So today marks the break from the longest running silence I have on these blogs. What has come over me to not blog, I’m not sure.

It certainly isn’t because life was boring. In a matter of fact this year has been nothing short of amazing.

So amazing and plentiful, I just can’t write it all here…my fingers would be bloody stumps.

But a new chapter in life is in progress and in doing so I’ve got to make some changes.

My website has unfortunately been neglected as well and I have wanted to update it many times beforehand. However, it looks like it will take on a large change. I had always made it so that it is easy for people to find me online and stay in touch…that will remain. The blog…I don’t know. I went without it for so long, I don’t really feel compelled to be writing this now. The files for my blog are in dire need of update just to stay current. A very big pain to do, don’t feel like doing it. With the updates on FB and some posts on Twitter, those have satisfied me enough. I don’t know if another blog is forthcoming. I will probably do away with that on my site, and in turn, as well as MySpace.

Or I may bring it back on a far simpler platform…but my life isn’t really online and I’m doing good keeping a hold on friends and family with few resources.

I really don’t need SPY if I’m managing the airspaces of Mesquite, metaphorically speaking.

Updates will also require that I now have a more professional web presence. This is part of this new chapter. I have been pretty candid, because that’s how I am. Of course, my life and work have allowed me to do this. It will be different now.

I am now slowly thinking up what I want to do as far as the new format for my site and maybe before the year ends I will have something up.

Will there be another blog? I have no clue at this point. Most everyone has been able to keep up with me without them. However, I also do look back and there is some good stuff that I posted…I think.

Of course, can that hurt my professional image? It may…

We’ll see.

My next post will probably be whatever decision I choose to make and if there are directions as to where to view any additions, they’ll probably be made available then as well.

Thanks.

Well, it’s been quite sometime since I’ve done a blog and I need to hit it up again.  A few notes however…

I’m doing a lot of changes all around, whether that is online or offline.  Work is going, to an extent.  Though now our working hours are on a day by day basis, deciding on what the workload is.  It’s been a little bit of a bummer to be a tad bit shorter on pay, but the weather overall has been pretty nice and has alleviated the fact that I get our somewhat early in the afternoon.  Of course, that can leave me with a somewhat hermit lifestyle just so I can keep better track of my money, but oh well…hopefully all of this is temporary.

Online…still keeping that low.  It’s been up a little since every now and then I miss “24″ and have to get the replay on Hulu.  I’d also began slowly moving over to Facebook…as far as how “active” my MySpace has been, that activity has about ceased and there isn’t too much of a point for me to sign on there daily.  I get e-mail alerts whenever someone calls me for whatever reason.  Even the group that I belong in there, which was a major reason I was there, has languished and the posts that have been put up there the past three months hasn’t been really inspiring.  I am gonna keep it though…I have always said I will stay in touch, and there are still a handful of friends there.  However, for some reason or other, a huge number of people moved over to Facebook…I don’t know why, but that’s what happened.  I guess MySpace didn’t get a favorable rap overseas, but now I have my cousins and other relatives and a rather large number of Cole/Navy friends on there, and it’s pretty active there.  I only have 24 hours a day to expend my time, right?

Right now, I don’t know if I will blog after this on MySpace.  I still blog at my own website…I’ve experimented a little with Twitter, I don’t feel for it the way others do, but I’ll hold on to it for a little bit more…  I don’t blog on Facebook either…they call it “Notes” and there is something about the format that I don’t really care for.  So I may just save myself a whole lot of time and just consolidate my blog on my own website.  It’s not interactive, but I get a good amount of traffic…which I apologize since I don’t really update it, so everybody pretty much sees the same damn thing from time to time…

I figured I’d hit this up now since March is over, and this has been quite a month.  The year has started off good…and FAST!  I’m gonna be 70 in a week if it just keeps getting faster and faster as it has been.

So while not a whole lot has gone on, there have been some big things.  First, in January, Tony had went off to do some workup training before his overseas deployment with the Reserves.  I’m watching this carefully.

March has come and gone…and the anticipation was pretty wild for me.  Better late than never, Sean eventually decided (after several years) to uncement his butt, quit making assumptions and actually planned to come down here to see things for himself.  It was kind of a last minute thing, but we got that to work out.  Also, Tony’s training had wrapped up and they were permitting his group a few days off before they made final preps and would head overseas.  As good luck would have it, they would have overlapping schedules.  Also, while it didn’t happen in March, I got to see Bobbie and her husband.  We’ve both been in Dallas for some time and, also better late than never, we finally met.

