Navy Ball Lemoore Style 2009

Just sharing some pictures from the latest ball that the bride and I went to last week. The last few weeks have been a blur of flu shots and filing forms, not much of interest happening on this side of the world. Busy mostly with living life instead of writing about it and life hasn't been too bad. I need to find my writing bug again and I'm sure it will come again, it's just not hitting me right now.

R.I.P. Josh Wright

If anyone is wondering why I've been in a mad frenzy of picture posting, well anyone who knows me on Facebook. Part of it is because of my friend Josh Wright, who passed a couple of days ago at the age of 31 due to complications of his condition. If you didn't know Josh, he had a blog called Devil Dogs War and was a great supporter of Marines. He wasn't a Marine but it was his greatest dream to be one, he lived for the Marines but it wasn't meant to be, he had contracted Hepatitis C when he was a child and his health was always a bit shaky but he lived for supporting us and thousands of Marines out there received his care packages. I had promised to share my pictures with him months and months ago and hadn't got around to it yet and.... now it's just a bit too late, so I'm putting many of those pictures I was going to give him over there. Rest in Peace Josh, you will be missed.

8 Years

I’ve written about this before and don’t think I can improve on what I wrote here and here, the details were fresher on my mind. 8 years later and 9/11 was one of those events in my life that totally shaped how my entire future would turn out. Two buildings tumbling down in a city 3000 miles awake shook everything, the repercussions rang the world like a bell and I think that ringing will echo for a long long time. In a sense, my life split in two that day. There was the person I was before which included my early Naval Service then getting out and going to school and taking up work as a mechanic, I was carefree and living for the moment. Then 9/11 where the shock of the events pushed me outside of my life and I looked down at doing and knew, it wasn’t where I was supposed to be at. The next day, I signed back up with the Navy and a couple weeks later, I was back in, minus a rank.

Two years and five months later, I was making my first trip into Iraq and eventually I would spend over 2 years of my life in that desert. This dry and inhospitable place soon became my home away from home, humans can get used to anything. In many ways, in my journeys into the war zone, I was lucky. No one I cared about died nor was I hurt but I could see the toil that repeated trips was were having. To me, to my fellow military members, war changes you and the person who went in isn’t the same person who comes out the other side.

It’s strange to say but for the troops on the ground, this might be the safest war ever conducted. We had the best gear protective gear ever issued to a military force, yes there are deaths but compare the numbers to any other war or any major battle and it’s a drop in the bucket. We were surviving, running through 120 degree heat carrying around 80 pounds of battle gear and more often than not, making it home whole. In body at least. ORM, Operational Risk Management was the key phrase, we get more safety briefs then most people in the civilian world could imagine and as boring as they are, they seem to be working.

So many changes have happened since I came back in, medically, we’re now tracking all of our immunizations online, our notes are now written on a networked system. There are still bugs being worked out but I wonder what the result will be in 10 years? Military medicine in the 90’s was basically unchanging and now, the changes are so fluid and fast moving that if you turn your back, you won't recognise what's waiting for you at your desk.

This month, I’m re-enlisting for probably the last time, I’m 4 and a half years out from my 20 and I’m going to have to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. Hopefully it involves hanging out with the wife and dog alot. I’m proud to have taken part in these great events, when I’m talking to my grand kids, I can say, "I was there", and if they are so inclined, they can come back here and catch a snapshot of what I went though. They’ll see the gaps and wonder, what happened there and I’ll still have a few tales left to tell.

Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?

Alright, I have a weakness for Joss Whedon but this video is actually by his brother Jed and stars the lovely Felicia Day. What does this have to do with Milblogging, why, nothing at all. From the people who brought you Dr. Horrible, enjoy.

