A flavor to ask...

Go and visit my favorite Army Wife Toddler Mom and push her over a 100,000 visitors. All it takes is a click of your mouse to put a smile on your face. If the 100,000th comes from me, I think she should buy me a beer at the Milblog meet up next year.

Torture and why I believe we shouldn’t do it

   Not that terrorists don't deserve to be drawn and quartered but as Americans, we can't afford to give up the higher ground.   Every time we press the standards of the Geneva Conventions or stretch the rules of how we can treat prisoners, we lose more of the moral high ground to tell someone else, "Hey, what you are doing is wrong!"  

 

   Looking at the view of torture from a purely professional standpoint of an enlisted guy on the ground.  Lets toss this question out there, who's going to be our boss in a few years?  This administration isn't always going to be in power.   What if our next President wins by a landslide on an anti-torture platform promising to prosecute every military person who's has broken the Geneva Convention all the way up and down the chain of command?   Even if I found myself doing this sort of thing, the powers that be can't promise up protection in the future. 

 

   I'm not willing to throw away a career that should last through a couple of Presidencies doing actions that are considered gray.   We really don't get paid enough to be the fall guy for breaking rules that have been laid out in black and white and used for half a century.      

 

   Ask Senator McCain if he ever forgot what the Vietnamese did to him.  The hurt that they caused will haunt him for the rest of his life, you find the breaking point of a man weather he is innocent or guilty and in some part of him, he's going to be your enemy for the rest of your life.   When I was in high school, I had a substitute teacher who was a POW and every time he saw me come to class, his eyes would flash with what looked like anger for a second then it would go away and you could tell he was working hard just to treat me as a normal student.   I didn't have a clue to what his problem was till one day after class he told me about being a POW and some of the things they did to him.  Me with my obvious Asian background still struck that nerve even though I was born in Arizona and am as American as apple pie.          

 

   Even though I'm a Sailor most of the people I interact with are Marines, in fact I've spent 9 years of my life working with Marines so you could say I know what I'm talking about.  All Marines who graduate boot camp are given Honor Courage Commitment cards.  This card is a reminder of the values that they are supposed to uphold.   The front of the card has the words in big letters and in small letters a brief simple explanation.  Honor is "integrity, responsibility and accountability", Courage to "Do the right thing, in the right way for the right reasons" and Commitment is "Devotion to the Corps and my fellow Marines".  

 

The back of the card states this

________is a Marine.

Marines…

1  Obey the Law

2  Lead by Example

3  Respect Themselves and Others

4  Maintain a High Standard of Integrity

5  Support and Defend the Constitution

6  Uphold Special Trust and Confidence

7  Place Faith and Honor Above all Else

8  Honor Fellow Marines, The Corps, Country and Family

 

Not one place on that card gives them leeway to do something that they might consider morally wrong.   It takes a special type of person to become a Marine, it's no walk in the park, these are regular flawed human beings who are trying to live up to a perfect example, by choice.   Most people join the Marines for a reason, they're trying to live up to some higher standard or principle that they've seen portrayed.  I've noticed that people who join and can't live up to those standards don't last long or longer then one enlistment.

 

   Marines in general don't lie, cheat or steel, there are bad apples but the environment isn't conductive towards their continued service.  Younger Marines have a harder time living up to these standards but as they age and grow into being a Marine, doing the right thing just becomes natural.   If they see a Marine who's not living up to that standard, they stop them and let out an earful.  After a while it goes against their nature to break rules (that is rules that have to do with HCC, they do break lots of other rules).   Marines don't like the idea of being the bad guy and when someone tells them they need to be the bad guy, it doesn't sit well and it shouldn't.  Every evil deed done has the potential to become a chink in our armor that will breed reasons that the enemy can use and will make the service members with deep-seated high moral codes lose faith in the institution.  

Myspace is taking over the world

   Yes, even I am a myspace user, I've noticed it as more of an enlisted phenomenon then an officer one, while almost all of our junior enlisted guys use it, I only know of 2 of our officers and they are fairly infrequent about it, one is described as a single computer geek and other officers think of him an aberration.  Walk around the internet café on any given day (or night) and you'll find 3 out of 4 computer screens showing a Myspace page open.  Ask the average 20 year old Marine what a blog is and they will say it's that button on Myspace (that most of them don't use), I only have a one of my Marines listed as a friend, most of them don't know I have a myspace (but for some reason everybody in my unit seems to know I have a blog, my guys know what a blog is!)  These kids aren't there to journal their lives or even tell a story, this is just a platform to network themselves out, meet girls and such (I already have a very lovely girl).  Gives them an outlet to touch someone outside of the wasteland that they are in.  I use mine a tool to keep in touch with friends from back in the day, school buddies, friends I've been stationed with and a few crossover ex regular bloggers who continue to blog but are doing it exclusively on myspace.   It's strange to think regular blogging has become a place where the elder generation is hanging out, I am getting old! 

