Impending Doom

Ok sorry I havent posted a blog on this thing in a while. I forgot my password when it changed from the old blogger to the new one. A lot has happened since my last post 3 years ago, and its more than I wanna type to fill you in. Heres the skinny, I am still living in Italy and still working labor and delivery. I went and ran a marathon in Prague (26.2 miles) and I finished well ahead of what I expected. I get my braces off come tomorrow and right now I am sitting alone in my bare room waiting for the movers to come and haul my things away.

Ive lived overseas for 2 years in a very relaxed country and I am a little concerned about go back to the States and especially going to the Naval Academy of all places. Currently I wear my uniform once a month for about 15 minutes, I am far from being in the real military. Here on this base we play military, and at times that can be more annoying than the real military. I guess what I am trying to say is I dont feel ready to come home yet. I am a little worried about the whole going to school thing, its something I really really want, but is it something that I can do is the question. Lets pray so. It feels like impending doom!

Disturbing

I just dont understand how anybody could be so motivated by hate that it consumes them. What I dont understand more is why would somebody try to mask this hate by religion (i.e Muslim extremist and the West Boro Baptist Church "W.B.C."). This "Church" preaches nothing but hate plain and simple. It picks through the Bible and focuses in on a few stern mostly old testament verses, and makes God out to be this vengeful, hateful God that loves few and hates many. I was raised Baptist, and the fact that this "Church" calls itself Baptist is an insult to the Baptist community. They have no real ties to the Baptist community and it's just a name these people gave themself, no Baptist association supports them, infact they denounce them. It would be like Osama Bin Laden calling himself a Presbyterian. They believe Homosexuals are the cause of all Americas problems, and the Military is at fault for supporting them (when did the military start supporting gays?) by fighting to protect for freedom of all Americans. The thing that just tops the cake is that whenever one of our troops is killed in combat, these people show up at the members funeral to protest. They hold up offensive signs feet from the ceremony that insult this persons service and sacrifice, and hurt this family terribly. They did it as recent as last week when a 21 year old female Marine Corporal was being laid to rest. The good news is a group of mostly veterans that call themselves the Patriot Guard Freedom Riders were there to shield this hate from the family with their benevolent deeds. They block the WBC from the families view by an overwhelming presence and flags. They are non-violent, and they dont instigate hate or anything. They are there to supprt the military member who sacrificed everything, nothing more. Im tired of hearing about these WBC members, I think they are just attention whores and are completely insane. They hate America so much and hate everything it stands for, they just need to get out!

watch this video

Lil bit confused

So I turn on the boob tube like at 4 in the morning and my choices are sports, the News (does Fox news really count?) and lastly Seasame Street. To me, four o'clock in the morning isn't a good time for sports,no time is a good time unless your playing, so me not watching sports was a given. I'm still confused why Seasame Street comes on so flippin early in the morning. Seriously what kids are up that early?! So I settled in watching the news, and it just frusterated the crap out of me.

So Hussein was hung, now every wing-nut with an opinion wants to get on the news and share their's. How about lets not. What makes it worse is that when they get on it becomes a debate, and not just a debate, but a heated one. This isn't news by the way, it's a bad episode of Ally McBeal. They start talking over each other and then making crude comments toward each other. Do they not know its 4am and they aren't going mto make a difference. Arguing and bitching on the airwaves gets you no where and gets nothing accomplished. Obviously hanging people gets things accomplished and moving, this last hanging (Saddam's)is the talk of the town. Hats off to the new Iraq government, they managed to do something in less than a couple of months that takes the United States 30 years to do. With all the red tape and appeals you cant get anything done, all that ends up happening is you have people get on the news arguing about it.

Not only that, but on New Years I saw a whole bunch of reporters in time square with a little table set up with champagne and crap on it. They opened it and were about to take a drink when one of the news anchors said " whoa now, you cant drink that on air, its not allowed". WTF!!!! America is too soft, quit worrying about offending someone and pissing people off. Seriously America, grow some balls!

If this continues Christmas and New Years will not be what they once were. Were not really suppose to call it Christmas now-a-days, you might pull a Mel Gibson and offend the Jews. Its now called Holidays, for example instead of Merry Christmas, which use to be a blanket statement, its now Happy Holidays. When you use to say Merry Christmas and you said it to a Jew, they knew what you meant, they just took Christmas and applied it to their Holiday. Santa is going to go skinny, because having a fat Santa promotes obesity in children, and we shoulnt leave him cookies anymore, instead we should leave him soy products with carrot juice to wash it down with. Nativity Scenes will undergo a change, animal right's activist prob will make America get rid of all the animals, its wrong to leave animals out in the cold (yes even plastic ones). Baby Jesus is going to go away based on the fact of child neglect on count of he didnt recieve proper medical treatment when he was born, and his parents are making him sleep outside in straw. So that means Mary and Joseph will have to be locked away when Baby Jesus is with CPS. Ok not really but you see where I'm going with this. America is too soft a country, and you better shape up before I come back, or Im going to be offending a lot of people.

You Must Insert Title To Publish Blog

So I continue to live in a strange and foreign land, and when you live in a strange foreign land you tend to do strange things. So on Halloween I decided to hike up the nearby volcano Mt. Etna with my friend Justin, instead of going to some lame mundane costume party. It took 6 hours of hiking and 2 hours of driving total to complete this task, and this was no easy task. It's very rare for me to quit something once I make my mind up to complete it, and my body was screaming for me to quit. Maybe its because we didn't start the hike until 5 o clock in the evening, and the sun was setting and for 5 hours we navigated to the top by moonlight (wasn't too hard, you just head in one direction, up!). What sucked the most is I had recently hurt my ankle (like father like son) running the PRT (see previous blog), and climbing a Volcano isn't exactly the smartest thing to do after such an injury, luckily my injury compares none to my father's.