4 year Anniversary in San Francisco

We decided to make a trip to the city for our anniversary this year and stay at the Marine Memorial Lodge, if you are in the military membership is free, you have to either go there and show them your ID card or call and they can give you the information you need to fax them. With the membership, it's 69 dollars a night for weeknights and 89 dollars a night for weekends, don't miss the free breakfast on the 12th floor, parking is an additional 22 dollars per day which is added on to your bill. The first night in town, we walked down to Sutter Square and explored the area till after dark then had sushi at a literal hole in the wall diner with 4 tables and our single beer for the trip (yes, it is possible to have fun without getting drunk).

Our window was on the 7th floor

8 pillows!!

These hearts were all over the place

This was one strange looking dude

The next day we hiked to the top of Nob hill and purchased all day Muni-passes for 11 bucks which let you ride the cable cars and the city buses but not the BART. Well have to save exploring where that BART thing goes for another trip. The cable cars basically go in a big X well more of a t across downtown going up and down these steep hills and we went to all of the ends. Exploring China Town in the morning and dropping a wad of cash on some swanky clothes for the wife, Sutter St that afternoon and finished off the day at Fisherman’s Wharf that night with clam chowder, took advantage of the Ripley's Believe it or Not military discount 6 dollars and change) and crawled back to our hotel.

cable cars

On the cable car

China Town with someone driving a Ford Fusion like mine

The following morning, we had a huge free breakfast (we missed the day before to our loss) and checked out and drove over to the Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, looking at the gun encampments and getting a few more pictures then across the bridge. I haven't been across the Golden Gate since I was a baby, that afternoon we lazed around Muir Beach. A great time.

On other things, I’ve been concentrating on work so much that I haven’t had much time to do much else and by our readiness numbers, it’s showing. I don’t mean to slack of on the blog but I want to get my real life in order before I put too much attention to my cyber life. If you’re interested in some Navy Blogs of people who actually have a life, check out Deploying in a “Sea” of Sand. He has some great links to other Sailors who are IA “Individual Augmentation” to somewhere else, currently, I’m in the middle of his snag which he posts about so I feel free to mention, hopefully it all works out soon.

Well I got to get back to cleaning up a bit before the bride gets home, have a good weekend.

Dropping like Flies, Jeff Goldblum too?

Farrah Fawcett was expected any day, Michael was a quite a shock but Jeff Goldblum? Unconfirmed reports are saying the he died falling from a cliff in New Zealand shooting a movie. Rumor? Yes it was a hoax (or so I hope, there are pictures of him in New York a couple of days ago with Rachel McAdams). Maybe but it is sobering hearing of the other two, June 25th is turning out to be a strange day. I was behind someone at McDonalds in the drive through and heard them tell the girl in the window that Michael Jackson was dead and the girl said “no way!” and a couple of minutes ago someone in the barracks screamed “Michael Jackson is dead!!!” at the top of his lungs. My grandmother in law was in tears over Farrah and when I told my wife that Michael Jackson was dead, she didn‘t believe me and looked it up on the internet. I’m sure there is an entire movement of fans who are planning candle lit vigils all across the world.

Both were younger then my father and the in-laws, Farrah has my mom by a couple of years but it's close enough not to count. I’m glad that Jeff’s was a hoax because it would have probably bothered me more then the other two, Jeff was a cool cat at the top of his game and the world will be a sadder place without him, Michael and Farrah have had their days in the sun, while it's sad when people go but Farrah wasn’t in a good way which she shared with the entire world and Michael was living like a billionaire off a millionaires salary and face it, was nuttier then a fruit cake dropped in a bucket of peanuts and that was bound to catch up with him.

These stories have dropped NK out of the front page at CNN.com and that is the country threatening us with a “nuclear fire shower” right now if anything happens to them, it doesn’t seem to matter what or who causes it. It will be our fault and we would pay. These jokers keep crying wolf and eventually we got tired of hearing it but we really shouldn’t. The world is a tinder ground, Iran is in chaos, bombs going off in Iraq, it’s difficult to keep your mind on the ball when you don’t know what the ball is. I just know, we could live a lot easier if we didn't have a wack job who yells out craziness off his porch with his old dying fingers on the big red button (that doesn’t say “Easy”)

Alas, what are we to do?

