Just a few hours ago, Christine and I were chilling in the dining room while everyone else was tearing up the karaoke. In some odd way, the discussion became quite lengthy…coming up to roughly two hours. The prevailing and final topic of discussion of those two hours were simple, what would life be like if I never went into the Navy and stayed in Texas. We had quite a couple of laughs as we just began firing off things that would have never existed for us if I stayed a normal civilian. As we really delved in, we were quite surprised by a lot of the things that we could come up with. Like I said, we were doing this for two hours.

While this was going on, my brain was going on overdrive in order to keep up with the conversation while multitasking on yet another thought. It was skimming through the six years I had been a Sailor and looking back into those eyes. Those that have had the opportunity to follow me through my final two years in the Navy through my Rogue Sailor series know that I did have some very tough moments in the Navy. Yet I constantly tell anyone that I talk to about my time in the Navy that it was definitely some of the best moments in my life, I do not regret wearing the uniform of the Navy and to this day I reflect and miss those times…all of it, good to bad.

In the background, it became a 2006 Year In Review. But it was more important since it spanned larger years and kind of was a self assessment to ourselves of what course of life we would chart for the future. It comes to the question for all of you. What have YOU done for your 2006?

Life is not smooth sailing by any ways. Those that have smooth sailing aren’t living, but existing and need to face it. The question is what have YOU done. What type of paddling did you do in the river? Don’t tell me you just drifted with the current. Eventually the river will end and you will be in the ocean, no matter where you look there will be water all over the horizon. Will you look back and regret not stopping to enjoy the shores, forests or mountains on your way down the stream? Yes, you’re wondering what’s up with the nature visuals…but the real question is how my grammar is doing so well after enjoying some bits of the Blue Bottle, lol.

I thought of where I was and what I was doing the last time Earth was roughly in this same spot relative to the sun. I don’t go crazy during the New Years, it IS the day before December 31 of the previous year…and we can’t have December 32! But nonetheless, I was a different person that last time and I measure my progress and what I have learned during that time. I’m glad to know that my progress has been significant, if not in a sick and twisted way, but that’s how it can get at times.

I’ve been getting more and more content and satisfied with my choice of direction and I hope for it to be even better, so that I can be even happier with myself when December 31 of 2007 comes along. I have new challenges in store for me this coming year, and I know yet at least another half will fall to my path as I progress along. But the important part is the YOU part. It gets tiring to me if I don’t get the control over my life that I seek, but I don’t need to digress into the comparison of Life vs. frantically bubbling through some rapids!

Of course, there is my job. Totally different from the Navy, but I am thankful for it immensely. I get paid well for my job, but not so high that it’s a job where I must make money. It isn’t an easy and clean job either. I get far dirtier in this job than I did in the Navy and as far as easy, there are no tech reps and nobody for me to really slide the job on to someone else if it starts getting really tough. But then again, I don’t have to worry about weekends of work either! Overtime also counts!

But my job has given me a lot of satisfaction in that I am really doing something. I’m not buying parts and just slapping them on. I am building it, to the very component if I have to. I drill the holes that need to be drilled, it’s glued and wired. The only things bought are the actual parts. It’s kind of like one of my goals in life to where I build my own samurai katana. I don’t care about the thousand plus dollar super authentic ones. I’ll pay to go over to Japan, or wherever they do it, and have a swordsmith show me how it’s done. Then I’ll spend my times hammering my knees the sword, heat treating my fingers the blade and sharpening my fingers off the edge of the sword. Then I’ll be happy because the ugly, bent and squiggly sword that looks like a sharp metal weed is a sword of my creation that I would cherish because I made it myself. That’s what I get with this job. Every machine I work on is, in some essence, MINE.

No robots did it for me, no computer to make the job easier…I feel like a dinosaur, while my fellow friends are getting paid to Stumble on the Internet (nothing wrong with it, and thanks so much Anthonie for making my occasional time of online boredom interesting again!). But it just makes the weekends more interesting because I do feel the need to live by “Work hard, Play hard.” Though I don’t think I’ve been playing hard enough!  I hear there’s some place where you can get a guitar for free, the only catch is you have to build it yourself.  While I have yet to know how to play a guitar (though I think I’m getting somewhere, I have this sneaking thought that you have to run your fingers across those strings…), I wouldn’t mind building my own for me to have.  I’d like to have my future home have a significant portion of stuff that were made by me…except maybe the tables and chairs, I’d like to eat in peace!