It really wasn’t the best time for a visit, but the window of opportunity on a near perfect visit had long passed and we made do with what was available.  Sean arrived on the first weekend of March, with where we met up with Christine until she got out of work and hit up Cafe Brazil.  The idea was brought up on a previous meeting with Bobbie and her husband the week beforehand.

Overall this entire week, sleep wasn’t really much of anything.  I was reeling and exhausted the following week but finally recuperated to make sure the following weekend wasn’t spent in bed!  We did plan beforehand to try to do some events, specifically the North Texas Irish Festival and the Greenville St. Pat’s parade.  It turned out that there was just simply too much to do, and those events took up at least half a day.

Part of the trip was planned to look for jobs…but the “fun” factor was kind of overwhelming and we deviated from that a little.  Still, we did a little bit of that and there were some returns…which was something that I guess Sean wasn’t used to.  I dunno.  Places to go, and mainly places to eat…those were the overlying bits of the trip.  He had a decent variety of food while he was here, including some good BBQ.  Places…Dallas isn’t really too much of a sightseeing bit.  We have a few things here and there, but it’s generally a live and work city for the most part.  One sight that we decided to see at the last minute, not really a sight…but by its nature, it is…is the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium.  Basically, everyone is encroaching on Area 51 looking for Roswell evidence.  The government needs a place to hide UFOs and they help give Mr. Jones some cash and arrangements and you have the gigantic obscenity that is the stadium.  Made so that an entire state’s population can watch a football game while government scientists continue to poke at galactic visitors underground!

Tony came in later in the week and that was good to see him.  We hit up a few favorites that we’ve enjoyed since he’s been here, but haven’t visited since he is now a fellow Dallas area resident.  Humperdink’s, Atheneos and Cheddar’s were our eating locations while Tony was here.  As well, we got a little shooting in.  This was good for all of us.  Christine and I were still working out shooting in our schedule and Christine hadn’t shot since Tony last shot before he left back in January.  Sean lives up in MA…enough said!  Tony has done some shooting, I’m sure…super advanced commando ninja stuff, like Navy quals and failure drills.  So this was his opportunity to touch up on what he personally felt he needed and in a more relaxed atmosphere.

As quickly as it happened, it went.  Sean went back up to MA, fully appreciating what his home state has and what Texas lacks, lol!  Tony is overseas, starting up his deployment.  Christine and I continue to have our “Sales…” moment, complete with speed of darkness, super loud second hand wall clock and flicker flourescent bulbs.  This was the beginning of the month…it would now be until the end of the month before the next event showed up.

It was meant to be a birthday present…but identity theft happened, and now I wish I had an Audi Q5.  Just kidding…but yeah, someone decided to be “me” on Paypal…so I’m in the process of paying back Christine!  Basically, it was time to do some shooting under the eyes of those more skilled than we.  Nothing really new, though a few things are almost always inevitably learned.  I do stuff like this to see how I stack up, or refine…I actually like the small scale informal stuff, like what dotted my calendar last year.  That’s what it does, but I always have a bigger picture involved.  It’s basically a “Welcome to My World” experience!  Turns out, that experience went a lot deeper…and in the end, much more satisfying.

So the birthday present, that I owe, was basically Christine meeting Paul…a real American hero and a badass in the truest sense.  That was the basic nutshell…big deal, huh?  But everything that came with it was awesome…she got to meet and make a few friends, in turn she made a name for herself and has become…dare I say…far more conceited!  Me, I’m just my super awesome humble self.  The last shoot we had, I only had 100% accuracy…which sucks, I usually do 180%…I need to work on my slacking technique and attitude.

As all the luck in the world would have it, Christine’s car (which we rode out there) dumped and died…her transmission.  Not a good thing when you’re out of town.  Welcome to the real world…she thankfully now has a job that makes it relatively easier for her to deal with the finances for this.  I told her at first it will majorly suck, watching all that money just vaporize.  In the long run, it’ll be good…you dealt with the problem on your own.

Well, not really…the guys we were with did some banding to help make things right.  Paul got on the phone to his wife, who went to CTU Mode…I mean, CMMDU (Counter Man Made Disaster Unit - it was political news about a week or two ago, go search it if you’re still drawing a blank)…and vectored us to a transmission shop.  Paul go to the tower that he usually uses and they towed Christine’s car to the shop, where it would be almost a week to complete repairs.  Paul had his right-hand man grab one of his trucks and loan me the keys for the weekend.  He said anything else, let him know…but I did my hardest to make sure that Paul did no more favors for us, too much to ask of him…and I barely asked, he did it on his own.  One of our fellow shooters said he met another shooter that flew in to Dallas and immediately went to see if we could grab a ride.  The answer was no problem, and no our issues were seemingly under control.