House

We’re moving into housing this weekend, after being without a home for 2 months, I’m missing my own bed. Growing up, I never imagined that I would have lived so many places nor move around as much as I have since joining the Navy. Three years here and four years there, it’s definitely kept me on my toes but at the end of the day, I’m wondering where I’m going to end up at. Five more years and I have to find something else to do with my life.

Lemoore is doing me good, it’s much nicer seeing the bride every weekend and being closer to the son and not worrying about being sent away to the other side of the world for a while. I feel at peace, well except for Saturday night coming out and seeing all of those broken windows. Then, I felt like Batman probably does. I don’t think I’ll be settling there, like New Orleans, it’s a nice place to visit but I don’t think I want to stay. Some interesting places to see in Northern California and my wife wants to share them all with me. I’m game, just a bit safety conscious.

Hope everyone is doing well out there in cyberville, I’m off to bed and on to another day.

Hoodlums

Last Saturday night my wife took me into San Francisco to go to a clubbing, she was the designated driver. We had a great time but when we got to our cars parked on 10th Street between Harrison and Bryant, there was a pile of glass in the sidewalk outside of the back door of our friends car. My wife immediately went to her Beetle and checked all of the windows but everything was intact.

We turned around to look up and down the street and at every parking spot except for ours, there were piles of glass or a car with a window busted out.. We went back over to our friends car, she had lost her GPS and her cell phone and the thieves had even took a hand full of mini muffins out of a container we had brought to munch on. The people down the street who just got to their car weren’t missing anything because someone had broken into their car a week before and stolen their stereo but still had their window busted out.

We theorize that the reason they didn’t break into my wife’s car was that she still had a tape deck, the only thing they could see through the windows were her tapes. Who in their right mind would want tapes? We were thankful but angry that someone would do this.

I’ve left the war zone but even here in the States, I can’t let my guard down. This event broken my compliancy, my warm self assurance in being back home. There are still beasts in the world, whether in a war zone or not.

One good thing that happened, I found a purse lying in the road, in the middle of a pile of glass and there was a check book inside. I called the number and the owner was still up the street, the bride and I walked it back to her.

It‘s funny how this didn‘t even make a blip on the news, the girl who owned the purse was parked on another street over, on my side of the street alone, there were probably ten cars broken into, I wonder if it was the same on the her street?

Google News searches have turned up nothing. On our street alone, 10 people had a possible life changing event. Yet I can’t find a single story about a rash of break ins. So I’m putting my high Google ranking up with the story so it doesn't get forgotten. From the people who I talked to Saturday night/Sunday morning, this is a regular occurence. There’s a new Police Chief in town, I’m hoping if enough people talk about this, maybe he’ll take notice and I won't be afraid for my car when I come into town.

Talk about a Bad Day 12/21/12

I just saw the Trailer for 2012 here, if you don't know the back story about 2012. Back in the day a couple thousand or so years ago, the greatest civilization in the New World, the Mayans developed an amazingly accurate calendar which we call the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar and on December 21, 2012 or the last day of the of a 13th b'ak'tun, the fourth world ends and the fifth begins. Well some people think it's going to be a day of great celebration and others.. Well they think it's going to be the end of the world. Hopefully not like the movie because from what the preview shows, the body count is rather high. And as a guy who's always shown an interest in this, I can't wait to see it.

Where every body knows your name

I was at Naval Hospital Lemoore today, doing a meet and greet to talk over some of the policies of the OpSide clinic that I’m working out of and was walking down a hall way and was recognized as the corpsman with a blog by one of the chiefs. I then gave the Master Chief a heads up that I‘m “that“ guy, which really isn‘t that bad of a thing. Guess I haven’t fallen too far off of the radar.

Most of the past couple of weeks have been spent checking in and observing as much as I can, as a first class, I’m expected to play a leadership role. And this is where I’m taking my cues off the great leaders of my past. The leaders that worked the best were the ones that took in their surroundings before making changes. The leaders that ran into problems were the ones who came in like a bull in a China shop and laid down the law without paying attention to the situation on the ground.