Ah well, I don’t need to ramble anymore.  The Blue Bottle is calling me, and I’m doing a great job of being in control.  So I wish you all the best for this new year.  The best way to make the most out of it is to take the final moments of this year and find out what YOU did for YOURSELF now.  If you didn’t paddle as much this year, you’d better do it in 2007.  Find out what YOU can, and will, do for this new year.

For that, it is time for 2006’s Most Ridiculous Event for me…in Gameworks, a little kid punched me in the face.  I’ll go into details later on, just remind me to.  Let me tell you that it was the weakest punch ever and to this day I laugh thinking about it.

Also, 2006’s Most Ridiculous Christopher Moment…again in Gameworks, a few weeks ago.  I was just walking in when I spotted a small group of women.  One of them looked at me, and after looking a little…south…smiled and said, “Is that a digital camera in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?”  Yeah…lame, huh?  To which I pulled my hand out of my pocket…pulling the digital camera that was in my pocket in the process…and replied, “Yep, that’s my digital camera!” and kept walking.

Anyways, this is the end of my final 2006 postings.  I’ll see you all next year!

The Chapter of Saddam is closed, I pray for a quick and bright future for Iraq now. Nothing really to discuss here…just that it’s been done, if for some reason you don’t know. Out of curiosity, I checked the two big news sites of CNN and Fox. CNN looks all pretty and stuff, Fox a little more blunt…he leaves this world with the varying interpretations of thought in him. Oh well, yet one thing to throw in the many 2006 in Review specials this weekend. Happy New Years everyone, best wishes in 2007.

CNN’s coverage:

Fox’s coverage:

So…why on earth have I started blogging just before five in the morning? Simple! I wanted to tell you all how, for the first time in probably several months or years (don’t know exactly), I remember EXACTLY what I was dreaming this morning! Normally my dreams tend to fade to some limbo as my brain goes to sleep, but this time I remember it all.

It starts off all movie like. For some reason, I’m back in the Navy…except they have on file some of my “explosive” behavior around the 2002-2003 time on the Cole where my anger was really growing. Anyhow, I’m back in the Navy and I am to go to whatever their prison is for two years. Nice! Well, so I’m lulling around outside, watching the sunrise when something abrupt pierces through my dream. Instantly, my brain knows I’m in a dream and what I am hearing is happening in the real world, I am jolted out of bed violently as my blood runs cold as I hear a Muslim man in my room shout, “Allah…”

In what spanned the length of just under a second, I kicked and slid myself across my bed away from the voice. I picked up my pistol and my flashlight while doing so and once I landed on the floor, with my bed between me and whoever was on the other side, my finger touched the trigger and began increasing the pressure as my other hand fired off my light…

…onto my bookshelf. My trigger finger returned to the frame. I quickly began panning my light, pistol tracking with the light beam. But the noise was still on the bookshelf. I squinted, saw nothing and cautiously (and shaking as 200 gallons of adrenaline flow through my blood vessels) reach for and put on my glasses. Same image, just 20/20 now. I look over and all I can think is, “Christine…”

Every now and then, Christine will drop in and find some odd way to wake me up. Though the past half a dozen times she’s simply gone to my clock radio and replaced whatever CD I have with some evil CD she burned herself. Anything from being repeatedly woken up by people yelling “Yankumi!” all the way to Darrell singing happy birthday to me one birthday morning!

Back track to a more recent time. I had missed a lot of Glenn at one time because I was busy at work. So being an Insider, I can go back on his 30 Day Archive…I had laughed at one show where he said he got something in the mail, and it was a pink Mosque alarm clock which I guess goes off when it’s time for Muslims to pray. You see where this is going?

Hail to my late Christmas present. I guess they didn’t come on time, neither did Chip’s, since both of us got a pencil for Christmas from Christine as she hoped our actual presents would actually come.

Time to also say that I am far from a fan to the Muslim prayer nowadays. This is not to anything against them. But traumatic moments in life can bring out negativity where it normally wouldn’t exist. After the Cole got bombed, most of us were still stuck in Yemen for about three weeks until they could figure out how to get us and the ship out of there. Because it was so hot, we spent most of our days outside and slept outside, using whatever space we could. Every day, according to their religion, the Muslims would pray several times a day. The prayer was done on a loudspeaker to be heard all over the city. We could hear it as well. Some of us didn’t know what it was, most of us had no clue what it said. But I know of over two dozen people, myself included, that felt like that prayer was mocking us and it etched a pain deep in us.

Since then, every time I have heard that prayer call it has at the very least made me uneasy. When I went to watch one of my now favorite movies, Blackhawk Down, I almost got up and left the theater when I first watched it because of that call. I loved that movie, and I usually skip that part on my DVD. It is also common to see on videos made by terrorists filming an attack that they begin saying something like Allah Is Great in their videos.