I am somewhat used to this…how friends went the extra distance to cover and help their peers while in the Navy.  It was good to “be back”…and Christine was impressed with it all herself.

So yeah, Christine as usual made a name for herself…and some of the shooters were convinced that we were more than we were letting on.  Not really…I was the former Sailor and Christine is just my younger Sister…  But I guess that was really all that I said.  Every since Christine bought her gun last year, I tried to make sure that she knew how to use it and how to make good shots with it.  Last year paid off…despite being surrounded by pretty good shooters, Christine was comfortably intermixed with the varying skill levels.  She did well with either hand, and even with a Glock 19 that Paul loaned out for her to try.  There was a hostage round where Christine fired some accurate hits without striking the hostage, as far as anyone could see.  In this stage, she and I did really well…the active Army guys that were present didn’t do so well!

During our stay, we decided to hit up some unique places to eat…we were there for a handful of days, so it really wasn’t a big deal.  But we hit up a local seafood cafe as well as a fast food joint specializing in chicken fingers.  Both amazingly good…which is one of the good things about being out of the city.

As with all great things…it was time to close up the show.  It’s been fun and outstanding, Christine didn’t want to leave…but how many of us wanted to anyways?  A fellow shooter, Derek, had offered us a ride back on his rental car…a Prius.  Interesting!  Happy, yet exhausted, Christine conked herself out in the back and Derek and I made conversation that made the drive feel like half an hour.  Didn’t accept fuel or food…once again, these guys are tremendous in gratitude and feeble in cost.  Now back to civilian land, lol.  As Christine put it…it would be, yet again, a “Sales…” moment.  Well, we all keep in touch as usual!

So, amazingly fast, the year is now 1/4 over and April comes in.  There’s not a lot to do.  But Christine was finally in the presence of some true American Badasses…I mean, there is Tony, Sean and myself…but, well…

Lol!

In usual goofy fare, it was time to wrap up the last weekend of 2008.

While trying to figure out when to comb Ariel’s hair, I remembered that ICE! over at the Gaylord Texan would be ending soon.  I didn’t know whether or not this was the last day (it ends on the first weekend of January, so a few more days left to go for those reading this currently) and figured I’d go.  Perhaps Christine would want to go again…we both went about two or three years ago.

This time, instead of my Sony V1 camera, I had my D40.  I wanted to see how the pics would turn out.  Last time I know I had to be incredibly still and still had to take a few shots to get anything nice.

The D40 was faster, had a larger sensor and I could actually use higher ISOs that I would’ve never done with my Sony.  The D40 also isn’t top of the line, but I’m not a pro photographer anyways.  I enjoy it, but it won’t be something I do for business purposes.

I hate digressing…can’t you tell?

So off to the Gaylord Texan we went!  We took in the atrium briefly, but this was going to be a shorter visit this time.  We had a shoot scheduled.  My current pistol I bought as a Christmas present to myself last year, so in essence it turned one years old a few days ago.

This time seemed a lot busier than usual.  Lots of kids, lots of families…clear shots were not the norm.  Because of that, it seemed like we all moved sort of in a line.  Last time, we all just wandered aimlessly and checked what we wanted to see.

The exhibits were also different.  It seemed a little smaller this time around…but I can’t really tell for sure.  Either way, I feel like I took a little fewer pictures, mainly for kind of moving in a group and not really getting a chance to roam around.

The disturbing exhibit award goes to Santa.  Santa was looking a little freaky, and he was at one end of the room.  The flanking sides of the wall had these elves…but they looked more like Charlie Brown’s head laid on the ground and stepped on until his eyes popped out!

Christine took a picture for a family as they posed in front of Santa.  They did the same for us and I had looked through their camera’s viewfinder…the difference in image quality was stark.  I don’t remember that much a difference with the Sony…but I think that Sony camera was one of Sony’s greater cameras of the time.

The next big hit was the ice slide.  This is where dSLRs definitely ruled.  Low light, varying light…lots of motion.  I watched family after family, camera after camera.  I felt a little sorry for them because they were just the typical point and clicking type photographers.  The amount of delay just on the cameras focusing, then add the slow write speed for most cameras.  If the person operating the camera didn’t time things right, they usually got no good pictures.

I had similar issues with my Sony, but learned to time for the right moment to fire.  Prep and compose, hold then fire.

