Speechless

Wow, there's not much I can say about this next clip, it was sent to me by my dear friend Ron... crazy kid...
Looks like a typical night at the office for me but in the Army fart jokes NEVER get old.

Reading Material

You know, the District of Columbia never ceases to amaze me. I'm sure there are places around the world that might have more quirks or oddities than the District, but perhaps once I've discovered all of them I'll continue exploring, but for the time being I'm still being amazed by the weird things I see around this city. This example I've been looking at almost since I moved here, and it makes me laugh almost every time I walk or drive by. In the front window of Kramerbooks/Afterwords Cafe are these three children's books.



Every-now-and-then they change it up a little, there are a couple other books they'll put in there, I think one is called The Holes in your Nose or something like that. Anyhow I just wanted to share.

On a side note, still no word on when I'll be moving out of my current apartment. I'm hoping to get some more information soon so I can start doing some serious apartment hunting.

Army 10 Miler

So they finally sorted through all the pictures from the Army 10 Miler and I only found one decent one of me as I was just a few feet from the finish line.

In other news... I MIGHT be moving sometime in the near future. The company that is trying to buy the building I live in now will supposedly offer very generous buy-out options to current residents once the sale is final. We shall see what happens, I'm assuming I'll get some more information next week, and hopefully its favorable. I hate moving, but with a generous enough buy-out option I'll just hire a moving company, even if I'm only moving a few blocks.

Anyhow I worked all night last night, I think I'm going to get cleaned up, head over to the gym, come home, maybe I'll think about catching an extra hour or two of sleep before I have to go back into work tonight.

Yes I'm still here!

No, I haven't completely forgotten about this thing... Not like anybody reads this anyway...

Anyhow as usual not a lot has been going on, went to Kings Dominion again this year, park was closed for a private event and it was still as crowded as a normal day. It was ridiculous, but we got to ride most of the fun roller-coasters. I swear I've NEVER seen that many morbidly obese people in one place at any given time. The number of times they had to delay launching a ride because they had to call over two park employees to try to squeeze someone into a harness and get that "One Click" for safety.

This past weekend was quite eventful. Sunday morning was the Army 10 Miler. I finished a little slower than I'd expected at 1:43:05 but it was still fun. I can finally walk again without my knees screaming in pain, and talk about nipple chaffing! The nipples were in more pain than the knees were. If I can keep running regularly throughout the winter and next spring I might consider training for the Marine Corps Marathon next year. But we'll see if my knees will agree with me on that idea.

After the race on Sunday I got a tour of the West Wing. It was definitely a little smaller than I had expected but still very interesting. Can't take many pictures, but you're allowed to take pictures in a couple of areas. So maybe I'll post one or two of them.

Home Sweet Home

Oh so happy to be home. I just spent the past two weeks plus a couple days playing Army up at Ft. Drum, NY. You'd think being that close to Canada it wouldn't be god-awful hot and muggy, but I guess since it was July, I was expecting too much. Don't get me wrong, it still got butt-ass-cold at night when I wanted it to be warm.
So basically the school I went to was two weeks of basic training all over again. I swear, I'm 27 years old, I'm a fracking adult, please dear god treat me like one. At least it's finally all over with, the last six days I was there we were out in the field doing all this tactical movement crap, that of course I'll never do again in my Army career, all the while wearing heavy body armor, Kevlar, all this other stuff designed to make you sweat balls.
Oh well... It's over! I'm back home, I can shower again, I can sleep in late, all the good stuff!
Now I just have to start cleaning the apartment, doing laundry, and all that other good stuff so my friend Jeff doesn't give me his condescending looks next time he stops over.

Buckle Up

Well we all know that vehicle safety is paramount. The easiest thing any of us can do to help protect ourselves or our roaming gnomes is by properly using a seat belt. Well I had parked my car and was hiking up the hill to my apartment when I passed this Jeep displaying how to properly protect your roaming gnome from injury.



Well hopefully soon I'll actually have something interesting to write about, but since I've been working night shift, not a whole lot goes on. I go out and run again now that it's warm out, so check back from time to time, maybe something interesting will happen!

Be careful when crossing streets!

I just love humorous graffiti! A few months ago I was walking past the grocery store in my neighborhood and on the side of the wall someone had spray painted "Sorry 'bout your wall..." I almost fell down laughing on the spot. Its hard to find graffiti artists with a sense of humor, so today when I saw this crosswalk sign, I had to snap a picture with my phone. I guess the camera-phone came in handy after all.



Anyway, its almost 10:30am, I'm going to try to get a little sleep before I have to go into work tonight. I think I've finally gotten night shift down to a science... Just requires me to have no life... I'm used to that anyhow.

Springtime has arrived

It's officially spring and the weather is cooperating nicely. 62 degrees outside right now and they're predicting we'll hit 80 by Tuesday, I just might have to crank on the A/C.