Which is how I at least know my reactions are fairly good, though it was probably only four more pounds of pressure to see how accurate I was in blowing away my Christmas present, which Christine decided to set on me when she made a stop yesterday. Anyhow, thanks for the Christmas present. It’s a laugh, and maybe this is the therapy tool I need to get more acclimated to a prayer call that gets under my skin and makes my blood boil every time I need it. As for waking me up so early in the morning at a near heart attack and will probably make me tired at work today… PREPARE TO DIE!

I’ll post pictures later.

Oh yeah, so full of myself, lol. To me, it feels like Tuesday but I know it’s Thursday, so that’s a good feeling for me. It was kind of like coming back home from deployment and as we sailed past time zones we’d get an extra hour of sleep…well, those that weren’t on watch during that time, that is! So yeah, it’s a good feel. Oh yeah, I had a good Christmas…forgot to mention and some asked. It was very interesting as usual. This is also the first Christmas that I actually tried to wrap gifts. Last year, I had all the presents hidden and on each turn would go off and wrap a present in newspaper and throw it in a shopping back, reusing it every time! At first glance, my wrapping job looked neat. But everyone carefully opened away and revealed that no, I do not have a future in the field of gift wrapping, lol!

So I went to the front page of Glenn’s website today and looked at the sliding menu on the top left of his page when I saw a picture. Hmm, is that MY picture he’s using? Awwwww Yeeeah! But aside from the picture, it says “New Spring Tour Information Coming in 2007!” So get ready, Glenn’s gonna hit the road again probably! Check it out now, I don’t know when it’s gonna be changed since he’s on vacation right now. But I’ve included snap shots in case someone happens upon this post ten years from now!

Again, you can see this picture and other’s at my Picasa Album.

I apologize to the half dozen or so people who I accidentally harassed via MySpace.  My incessant clicking on trying out their address book feature got me sending MySpace invites to some people.  Please disregard!

So after a few years of solid service, the boots that I have used in the Navy have been worn down and no longer serviceable.  They were great especially with my job right now.  So, in need of some footwear, I decided to go check out what they might have in Wal-Mart.  Came across several steel toe boots and found one that I seemed to like and hopefully fit the bill.  As a bonus, these were also rated as waterproof.  I tried them on and walked around for about two minutes.  Satisfied, I bought them.

The past week I’ve been wearing them to work and I quickly realized how I took for granted the thought in design that went to my previous military boots.  The inside of this shoe was synthetic, slippery and had odd bumps.  I don’t know if they were supposed to massage the bottom of my feet, but it didn’t really give me any support.  They were overall clunky as well.  The back of the shoe was also very firm and was “stabbing” away at the back of my ankle, which was very annoying.  I hoped that either it would “break in” really fast or my ever adapting body would quickly get used to it.  Most importantly was the waterproofing bit.  I got rained on and no, my feet didn’t get wet.  But they said it was breathable…I don’t know what type of material lines the shoes, but it is a sauna in there with my feet!  My feet are burning, sometimes sweating in there.  Sadly, we’ve been having cooler weather these past couple of days.  In about two months we’ll be having desert conditions.  Anyhow, the poking at my ankle is no longer an issue.  My feet sometimes “slip” in the shoe, and they’re definitely feeling like rotisserie during this winter weather.

Results: Failed!  It was a thirty dollar piece of footwear, and I’ve found myself bringing one or two extra pairs of socks to change out after eating lunch.  Unacceptable.  I will be addressing this situation in less than two weeks.  I’m not going to deal with this when it gets warmer outside.

Yesterday, I got news reports on traffic that a large truck carrying chickens got in an accident and the chicken spilled out onto the highway.  Needless to say, it was a very messy traffic situation and to no surprise, many chickens were killed.  I was already at work and was actually kind of curious as to how bad the traffic was.  So I logged on to TXDOT’s highway traffic cameras for Dallas/Fort Worth, found the part of the highway where the accident occurred (this camera was probably right on top of it all) and clicked it.

Except that it was showing the next camera over.  So I clicked on the next camera over…same image.  Clicked on the one on the opposing side, nothing to see.  Was it just a coincidential occurrence that I was unable to view the accident of truck, cars and chickens?  Or was someone on TXDOT altering the site’s feed so that nobody couldn’t see it?  Driving back to Mesquite, I saw some feathers and what looked like what was left of some chickens…but that accident was long cleaned up.  Weird for the year wrapping up.