A Series of Fortunate Events

Ok so here is a quick run down of the day.

1) Last day of ORI so work was pretty good and went really quick.
2) Stopped to test drive a Mini Cooper S on the way home. That was a blast. The S is a very fast car and I thoroughly enjoyed going from 0 - 75 in like no time. Fun to try, not so fun to buy. This seems like a mid-life crisis type of purchase.
3) Came home and got to talk to my wife for a while before I headed to the CF gym
4) Got a new crossfit shirt, did a pretty sweet workout, and did a ton of muscle ups throughout the workout. It was grand.
5) Went to get dinner while the laundry was in the washer. Used an expired by one get one free coupon but the manager said it was fine. In addition, I had a free meal on my Qdoba card I did not know about so I got two free meals.

So overall, pretty good day in my books. Hope tomorrow is just as good.

Pretty Decent Day

Quick day at work. Got trained on the M-35 which is a 2.5 ton 6x6 utility truck. Its huge! But I got to drive on the highway and go off roading with it so that was pretty sweet. Then I came home, went running and do a little workout over at the lake. After that I came home and made dinner. Played some Xbox for like the first time a a week or so. Tomorrow is the last day of our inspection so it should be a good day even though it might be a long one.

Great day

First off I just have to say that I am like a gosh darn Navy SEAL and and Olympic gold medalist wrapped in some freaking body armor, I mean I am elite because I do crossfit. Here is the link for that reference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsTbas5NgF0. But really Crossfit today was legit, I did two workouts. The first one was As Many Rounds As Possible (AMRAP) in 20 minutes of 2 muscle ups, 4 hand stand pushups, and 8 two pood KB swings. I had to scale the muscle ups to 3 dips and 3 pullups per muscle up. Then I did 4 rounds for time of 10 OH squats, 10 knees to elbows (KTE) and 5 KB figure 8s to hold. This was a new workout to me but the figure 8s were pretty cool, definitely a new KB workout for me. It felt really good to get a couple tough workouts in. Afterwards I tried to be healthy and got  a subway sandwich.

Work was really good today. I had a lot of good talks with my troops and they taught me a lot about how to treat them to gain their respect and not piss them off. It was some really good info. The day went quicker than that last couple perhaps due in part to the fact that I tried to do most of the work today. Obviously though there were quite a few times when I could not do much and had to let on of my other guys work the issue. At any rate, really good day, I am pretty tired but that is how it should be.

I am ready for my wife to be here again but I will just have to make it another 2 weeks.

Just What Is On My Mind

I have decided to not just try to write on every single event that happens throughout my day but instead to try and just write about what I am thinking at the moment. More of a stream of consciousness type of deal. Obviously some of my thought will also reflect my day but I will try to avoid just regurgitating my actions of the last 24 hours. Today was alright. Work was super boring but we got the go ahead to bring movies and stuff tomorrow so that will help a lot. After work I got a short workout in before heading to our haunted house to start tearing it down. We were there for 3 hours but we got a ton of work done Tomorrow we should only need to work for about 2 hours.

I totally forgot today was Saturday since I had to work and when I got to the gate to base, it was closed. The gate I normally go in is not open on weekends so this was my first indication that today was going to be interesting. It was a gorgeous day which kind of upset me because I totally could have been climbing or skydiving instead of sitting in our shack waiting for the phone to ring.

I spent a good portion of my time at work looking up and customizing a Mini Cooper, which for some reason has become my new favorite car. I think I am going to go test drive one sometime here in the near future just for fun. My wife thought I was crazy for all of a sudden thinking that. The other time at work I just chatted it up with my guys which was pretty interesting. We talked a lot about divorce since they both are. I just do not get it, why do so many people get married when they do not really love each other? I realize things change but seriously, love is love, and it should always be that way. I think for my wife and I, that fact that we have always lived apart has helped to create a very strong foundation in our relationship. I just do not think marriage means today what it meant just a few years ago.

Ok well I am kind of burnt out on typing right now so I am going to end early tonight. Tomorrow I will try to type something meaningful.    

Quick Day

Today was a pretty quick day due mostly to the fact that I do not think I did anything for more than an hour today. First off, I got to sleep in a little bit because we had late reporting today and I did not have to be to work till 9:00 AM. I spent the morning just taking my time getting ready and relaxing before I had to leave for work. Once I got to work I helped out a little bit with some filing stuff and that pretty much took up the whole morning. During all this a new LT showed up officially relieving me of the "new guy" title. He seemed like a pretty nice guy. I was jealous of him though since he will be done with training before I am even though he commisioned much later than I. But what can you do, I guess I will just have to deal. 