Today was hopefully the last of the boards I have to go to. This one was the DISA Enlisted Member of the Year. It was definitely setup differently than any other board I've ever been to. I was sitting in front of a table filled with 13, E8's and E9's from almost every service (I don't think the Marines were represented, nor was the coast guard, but the CG doesn't really count). This board was all questions on my opinion of current events, which was nice; I didn't have to study about NCOER's, or the maximum effective range of the M16-A2 and whatnot. I've never been good at memorizing those kinds of facts anyway.

Tuesday my friend Aubrey will be coming into town for a few days, so I finally took some leave. I'm sure we're going to be out partying like rock stars as much as possible, so hopefully that'll help me adjust to night shift when I get back to work in April.

Oh oh oh, don't forget to watch the season finale of Battlestar Galactica tonight!!! Rumor has it we find out who a few more cylons are!! I've got my tivo ready, and don't even try to call me tonight when that show is on, the phone will be off, the pager will be off, I may even power down the entire network.

Promotion, Tourism, and Work

The past week or so has definitely been a busy one. Mother came out to DC to visit, this was the first time she'd ever flown, and I’d say she overcame those fears with flying colors. We did as much of the typical touristy stuff as we could. Toured the Holocaust Memorial Museum, then took the elevator to the top of the Washington Monument, walked down to the Lincoln Memorial, then over to the Vietnam Memorial, and up for a circle around the White House. I had to stop mom from sticking her camera through the fence a few times, the last thing I wanted was to stand there and watch my mother get tackled by a bunch of secret service guys who get trigger happy. All of that walking had us both pretty exhausted and feeling the need for some lunch, so we got some sandwiches at Cosi then caught a cab back home.
My promotion ceremony was last Thursday and it was nice that Mom was able to be there for it. Now I'm really looking forward to that first paycheck that says Sergeant on it! Everybody at work (well all the E7's and above) tells me that’s the wrong attitude, but if the pay didn't matter, there wouldn't be an increase for getting promoted. Anyhow here is a picture from my promotion ceremony.



After all that, Mother went back home on Friday morning and I went back to work, and life got back to its usual routine. Working 12 hours a day, getting a little sleep, then back to work. It's nice to have a day off, I've spent the morning doing laundry, got a haircut, and all the typical domestic type stuff you try to get done on your days off.

I still hate snow

Well, I guess I kinda shot myself in the foot by posting about the "mild" winter. Its snowing like CRAZY now, granted the weather channel is telling me this is going to turn into rain later today, ugh, I still don't know how this is going to turn out. Of course, first thing tomorrow morning I have to take a PT test. Never fails... *bangs head on wall*

I snapped a shot of this dreaded snow from the living room window of my 4th floor apartment. Here you'll get to see the magnificent view of the city that I have.

Evil Snow

Well I guess this has been a rather "mild" winter so far. We've had one good bout of snow here in DC, which didn't hinder my driving ability too much, but parking, now that’s a different story. A couple of days I gave up and decided to metro. Needless to say my car ended up being parked on a sheet of solid ice with a small mound of snow/ice separating my car from the street. 45 minutes of "rocking" the car and a bucket of kitty litter later and few extra scratches on my bumper I finally managed to get my dreaded little car out into the street. Thankfully all this has melted and I can parallel park again without worry.

On a brighter note, mother is coming to visit next week. I figured we'd spend some time checking out the mall, a few museums, and maybe some sightseeing around town. Oh, yeah my promotion ceremony on Thursday as well.

Lazy Couch Day

Having a free weekend is so nice. I slept in today, which means I slept until 7am instead of my usual 5am. I really should spend some time today trying to be somewhat productive around the apartment, but I don't know how well that's going to go. The place is still rather clean, but I think my friend Jeff would be disappointed if he saw the dishes, and empty pizza boxes and dirty clothes around.
Speaking of Jeff, I think he mentioned he was coming into the city for a drink or two tonight, maybe I'll meet up with him later and be somewhat social.
As far as an update from my last post. Not much has been happening around here lately. I've been going to boards; I passed all my tests for the next level of qualification at work (no, I don't get paid any more). Trust me I will be very happy when these stupid boards are done! I really haven't had any time to relax and not worry about what's coming up over the next hill. By the end of March I'm hoping that this will all be over with and I can take a little time, and only worry about going to work, keeping the apartment clean, and maybe being more social. Oh yea, and I need to take some leave, hopefully the bank account will support that as well, but we'll see.

Busy Busy Busy

FINALLY transitioning from night shift back onto day shift. It's so nice to be able to sleep at night again, I was finally able to take down the huge ghetto blanket from my bedroom window. Thats about the biggest thing going on around here, other than I should be getting a promotion sometime around March (I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one). My life has pretty much consisted of work for the past month or so, especially with all the big holidays. Almost everyone else at work has big families with 2.5 children and all that, so they got all the holidays off while I sat in the office all night and watched crappy tv. I was rather disappointed that I didn't even manage to get New Years eve off, the one holiday I was looking forward to. Either way I probably would have ended up sitting at home alone anyway, I haven't been overly social lately.
But anyhow, thats about all the updates for now, perhaps I'll write more if anything interesting happens within the next month.