 

   Myspace is the only place where you can find the group of buddies from high school or actually most of the people I hang out with in one place.  It's easier then calling, you leave you message there and they surf through, read it and leave a comment.  A very different vibe then my regular blog and I don't get near the readership that I get here (1600 over 2 years and it has mirrored this one for the past year)   People aren't going there to read blogs unless they were bloggers or blog readers before.   

 

   I'm probably one of the easiest people to find online, Google "dustman", I'm usually in the top 3, "sean dustman" and that me who takes up the top 30.   Yet I've had couple dozen people find me though myspace alone not using a search engine at all.  It's a sign things are changing.   For me it's just as easy to blog both places, I'm writing the same thing but I get a different reactions to what I write depending on where I post it.  Don't worry, Myspace is never going to take over this blog but it does offer me another demographic where I actually know most of the people in person who read my blog (where some people on myspace don't know anyone on their friends list in person.   So don't use me as the norm). 

Cranky Old People

After 3 trips out here and you start to notice trends, what works and the people who make a difference. There's always someone who goes beyond what is expected of them, doing things that aren't asked has that shining moment when they're so pissed or some subject urks them so much that they have to fix it. I had my moment when I put all of the books in order.

There's another guy in our squadron who worked construction for the decade prior to joining the Marines in his late 30's on a age waiver. He came out here and witnessed the shoddy construction that his fellow Marines hand done, primitive benches, shelves that weren't level and lean to's covering smoking areas. I've seen better tree house construction in some cases. Hidden behind his mild mannered bifocals, Sgt Elka started building a deep resentment for all of the crap that these amateurs had built and were displaying proudly.

My own little pet peeve was the crappy bookshelves that were up. People who lived in shanties would have made better bookshelves then the ones we were using. So one of our first projects to make some new book shelves and I would put everything in order. (one of our officers was also getting miffed by all of the books lying around and was requesting marshmallows in care packages for the book burning so we had to work quickly). So bookshelves were made and installed along the halls outside of medical (so I would have to go far to keep everything in order).

Sgt Elka started on making these octagon picnic tables and putting park benches all over. As usual no good deed goes unpunished and the command started putting in requests too. Soon we had a phone booth built with it's own AC unit, CO's from other units would come by and start talking about wanting such things at their units (and egad! having their books put in order!! Glad I'm going home soon, have you ever had to go through a couple thousand books that have been through a couple of years worth of dust storms? Very messy!)

It's not the people who do well on their day jobs who make the mark that everyone remembers, it's those cranky old men who get pissed off by the status quo and do something about it. I know those book shelves and picnic tables will be around for a long time after we're gone.

5 years

I was living in Paulden a very small town 30 miles north of Prescott Arizona on a 5 acre plot with 4 goats, 3 dogs, a garden and a pile of ducks and chickens.   On that particular morning like others, I had woken up before the sunrise, grabbed a shower and was off to work.  I turned on the radio which was tuned to NPR and had to turn down the volume because people were screaming into the mic, I immediately knew that something was wrong.   The normally calm and collected voices of the show Morning Edition were in the state of panic.  Reports were so fragmented so I scanned some of the AM talk radio stations to see what they were saying and there was a bunch of "oh my god's" and people crying, even worse then it was over at NPR.  

   I turned it back to NPR where they were talking about someone flying a plane into the side of the world trade center.  I listened with a growing sense of dread, tears welling up in my eyes.  I didn't have any friends that I knew of who were there but I started calling the important people in my life anyways.   There was no rhyme or reason for what I was doing, I knew I was waking some of them but some part of me needed to hear their voices.  I needed touch stones to ground me out.  

   As the day went on the news got worse and worse, I got to work and there were people jumping from buildings on live TV, huge balls of fame, pictures of taped to walls, gray dust coating everything.  It was pure pandemonium.  Why would someone do something like this?  What kind of sick-o would kill that many people?  There must be a reason. 