One thing I've noticed since my enlistment into the military is that I have only spent one holiday (Christmas 2004) in a normal light. Holidays just glide past me nowadays with pretty much no thought into them. There was last Thanksgiving, where Justin and I cooked a 15 lbs turkey in a toaster oven in the barracks. I find myself working most of the Holidays at work, being that I have no children and that I am single. It doesn't bother me though, holidays just aren't the same as they once were when you were a kid, and they aren't even close to being a holiday if you have no family to spend them with.

To think about it, Holidays pretty much suck as an adult, it's not that much fun to sit at home and hear the doorbell ring 2 million times so you can pass out candy to small children (unless your Mark Foley). In fact, Halloween teaches children that welfare is ok, you don't have to work for a living, you can get food by going door to door. Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year, pretty soon we all will be taking a page out of the Texas Trailer Trash book and leaving our Christmas lights up all year round. New Years has turned into Anthony Robbins Holiday, everybody trying to improve themselves, they see Chuck Norris on a Nordictrack and they go out and buy one, or buy the ab shocker thing, the thing that gives you six pack abs while sitting on the couch eating cheetos. (Pfffffft). Easter has turned into a Rainbow fest, if your not careful you may confuse it with the next gay pride rally. Everything is pastels and rainbow colored, bunnies, chicks and little candies. A far cry from Jesus hanging on the cross, but don't tell Hallmark that. So in all reality I guess Im not missing to much when it comes to Holidays, just my family, and that's nothing different than I miss everyday.

You would just think.....

Im am about to venture off and do my PRT (physical readiness test) for the Navy. It is composed of a weigh in, toe touch, mile and a half run, push ups and sit ups. You have to be within weight regulation (if you fail this enough times your fat butt gets kicked out), you must be able to touch your toes (should be easy, lots of Sailors can't), you have 2 minutes each to perform as many sit up and push-ups. The cherry on the top is the mile and a half run. You would think being in the MILITARY, a fighting force, that you would want to be physically fit. It amazes me the amount of overweight and underfit people serving our country. Its like when I was in boot camp, we had people join the Navy who did not know how to swim. Now this may be just me, but if theres the risk of me going out to sea on a ship, I think I would learn how to swim before I volunteer to do this. We had people in Boot Camp with me who couldnt read, not because they couldnt see the words, they just didnt know how to read em. Back to the PRT. Its always funny to me, that 2 weeks before the PRT you start to see people in the gym trying to shed the lbs for the weigh in and improve their run time. Personally I think we should be physically fit year round, but of course thats just me again. Its just a pet peeve of mine to see people in their younger 20's winded after running a lap. Im going to wrap this up and just blame it on their parents. Now a days you see the signs " Caution Children at Play", but you never see the children. They are all inside playing video games for hours on end, and their parents are letting them. The United States will not remain a world power if this continues, the Asians are going to take over, they are much smarter and they play outside. I just dont see why kids play Basketball video games when they could actually go outside and play basketball. Shoot em up games are ok though, we dont really want kids going outside and shooting people, that has got to stop!!!!!!

I just woke up hating everything

I just moved into a new room, a bigger and better room. One that I do not have to share with anyone but me! Its funny the thins you find when you move, i.e.

-Keys to someone elses car???? (not mine, but they were behind my dresser)
- balls and balls of wires and AC adaptors and more wire
-empty boxes, and lots of em
-old papers and fliers
-and just a whole bunch of junk you dont need, but yet you still keep it (its like you move junk from one location to another location)

Not only did I bring junk I never use over, but I also tracked in 3 inches of dust from my old place. I guess my mom's method of using dust as a proctective covering isn't the best thing, now I'm having horrible allergies. Today was just a day full of errands, grocery shopping, unpacking, bank, stopped by to pay my phone bill (never fun) and I even had time to get pulled over by military police for speeding (which I was not) :( . Luckily I didn't get a ticket, I refused to sign it, and I told them that they were shooting radar while they were moving, cause I knew how fast I was going (cmon like my station wagon can speed). Well thats about it, nothing too special going on here, just there damn allergies.... aaaaaaaachoooo

My patience is building

Just a little musing from my weekend, well my night last night to be exact. My friends and I decided to go out into town and have a nice dinner and hit up a few Italian pubs. Fun it was indeed! Turns out there was some Italian festival of some sort in Catania (Catania= large city near base) and there was an immense amount of people out in the streets. It would have put Disney World to shame (except no fate people in scooters were out last night). Well I drove us to the restuarant and parked the car. It was agreed upon that my friend Stef would be the D.D. and drive on the way back. Well it wasnt until we got back to the car that Stef informed she could not drive a stick (should of told us before that). So we gave her a crash course in driving a standard, and no parking lots were used. Turns out that a car with 4 varying slightly unsober people out at 4am is the ideal way to learn how to drive a stick. I know how hard it is to teach a person to drive a stick, my ex-girlfriend almost put my truck into the neighborhood pond when I was teaching here, and I was stressed out of my mind. For some reason last night, I was very relaxed and calm when teaching Stef. Even when she stalled going up a huge hill and started rolling back, my nerves were good, just a pull on the parking break and all was well again. This was Stefs first time to actually achieve driving a stick, and I felt very proud. She said that her boyfriend freaks out and screams at her when he tries to teach her. My patience has greatly improved lately, and the 40 minute car ride home was actually somewhat pleasant.