 I ate lunch at work while looking at CrossFit stuff and trying to figure out how to start and affiliate at the base. Starting an affiliate seems like a lot of tough work but I did get some info for a guy at Vance who started a CrossFit group up there. Hopefully I can get some useful information from him to make the process a little easier. After that I pretty much just sat around till we had a short staff meeting. I thought this was going to be a real staff meeting but it turned out to just be a little get together to celebrate the October birthdays in the leadership element. We had a fun time just talking and hanging out until we had an all call. For the all call we first had to do a FOD walk of the entire back yard and parking lot, which went about as well as a FOD walk can go. After that we had the all call to disseminate information about the ORI and then after that we were released. The people from my building went back and cleaned up the building and swept the floors before we headed out. 

Once again this early release really messed up my plans to go to the CrossFit gym so I decided I would head out to the training area to see about helping to tear down our haunted house. I got out there and there was no one around and the door was locked so I assumed that no one was coming. As it turns out, I got a call later from the people out there wondering where I was and of course this is after I am home eating dinner. I would have loved to help but with the inspection, everyone's schedules are just too hard to reconcile. So from there I decided it was late enough to head to the gym. I got there and of course I was too early so no one was there and the owner would probably not have been there for another hour. At this point it was too late to head back to base to workout so I just headed home with the plan to workout at the base tomorrow. Once again my workout plans were foiled. I have a hard time complaining though because these difficulties in working our are due to time off, which very few people can complain about. 

On the way home I talked to my wife on the phone for a while. As always, talking to her was extremely enjoyable. I kept seeing billboards for Mini Coopers on my way and they made me really want to stop at a dealership and test drive one for no real reason. Perhaps the next time I am really board during the weekend I might try to do that. Regardless of my desire to drive a Mini, I went straight home and began making dinner. I made some boxed three cheese macaroni. However, I added a little zest and added two more cheeses, so you could say I made my special five cheese macaroni recipe. While I ate dinner I began watching Assault On Precinct 13. I stopped half way through to go to the store though.

I just needed a few things so the trip to the store was not a full fledged Wal-Mart experience but that place was crowded nonetheless. I just got the things that I had run out of and needed before the next week. After that I cam home and finished the movie. I thought that the movie was pretty good overall but their budget seemed to have been pretty low. The acting was alright but the sets, props, and backgrounds were not very realistic. At any rate, watching that movie was a good way to spend the evening. 

After the movie I came to the computer to write this blog and here I am. Not as much to write about today, I also need to get to bed early because I have to be at work at 6:00 AM tomorrow so I am trying to wrap this up early. One notable conversation of the day was one I had with a coworker regarding life in Germany. He was talking about how you can get a huge nice house for the money that they give you as a housing allowance and that Germany is an awesome area to go and see the rest of Europe from. I have always wanted to live overseas and I always thought Germany would be a really cool place to live. After talking with my coworker my motivation to try and go to Germany was totally renewed and made me want to go even more. But that is a few more years down the road so we will just have to see when the time to move comes upon us. 

Just as an explanation of this blog, you may notice places where I am vague or use some obscure word instead of a person's name. This is because I do not feel comfortable using other people's names when they do not know that their name will end up on the internet and there are some aspects of my work that I am not comfortable publishing for the world. That is the reason for the areas where my narrative may seem vague or not complete. Well thats all I have for now. 

Pretty Good Day of Unexpected Events

A lot happened today that I really did not expect but it all came together to form a pretty good day. The first thing I remember from today is waking up at around 5:20 AM and assuming that it was indeed 6:20 AM, the time for which I had set my alarm. As I start to get up I realized that it was not my alarm that had woken me up but instead it had been the torrential downpour and wicked thunder that was going on outside that had done the dirty deed. But it turned out to be pretty nice because I ended up being able to sleep for another whole hour. When my alarm finally did go off I got up and did my normal routine of eating breakfast, getting ready, and then heading off to work. The drive to work was pretty intense because Oklahoma seems to have a serious lack of storm drains so in addition to the random lakes that appear out of nowhere and the tidal waves thrown up by the Chevy Road-Boats driving beside you, the lane lines were impossible to see. Then to top it all off, the traffic lights at a major intersection went out just as I rolled up. This intersection needs help when it is running properly but the lights going out was like running over a squirrel that has already been hit, it was just wrong. But traffic rants aside, I got to work safely, waited in the normal 20 minute queue outside the gate, and rolled into the parking lot.