   All across the nation in that moment we all fell into a psychosis, unlike Pearl Harbor, we were watching events unfold live on TV.  Hundreds of millions of people all around the globe couldn't turn their eyes away from the news, I know friends who didn't work or sleep for days, just watched the news hoping for a tidbit of new information.  Some secret bit of information to answer the question of why.  In some ways I was one of them, but I went to work and slept but all of my waking hours were filled with news stories from that front line.  Visions of exploding and burning buildings were engraved on my retinas when I wasn't watching TV, I had NPR playing on my old tape player.  For the sheer chaos they were doing a pretty good job, they had a local New York affiliate reporter rollerblading around and reporting by cell phone.  I knew no good was going to come of this.  At that moment, all I wanted the people who caused this to pay.  

    I was going through a time in my life were I was abstaining from TV.  There was no TV at my house so I did the next best thing and went over to my best friend Larry's house where he was sitting there watching the news.  I grabbed a beer out of the fridge and joined him where we didn't move till late at night, we didn't want to miss any thing.  We were in a state of shock like everyone else.  This can't be happening, it was like a scene out of Independence Day.  

   I had to talk Larry out of jumping into his car and driving off to give a hand.  He had two kids and many responsibilities to take care off.  Not to mention there were countless thousands who were thinking the same thing and we were on the other side of the nation.  I wonder how many of those people lost everything by jumping off in their cars and going to help?  I'm sure there are a few of them.  

   If I lived closer, I would have done it but the car I was driving at the time wouldn't have made it, who would have paid my child support or my rent?  Every mistake in my life has been made on a spur of the moment decision and at that moment I wished I were back in the Navy, maybe I could have been someplace where I could have done something.

   A week went by and most of us were still in shock, our business was suffering too.  We specialized in hot rods and 4 X 4's, one week we were doing 500 or so hours and the next we were under a hundred hour a week.  Prescott has a bunch of retired folk living there who survive off of the stock market and were loosing their shirts.  I wouldn't have done business with us either.  I could see in my boss's eyes that he was hurting financially and I could imagine what was going to happen next, tightening the belt and laying off.  So I came up to him and said, don't worry about laying me off, I can go back into the Navy.

   So a couple of weeks later, I was pulling into the gates at 32 ^nd street in San Diego.  Guards everywhere and every other vehicles getting searched, they didn't even want you bringing a knife on base.   I think they got tired of searching my suburban which held a mechanics set worth of tools, maybe 300 books and all of my clothes, all stuffed in there to the top.  I had a lawn chair in back that I would pull out and a book to read when they did, usually took them 45 minutes to an hour but I never complained, it would take a 6 man team to search it in that amount of time but I really didn't have anything to hide.  

   I regret losing a rank coming back in and starting over but I can honestly say that this has been a good experience.   My regrets are minimal, being sent out into a war zone as frequently as I have isn't always joyous but if I had stayed in Arizona, I wouldn't have met my wife.   Hopefully I made a positive difference in some peoples lives and through this blog helped people get a small snapshot about what is going in that war of ours.  

 

It's crazy to see how far I've come in five years. 

Ethics

I've been cranky all week and there really isn't a reason for it. Two great weights are off of my shoulders, my advancement exam and the FMF Warfare board but I still feel like there's weight on me. Earthquake weather? I feel an anticipation that something is about to happen or I could be just going stir crazy from being away from my lovely bride so long which sounds reasonable too.

Case in point, I chewed out a poor Corporal this morning about breaking my coffee pot and not wanted to help with getting a new one and it ended up being me lecturing him on ethics. I've always taught the people working for me, if you break it, it's your responsibility to fix it or if it's beyond your means help get it fixed. At least make an effort unless it is an absolute accident or act of god. This strikes the same chord in my brain that stealing does, stealing is bad and disrespectful. What separates the humans from the savages is the respect for each other. Everything starts off with respect and respect for each others property, you treat people how you expect to be treated and work your way up from there. Respect starts out at a relationship between two people and it expands out to your family, friends, school mates, coworkers, groups and when you get far enough up the pole, nations.

