Posts Tagged ‘life’

• Something different every day

  Date: 2010.06.18 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 0

  We’ve hardly had any real downtime since I’ve been home and it isn’t a bad thing. We’ve been busy hanging out with the extended family, attending weddings, playing with the dogs, cleaning the house, and we’ve been having a great time doing all of that. We won’t have any slow days until sometime next year if we ever have one again. This is the life we live and its busy and a little bit different each day.

  The wedding is right around the corner and we’re putting all of the finishing touches on the planning. I’ve still got to make a few reservations for our honeymoon in Kauai but we’ve got the important bits done (airline tickets, hotels, and a rental car). I figure I’ll set up one or two things ahead of time but I’ll leave the rest open for free time. We’re supposed to go and relax – I’m bad at relaxing. I guess that’s why I don’t mind the pace our lives have taken.

  Parent, grandparents, and other relatives will be traveling to the Pacific Northwest for the wedding. I want to make sure that I thank all of them for taking time out of their schedules (which are probably as busy as ours) to make a trip out here. I hope I have the time to fit it all in. It’s going to be a crazy couple of days as we see everyone come and go – in fact, we’ll leave before some of them do (my parents are included in this group).

  Ok, I should stop typing – change my clothes and head to the garage – I’ve got some unfinished projects and I don’t mind a bit.

• The Happy Guy

  Date: 2010.03.07 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 0

  If you’re reading this you’ve obviously been here before. Seldom does this website get random visitors so I know most of my audience. You’re aware of my temperament. You know that I like to rant and I fly off the handle with ease. This blog (in its various incarnations) has been a venue for my frustration for the last… 7 years? Lately, I’ve noticed a change that makes it harder for me to deliver my normal shtick. I’ve become “The Happy Guy.”

  You’ve seen that guy in the morning. It’s early, the sun isn’t over the horizon, and this guy is wide awake and ready to go. He’s walking at a brisk pace and is probably smiling about something. Why in the world would anyone have something to smile about so early in the morning? He hums and whistles little tunes to himself and talks to almost everyone he sees. He is quick with the “good mornings” followed by smile. His smile, unlike yours, isn’t forced this early in the morning. He does it because he is “The Happy Guy.” His voice is booming – he is trying to wake you up. He says things like “isn’t everybody here a giant ray of sunshine”. You want to stab him in the neck – stupid “Happy Guy.” He thanks all of the servers as they load his plate with breakfast. He doesn’t like breakfast but he’s a “Happy Guy” and he is excited to face the day ahead so it doesn’t bother him. You hate breakfast – you want to have coffee and cigarettes and go back to bed – this “Happy Guy” is really getting on your nerves. All day long you see him smiling, joking, and laughing with anyone and everyone. Sure, this “Happy Guy” swears every which way to Sunday and he has his gripes but as soon as they are out of the way he is back to being happy. You want to stew on your unhappiness and hold it close – he lets it go as fast as it’s out of his mouth. You envy “The Happy Guy” but you know that you could never be like that…

  How in the world did I make this transformation? I have a fantastic fiance waiting for me at home, I’m going to get married later this summer, and I have a new job and a new future on the horizon. I’m also tired of being sad and angry. It’s so much easier to smile the day away – much to the chagrin of everyone else. Frankly, I’m glad to be the happy guy. I’m glad I made it out of my rut. Sadly, it leaves me with much less to write about. I’m sure I’ll think of something.

• Havoc in our day

  Date: 2009.12.18 | Category: Life as we know it, family | Response: 0

  Havoc – general destruction, devastation, desolation or wasting. In our case, its a little puppy that hasn’t destroyed anything as of yet. She does have a nose for socks and she always seems to find them. They can be off the floor but if we leave her unwatched for a minute or two she’ll come out with one. It’s like “hey, look what I found!”
  

  
  
  

  Jessica likes the puppy

  
  
  Puppy training is not without issues but it does help to be down to two dogs. She picks up alot from Duke and that certainly helps us out. Hopefully she doesn’t pick up any of his bad habits. She is crate trained (miraculously) but house training is still going to take some more time. Yesterday, for example, she woke up from a nap to follow us to the basement. When she got to the laundry room where we were standing she decided she had to pee. There was no warning – simply, I’ve got to pee. Great.
  
  
  

  They like each other

  
  

  She and Duke get along great – when I went to the back yard I found them snoozing in the same dog house. She follows him practically everywhere he goes. For the first week she slept in the same dog kennel with him and she snuggled right up to him. Now that she is in her own kennel I no longer get to sleep in. As soon as my alarm goes off she reminds me that she has a small bladder and that she needs to go outside. Reminding me is a good thing – not pooping on the floor is a good thing – and I’ll grudgingly take her out early in the morning as long as the arrangement continues.
  

  
  
  

  She really likes Duke

• The wait sucks

  Date: 2009.06.17 | Category: Life as we know it, work | Response: 0

  In 13 hours I will know the results. In 13 hours the results of the job “interview” will be available for all to see. In 13 hours I might be happy or I might be waiting until next year so that I can try again.