I immediately noticed something was askew, namely, the fact that there were perhaps a total of ten cars in the parking lot. I walked into the office only to find out that our flight was the only flight that had come to work today. Being as we are the support flight, our job is somewhat difficult to do when there is no one around to support. So we did a little work, ate bagels that someone had brought in, played along with a small exercise and then left right around lunch time. While all this was happening, we were yelling at each other, not because we were angry but because when you are in a double-wide and it is raining cats and dogs it sounds like a train is about to blast our building. So from work I headed home to relax. On the way I stopped by a camera shop to see how much DSLRs cost and what kind I might want to get. They were nice and helpful but somehow did not get the concept of, "I have no clue what I am looking for, so nothing you tell me means anything, please just tell me how to compare cameras."

I should have worked out during this extra time off but I had planned on going back to the CrossFit gym this afternoon until my wife reminded me, again, that I had to volunteer tonight. So once I was reminded of this pretty fact, I was already mostly home so I decided to relax for a while and then go to the climbing gym later. I had a snack right when I came home then I though Animal House into the Xbox 360, and laid back to enjoy the hilarity. Animal House was a decent movie, I definitely laughed quite a bit, but I could tell that when the movie came out, it must have been the funniest movie ever. Afterwards I talked with my wife and my buddy for a little while before falling asleep on the couch. I was awoken from my nap to the Skype ring on the computer which in my tired stupor sounded like the tornado sirens were going off. Needless to say, I woke up with a little start. I talked to my buddy a little longer and then headed out to pay my rent and go to the climbing gym.

The drive across town this afternoon was infinitely more enjoyable than this morning. I got to the gym and the parking lot looked pretty crowded which is sometimes a good thing and a bad thing. Lots of people can mean more people to climb with and talk to but at the same time, lots of people also means less area to climb on. When there are a lot of kids there you can pretty much count on not climbing at all. I do like kids but when they climb they have so much energy that they never stop climbing and therefore never give you a chance to get on the wall, but I digress. I walked in and headed back to the bouldering room which was prominently adorned with yellow construction tape and a lovely little sign stating that the room was closed until further notice. I immediately felt the need to tell myself out loud how upset I was that I had come to boulder and could not, to which some random girl felt the need to tell me I had failed. I went back to the front desk to ask what the deal was. Apparently the door in the bouldering room had not help up as well as anyone expected and had leaked rain water all over the floor. The inability of the door to fulfill its one task in life effectively ended my climbing adventure for today. At this point it was too late to head back home and way to early to go to the Humane Society so I decided to head back to base to get a quick workout in.

I got to the gym and decided on doing 40, 30, 20, 10 of wall ball shots, back extensions, and sit ups. As I started my workout BC came in so we chatted for a few minutes and then I got to work. The workout was pretty tough especially since I am pretty sore from yesterday in my back on my hamstrings. The back extensions were the hardest part because I did them the way that Stacy showed me to do them yesterday. When coming up from the back extension, you roll your back instead of keeping your back straight like a board. Doing the workout that way really works all the muscles in your back instead of just the lower ones. That workout took me exactly 15:30. I still had some time left so I grabbed a jump rope to practice double unders. The only place with enough space to do double unders was in the multi-purpose gym which was already mostly occupied by the aerobics ladies. So when I started to do the double unders, the "woosh" noise of the rope was pretty loud and they all stared at me. Due to this I decided the prudent move would be to do normal jump ropes and be a little quieter. I ended up just doing 3 sets of 100 jumps. After that, I headed back to the locker room to change out of my sweaty workout clothes into some clean ones to head on up to the Humane Society to volunteer.

On my way to humane society I talked to my mom for a little bit which was pretty nice. I made a dinner pit stop at Panera and had a tasty sandwich and salad. Then I finally got to the Humane Society and started doing some work. Mostly I just cleaned up and mopped. In a typical instance of cosmic irony, I walked in and there were three gorgeous puppies. Interestingly enough I had just told my wife earlier in the day we could not have a puppy yet but of course I see three cute lab puppies and thats all I can think about. They were the kind of puppies that I normally associate with the word puppy. There were also some cute kittens there tonight. There were two other dogs there, one who whined quite a bit and I felt bad and wanted to play with him but did not get to. The other was a huge 200 lb dog that seemed very nice but also very huge. After finishing all the cleaning, which went really fast due to the obscene number of volunteers, I filed paperwork for about half an hour. After that I headed home. I had hoped all day that the cool lady would be working tonight and oddly enough she was but she was working with the not so cool lady. This provided me with a best of both world scenario where I did a lot of work but still go out of there at a decent time.