Wars start when one group of people lose their respect for another. 9/11? It was a small bunch of savages who had no respect for the property of US citizens. With the actions of that day and not taking responsibility for their actions, a relative handful of people have caused a chain reaction which has caused countless deaths all around the globe and used their fellow Muslim brothers take the weight of the actions of a few. Some people are saying that we have over reacted, I think we should have waited and hunted till we had the names of all of the people involved and found out where they lived back where ever they came from and grew up had their training and dropped a daisy cutter (a really cheap big bomb) on each of those places at the same time. Sure a couple of thousand people would have died but it's better then the tens of thousands since and would have made them responsibility for their actions and the next group who thought about doing it would have had second thoughts.

Back to the coffee pot, these relationships start between two people showing respect for each other and each others property. Values need to be installed in individuals, we can't expect the nations to act with respect if the individuals do not have any values. While I know I'm fairly laid back about most things, you could even call me a slacker and it wouldn't be a lie but moral integrity is something I'm no slouch on. I don't lie, cheat nor steal and I don't let my son nor the people around me do it either.

The Blog of War

Last year Matt from the milblog Blackfive sent out a mass email to all of his fellow Milbloggers asking who would be willing take part in an effort to a gathering of our best blog posts in a single book called The Blog of War (it just went on sale at Amazon where you can search the inside of the book, type my name in to find what I wrote). After gathering these posts up and spending some time weeding and editing with our approval he found a publisher in Simon & Schuster so now I and a who's who list of military bloggers can now be called published authors (yes we got paid!) Thanks Matt!

This is the first conflict that there are American troops on the ground putting their thoughts out to the world in real time. Which even I admit isn't always a good thing but we do a fairly doing good job policing each other and our own posts because we have seen what happens to the people who don't and it's not pretty.

For good or bad, we have helped change public perception about the troops as individuals. Instead of a hero who you might see a single story about then drops out of the lime light. Milblogger have an ongoing online journal where anyone who has an internet connection can interact with. There are no lines drawn or holds barred. Milblogs in turn have been patriotic, angry, sad, raw, despairing and joyous, this is the story about how we feel, we're not a news agency taking a look at the big picture. We're just the eyes of that one lone individual looking at a war in a very up close and personal manner and sharing it. A few of us have been lucky enough to turn their blogs into a financial gain and have published books based on their story. (not me, you wouldn't believe how uninteresting my life is 99 percent of the time of which I'm extremely happy for). When I first started, there was less then 30 milbloggers out there, now there's literally thousands, every other person out here has a myspace account and if one out of ten uses the blogging portion, that adds up to a lot of people telling their story

I think the review from Publishers Weekly on Amazon is ironic " Every writer supports America's war aims, admires the President, despises enemy fighters (generally referred to as terrorists) and holds a low opinion of Americans who oppose the war (generally referred to as liberals). " I do despise terrorists but some of my best friends are liberals but I also have lot's of conservative friends too. Just because you don't believe in killing someone doesn't make you my enemy, there is nothing at all wrong with wanting peace nor disliking our elected officials.

Considering my portion of the book took place a few weeks after 9/11 and was mostly me writing about going to an open mic poetry reading where my best friend Won said her goodbye to me in poetry in front of a large crowd of peaceful hippie types. She wrote about how I am no longer her "sensitive ponytail man" and have been "shorn into a beautiful Monk". The shorning part actually happened at my going away party (very wild night, I'm sure there's pictures floating around somewhere). The pony tail resides in a plastic bag to show people yes there was a version Sean 1.0 a couple of years ago and I was a long haired hippie.

We were as far from a pro-war crowd as you could get that night but her message still reached an audience so receptive that some burst into tears after she was done reading (which I've never seen happen before). Contrary to what you imagine as a stereotypical Milblogger, not all of us are conservatives nor Republican as the Publishers Weekly review implies. We're from all walks of life and individuals who dance to different tunes.

The book is a great cross section of what Milbloggers have to offer and I couldn't recommend it any more. I've already purchased a copy for our book shelf out here and for my parents, check it out!

Care package thanks!

Just wanted to say a big word of thanks to Chris Huse of Onida South Dakota purchasing the first season of Doctor Who off of my Amazon Wish List, I've been wanting to finish the rest of the season for a while, thanks and Pat C, Debbie S and Debbie D from Operation Care Package for the great care packages they sent to Sherwin, Chris and I, thanks again!

I'm not the only medical person of my squadron who made the news

My boss also had a story written about her. Not much going on over here, studying for my advancement test and dreaming of coming home. After spending months on end looking at just brown, it's nice to return to the techno color of my wife. I'm living every geeks dream, married my very own Anime Girl. Haven't regretted it for a second, not much longer hun!

