Blue Crush

I found this cool widget over at Canadutch's place. Essentially you put in the names of three peeople you dig and it spits out your compatibility. I put in SW, Briegh, and some girl from high school. I'd like to say that the results were good, but maybe it's just me.

Anyway--it's just a game anyway. Try it out.

Crush Calculator

random

School's In

The school district that we live in does year round school. What that means is that the monkies get half the summer break that I did as a kid, but they get multiple two-week breaks throughout the year. It's a little bit of work for us now, since it tosses even more chaos into our already chaotic schedule, but it pays back when they (and we) get a break a few times a year.

They had their first day of school on Monday. Princess seems to be an old pro at this now, although we're not too crazy about her teacher. She just seems a little too high-maintainence and self-absorbed to be a second-grade schoolteacher. To top it off she loaded Princess up on the bus on her second day, even though we filled out the forms and explicitily reminded her to not put our kids on the bus. So SW spent yesterday afternoon stopping the busses before they left the parking lot to pull Princess off. To add to it--the teacher tried to lay the blame for the debacle on us, by saying that we hadn't filled out the correct information on her nametag.

Cowboy's a different story. We went to great lengths to get the teacher we wanted, and to get him in the same class as his best friend. My first impression of her is an awesome one. She seems to be great with kids and Cowboy loves her so far. I was hesitant as to how he would handle going to Kindergarten, but he took it in stride and barely said goodbye to us.

SW seemed to handle dropping Cowboy off without any problems--I managed to hold tears back somewhat until I got in the car.

He still looks like a baby to me.

family

Bandit Three Six

Bandit Three Six is a blog that I've read from time to time. He's deployed to Iraq and is blogging from the Green Zone. His current posts are a slap back in the face of the MSM who says that we're losing the war.

Well worth checking out.

military

Peeped Out

Well, that was fun while it lasted.

After four days I finally got booted off of 25peeps. That was three days longer than I thought I would last. At the very least, one of the new contenders that bumped me off was Briegh from Canadutch. You can check her peep out here and pass on some of the luv.

I'd like to do it again--I think I would need a better, more "clickable" photo, though. I'm open to any suggestions that people have regarding what I should put up.

Don't forget, I'm a guy--so boob shots aren't a player.

I've been conspicously absent for the past couple of days due to some serious buffoonery on my part regarding what is classified and what is not--I accidentally sent some sensitive info across an unsecure computer without realizing it. No harm was done, except for the fact that the had to sanitize my computer at work all day...for two days. I was starting to get the shakes from not being able to get online.

I need another hobby.

blogging

Superman Returns

Superman. Abso-f*cking-lutely rocked. Mind you, I've always been a very big Supes fan--I loved the movies in the late 70's and early 80's. So to have the same theme music come crashing through the theater speakers was a trip, to say the least.

It was kind of a chick-flick, but not really. Just a little touchy-feely, but I think it was necessary to build up the characters for a new generation of movie goers. But the special effects and action scenes were phenomenal. Like let-out-a-yell-in-a-crowded-movie phenomenal. Princess, I think, was a little bored--but Cowboy was completely beside himself. In the movie the bad guys figure out a way to hurt Big Blue and the beat the snot out of him. For a while you think he's dead or dying. As the scene was playing out I could hear my five year old Cowboy sniffling in his seat beside me. I looked down and he was crying his eyes out, but didn't want to make any noise because he was in the theater.

Man, he's a great kid.

Anyway--I'll probably take Cowboy to see it again, because this is one that is definitely better in the theater. I think it sucks that it's not doing so well, because I am dying to see a sequel.

family

Martial Motivation

I've won quite a few things in my life. Lost more than I've won, but I have quite a few plaques on my wall. Well, ok, they're in a box in a clset since SW doesn't want them all over the house. But I've won them nonetheless.

One victory that I had was when I was a teenager taking Karate with my Dad. The organization we're all in now, ATA, has tournaments out the wazoo. The organization I was in then, Fred Villari's Studios of Self Defense, didn't have them that often. So in the whole time I was taking it (about 2 years) I only entered one tournament.

One of the events was sparring. Essentially you and another dude would put on gloves and go at it. You face each other and a referee raises his hand from between you to start the fighting. You got points for making contact in the head or body area, when a judge would raise a red or white flag to signify the hit. Once a point was scored, you stopped, reset, and did it again. This went on until someone scored five points.

I entered my one and only tourney as a blue belt, roughly halfway to Black Belt. I kicked ass in another event--even won a trophy--but it was sparring that I really wanted to do well in.

I faced off in my first real match, my Dad and high school sweetheart sitting in the stands watching (can you say "Karate Kid?" Hey--it was a good movie). We went back and forth for a while, and he was a hell of a lot better than I. He scored three, then I scored three, then he scored his fourth, and I scored my fourth. Next point wins.

I'm still not sure why I did this, but when the ref's hand went up I yelled as loud as I could a threw myself (all 190 pounds of me) through the air at him, with no hope of landing on my feet. As I sailed by I shot my fist out and bopped him on top of the head. I went crashing by him into the crowd standing nearby like a bowling ball and landed on my back, out of the ring. When I looked up, both judges snapped red flags (my color) into the air.

The crowd (my Dad and girlfriend, but it felt like the crowd) went wild. I won my first match.

