Not much time left

This post will have some vague army things and a few random specifics, now that’s a descriptive intro! For the vague army things it’s no secret we’re deploying soon and to the beautiful eastern afghanistan. I can’t say much (anything) about where we’re going because, well, I don’t even know anything about where we’re going so I’m keeping no secrets. How do I feel about deploying? I’m pretty excited to do something besides the same old stuff we do on base. JRTC last month was a good look into how my job will function for an extended period of time as opposed to the 1-2 week field exercises we do. It’s crazy busy for the first few weeks, meaning 16+ hour days, but after that it settles down into the normal 12 hour shifts which are mostly full of “monitoring the network” or, as I like to call it, reading on my kindle. If anybody who is reading this doesn’t know my job in the army it’s pretty simple; I set up and maintain the tactical network. In short I keep the internet going. It’s not just used for facebook, although that’s part of it; it does have an important role with other army computer systems…that’s what I say to trick myself into believing my job is important, harhar. I just googled when to use semi-colons so I added one into the last two sentences and this one as well; I hope I am indeed using them correctly. More about deployment…of course I have some concerns about the safety of it but I trust that whatever God’s will is for this deployment will happen and either way we’ll just have to accept it. That may seem like a “cop out” but it’s really a nice way to view just about everything in life; it’s all in God’s hands.

Alrighty, enough army stuff and onto the super amazing thing that is my personal life. I actually don’t disclose much to that effect(i hate the difference in effect/affect, I never know that right one to use no matter how much I google it).

Here’s a few things I’ve learned in the recent present time:

1. Monster cans, when frozen, will burst if left in the freezer too long. Looks like a crime scene with blood splatter against the walls, pretty cool.
2. Remnant orange juice pulp, when left unattended for many hours, is a difficult thing to remove from the inside of a cup.
3. Being sick prohibits me from working out.
4. My left shoulder pain (still from the middle of December) also prohibits me from doing any upper body exercises and I feel suuuuper out of shape.
5. On the subject of out of shape during JRTC(the month of January) I only ran one time for three miles and did a total of maybe 100 reps of abdominal things…all these add up to me feeling even more out of shape.
6. Can’t wait till my left shoulder heals up and for me to get un-sick.

Sorry about the last 4 points; they were a bit redundant. I love semi-colons now; it’s just like typing the … but it looks more professional. Also, if you didn’t click the semi-colon link from earlier you should; it’s a really funny site on how/when to use semi-colons.

On a more serious personal note; the month of January was spent, as I said before, at JRTC which is in Louisiana. FYI it stands for Joint Readiness Training Center. It’s supposed to simulate a deployment. From what I heard from the combat people it’s a pretty good, realistic training time. Our FOB got attacked a few time and every morning we would get mortared which was pretty uneventful since we were told our building was a “notional bunker” so we just kept sleeping through the alarms and explosions. Despite being so uber busy I found it strange that I was much more desiring and disciplined to get into the Bible and I was getting sooo much out of it and praying way more than usual. Now that I’m back at bragg that’s changed and I don’t like it! I’m blaming it on me being super sick but that’s just dumb, I don’t know why it isn’t the opposite way. Here I have lots of free time and I waste it away but at least now I’m aware of it and am determined to make a change. Anyways it’s very late and I need to get some sleep, farewell folks!

You can’t buy me

I usually don’t post super random things but this I must. I JUST got a phone call from my internet people (time warner) and here’s roughly how it went after the beginning “how are you” babble; it’s pretty fresh in my mind:

Lady-”Hi, this is Time Warner Cable and this evening we’re contacting our internet customers who do not have our cable service.”

Me-”Okay…”

Lady-”I see that you have our internet service and not our cable service. Are you subscribed to another satellite/cable provider?”

Me-”Well, I don’t have a TV”

Lady-”You don’t have a TV!?”(she sounded super surprised)

Me-”No ma’am.”

Lady-”Well what do you do?”

Me-”I watch Hulu and Netflix.”

Lady-”What do you do if you have company?”

Me-”I’m in the Army and live in a really tiny room and there’s no space for company.”