Oh here's a picture of my team trying to take out Superman.

5444

   Twice a year, the powers that be in the Navy come out with a Bibliography of the material you need to study for the bi annual advancement test to get promoted to the next rank up the ladder.  Each bib is specific towards the rate rank of test you are taking and tells you exactly what information you need to study, chapters, instructions, workbooks, manuals, etc.

 

   The exam I'm currently studying for is the HM1, E-6 exam.  After finishing up my FMF warfare device and my brain was still in the study mode so I picked a manual out at random and started reading.  Over the past couple of weeks I've literally read 1500 or so pages and my brain was starting to ache and my eyes get blurry trying to memorize this supremely dry material.  

 

   I needed a break so I decided to figure out how much we were actually studying, I'm a number type of guy and I'm good at laying down figures and stats.  So I pulled up every piece of information that the bib said we should know about and added it all up.  Five thousand four hundred and forty four pages.   Egad!   5444 minus 1500= 3944 divided by 15 days till the exam, each day I need to read 263 pages of adult Snoppy language and let it sink into my noggin.   Bleh.     

 

   So if I disappear for the next few weeks, it's unlikely that I've been blown to smithereens, I might wish that I had every once in a while but it probably didn't happen.  And if I am here, it's because I'm using the blog as a release from scholastic tension.

How those bombing asshats affected my travel plans this year

1. No more bottles liquor or perfume from the duty free shops. I wonder how many billions the people who run the duty free shops are going to loose? Not that I've been a big buyer of either but I'm sure there are people out there that are. That whole line of business is going to go bankrupt, thanks for nothing Osama!

2. Not being able to brush my teeth after a twenty four hour flight. Yuck! This one hits close to home, not only are we going to be smelly from the hours we spent waiting on the plane in 100 temperature and not taking a shower in some cases 2 to 3 days, we also can't brush out teeth for the entire flight. So much for a first impression when we get off the plane and kiss the love of our life.

3. Guess all of those dreams of future in-flight internet services are out too since we're not allowed to bring laptops into the plane. Oh no, have you seen how military people load up sea bags? If it can't survive an 8 foot drop to the deck, you shouldn't put it in your stowed luggage. It's not so bad on the when I fly civilian airliners, I have a hard suitcase that a 200 pound man could do a dance on top of without it harming the laptop we don't get that option in the military.

4. I've had all of my luggage misplaced a couple of times, how many of you guys have your entire contact list programmed into your cell phone? Guess we're going back to using payphones and little black books. If my luggage gets misplaced in another state, there goes all of my conveniences of modern technology, my cell phone, my car alarm which is waiting for me in the parking lot for 8 bucks a day and several thousand dollars worth of computer garbage which I've seemed to have collected.

There should be limits on what we are willing to give up in our chase towards safety. We're letting a very small group of bad guys dictate how we live our lives and putting more power into the hands of the people who enforce these rules. We're being forced to turn back the clock 25 years to a time when our lives weren't controlled by electronic gadgets. Not that I have anything to hide and I know it's important to keep us safe from the bad guys but how far are we willing to go? I don't want our lives to end up like a scene from the movie V for Vendetta. I might be fighting a battle for freedom out here, but there are other battlefields in this war being fought tooth and nail not by rifle or sword but by pen and votes, on television and on the web by other warriors, you don't need a gun or to take someones life to get involved, tomorrow it's everyones future we're talking about today.

Information Psychosis

It's a term I picked up out of a Roger MacBride Allen book that was written in 1990 before half of the globe was plugged into the internet.  It's a term for people who had become overwhelmed by information, I'm sure I'm not the only person out there suffering from this?  As bloggers we get online and spend hours just gathering information that we don't even use.  We each have a list of websites that we click through like clockwork, some of us spend more time taking in information then doing anything else.  I don't even want to think about the cases Glenn Reynold's or Matt Drudge are hiding in their closet, take them away from news and they're probably basket cases. 

 

Which brings me to the point of why I'm talking about this.  Our base was cut off from the outside world for the few days because of an incident which didn't even make CNN or FOX because of the British Terror Plot.  While very important, that wasn't the only thing happening in the world yet according to their tickler and reporters that's all that was happening.   They spent three days rehashing the same words with hardly any new information, today they're covering other stories again but don't they realize that this drives more people away from them to the internet?  If they were the only source of news you might imagine that was the only news out there.  

