Can't sleep

My random thoughts....

I worry about my dog Daisy. She's 13 years old, and apparently isn't doing so well. She's getting weak and can't eat much. My other dog, Toby can tell there's something wrong and is acting kinda depressed according to my Mom. Losing Daisy would be a huge loss to my family, she's such an integral part of who we all are. It's amazing how much an animal can become a part of our lives.

I forgot to mention that my best friend Jason makes me feel better about myself in many ways. In this instance, he lives in California selling not security systems like I thought, but get this... garbage routes! He works for this company who tries to consolidate neighborhoods and get people in certain areas to swap "sanitation providers" to condense his company's routes. So he's like the garbage man's assistant. I love it!

I am really glad to be back home finally. I loved my trips and everyone I was able to see and meet and I'd do it again in a heartbeat but it's nice to be at my own house. granted it's only my house for 8 more days in which I need to find a storage shed, pack and move out. Talk about stress, I have to pack, but still keep things out that will last me till I leave for good.

I think with all the trips I've taken this year so far, and the fact that I'm about to leave for a bit makes me feel very disconnected from everything. I'm looking for something to help me feel grounded.

I still don't like California, I'm convinced it's going to eventually burn even more than it usually does. And how is it that I can spend days out on the open water and on the beach on the East Coast, and only get slightly burnt, but I can spend 3 hours on the beach in San Diego and come back roasted?

Even MORE vacations!

Ok, I promise, this is going to be my last vacation in a long time! Unless you count my all expenses paid trip to a certain cradle of civilization country that some of my friends refer to as me going on vacation. How's that for denial?
At this point, I'm a little more than halfway through this vacation. Last week after being beaten shamelessly in a game of Settlers (even though I was totally justified in losing, they had to change the game AND the rules just to have a chance at beating me) I decided I needed a pick me up. Where else do I go? That's right, to visit my best friend Jason in San Diego. He always makes me feel better. At this very moment, I'm watching him sleep uncomfortably on a love seat, last night's bowl of ice cream sitting next to him. I took his bed, heck, just doing that makes me feel better! Dang he woke up. But yes, I'm halfway through this vacation. I had a pretty boring week, didn't do ANY of the things that I had set out to do, and decided that I needed to come visit him, if only to justify my procrastination a little bit more.
Yesterday we went to Sea World, with him complaining about my selection of parks. With all the parks that were around, why did I have to chose Sea World! It was like picking McDonalds when there's a dozen fancy places around. Well to be honest I didn't know there were any other parks around, and Sea World came highly recommended. I sat listening to him complain about it all the way to the park, but once we got in the park, oooh guess what! Sea World was his favorite park when he was 9, and he was excited to be going again. Such a baby underneath that rough, tough, grouchy, depressing exterior. I love this kid. But of course it was raining most of the day, clearing up later. I really enjoyed most of the exhibits, though I got the feeling that at my age, unless I'm coming with a couple toddlers, it's not really geared for my enjoyment. I think I'm in between their target demographics which are little kids, and parents of little kids who have the money.
But today being Sunday I think we're going to take it a bit slower and just relax, go to the beach and walk around. Crazy to think that just a week ago I was sitting on the East coast, and now I'm on the West coast. It's going to be a good day, and I'm looking forward to spending time with my best friend till my flight leaves. I should probably find someone to pick me up from the airport huh? Anyone want to come get me at midnight?

