New Year's Resolutions

This is a new year and I'm working on creating a new me. My new year's resolutions so far are:

1. Learn to fly. I tried to teach myself this morning by running across my room and flapping my arms like crazy. I fell down and hurt my back. Perhaps my arms didn't have the right angle of attack. But this just leads me to my next new year's resolution.
2. Failure. I will not accept failure of any kind. Especially the non-advantageous type of failure.
3. Scale Mount Everest. I will Scale Mount Everest while singing all the hits of Mel Torme. Without oxygen.
4. Lectures. I'm seriously concerned about the lack of education in this country. So I'll stand on the street corners and recite free lectures for all the passersby about everything I know. They'll probably be really short.
5. Art. I'll try to explore the subleties in the textures of concrete and debut in an art gallery somewhere.
6. Performance Art. I'll scream at the top of my lungs for an hour while people pay me to do it. And they say there's no money in art!
7. Advocate for Human Rights. But secretly I'll be spying on them for the Human Lefts.
8. Brawling. I'll attempt to fight my way out of a wet paper bag this year.
9. Pi. I'll learn all the digits of Pi out to a thousand places so I can recite it when I go to parties. I also plan on going home alone and crying into my pillow.
10. Music. I plan on writing a symphony for a 300 piece orchestra. The only musical instruments will be pots, pans, forks, spoons, and blenders.

And there you have it. Look out world, here's the new me coming through!

Supper

Tonight for supper I successfully made something that smells like kimchi and looks like brown snot.

Mustache-a-palooza!

Upon my return from vacation, all my fellow coworkers and I will attempt in the most manliest contest known to mainly manly men. Say that three times fast. The contest? To grow the best (and worst) mustache within regs known to mankind. The rewards for undertaking such a task? Immeasurable. I'm secretly hoping that I'll grow a mustache so manly that when I shake other people's hands, they'll collapse to the deck and yell, "Sir! Your mustache is so manly that it makes me cower in shame!" The reason for undertaking such a task? I'll have to turn to a quote by Sir Edmund Hillary (who had a decidedly bushy mustache), "It is not the [mustache] we conquer but ourselves."

New Apartment

I got a new apartment in the Norfolk area since living on the ship is cramped and freezing. I stopped by one day with a friend who also lived there, and signed the lease papers the same day. The only thing that concerned my parents was my lack of furniture. "Oh, I'll be alright mother and father," I said. And indeed, I was. I camped out there in my sleeping bag and pillow and had the best night of sleep since several months. The only problem was getting my stupid power turned on. I had it scheduled for the end of the month, and the date came and went. My power was on, and I figured everything was gravy. That is until I got back late one night from work, tried to turn the lights on, and then attempted to flip the breakers on and off only to discover that the realtor had paid the power company through the end of the month, and that my power never got turned on. After several phone calls, lots of emails, sending in a copy of the lease, and finally filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, my power got turned on. 3 weeks late.
Their main justification for not turning the power on? "We were having billing problems with the previous tenant." That's just peachy keen. My lease that I faxed in proved that I was not the previous tenant and I have no trouble paying my bills on time. Right now I'm kind of tempted to send in a voided check with the billed amount on it to the power company with "Trouble billing with previous power company" written in the Notes section. But I think that'd give them more justification to turn my power off again for a few months this time.
On another note, I'm wondering about my pu'er tea in the really dry environment. The relative humidity in my apartment is about 25-30% which makes me wonder if my tea is going to dry out completely. I think I'm going to have to store it in a chest or a humidor or something for the time being. As for my violin, it might have to stay at home for the time being since I don't feel comfortable taking it to such a dry environment.

It's All on the Internet

I mentioned yesterday that it feels like some little man with a pitchfork poked me in my legs all night because they hurt like the dickens. Well, it's an unwritten rule that whatever thought you may have, no matter how outlandish it may seem, someone else has had the exact same thought and made it public through the internet. My google search of little man poking me in the legs yielded a moving spiritual that soothes my soul when I sing it to my aching quadriceps.

New Portholes

My grandfather called me today and we had our typical wordy conversation that went something like this: "Hello?" "Hello" "Hello?!" HELLO!" "HELLOOO?! HELLO?!" "GRANDDADDY?" "IS THIS MY GRANDSON? HELLO?" "HELLO!" "OK!" "WHAT?!" *click*