 

After being cut off for a few days from the internet, we missed stories like the biggest Typhoon to hit China in 50 years?   Do we not care?  What's happening in Israel or Iraq?  Nope not interested.   What about that big pipeline in Alaska which supplies a good percentage of the domestic oil to the US that is going to be shut down?  Hey there was tickler spot for that!   Who decides what's important for us to see?  How many people were tired of seeing the same images of an airport, the ratty house in Britain with the guys in the bright coats, the camera zooming away from those fellows in the white robes and reporters treading off a list of things you couldn't bring on a plane.  For a news junky like me, that was just a load of crap.

Another one bites the dust..

I just learned that one of my favorite authors David Gemmell has passed away, he wrote Legend and Waylander and speaking as a guy who reads quite a bit, every word he wrote was quality stuff.  Much of his work took place in different series, colorful detailed worlds that blossomed under his pen.  Everything that Dave has written is on my shelves and he'll definitely be missed.  While he does write epic fantasy, every book also stands alone, you can pick up any of his novels and start from there, so no strings left untied.   His characters made you want to be more like them.  If you want an insight into warrior creed, this guy had the inside scoop.

 

At least he didn't leave us on a cliff hanger like what could possibly happen if Robert Jordan kicks the bucket (sorry RJ).  Robert brought us into his imagination and his worlds were so close to reality that I would wonder which world I woke up in when I hit the snooze button.  The Wheel of Time is probably one of the biggest achievements in epic fantasy, millions of people are hanging on to each of his words waiting for the final battle and what happens?   Right before he gets is last book written, he falls ill with some evil disease called Amyloidosis and is admitted into the Mayo Clinic.  I'm praying for his recovery but investing months of my time on his alternate reality and having it collapse around me without the answers would be somewhat disheartening.

 

Other Authors who have died on me?  Of course there is Douglas Adams who had actually stopped writing and was making movies and video games when he keeled over at age 49 in 2001.   Two hard science fiction authors that I liked and close friends Robert L Forward and Charles Sheffield were taken out 42 days apart by two separate brain tumors, (anybody else think that's strange?) they were both working on space elevators, space tethers and different types of star drives, alas, they didn't get to see any of their work be put into production because they died in 2002.  

 

But out of all of the writers in existence, no one has strung along as many fans for as long as Robert has, 16 years since Eye of the World came out and the next one (if it ever sees the light of day) is called A Memory of Light and rumored to be 1500 pages long (I might have to take leave to read that if and when it comes out).   After spending so much of my life reading this guys work, stepping into a Wheel of Time novel is like returning to my home town and I pray he doesn't die before he finishes it.

 

I finished Terry Goodkind's Phantom which I thought was a vast improvement over the last two Sword of Truth novels, if a bit gory for the average reader, like the Wheel of Time series, only one more book left.

Excuse me while I fall into this book

I'm taking a time out from everything to dive into Terry Goodkind's Phantom which just arrived fresh from Amazon directly into my grubby little hands along with a copy of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. Which was on sale in hard back which brought my grand total to 25.96 which makes it eligible for free shipping and handling! Yay! Took 9 days to from the time I ordered it till it arrived. Not to bad Amazon!

Yes, I'm a reader of epic fantasy novels which tells you my level of geekdom. My calendar is marked off by release dates of authors that I follow, the next book on my list is Dzur by Steven Brust which comes out on the 8 ^th of this month. Wow, that's in a couple of days. The other epic fantasy readers in the squadron have been coming by just to touch Phantom which is sort of funny now that I think about it.

I finally have time for some reading, I've been studying for the last few months for my FMF (Fleet Marine Force) Warfare Pin, it's a written test and an oral board covering all of the aspects of the Fleet Marine Force, history, weapons, tactics, important people, ORM (operational risk management), NBC and countless others. It wasn't easy at all and for any of my corpsman readers, yes I'm a slacker. I should have had this done a long time ago but I'm pretty happy with my timing, it's not affecting the time I spend with my family and there was a huge pause between books this summer from the authors that I follow.

Other epic series that I'm following include George R.R Martin's, yes Harry Potter and Robert Jordan who I hope is recovering somewhat from his illness so he can finish the last book of the Wheel of Time Series (12 ^th book and final book). It's a series which I've been following my entire adult life and if he dies, me along with a million other fans are going to be left hanging like what almost happened when Stephen King was ran over by that van.

Well I'm hitting the book so take care!