What are you doing on Friday?

I'm going to see The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! Douglas Adams was a rare comic genius who touched millions of lives, ask anyone who's read his stuff. You can't go wrong with anything he has touched or wrote. My saddest memory of 2001 other then 9/11? When I heard that he had died of a heart attack at age 50, for a moment I thought it was a comic prank but NPR has never been known for pulling pranks. I'm glad to see this masterpiece has made it to the big screen. I hope the director had done justice to his work!

heh

As a huge fan of pulling pranks on fellow military buddies, the guy that does Dance, White Boy, Dance, has got me totally beat.

A little story about our trip to Arizona last weekend, while in Prescott, pulled into my best friend Larry's house and step out of the truck and someone starts screaming like a banshee and I see Chase and Larry running from out of the trees pointing rifles at me, hollering at the top of their lungs. I stand there and stare while they start pelting me with plastic pellets; I turn around then, ouch! Those things hurt. Well I can either run or just stand there; they’re waiting for me to run so I suck it up and wait them out. 3 pellets later and they’re done, whew. See what kind of friends I have? He’s still making up for prior pranks that I’ve pulled on him. I was at my sisters house that night and there’s trash piled up all up and down her street (free trash day, say free in Arizona, everyone will wait), her neighbor has a full set of wire Christmas Rain Deer sitting out, you know the ones with the moving heads and lights? Hmm... Larry and Jen walked out the next morning some deer doing the National Geographic thing, heh. But it’s a week later, I still have a red dot on my forehead, sigh!

Currently house shopping around San Diego, first weekend without Tragic and I'm moping slightly, mostly just tired for some reason. Too my excitement for my advanced age.

One of my blog children does good!

Soldier's Mom got an MSNBC Mention yesterday along with some other Milbloggers, you can see the written blurb from Joho the Blog! and the video here. Soldier's Mom is a local from my beautiful hometown of Prescott AZ and she has one son deployed to Iraq with the Army, one in the Navy, another that's ex Navy and a daughter that is going through Med school. Her husband is a retired Naval officer, I guess you could say she's in a military family, sorry I didn't get to do a fly by last weekend but I'll be making more trips your direction over the summer. Should be back to regular blogging soon, it's hard to concentrate when your schedule is as full as mine has been the last few weeks. Tragic was a hit with the family (and I think I was a hit with hers too!)

Push American Soldier over 150 thousand!

He's catching up with me by leaps and bounds, could you be the one to push him over?

I'm a slacker

Once again I’m doc the traveling man and with Tragic about, we’ve been focusing on each other and I haven’t had or needed much escape time. I met her family the weekend before last and this weekend she’s coming with me out to Arizona to meet my family. Hopefully it goes as well for her as it went for me meeting her family. There is always that little bit of apprehension before you bring home the girl that you plan on marrying, specially when you’re from redneck country and your fiancé has pink hair. I’m the obvious diplomat and after they meet her, they won’t be able to get enough. My favorite picture of her.

We’re getting back into the state side footing at work, blood draws and much shuffling of paperwork. There’s a viscous rumor out that my squadron medical might be having a CG inspection at the end of the month. So I’m dotting many I’s and dotting a few t’s, I think we look alright but I might as well get it done before my nights are taken up again with romance.

Sorry about the delay in blogging, with Tragic till a couple of days ago and my work load, I haven’t had much spare time. Plus the last few days, I’ve been struck by the evil game Half-life 2, which totally takes kicks butt over Doom 3 (which I also play), both are mental cocaine for game addictive personalities like me.

before my time

Visiting Tragic’s family was an endless source of wonder, with picture’s of her decorating the walls and table tops. Snap shots of her life before she knew me, to think she existed before I met her! Our lives seem so entwined in the present that it’s easy to forget that we have hardly scratched each others pasts, even with us being bloggers and putting our innermost thoughts out to the world. We’re only putting forth moments of our lives. There’s worlds of existence that we haven’t even touched.

Here’s a picture on the wall of her and a friend, what is she thinking of? What’s making her tic at this moment in life? What kind of dreams is she having? I know she doesn’t have any idea that she’s going to be marrying me, but I wonder who her ideal was back then? Over here there’s a picture of her graduating, different hairstyle and clothes. Who is this stranger that is going to be my future wife? I can’t get enough of her.

