The Following May Offend: Politicians, Lousy Hockey Players, Union Bases, Environmentalists, Bleeding Heart Liberals, the Commissioner of Baseball, Lawyers, Members of Parlament, Condo Developers, People who Talk During Movies, Bureaucrats, Upper-Management Officials, Bob, Middle-Management Officials, the Clinically Insane, Clinically Insane Dictators of Foreign Countries, my Cousin Joe, Overpaid Basketball Players, People Who's Phone Rings Every Ten Minutes, Poets, Film Critics, Rampaging Zombies, Ambivalent Seductresses, Unfair Referees, Political Cartoonists who can Neither Draw nor Tell a Joke in Cartoon-Form, Grumpy Old People who Work in CD Stores, the Guy that Stole my Bike When I was Seven, Girls who Talk too Much, Guys who Talk...

i surprised my family by buying a plane ticket home from CA to MD. my plane leaves for CA in 6 hours. its been wonderful to see friends and family again, and even better was the surprised look they had when i showed up in dress blues =]

the past few days have been very eventful. wednesday and thursday we were in the field doing fireteam and buddy rushes with light machine guns. thats where one squad advances and the other two squads lay down suppressing fire and then they advance and you just repeat that until you take the objective. we had a night shoot that lasted til 11pm and then hit the sack by 11:30. up at zero-four in the morning, we packed our sleeping bags and stepped off at 0515 for a 15 kilometer (a little over 9 miles) hike back to the squad bay. it was about 2 miles from the range we shot at to the base of this small mountain. then 2 miles up, two miles along the side where it was mostly flat but still dipped up and down a little, then 2 miles downhill on what is dubbed 'the anklebreaker' and then about a mile along the flat road back to the squad bay.

then they had the nerve to give us two hour long classes. dont they know we just hiked our asses and only slept 4 hours? so there was plenty of nodding off. then they finally released us for a 96 hour weekend liberty. i took a shuttle bus with other marines to San Diego. there, we got a one bed hotel room, dropped our bags and hit the town. many drinks later, and not remembering much, i stumbled into the room, saw one marine already asleep on the fullsized bed and another two marines on the floor. so i says to meself, screw it and i pass out on the other side of the bed. knowing of course, that its 1am and i have a flight at 7am. so thankfully, i somehow wake up at 0530 and there is now a 3rd marine sqeeezed onto the bed between myself and the other marine, and there are now 3 marines alseep on the floor. job well done id say.

so then we did a quick roundrobin of taking showers and changing and go to the airport on time and didnt miss our flights. whew!

5 hour flight later, i arrived at BWI by 3pm. then it was a day of visiting family and lots of food. good times had by all. i ended up staying awake til 2am playing Rock Band with friends before i finally gave out and slept a good 10 hours or so.

ah but now the short lived vacation has to end and i need to get back to my duties. ill be bringing my laptop back with me so hopefully i can get some interweb action goin on for the weekends =]

hope youre all doing well and stay safe!