Serkis:
Not Gay:

At First

A benefit to the Air Force is the time you get off. You're "on duty" 24/7, but you get out early some, and usually when there's a three day weekend, it turns into a four day weekend. The downside is getting shot at.

This past weekend was a four dayer and Eric Sward, a friend of mine from back in DLI days, invited/recruited me to drive him (and, sort of unavoidably, myself) to Minnesota and ultimately to an undisclosed location in upper Wisconsin for four days of ski, scrumptiousness, and scruples (nothing starts with "sk").


These are two pictures I took. I'll post more when I go back up there and take more pictures. I took my camera up there, then we'd go out on the boat or drive somewhere and I'd think, I should have brought my camera. These two are from backwoods tour given by the Sward grandpappy that the Sward children often fight over for their turn to go on. I doubt that sentence was grammatically correct. Nevertheless, I thought it was interesting. We checked grandpa's minnow traps, saw that big damn beaver dam in the left one, and learned about the history of the old rail lines that used to haul lumber out of there. I was also scoping out the place for where the holy grail was buried, as it was the Knights Templar Club and you know how those people are with their grails.

In the meantime, between when we got there and left, we did some hot tubbing, some tubing behind the boat, others skied and I oft considered skiing, saw pirates 3, played loads of games, and did all sorts of other things I promised not to disclose (in exchange for which I get treasure). It was much fun. The cast was myself and Eric, Stevo and Carla (the parents, we called them the fantastic 4, which doesn't really make sense), Sarah, Kristen, and Jenna (the girls, who we called the Lone Ranger(s)). It was a time of music and odd nicknames, and I didn't want to go home.

The V-Day

Happy Valentine's Day. I think some guys are gonna come over and we're maybe gonna play poker...in our underwear of course, in homage to valentines day.

Poker Night

Here are some pictures of poker night at my house. I broke even, won one game and lost 2.High stakes: those chips there represent 3 million dollars.These are "the playas." The one on the right with the big guns is Kyle "Black T-Shirt" Wilson. The one in the back that appears to be vomitting into a bag is Colin "Can't Hold the Liquor" Sheffield. And the one on the left is Allen "Heavily Damaged Retinas" Barragan.
That's Jon Roe. He was the bouncer. Everyone calls him J-Bone (no they don't).
And that's me, cause I was there too.