After volunteering I headed home and talked to my wife along the way. During our phone call, my BlueBerry fell out of my ear and went under the seat. I was very nervous because I was afraid my wife might think that I got in a wreck. I had to wait till I got home to find my hands free device before I could call her back. I also checked my mail, that is real paper mail, and my mailbox contained a wonderful Halloween card from my wife that certainly brightened my evening. After that, I sat down at the computer and began writing this and here I am 45 minutes later. Today while talking to my wife I realized that I too want a puppy but we will have to wait until we will be around enough to take care of one.

Once again this has gotten quite long so I am going to quit typing and go make my lunch for tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow will be a good day as it is a Friday and a bad day would be hard to come by. One random thought today concerned the reasoning behind not putting reflective stuff in the roads to make the lane lines easier to see. They do put that stuff down on about 1/3 of the roads so why not all of them? Silly I think. Until tomorrow this is all you get.

Finally CrossFit Again

This morning we had a costume run at work. I was kind of nervous that I would be like the only person to dress up. I got more nervous when I got to work and did not see anyone in costume but that was just bad timing because about half of the people were dressed up. I went as a banana and did the whole "peanut butter jelly time" thing. I only had to do the dance once but then the guys in my office kept singing it all day long just to bug me, it was funny though. The people who wore costumes pretty much got out of the whole run because we stopped at about 1 mile to get judged and then did not pick back up until the last mile. In the end our squadron won so we get a day off sometime in the next couple weeks. All in all it was a fun time and  I will definitely try to have a really cool costume next year.

After the run and having gone over to the fitness center to shower I went back to work for about an hour before we had a promotion ceremony. Immediately following the promotion ceremony it was pretty much lunch time so no one really did any work in the morning. I read some of my book again during lunch and then did a little bit of work this afternoon. At about 3 o'clock everyone started leaving then it was just me and one other guy left in the office and he asks me if I am leaving. I looked at him with a puzzling look at which point he informed me that we have been released for the day. So I did what any hard working person (or not) would do and immediately left.

From work I decided that it would be a good day to go an try out the local CrossFit gym in Moore. I showed up at CrossFit Exile and the only other person there was the owner. He showed me around a little bit and we chatted for a few minutes before he was going to start his workout. So I decided I would do the workout with him. He showed me their standard warmup, which was pretty good since I rarely do a proper warmup. Then he showed me how to properly do power snatches. I usually do not do the Olympic lifts so this was somewhat new for me but it seemed like fun. So after learning a new lift we got to the workout: 75 Power Snatches @ 75 lbs. As we got into the workout I quickly remembered how much I love and hate CrossFit. That extremely familiar feeling of burning muscles and flaming lungs combined with the wonderful feeling of knowing you are giving 100%. The workout definitely reminded me what I was missing. So much familiar stuff in the CorssFit gym, my motivations was certainly renewed this afternoon. Stacey pretty much kicked my butt even though he has a torn meniscus, but nonetheless I finished the workout in 10:19 which I thought was pretty respectable. After that we rested a few minutes and then did 8 rounds of Tabata planks which was much tougher than I originally expected. I would have liked to do more after this but I decided to be smart and take it easy so that I would still be able to work out tomorrow. So I did some stretching after the workout, which I normally do not do but am certainly glad I did. I am already getting sore and can only imagine how much worse the pain would be if I had not stretched. I should stretch again before I go to bed. I met a couple new people at the gym in addition to Stacey. I met Brian who seemed to have just started CrossFit and I met Jason who is a pilot at the base. We talked a little bit and I informed him that his plane's engines are about the loudest and most annoying fuel-to-noise converters I have ever had the misfortune of having to listen to. He seemed like a pretty cool guy. Hopefully I will be back there soon.

On the way home from the gym I talked to my beautiful wife on the phone, which as always was very enjoyable. Apparently her printer was going on a rampage arms with an assortment of small arms, but she ended up buying a new one so she could finish her work. I was talking to her on my BlueBerry because traffic was pretty bad and it was killing my ear. Putting that ear piece in my ear is like trying to put the square block in the triangle hole. So I decided I needed a new one. But that was going to have to wait till later because in typical CrossFit fashion I was famished after the workout and seriously required immediate nourishment. I got home, made some leftovers and had my normal post workout snack...chocolate milk. I do not care what anyone says, chocolate milk is by far the best recovery drink there is, far better than any protein or other cheater beverage.