Vacations again

Where I last left off, I had just gotten home from Florida. Lo and behold, 2 days later it was time for me to run off and go play Army in Virginia for 2 weeks. This training was the final training for my Warrant Officer promotion. It was supposed to give me the basics of management within my field, and teach me supervisor functions on several computer systems that we'd normally use. The normal Active Duty Army course is 8 weeks long, but since I'm a Reservist I only got a 2 week course. So they took 8 weeks worth of material and condensed it down to a 2 week version. You'd think that it'd be a very "go go go" type class, starting early and ending late, lots of learning the whole time, right? Wrong. I should never underestimate the Army's ability to screw things up. Of the 13 days that I was there (rather, supposed to be there, due to a misunderstanding I showed up a day early, and I left a day late, to be explained later) we probably only had 6 days worth of classes. The rest of the time was spent in the classroom, but we were sitting around doing nothing. They would have us get up at 3 am for most of the first week, for random things that would only take an hour or two to do, and then they'd let us go till 8. We couldn't go back to sleep, it was pointless to go back to the hotel that we were staying in (oh, I found a dead roach every morning in my room, great way to wake up). It was frustrating the amount of time that we could have either been learning something useful or doing something that we wanted to do.
But anyway, the class was useless, I didn't learn anything. Scary considering how I'm going to be expected to do my job without problems or bumps here in about 3 weeks, just because I checked the box that said I got the proper training. Kinda reminds me of how I feel about a high school diploma or a college degree!
On to the fun stuff though! While most of my classmates were leaving on the Friday that we graduated (yet another waste of time that nobody cared to do yet had to checked off in order to justify our instructors' jobs.) I wasn't scheduled to leave until the following day. And it just so happened that some people were headed to Myrtle Beach, SC that week for a vacation. I was lucky enough to be invited down to hang out till my flight left. So right after the graduation I drove the 5 hours to the beach, and within a half hour of me arriving I was in the water! It was so nice, the water was warm, the company was amazing and the weather was perfect. We swam for about an hour, then went back to the room to change. We had tickets to go to a show called Medieval Times. I had never heard of it before, but it's dinner and a show, set in the 11th Century. I understand that the story varies from place to place, but our section had a knight to cheer for, and we watched horses do tricks, and some really good riding and sword fighting. I thought that my sister Kelly should go work there, she'd love it. We ate dinner with our hands, and our wrench (waitress) was really fun to interact with. When we got back to the hotel, which I might add, I'm very grateful to my friend for letting me crash on the extra bed for free, and I'm glad that it wasn't a King sized bed, cause that might have been a bit awkward at times! But anyway, after dinner we walked around on the beach for hours and hours just talking and catching up. It was warm, and we walked in the surf watching the heat lightening over the ocean. It could have been considered romantic by some, I was just enjoying the view and people watching. It's odd how many people were out and about as late as we were, but I guess we were out too... We got ice cream and watched a guy tap dance, talked about the various types and groups of people that were around us, and just enjoyed being there. I don't think we got to bed till 3 or so, but it's going to be a long time till I see anyone from there again, if ever, so I wanted to make it last.
The next morning I knew I'd have to leave sooner than I wanted to, so we got up and walked the beach again, looking at shells and letting the moments linger. We finished conversations from the night before, ate breakfast and packed up. I really enjoyed my time out there, and it made the previous two weeks of pain and suffering totally worth it. I'm glad that I went, and I hope that we all keep in touch and know that if they ever come out to Utah for any reason they have a place to stay and a friend to hang out with. Some really amazing people...
But all good things must come to an end, and this one ended way too soon for my liking. I could have gone another week, easily. I left with enough time to get to the airport and sit around for an hour or two, just in case. And it was a good thing I did, cause due to backed up traffic coming out of Myrtle Beach and an accident along the way, I lost about 2 hours. So I had to go 85-90 (in a 65!) the times that I wasn't sitting still in traffic, and thanks to some good driving and some blessings from Heaven, I made it safely, with about 10 minutes to spare before the plane took off.
It felt good to be home, though I longed to be back at the beach in the company of good friends, no cares and amazing weather. I was able to see my sister Laura and her husband Shane last Sunday for dinner. They made me pancakes and bacon, it was so good to not have Army food at last! We played an expansion version of Settlers, and I came in dead last, but not by much. At least I will always have the satisfaction of beating Shane the first time I played him. Probably a very good thing on his part that he lost. It may not have been a good thing beating your future brother in law in a game he's good at the first time you meet him. I totally felt like the Alpha male. Yes yes, my ego was massaged, still is.