My job is to take what’s working and fix what’s not. Right now, we’re having a problem with organization and accountability. Two things that I have been both horrible and excellent at. We’re working out of temporary trailers while our main clinic gets remodeled, not the best situation. It’s tight and there is a certain looseness in the knowledge of where all of my people are at given a specific time because there isn‘t even enough seating space for all of us in the same room.

I’m watching the patient care, it is getting done and the paperwork is turning out right but it sort of seems like magic. No one has sat down and told me step by step on how they’re doing it. Believe me, I know how to fill out the paperwork but there doesn’t seem to be a standardized way we do it here or at least not one that someone has set me down and told me. Another tack in my book.

Talking with the leadership, as usual, there’s a power struggle between who owns the squadron corpsman. There are good and bad with working for the squadron and the clinic. I think the only way for us as squadron corpsman to prosper is to tighten up our acts and put forth a more professional front. Every place I’ve been stationed at, we have had to walk a tight rope and it makes it a harder job if we’re not running a tight ship.

Problem with being a blogger, I’m going to publish this and everyone I work with can take a look at my thoughts, both junior guys and the leadership. Oh well, at least they’re know where I’m coming from. Aren’t we trying to be transparent?

Woman who missed Air France flight killed in car accident

I was trolling net between courses and saw this. Her and her husband has missed the flight and caught another flight the next day, less then 2 weeks later, her and her husband's car veered into an oncoming truck, she's dead and her husband is in serious condition. Now if this isn't reminiscent of the movie Final Destination then I don't know what is, spooky!

Rat in his Wheel

A piece of interactive art I took part in last weekend at a NIMBY event that we went to, the bride did an excelling job at the filming. NIMBY is a place to create anything that your mind can come up with and they rent out space to artists with a wild hair. They have shows every month that are like mini Burning Man festivals, only these people are doing it all year long. Even though I haven't been online as much, it doesn't mean life has stopped. Check out the web site above, if you're ever in the Bay area during one of their events, I promise you a show that you will not soon forget plus it's a really cheap good time, good music, robots shooting fire and things that you could not imagine.



But work is nothing like being in a cage, I'm in the process of checking in still. Corpsman out there, listen up, keep up with your NKO courses or your next command won't give you your keys! Half of my time since checking in has been doing online courses. So far, friendly people and a job that is in need of my skills, I can do this.

Tomorrow I'll be attending the local Corpsman Ball with the bride where we get to make a first impression with the local medical community.

Impressions? I enjoy being so close to the bride, after spending time at Edwards AFB and China Lake, this place is nice. Besides, it's not where you're stationed at, it's who your stationed with. I think I have some good material here. Fresh faces and fresh impressions, wish me luck.

Dinner with one of my oldest friends

Last night I was invited out to dinner with one of my oldest friends Leslie and her husband Scott at Buffalo Wild Wings (the Mango Habanero sauce rocks). Back story on Leslie, we met the summer before my 6th grade, she lived a stones throw away from me and had a big empty lot next to her house with ATV’s that we used to carve up trails around the place with (I also ran over her big sister which scarred me for life, sorry Shelia!). Sixth grade, she was probably one of my best friends and was in fact my first girl friend before we both knew the full meaning of the word. Meaning we held hands a few times and kissed once… in her shed next to the quads. I think her dad telling me that he was watching me might have stopped that back then.

Talk about some old memories, talking with her reminded me just how much I forgot over the years. Items that were important to her back then aren’t even blips that I have thought about since they happened back then. A few items that I had totally forgotten about, I went to Thailand in 7th grade and brought her and her sister back souvenirs, I remember buying souvenirs but I don’t remember who I gave them to, she still has hers. I have a talent for drawing mazes, something I think I could do before I could actually write and I drew her name in bubble letters and made a maze out of it and I guess I drew her a some other drawings, I have no idea what they were but she still has them. In 7th grade, we had wood shop together and she told me that she was going to fail if she didn’t get a box she was making routed and I routed it for her. It was a big deal to her but all I remember was her asking me for a favor, I didn’t even remember what that favor was. The funny thing is, her parents are still using that box (and think that she routed it, heh). I don’t even have any of the my wood shop projects from back in the day. I think my mom sold them at garage sales or gave them away (like she did my comic books). 