I actually went on to get trounced in the semi-finals, so I never won a trophy for it. But I tell you what--I have never had such a great feeling of triumph (ok, maybe I have--but not in sports) since then. It was, to be a teenager for a moment, so cool.

That's one of the reasons we're taking this completely insane adventure right now as a family. Not only do I want that feeling again, but I want the monkies to have it to. I want them to go further in the sport than I could due to circumstance. Those two years have stuck with me ever since, and I desperately want it to be a part of their lives.

random

I'm Famous

At least I will be for a few minutes.

Breigh (Bree-Ah) from Canadutch dropped me a line to say that she had found my site through 25peeps today. 25peeps is a website that you upload a single picture, and if it gets enough hits you move up a list to eventually be in the top 25. I think I uploaded mine about six months ago. Well, apparently I've made it to the big top 25, because when I went to check it out--lo and behold, there I was with the monkies.

My pic will only stay up as long as people click on it--so help a brother out! Drop by 25peeps and click on me...

Ok, enough beggin'...back to my miserable week.

UPDATE: YOU GUYS ROCK. By day's end I have moved up into the top couple of spots...beaten only by the guys that made their ass look like a great set of knockers (wait a minute...)

blogging

Israel

I love the Israeli Military.

I like the country, the government, the loyalty they have shown--but I love the military. Once they are given the green light, they clean house. Every time. And it has hurt for me to watch over the past few years as Hamas has summarily executed thousands of innocent people in that country, while the military was (for the most part) held at bay.

Wizbang had a great article on the current situation in the region and what's going on. It's worth a look.

So, while it may not be politically correct to say so, I am ecstatic that they are finally steamrolling through the bad guys. Hezballah wants in? Cool--we'll steamroll them too.

Go get 'em boys. Protect your women and children.

military

Overwhelmed

This week has sucked.

In addition to my normal issues at work, a plethora of other issues have been dropped in my lap, and my co-worker has elected not to help in any way. Couple that with the car issues (more on that below) and not being able to get around, and life just kind of generally sucks here.

This has been the first week we've been able to try to do the TKD schedule with the monkies going at one time, and us at another. Plus SW is working from 0900-1400. For example, Tuesday's schedule. Mind you, we live 35 minutes from town:

0700: I go to work
0830: SW goes to work
1400: SW Dentist appointment
1430: I leave work early to go back home and get the monkies
1510: Me and the monkies go to TKD
1610: SW arrives at TKD
1645: We leave in 2 cars to go home, I stop at Walgreen's for medicine for MIL
1730: I get home
1810: SW and I go to TKD
1945: TKD over, we go home
2015: Cook dinner
2045: Eat said dinner
2130: Pajamas and get monkies ready for bed
2200: Collapse in a heap

That is how it's been for us for a while now. The singlemost largest mistake we made was living so far from town. Tonight we get to go to two different schools (a fine example of Arizona's politicians failure to support the poplualce in their explosive growth in the last few years) for the monkies two open houses. The first is at 1730, the second at 1815, and we're supposed to be at TKD for me and SW's class at 1840. Oh yeah, we still live 20 minutes from the school. Not sure if we'll make that one.

Next on the list of Lucky's woes is the car situation. We need three modes of transportation: car for SW to get to work, Harley for me to get to work, and car for monkies to get to school. A while ago our Durango started overheating when the temperature topped 95 degrees. I replaced a couple of things and flushed out the radiator, but we eventually had to take her in. After a $340 bill on Friday, the damn thing overheated again last weekend. So now we're minus a car while the guys at the dealership have been trying to figure it out for the last few days. The monkies start school on Monday, so we really need this to be handled.

Continuing the beginning of my financial ruin is SW's dental woes. She cracked a tooth while she was preggo and couldn't go to the dentist until Odie popped out. When she finally got in, the diagnosis was grim: two root canals, two crowns and a bridge. While the military generally does a good job at taking care of its people, one place they fail miserably is dependant health care. The insurance that we have is abysmal. So, all told, we got a $3000 bill dropped in our lap this week. This is two weeks after we spent $1700 to go see the grandparents in St. Louis.

I'm trying to tell myself "one thing at a time" over and over, but it's not working very well. I'm at the brink of being overwhelmed at this point.

family, rant

Fear

I'm scared.

I was watching the President this morning giving a speech about the economy that he has given a dozen times and I got the feeling that, at this point, noone is taking him seriously anymore. I got the feeling that so many people are so tired about the war and this administration that the outcome of the elections this fall, and the next Presidential elections, will be disasterous.

The President's support is waning day by day. I used to read political/military blogs almost exclusively and these days it gets hard for me to stomach them. Politics in general were always hard to stomach--I honestly don't think a "changing of the guard" this fall will have any noticable effect whatsoever--but the national "mood" and opinion is getting difficult to watch. There's nothing like watching the Spirit of a nation deteriorate, especially when that nation is the one you've sworn your life to defend.

My fear is that by the time the next presidential election rolls around, if significant progress is not made, the voters will go for anyone who can end this. And, much like Vietnam, we will be pulled out with our tail between our legs. And all those solider's lives will have been lost in vain. There is so much self-preservation in politics today, that the greater good or greater goal is lost in the duststorm. The people of Iraq need us. The people of Iraq WANT us to help them, because they know that if we bail, then what is already is horrible place to be will become the truest version of hell on earth.

I can't imagine what being in the US Military would be like, if the anti-war side wins this one.

politics, military