And with that out of the way I went to go get new glasses. I needed them because my old ones are on their last legs. And by last legs, I mean I expect that when I pick them up and put them on my face, they'll crumple into dust and I'll be forced to walk around with squinty eyes and hands held out at arms length while moaning "OOOO! My glasses!"
But the eyecenter I went to had lots of different frames with pictures of models modelling them and stuff. And that was ridiculous in itself. One of the models was wearing some Columbia frames while scaling a cliff face as if to say, "These glasses allow me to see which crevices and holds I should use to prevent my untimely death since I'm not wearing a safety harness," and another was wearing some ridiculous Dave Brubeck type hornrim glasses with a scarf tied around his neck and his collar popped which told me, "I know how to show a girl a good time. First we'd get manicures together, then get our hair styled at the spa, and have conversations over drinks with umbrellas in them."
I settled on some plain ol' frames that didn't have a crosspiece on them but looked like they'd withstand being dropped a couple dozen times and didn't need to be taped in the middle. And as the saleswoman explained to me, "You get a 20% discount since you're in the military. Normally it'd cost this amount, but you save X dollars."
"I thought as much," I sagely murmured, while the look on my face said, "Eyeglass lady sure talk pretty."
Hopefully when I get them on Monday they'll look better on me than my OCS glasses. Now those were a pair of eyeglasses!

Fond Memories of my RDC and CDI

This is an email I sent to my sister during OCS. I think it sums up the more memorable (and hilarious) moments of OCS:

Earlier this week we were doing lots of pushups and sprinting 400 meters
outside during drill, and our CDI said, "ALRIGHT, STOP!...Turn around. You see
that pump house or generator building or whatever the ---- it is?" "YES SIR!!"
"Shut up, dummies. You see that bush?" We watched the bush beside the pumphouse and some guy came out from behind it while his family was standing there. He'd had to piss and went behind the bushes. "THAT KIND OF ---- PISSES ME OFF!! It's one thing to go behind the bushes in secluded areas or where there's no head, but MY GOD to do it in front of your family is just disgusting! ALRIGHT GET BACK ON YOUR FACES!" "AYE, SIR! DOWN, AYE SIR! UP, AYE SIR!"

A little bit later during the week we were doing drill in the killzone right after PT, and there was a yellow "Caution: wet floor" sign outside one of the heads. One of
the class idiots was screwing everything up, and our CDI yelled, "HEY STUPID!
WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!""Uhh, I, uhhh, this candidate officer, uh, is not, was,
uhhhh, I mean-" "I? I?! AAAAAAAAAAAH!" and with that scream, the CDI took off at a full sprint, punted the yellow caution sign through the ceiling, breaking several
tiles. We're considering framing the pieces of tile and the broken sign as a
memoriam to the day our CDI lost it.

While we were preparing for our 6th week PI, our RDC dropped by to see our rehearsal. We got put on our faces because of our crappy dry run, and he made us put our anchors into an open tupperware container. "Geez," I thought, "there's no lid on that thing, I hope he doesn't throw that" but as soon as I thought those words, he hurled the tupperware down the p-way with an "AAAAAAAAH!" I think it was also during that time were we got RPTed by him while he drolly said, "Everybody say thank you, "THANK YOU SIR!" "Thank you" "THANK YOU SIR!"

And some other quick quotes from the week:
CDI: "Hey stupid! What are you doing?!" "MARCHING LIKE A PANSY SIR!" "WHAT?!"
"MARCHING LIKE A PANSY SIR!"
"What's the sole purpose of the Navy?" "To kill people and blow shit up, sir!" "YES! EXACTLY! Blow shit up!"

"Hey, HEY PORTHOLES!" "AYE SIR!" "THE OTHER PORTHOLES STUPID!" "AYE SIR!" "THE OTHER PORTHOLES @&^*&#@! MY GOD!"
RDC: "Officer Candidate, you don't have any personality, do you?" "No sir!" "Well, at least you're honest"
"So, your wife's pregnant? Congratulations. How far along is she?" "Hopefully more than 6 weeks sir!"
We also have two guys named Baker.
That makes for hilarious drill sessions with our CDI: "BAKER!" "AYE SIR!" "OTHER BAKER, STUPID!" "AYE SIR!" "DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING?!?!" "YES SIR!" "THE STUPID BAKER, DUMMY!" "AYE SIR!"
"Sir, could the Class Drill Instructor watch Class 22-09 during our own drill practice?" "Watch? HELL YEAH I'll watch! Lemme go grab some popcorn and a soda! GET ON YOUR FACE RIGHT NOW!" "AYE SIR! DOWN, AYE SIR! UP, AYE SIR! DOWN, AYE SIR! UP, AYE SIR!"
And the other pressing matter that I have on my plate is that I was elected as the daince body for the Welcome Aboard for the new indoc class that has just come in. Can you imagine that? Not only do I get to make a jackass of myself in front of my class, I get to make a jackass of myself in front of the regiment which is about 120 people while the rest of the class sings a song they made up. Can you imagine that? I've got a feeling this is going to go down in the annals of OCS Legends: "Class
14-11, Ears!...On 14 JUN 2009, a young officer candidate started dancing during
a Welcome Aboard and the safety officer called an ambulance because he thought
the officer candidate was having a seizure. Order could not be restored until
three hours later. This is why we now recite poems for Welcome Aboard instead of
singing and dancing."