  I’m waiting on promotion results to arrive and I’m not sure if I made it. I know what the average cut-off score is for the entire Air Force but I don’t know what the cut-off score is for my career field. I know roughly how well I needed to do on the promotion tests but I have no idea what my actual scores were. The wait sucks…

  Last year I blew my chance by not taking the test seriously. This year, however, I spent a lot of time studying the test material. I can only hope that I studied the right material.

  *crosses fingers*

• Rock usually wins

  Date: 2009.04.13 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 2

  In a game of paper-rock-scissors any of the three can win. In a game of rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock most people can’t keep track of the rules so the winner is seldom decided. When you play rock vs. eye rock always wins.

  On Friday I wanted to take care of as many chores around the house as I could before Jessica got home from work. I started by mowing the yard and it was rather uneventful. I had some grass to trim around the edges of the house so I grabbed the weed eater and fired it up. I made sure to wear my protective glasses because nobody wants to go blind – the chicks really don’t dig it. I was almost done when the really really crappy happened. I hit a rock.

  But wait you might say – you were wearing protective glasses and they should have prevented injuries. You are correct – I was but irony loves to kick me in the ass. Unfortunately rocks like to bounce and this one bounced off my cheek (directly beneath my eye socket), ricocheted off the glasses, and bounced off my eye. Yes – it was painful. Somehow all of that military training kicked in and I immediately shut of the weed trimmer and went inside to irrigate my eye to remove any remaining debris. I knew that I didn’t want to rub my eye or really keep it open. I grabbed my recall roster and called someone to give me a ride to the ER as I felt sheepish about calling an ambulance. Joe, Jessica’s dad, works in the same firehouse that would probably have responded and I didn’t need any excess attention – especially if it turned out that I was overreacting.

  I called Jessica and she wasn’t as calm as I was. I was scared that I would be blind – she was just scared. She quickly jetted out of work and headed down to the ER. She had a visitors pass but didn’t have tags on her car so she had to grab mine to get onto Ft. Lewis. I got to Madigan (the army hospital) about 20 minutes after it happened and I was triaged and quickly rushed through. Most of the people that are in the ER have colds and don’t want to make an appointment – when you have a life/limb/eyesight injury you get pushed right to the front of the line. I was the last one in the waiting room and one of the first ones out. Jessica got to the waiting room without stalling my car – imagine driving a picky clutch while you are extremely nervous while having little experience and driving in rush hour traffic on a Friday. All circumstances considered she did quite well.

  The doc in the ER numbed my eye (hooray for medicine) and went a little overboard with the eyedrops. For the next 30 minutes part of my face was numb. He wasn’t an ophthalmologist so he could only do a basic check to see that I had torn a chunk off my cornea and that it was hanging loose. Gross huh? He called for an ophthalmologist to come in and do a further consult.

  The other doc came and told me that the tear wasn’t in my central vision and I had a giant sigh of relief. I wasn’t going to be blind (HOORAY!). He removed the torn chunk with a Q-Tip and gave prescribed me some painkillers and some ointment. Yes, he touched my eye – some people in my family are probably squirming just thinking about someone else touching their eye. It’s not that big of a deal.

  We had a snafu getting the medication and it ended up taking an extra two hours after diagnosis and consult to get out of there but at least I knew that I was going to be ok. My eye is doing quite well and it should be mostly healed in another day or two.

  I’m a lucky guy – unfortunately I wasn’t lucky enough to have the rock bounce off the glasses in the first place.

• It's Mine

  Date: 2008.11.22 | Category: work | Response: 2

  These past two weeks have been probably the most stressful weeks I’ve ever been through. About a month ago I was notified about an official position in my lab, with my exact job duties. Basically they are getting rid of my intern position and giving the production team another official tech. There was also a position for the other group that works in our lab, Germination Research. I am currently working with the production team so I applied that position. They told us that the research position and the production position would be interview together as a pool and they would pick from the pool. I then was giving a date for a phone interview on the 12th. It was weird. I have never been in a position where I can’t see the people asking the important questions. I guess I really like to be able to see if they think I’m complete idiot or not.

  The phone interview was 30 minutes, 8 questions. I got through it in about 10 minutes. I must have done O.K. because I was then scheduled an in person interview on the 17th. Yeah, I was freaking out with nervousness. I have to say that I didn’t think the interview went that bad. My answers had a little more substance to them as to take up more time. Then next day we had a “meet and greet” and program overview. They served us lunch and went over the basic idea of the project. Then, they brought in everyone from the lab. The people that I know and work with. This was the worst part of the whole experience. I didn’t want to be that person who was “buddy-buddy” with everyone in the room, making the other candidates feel awkward so I just hung back and watched everyone interact awkwardly. Then I had to leave the room so they could all give their input about the candidates. After that point I couldn’t really be nervous anymore. It was out of my control and all I could do is wait.

  Then, that night at about 6pm my phone rang. It was my boss who had called to let me know that I was the best candidate for the Production position and the job was mine. So as of December 15th, 2008 I will be an official Weyerhaeuser employee with full benefits and about $35K a year. Not too shabby for a first job. Looks like my hard work paid off. Go me!