Fulfilling a request

So some of you may have heard that I've been away from the blessed protection of Utah lately. The truth is, I have. And to be honest, I'm having to look at a calendar to remember when I was where and why. On the 20th of May I headed home to Alabama to visit my family. I was really looking forward to spending some time with my family and relaxing. I got to see my sisters, well three of them, the other one was still in Utah being lame, going to school or something. My parents were there, as were my dogs. It was great to see everybody, though my dog Daisy was looking older and weaker (sure enough, I got a phone call the other day saying that they weren't sure if she was going to make it much longer. More to be said about this later).

I didn't sleep much at my parents house, but when I woke up, my sister Emily went back to West Virginia and my sister Kelly and I headed down to Pensacola Florida to see my Grandmom. It was a 6 hour drive, and after a night of little sleep, all I wanted to do was crash. Bless her heart, I love my Grandmom, but she is slightly over accommodating. Kelly and I wanted to fix a sandwich, so we got out the meat, mustard, cheese and all that. Well after we're halfway done fixing out sandwiches, she tells us about every other type of sandwich that we can have, and if we run out of something then we can go shopping for it in the morning. And it wasn't just sandwiches that she did that for, it was pretty much all food. That woman can talk! We talked about the phone lines in her house, painting the numbers over the garage, everything. I did enjoy helping her out though, I power washed her back porch and changed some light bulbs, plus I repainted her house numbers. I think Kelly did something for her, but that might have been just listening to her talk, bless her heart. It needs a lot of blessing. I stayed with her for a couple days before I flew to Miami to see my friend Caleb.
Caleb worked for the Coast Guard in the Florida Keys, shooting up drug runners and stopping illegal immigrants from entering the country. Apparently once Cubans get into the country, so he says, they get $10k from the government, and then they can get a $250k home loan and a $250 business starter loan, 76% of those loans are defaulted on. There are too many people out there for the banks to get their money back or go collect their things. I don't know if its true or not, but it's interesting.
Caleb is one of those kinds of guys that everybody likes. He hits it off immediately with everyone that comes around, makes connections and somehow gets all sorts of benefits from it. Like he used to live across from a bay, and did some odd jobs for a lady who owned the docks and some property, so she let him take her boats out whenever he liked. Eventually, when Caleb's family moved back to Idaho to save on housing costs, she let him live on her boats. How cool is that? I'm just the lucky friend who gets to reap the benefits of having a friend that everyone likes. So I get to crash on a 40 foot boat with one of my best friends, in the Florida Keys. We go out snorkeling everyday, and I got so burnt! I forgot to put sunscreen on my legs and head, but I remembered later that night! It was amazing though, all the fish that we saw. There were some baracuda that scared the crap out of me, I mean they were as big as I was! They could have eaten me pretty easily if they wanted to, with as many of them as there were.
But alas, all good things must come to an end. I had to go home. I was grateful for my chances to see my family even with all the drama that only family can bring, and my adopted brother Caleb. I flew home on a Wednesday, and had time to unpack, do my laundry, and pack again, cause I flew to Virginia on Saturday for some fun Army stuff. But I'm going to have to write about that later cause I'm way tired, and I still have to pack for my San Diego trip tomorrow morning.
Oh, and my friend A kept teasing me, so I told her I'd write about her. Today she got a facial, and apparently her face smells good, and she went to a Chinese food party tonight. At least I didn't write that you were a crazed controlling freak!

Talking

I'm in Virginia right now, and I'm slightly frustrated. I want to talk to people, to someone, anyone. I can call, text or email people, but I miss the human interaction that all that lacks. I rely so much on my relationships with people to keep me sane, and I feel that I'm slowly being pulled away from everyone. And when I go to Iraq, I'll be forced to forge new human interactions with the people I'm there with. While I'm gone, I worry about those I leave behind, and how the lack of interaction will affect our relationships. I know that deep down we'll all be friends, and that people change whether I'm there to experience it or not, but still that weighs on me more than anything else I face while I'm over there. I'm sure that I'll make friends while I'm over there, but I'd say that 90% of the interaction I'll have will be the leader/subordinate type.
Eh, I'll be home in less than a week and I'll get to see most of my people. I'll try to spend as much quality time with them as possible.