At this point she just started laughing really loud and I joined in a little bit mostly because of how the different angles she was trying weren’t working.

Lady-”I was gonna say, “You just have everybody crowd around the internet and watch Netflix and Hulu!?”

Then she continued to tell me that they increased the internet speed across all their services and I should be noticing faster speeds starting now. So basically the phone call ended up being them telling me that my internet is getting faster…thanks Time Warner Cable!

 

Yesterday was extremely fun and as you probably can guess from the title it involved snowboarding. Not just any old snowboarding but my first time ever doing it “legit” style. I’ll admit, around 8 years ago I made a 30ft journey down a little hill on a piece of crap snowboard so today, I guess, was technically my second day. So here’s how the day went…we got to the “Beech Mountain Resort” around 10:30ish, got our equipment and clothes around 11 and then a friend and I knew we would be terrible so we went to the humbling beginners class. The stuff was super basic but necessary if I were to enjoy the rest of my day and I’m glad I did it. BTW, today was the first day this place was open for the season, pretty cool! Anywho, after the class we ate lunch, bought some waterproof gloves and then hit the real deal slopes around 1:30. The first couple times were terrible; extremely slow progress going down the mountain because crashing every 100 yards or so isn’t very effective. Many times I would “eat it” so hard my sunglasses and beanie would fly off my head leaving me to scurry around the slope collecting my things while the good riders glided right on by. However, this was encouraging because I knew that someday I can be the guy laughing in my head at the helpless beginner as I float on by his belongings that are scattered about the hillside. The last sentence is just not true so please don’t think I’m motivated to get better by wishing to be the contemptuous snowboarder. For real though, it was just a lot of fun. I was only able to get down the run 5 times and by the last time I was doing pretty good for just learning how to do it. I didn’t fall once and didn’t stop at the top of a “big” hill to gather my composure. The last time I made it down in a personal best of roughly 3 minutes. Also, the lift was pretty fun and very long to me, about 5 min. The perspective was amazing especially over certain jumps when good riders would go off them and do crazy tricks. Can’t wait to go back to work tomorrow….here’s a picture of me at the beginning of the run, a nice view for sure.

Laser Eyes!

So…I got my eye implants this past week enabling me to yes, shoot lasers out of my eyes as well as do more productive things like setting up peoples printers to their computers just by looking at them. It will certainly save me a lot of hassle at work which should free up a lot of my time. The surgery was on Tuesday and was a lot quicker than I thought it’d be. Here’s the dealio-went into the briefing room with 7 other people, of course I go first because I’m just that aweseome, they put a sweet bonnet thing on my head and put sticky pads next to each eye(for absorbing the numbing drops), then I was escorted into the surgery room where I was greeted by classical rock, no joke, and the doctors. I was sat down, then reclined and told to focus on the little glowing orange light. First they put a ton of numbing drops in my eyes and then got what looked like a small buffer and began to “buff” my eyes. I could feel the pressure of the device but there was zero pain. Then they got a little scraper thing and ran than across my eye a few times I suppose removing some sort of layer of my eye, nothing major of course, again no pain. Then I heard and saw the machine!! It came to life with a steady zapping sound just like when bugs meet their doom in those electric bug zappers. I was told to continue focusing on the little glowing orange light. With every zap I could see around the edge of my eye a blue/purple ring of light and eventually in the center of my vision a small fuzzy black spot which I guessed was something getting burned away, again no big deal. They repeated the same thing for my other eye and in no more than 10 minutes I was finished. Right away I could notice my vision was massively improved compared to what it used to be without any glasses or contacts but still it wasn’t perfect. My recovery was pretty easy. The day of and the next day I didn’t feel pain, maybe because I was downing a percocet every 4 hours but I don’t think so because on the following day it didn’t hurt but it was very uncomfortable to keep my eyes open and focus on anything. So I slept literally all day except to go get food, I felt like an animal and it felt great! It’s been only 5 days now and my vision is slowly but surely getting much better and the discomfort from looking at things is completely gone ever since that one sleepy day.