In my wildest fantasies, I had never dreamed of marrying someone like her. She isn’t the perfect bride that I imagined (not that I had a clear idea what one was supposed to be like) Somehow she’s better then any vision that I had. I don’t think having a showroom wife is the key to happiness, finding that someone that takes advantages of your flaws and likes you even more for them might be.

We all have quirks about us that make us what we are, those imperfections that make you think, no one could love this part of me. She’s almost custom tailored to my flaws, I can stare at her for hours and not get tired of looking, we’re both tragically clumsy (pun!), we’re nerdy reading people, our silly since of humor matches and not to mention that neither of us has ever fell for someone this hard, it‘s good that it‘s happening to both of us. Don’t worry, I’m not going to let this one out of my sight. Plus the added bonus, my son thinks she’s super cool.

Visiting my future inlaws and son

Tragic and I have been on a road trip all over northern California this weekend, pulled into her dads house Saturday night. Wow, yes I picked the proper girl for me, he has roughly 4 times as many books as I do and shelving units covered with electronic gear (sort of looks like my dads house but not quite as stuffed). My first hour or so in his house I spent gawking at the walls. She's lived with someone like that all of her life and to her it looks normal, if I had searched my whole life I couldn't have found someone well groomed and trained to be with a geek like me! He's pretty cool and we share many of the same nerdy interests (scifi channel get much airtime there). Next day we went to her mom's for a family dinner with her grand parents. Her grand father is a retired Marine MSgt who made it through World War II, Korea and Vietnam. When he joined, he was making under 60 bucks a month! Her entire family is a bunch of story tellers and we went in a circle passing stories around and no hun, I wasn't bored at all.

Today I'm picking up my son Collin and will play it by ear, thanks everyone for the warm welcome back. I'm very glad to be here!

Back home!

Back in San Diego safe and sound, remind me not to take L1011-500’s anymore, might have just been the model that we were flying but it was a flying junk heap. Couple of days ago, our time was sent to go through customs at 1:30 in the morning and the finished emptying out our bags and pockets around 5 and we were told to wait in a holding tent till 7 when we were going to ride the bus the airport. I was in the middle of my two hour power nap when everybody started heading for the busses. So I woke up, primed and ready to get on the plane, What? It’s broken down in the states and the flight has been pushed back 24 hours? Couldn’t they have told us this stuff before we went through the customs ringer? Jeeze Louis!

Since I was already up went to breakfast and hit the rack again to prepare for the same thing the next night, the customs folks felt bad about us going through all of that and came to our tent to go through our gear. Which meant we could sleep till they got there and after they left, so 7 the next morning we’re heading to the Airport. Climbing the stairs, I was mildly disturbed by the clanging sound the engine made. Maybe it’s something that this model does. Who knows?

I wasn’t pay attention to where I was sitting and ended up next to the guy that hates flying probably more then anybody else on the plane. We’re heading down the runway and I glance right and his arms and legs are sticking straight out and shaking! Of course a moment later, I had to ask him if he’s seen the movie Final Destination , yes he had. And I followed up with, this is probably how high they were when they blow up. Okay, when I’m tired, I have an evil sense of humor.

More gripes about the plane, the ceiling wasn’t attached on my side and hung down 4 inches (clip broke), the luggage bins above the seats were small and all 4 lavatories, were different models from each other, two of them wouldn’t flush after halfway through the journey. No first or business class, not that I ever get to sit there but it’s always a nice dream. Still it was better then military transport but after 2 weeks of total civilian air time in the last decade, would have to say this was the oldest creakiest jet that I have flown in a while.

Next shop Shannon Ireland and cold beer! Just had a token Bass, I had only been in the desert for a little over 2 months unlike the rest of my guys, they had a bit more and deserved it! I picked up a hand crafted stole for Tragic, it looked like something that she would wear and haven’t seen it’s like in the states.

Next stop was to the usual awesome welcome that we always receive at Maine, my forth time through there. I’ve shown up at all hours and someone is always there to shake our hands and give us a warm welcome, they also have cell phones so we can call home from there. Thank you! Had a token Bud Light and we were off to Mira Mar and arrived an hour and a half early. Home at last!