Wow... its been a long time since I've commented on here about anything. Well what's happened since November? LOTS! I've changed units and am no longer with grunt infantry units. It was kind of an interesting change I've gone from being 2nd in charge of an aid station for a regiment to the #1 guy of an arty battalion. Its been tons of work and lots of head aches but its starting to pay off. Whitewidow has gotten into roller derby and I've become the team medic Its lots of fun to go watch but sometimes I cringe when I hear her go down (yesterday was a pretty rough practice). Tomorrow its off to The Mouse House with my niece, nephew for their first visit along with my sister who hasn't been there in maybe 10 years. Should be some good times, I'm taking the good camera to catch everything. Well its late and I need to get off and get some rest before a big day of Disney fun.

Oh yeah Whitewidow and I got some new ink last weekend. Mine is pretty boring but hers is out of this world awesome. We're going to enter her 2 tats (all 7 hours worth of chair time) in the upcoming Ink & Iron event at the Queen Mary in Long Beach in June.

I'm a sneaky bastard...

After taking my lovely wife whitewidow to a surprise showing of Cirque's Kooza she thought that was about it and that I'd blown my wad when it came to her birthday stuff.

Tonight she had to teach dance and I managed to sneak a mini cheese cake along with a card containing an iTunes card as well as the new Transformer movie (she's a bit of a Transformers nut).

Got to get back to save her from the kitties... I think they might like cheese cake too.

I've decided that as soon as my subscription is up I'm not going to be renewing...

My wife whitewidow's subscription lapsed and we didn't see the point of having 2 accounts for one household. We might either change this so its our account or reactivate hers since she has almost all the friends on my list and a whole lot more.

In other news its my turn to get poked and prodded for the whole fertility thing. Today I start clomid... I always thought that was for women, not men.

Happy Birthday to me.

Pissed off at the world, there needs to be about 37 hours in a day, I have no time for anything I want to do much less catch up with work and take care of projects at home before I'm out of time. Right now I've got 3 things sitting in my garage that need completion before I can even think about breaking out my work stand and getting my mountain bike up and going again.

Things to do:

Finish X, Y and do something with Z
Organize/toss/donate 75% of my clothes,
Fix this that and the other thing around the house,
60,000 mile tune up on the Xterra followed by the 80,000 mile one
Pull the computer apart and upgrade it simply because the high end stuff is now low end stuff and what's inexpensive crap being blown out for nothing will be an upgrade,
Pull the tree out of the front yard,
lay sod
fix the fountain,
get the screens repaired,
get new light/fan fixtures and put them or have them put in,
Get the AC fixed or serviced,
Turn over all the administrative and medical stuff to my new underlings,
fix the closet hangar rod,
figure out the layout/plans for the rear patio and get estimates,
pick up the guitar my wife got me 2 Christmases ago and relearn everything,
tune my bass and do the same,
actually use 4wheel drive in the truck in a situation where its actually required,
sleep in past 8 on a weekend,
get more then 5 hours sleep a night,
I know I'm missing something else but its slipped my mind.

I thought that being in garrison was supposed to be down time to take care of projects and spend it with family WTF is wrong with this picture????

.... been a long time since I've updated so I guess I must have more important things to do then type crap on here.

So, my wife and I have decided to do something a little more off the beaten path. At first she was kind of opposed to the idea till I threw her into the middle of it. If anything I'd think that she may be a bit more overboard on things then I am right now but better that then against it as far as I'm concerned. Only thing is we've had to kind of take things in phases in order for the whole thing to work. So far phase1, 2 and 3 are 100% good to go and all we have is the last phase left. Till we're finished with it things will remain a secret and I can't say what it is on here because I have a family member that is on the site.

Well I've been back in the states for about a week and I've already had quite a few things that I missed out caught up on. I got to celebrate a late Christmas with the majority of my family, and this weekend my sister and uncle came down to throw a surprise 60th birthday for my mom. Its been some great times but exhausting. I think that we've been trying to make up for 6 months of time way too fast. I'm thinking that a trip to the mouse house is in order, and with our recently renewed passes I'm sure that we'll be frequent guests once again. Next week I start some much needed leave and I'm really hoping to take care of some pretty important things around the house (maybe replace our master bathtub with a jacuzzi tub built for two if the price is right). There is a ton of stuff I'd like to get done but a bit of a get away for us is top priority, after that maybe some more socializing with friends.

In typical military fashion its a big hurry up and wait game, I've got all the gear I needed to turn in taken care of and my bags pretty much packed. I'm pretty much living out of my sea bag so that all I have to do is throw a few things into it haul ass. The flying back to the state on Thursday is starting to look like a red herring, and the key volunteer network (which keeps the wives informed of things) hasn't got a clue as to when we're actually going to be getting home making any kind of planning very difficult. All I know is that I'm going to wait until the last minute to have my internet shut off so that I have some kind of life line back home.

On another note I retook my Fleet Marine Force oral examination today after failing it simply due to such short notice and passed it, I now no longer have the 18 month window to qualify hovering over my head waiting to slam me for not getting it done. As of right now I'm not planning on staying in simply due to how difficult it is when you leave someone behind, but at the same time I don't want to have some sort of negative evaluation following me around in the event that I do decide to stay in. Who knows, I personally feel like I've gotten as much out of the military as I need to for now and its time to take back control of my life, besides right now the new GI bill for furthering my education kicks serious ass and I'd be a fool not to go after it.

Standing by for further orders in Okinawa.......

is it time to go yet?

In typical 3rd battalion 1st Marines fashion things are about as clear as mud... but there is bottom to be found if you dig deep enough. Tonight at a little before 10pm I found out that my flight home could be as soon as Thursday. I'm pretty happy about that, but the timing with everything else could have been better.

I've still got to:

1. Pack all my stuff up into bags tomorrow.

2. Clean this place to the point where it looks like no one has ever lived in a building as run down as this.

3. Disconnect my internet and lifeline back to the states.

4. Take care of any loose ends that may still need getting taken care of.


Another big surprise is that I still don't have a time table as far as the flight out, arrival time in the states, arrival time back on base or anything like that. I'm almost positively sure that it was passed to someone since you don't move about 1000 Marines and sailors with out some kind of logistical plan. I'm convinced that the whole trickle down thing as far as passing information is pretty flawed since I'm not too far from the top on the enlisted side and I'm not getting any info and I'm having to find this out from my junior guys.

Oh well screw it, less then a week of this crappy barracks room that smells of mildew and swamp no matter how much I try to do to make it go away. Less then a week till I don't have to listen to motard drunken idiocracy at 3 am banging its way down the halls making a stop at every door trying to find someone that's on the next floor up.

The best part of coming home isn't too far away.