• 31 days, 744 hours, or 44460 minutes

  Date: 2008.08.27 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 0

  Irregardless of which way you add up the numbers, I’m going to spend a long time away from work. I have a bunch of leave available and I decided, hey, why not take a bunch of it all in one giant go? I won’t be traveling far from home during the duration of my leave but I’ll have plenty of time away from work to goof around. I only have a few goals while I’m on leave

  1. enjoy my time away from work
  2. avoid thinking of work
  3. goof off whenever possible
  4. read a book or two
  5. study
  6. hang out with Jessica
  7. hang out with my parents (who will be here from the 6th-12th)
  8. wear all of the dogs out
  9. Train for snowboarding season (its right around the corner – hooray!!!!)
  10. Go to the Mariners game on the 9th (my birthday coincidentally)

  None of the goals are monumental and all are achievable. The only ones that will take a little bit of willpower to achieve are numbers five and nine.

  I’m going to study for a few CLEP tests while I’m on leave so that when I return to work I can enroll in school. Due to the manning situation at work (we don’t have enough manning at work) I’ll still be on mid-shift for the next few months. The current schedule looks like I will be working nights until Thanksgiving. It could be drawn out longer but we’ll see what happens when we have people return from this current rotation to the desert. As a military member we sacrifice, this is my current sacrifice; I work a shift that nobody else wants because I’m the only guy that can do it. It messes with my personal life and its going to mess with it further when I enroll in classes in late September. I should have plenty of time to do my homework at night but some of my classes are going to be during the evening. There is no way that I can avoid that – oh well, gotta get my education finished sooner or later.

  Training for snowboarding season means a tweak in my workout regimen. I’ll target all of the flexors and core muscles in my body while doubling my lower body workout. I lift legs once every 5 days and do cardio every other day. I’m planning on doing a two day leg lifting split that will have me doing one day of ridiculously heavy lifting followed by another day of endurance lifting. I’m not worried about the heavy lifting – I’m worried about the endurance lifting. Simply put, its going to hurt – alot.

  I should have a busy, and hopefully relaxing, month ahead of me.There are times when it’s great to be a government employee – thank god for paid leave.

• Getting the time in

  Date: 2008.07.29 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 1

  I’ve been getting to the gym and doing my time but the quality of my workouts have suffered. The gym at Balad was absolutely packed with equipment, unfortunately, that is not the situation at McChord’s gym. For some reason, the quality of my workout has been slipping but I’m still doing my time. I can definitely tell that I’m not getting an adequate amount of stretching – I feel so old some days. I’ve got to give myself a little credit because all I do is move awkward heavy boxes all night long. The lightest box that I move weighs 71lbs and I’m bound to move at least a dozen of them a night.

  Everyone is taught how to properly lift an object at some point during our working lives. Use your legs, don’t twist your back etc. These damn things are so awkward that its nearly impossible to practice the proper lifting techniques. My lower back bears the brunt of the work.

  I’m still going to the gym – I’m still putting my time in – I’m just not seeing the same gains that I saw while deployed. I haven’t seen any weight gains since I returned so at least I’ve got that going for me. I just need to find a way to spice up my workouts – cayenne pepper maybe?

• Loosing our minds over wiffle ball?

  Date: 2008.07.10 | Category: ahh the news, links! | Response: 2

  I caught an interesting article about kids that built their own wiffle ball field in the middle of undeveloped city grounds. They cleared the land, put up an American flag, and put up their version of Fenway’s green monster.

  Soon after – the lawyers came.

  I’ll let you read the rest of the article for all of the gory details but I’ve got to wonder – what the heck is going on in our country? When I was a kid I spent most of my time running through fields or goofing around in the overgrown horse pasture that was next to my house. An odd tidbit – my mom tried to burn down that pasture and the city got to try out its brand new fire truck for the first time. The entire town was my playground and I could normally find something to keep me occupied – my parents might try to refute this statement as I was known to come to them complaining of boredom. Sure, I was destructive as heck while I was out but my creativity and energy level were the only things that could slow me down. Well it was almost the only thing save for my mother yelling for me to come in for dinner which often had a damper on whatever shenanigans I might have been up to at any given moment.

  There were no lawyers. Neighbors didn’t complain – well, at least that I knew. I was free to be a kid. I didn’t destroy anyones personal property and neither did these kids – so whats the big deal? I’m not really sure – maybe some of us forgot how great it was to be a kid.

• Electrified Dogcatraz

  Date: 2008.07.08 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 0

  I had to stay late at work today – joy of joys! They provided me and my car a ride home because driving tired is as bad as driving drunk. Imagine staying up until 3AM – yeah – that’s the level of tired I was experiencing. I had consumed copious quantities of caffeine but the net result was a frantic heart and a barely functioning brain. My body was trying to stay awake but my brain had already hung its hat up for the evening. Jessica’s parents came out and made some “modifications” to the dog kennel and the back yard while I was asleep. I knew they were coming but I was unaware of when they arrived and when they left – when I’m asleep the red army could overrun our country and I wouldn’t have a clue.

  The yard is now completely surrounded with hot wire – Texas had old sparky – Washington has dogcatraz.

  Try and get out of that one Lick – I dare you.