After dinner I headed out to the phone store to get a new BlueBerry. Even though I have Sprint, I went to the US Cellular store because 1) the Sprint store looks more empty than the moons surface and 2) it was closed. I wanted to try them all out, I do not know why they do not have some type of BlueBerry dressing room, but alas one was not present. So after close visual inspection of every unit I settled on one pretty much at random. I got home and tried it out and it fits pretty nice and certainly does not make my ear feel like someone shoved a steel rod into it. But it was not charged so I am currently still waiting for it to charge so I can see if it is loud enough to work in the car.

After that I just watched some TV, talked with my lovely wife on the webcam (always a treat), and sat down to write this blog. Today was a decent day and I am sure I will sleep very well tonight because my workout wore me out. But unfortunately I will not sleep as well as I do when my wife is here but that will have to wait a couple weeks. I am enjoying writing this blog because without school, I really do not have any opportunity to write and practice my writing skills so this is a fun way to do that. I also enjoy just recapping my day and thinking of all the events that happened. I decided today not to pursue my PPL for a couple months until I get back from training and have some more money. After spending many hours reading awesome trip reports on 14ers.com and becoming insnaely jealous, I think I want to buy a nice DSLR camera so that I can take neat pictures when I go climbing. But I will have to do some research on that.

I typed a lot more this evening than I expected too but blogging seems to be addicting and fun. I will try to write again tomorrow.  

Tuesday 27 Oct 09 - First Blog

So this is my first blog ever. Basically I live away from my wife right now due to work and so in my free time I felt like I needed something to do. I like writing and just always felt weird typing things into Word and calling it diary. I guess I just feel less awkward writing something that at least feels like someone else is reading. I am simply going to use this blog to document my day to day life and perhaps someone will read and enjoy it. In addition I will try to document thoughts I have had throughout the day because often times writing thoughts down helps to formulate them into something tangible. Without further delay, here is my day.

Another fairly boring day at work. I have not been to my training yet so there is not a whole lot I can do at work other than just ask people what I can help them with and try to learn new skills by following people around. I sat in the line outside the gate for almost 20 minutes this morning. It is starting to get pretty ridiculous. They closed on of the gates so the traffic at the gate I normally go through is atrocious. But it should only be this way for a month or two. In addition, I just bought a house that will put me much closer to work which will help to alleviate the problem.

Once I got to work I just had one meeting today and then I had to go and get a physical for some training that I am going to. Pretty benign physical but I did see that my blood pressure had gone down since my last visit to the doctor a couple weeks ago, when I am pretty sure I had the Swine. That ate up pretty much the rest of the morning. I read a bit of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea during my lunch. So far I enjoy it. It is a regular routine for me to eat my lunch while I read a book on my Kindle. I just finished reading The Lost Symbol which I thought was pretty good other than the fact that it was eerily similar to Angels and Demons. I spent the rest of the afternoon just surfing the internet and chatting it up with some of the guys. I cut out early from work and decided I would head to the local municipal airport because I have been contemplating getting my private pilots license. This is where my day got infinitely more interesting.

I have been looking at getting my PPL for a couple weeks now and I decided today would be a good day to go get some info on it. So I pulled into the airport parking lot and this guy pulls up right behind my car boxing me in. This was a little weird so I got out of the car and this guy says he has been following me for the last 2 miles. At this point I am thinking, "Shoot what did I do push this guy's buttons." Turns out he saw all my skydiving stickers on the back of my car and wanted to ask me about it. He points across the runway to a A-26 World War II Bomber and says he has been curious about letting people jump out of it at their air shows. Apparently, they do dogfight reenactments and thought it would be cool to get "shot down" and then have people jump from the airplane. At this point I am grinning ear to ear because this sounds absolutely amazing. He tells me that he has been jumping for quite sometime and we chat for a little bit. Then he invites me over to their hangar. So after I got the info I wanted from the flight school I made my way over to their hangar. I spent almost two hours with this guy and his teammates. They showed me the plane, lets me sit in the cockpit, and pretty much taught me the basics of flying it. Plus I got a lot more info from these guys about learning to fly. They invited me to come back anytime, which I intend to do. At any rate, it was pretty cool.

After that I came home this evening talked with my college roommate on the web cam and then did a three way call with him and my wife. I did not know you could do that stuff so that was pretty neat. Then I made dinner, which concluded with me deciding to write this blog. And here I sit.

I guess I will try to make this a daily thing so we will see how it goes. I am sure I will get more proficient at writing a blog as I go but I simply and just trying to write down all my thoughts. So one random discussion that happened today was about the invention of a sleeve for Camelbak water bottles to prevent them from "sweating" but also still allows you to see how full it is. Well that is all I can think of for now, I will write again tomorrow.