Those are definitely some items out of my prehistory that were important to her and she was able to hold on to the memory because she had kept those mementos. They had fallen out of my memory because I had lost so many items from my past like most of us do. I had thought that I had a great memory compared to most of my friends about those days but seeing Leslie showed much of my past I had forgotten, I didn’t have a diary or a camera and most of those items had been added to the rubbish bin over the years meaning that they also fell out of my consciousness because I didn’t have those bookmarks in my memory to keep them fresh.

Forward to today, we both have kids who are in high school, we’re both happily married, in fact, she’s been married to the same guy for 16 years a cool dude. Anyone who stays married for 16 years and be as happy and as comfortable as they looked made the right choice. We both have tattoos, hah, never thought I would see that day. It’s strange experience seeing us both as adults because the last time we were close to each other, we were still children. We were friends after we moved away from that little neighborhood but after 7th grade we didn’t really hang out and grew two different ways but for that year and a couple of months, we were two peas in a pod and our memories of that time are still locked in place and unsullied by the process of puberty and growing up.

In Scottsdale, a mild stress attack and some karma rebuilding

I flew into San Diego the day before yesterday and did something so ignorant that I felt like banging my head into the nearest wall. I had flown down without the key to the car that I had left in San Diego, they were on the keychain to my truck. After a few minutes of pure panic, yes, it was very pure, I calmed down and called my wife, she said she would overnight them too me and that I should spend my last night in San Diego hanging out with buddies and we ended up having a great time, thanks Dang!  With a few words, my bride had calmed me down, it was more of a problem in my head then anything else, just had to remember that this was my town and I did have a lot of friends about to call on in times of need.

So yesterday, my keys arrived at my old landlords office at 10:30 and she told me it was fate that I would stop by and see her again, I caught another ride to base and I was off to Arizona and pulled into my dad’s around 7 PM.  I think I was asleep by 9:30, that stress attack had worn me down.

Today, I looked around my pops place and thought, my dad needs someone one to take care of some of these projects he has sitting around. Not my step mom, she’s busy enough as it is. You see, my father is a hoarder, he has worked with electronics as long as I can remember and his place is loaded down with obsolete junk and he seems to pick more up every time I see him. Being a minor hoarder myself, I know what he’s going through, it overwhelms you. There’s too many projects to do and it’s hard when you have piles of craziness lying around that need to be sorted.

So together we looked about to discover some projects that my talents could be put to use, the back glass door had hung up since he moved in, I said I would fix that, there was a pile of cleaning supplies sitting out on the back porch, he explained that he said that he wanted to put a sliding shelves under the sink, yup, I could do that and his grass was all splotchy, green and tan and yucky all over.  Mostly due to the 6 broken sprinkler heads, can do. So I went to Lowe’s and purchased the sprinkler heads and some rollers for the door, for the shelf, we used some sliders he had sitting about and some laminated particle board that just happened to be on his back porch.

I told him to go back to programming (that what he does) and sent started off with the back door so we could turn the A/C back on, it actually took 3 tries with his help to get it properly set, the spacing where the rollers were wrong and we had to drill an extra hole and put a spacer in but at the end of the day, it worked fine. The sprinklers, while dirty and muddy only took an hour in the hundred degree sun of digging. We argued around the idea of the shelf for a while and I think my idea of the sliders underneath prevailed. Picture below.

Tonight we went to the DAV for a spaghetti dinner on his tab and a couple of beers. Tomorrow, I plan on just hanging out with friends, yes, you Sherri and Leslie and see my uncle Larry. With all of the cursing I did in my head on Monday, I needed to balance out the karmic scales with some good deeds which have been taken care of. Have a great night everyone.