Getting Christine going down the slide was no problem for me at all, same with her getting a pic of me doing a tactical ice slide!

After that was her famous evil angel exhibit.  Flanked this time around with luminescent candles vs the angels of 2 to 3 years ago.  After that, it was the manger scene…then the end.

I had my camera and Christine brought along her Flip, another difference from my big camcorder from the last ICE! visit.

I don’t know if they worry of the economy made the exhibit seem smaller, but it was moreso evident with what greeted us after we exited.  Last time we got a coupon for a free hot chocolate to warm up after the exhibit.  This time, our coupon was for glowing necklaces.

Awesome…despite my fashion insensibilities, I’m proud to know that my wardrobe is now complete to have a glowing necklace as part of my ensemble.

Oh wait…I forgot to redeem that prize on the way out.  Great, now I have to BUY one!

Tony was done watching his weird…movies.  He had just returned from seeing his parents back home and elected to watch strange videos that only Sean would also appreciate vs doing a tactical team ice slide or whatever!

Time to shoot!  Well, we made a short stop and started to hit the Garland outdoor range.  But Christine wanted blue whale biscuits from Central Market, so even though it closed sooner Targetmasters was the more logical choice.

Over the course of the year, Christine has fired several hundreds of rounds and I’ve kept a nice close eye on the progress.  Around the summer time, she seemed to hit a wall.  Her shooting was very good, but she wasn’t really getting more accurate.

I also knew that she was left-eye dominant.  This was a challenge posed when line coaching Moni, I think, back on the Cole.  I didn’t really have a confident solution back then and it was coming back to haunt me here.

Some thought and some conferring and we decided to let Christine try starting to shoot using her left hand.  After making sure she had a halfway decent grip on the gun, we threw a clean target on the range and she fired off a group very similar to shooting right handed.  Positive signs for me…we’ll see if she does end up rocking back up again!

Tony did a couple of firing strings…glad to see him up shooting to about usual again, but disheartened that he was pretty much the only one in his unit that was to that capacity.

Me…well, I just simply had to be the most awesome shooter in the range…so I shot and I let that ever growing hole on the target speak for my awesomeness!  We even scared away the rest of the shooters from the bay, that’s how awesome I was.  Nevermind that the range closes in about half an hour.

Feeling good of our shooting and letting the goofy momentum continue, we had someone enter our bay and continue to show that no matter how bad of a day we have shooting, we can always look at someone nearby and feel much better about ourselves!

Our example here is seeing this guy’s target…maybe three yards away and he is shooting fairly rapidly.  His “group” was pushing past a foot wide…basically five or six of the worst groups of Tony, Christine and my shooting combined could fit in this guy’s handiwork.

We went into mockery mode…Tony and Christine began wobbling their guns while shooting at the target.  Yet…the shooting was still better.  So he was rapid firing somewhat, I decided I’d take him up on that…nothing but a fist sized group.

So, like many others we’ve seen before, what’s a guy to do who can’t hit a target not even 10 feet away from him?  Let’s run the target all the way out to 25 yards!  We watched a little more until we saw one end of his target fall away as he hit the clip of one of the targets.  With about five minutes to go, we quickly just packed up and left him on his own.  If he wants to set the whole range on fire, that’s all him!  Tony noted him having a USP of some sort…his holes looked like a .40 or .45 to me, nothing Christine herself couldn’t handle.

To Central Market we go!  Tony feels hungry at first and then he sees what seems to him to be Neiman Marcus prices.  So he eats the price inflation floating in the air and all of a sudden he just wants a bottle of real Coke!  I figure a burger with fruit is good and I got a whole pizza where he could at least have a slice if he got hungry again.  Christine got a meatloaf sandwich.

Mine was pretty good…I didn’t leave much of anything behind…actually anything!  Tony had a slice of paper thick pizza and declared himself full.  Christine wanted to like her sandwich…but meatloaf usually has a tomato sauce of some sort, not mayonnaise.

On a side note, Tony and I were looking at the chicken cordon bleu that was up there.  We laughed because in the Navy, that was one of the few foods you could ever screw up.  It was a good day onboard if you got to the messline and saw you’d have it for lunch or dinner…you were gonna have a good meal!

Then we got some groceries, Christine got blue whale biscuits and we all headed back to Mesquite.  Sleepy I was, with work the next day.  Christine tenderized her blue whale with her microphone.  Tony went back to watching movies that he and Sean watched together in some undiscovered space on the Cole!

What a great finish to the final weekend of 2008!  Gonna do similar for the first weekend of 2009!  Standby!

Don’t mind the title…I’ve been up for four hours and am messaging three friends…who sleeps anymore right?  Haha!

Recently I had a conversation with a buddy of mine that somewhat amused me.  His Christmas revolved around a dramatic breakup, so he wasn’t really having a jolly season this year.

After chit chat here and there he just put down his drink and looked hard at me.  “Who’s your ideal woman?”

I didn’t quite understand his question.  So he repeated it slower.  I heard the question well the first time, but I repeated that I didn’t understand, but then I offered “…one who will put up with me!”

It was a half joke…but very serious one too.  You learn hard oftentimes as a military person that it’s not easy to find someone to “put up” with not only you, but…the life.  And if you are someone that has a Warrior personality and you love that way of life, even when you’re no longer in uniform that can still pose challenges.  I’ve got to learn from mistakes, but thankfully there was also an enormous ship that held nearly 300 people and you got to learn from some of their mistakes too.  That said, the two most awesome marriages I’ve seen so far…both of my buddies are in the Navy.  So I know it works, and can work well.  But I digress…

So, he offered up hints, naming off people we knew and also some celebrities.  Basically, the would you like this person or that…  And use that as a baseline for who we seek.

What?!?

I’m sorry, I didn’t know you could custom make women now.  Who came up with that factory?  This guy?

I believed my buddy was looking at it totally wrong.  I told him if I ever did that, unless I actually met that person…there’d be nothing in my life.  I told him every person, and this can be anything…friendship, teammate, whatever as well…I look at the collective sum of that person.  I don’t see a real possible way to categorize people in that manner.  There were plenty of awesome and worthless people in my division.  Same at work.  I can go to a location and be friends with just one person there and the rest I’ve judged idiots.

To make sure, I took a jog through memory lane.  In this area of life, my road has been cautious so there have been a smaller pool of experience to base on, but I also notice very little drama.  Each person not too similar to people before or after.  I reviewed other friendships and work relationships.  Same conclusion as before…so at least it was working for me.

My buddy started drinking again…he said I was hurting his head.  Oh well, you wanted to know, right?

He still wasn’t satisfied, I could tell.  He turned to me, ready to ask another question.  I was sure I knew what he was about to as so I quickly thought and came up with the answer just as he opened his mouth.

“So is there anyone kinda famous that you like the collective sum of who they are?”

I knew it.  My answer was made and it didn’t take but half a second for me to reply.

“Gina Carano!“  Duh, lol.

That conversation amused me because I know he’s not the only one that thinks that way, and in closing I told him he needs to look himself in the mirror and think differently before he goes out looking for someone else.

———-

On another note, as I said…I’ve been awake.  Dreams that force me awake are slowly returning.  No…it’s not those dreams.  I’m trying to figure them out.  Almost all my dreams slip from memory when I awaken.  But these dreams are just like the others before, they play out and cause my mind to react strongly to them…like they laser etch themselves into my mind and in the shock and electric feeling, I’m jolted awake with those scenes and images glowing brightly.  I remember them for weeks, and in my down time try to ponder the meaning.

I do think they hold a message.  Of what, I’m not sure.  The biggest dream I had of last year, I could decipher that and I have lived my life accordingly.  The past couple of weeks I’d have dreams like this once a week…but they’re random as far as I’m concerned.  Oh well, at least it’s not a weekday today!

———-

It was my M&P’s birthday a few days ago, gotta ring it out…probably do that today!  I guess the sun’s almost up now…probably go hit a run before I go out.

…so a video must be worth a thousand or more pictures, huh?

Well, I’ve been behind the power curve on this all.  There’s no where I’m gonna catch up on this.

Just a few more weeks till the year ends and with all the strangeness and pain that’s incorporated throughout, thankfully it’s been fairly few of those.  Lots of good fortune for this year, but as I said last year…it was DEFINITELY a busy one for me this year.

I hope the year has been a good one for all of you as well!

That said, there were some things that were surprises this year and the unintended consequences make it yet again a busy year next year.  Hopefully this is the last year of it all though, lol…I don’t want my hair graying out before I’m 30!

Best wishes to all of next year…maybe a little less crazier than mine!

Anyways, it is no contest..this is my Personal Achievement of the Year for 2008.  Probably doesn’t seem like much for some of you, but there’s a lot more to this than what you see, I’m trying to keep this short as well!

Well, have yourselves a Merry Christmas and I’ll see you on the newer orbit around the sun!