I'm headed to Afghanistan for 9 months later this year. I just found out a couple weeks ago and I don't know a whole lot right now. I know I'll be working with a Provincial Reconstruction Team and that it's an Army tasking. I started a new blog specifically for the deployment and the training and preparation leading up to it: A Year In The Sandbox. I know I'm only going to be gone 9 months and not a year, but a year is more catchy and if you include Combat Skills Training then I'll be gone a year in all. So check it out, I'll be updating that site much more often than I update this one. After leaving Belgium I really slowed down on things to write about.
I've found my new favorite thing to do in San Antonio: tubing the Guadalupe river! About a dozen of us from work met up a couple weekends ago and headed up to the Canyon Lake area to go tubing. We went to River Sports Tubes and rented our tubes there. We came prepared with 4 coolers for the 12 of us. We spent the next 6 hours floating down the river drinking beer and bullshitting and it was awesome. You wouldn't think something so simple would be so much fun, but it really was. I got a little sunburn, but not bad thanks to the tan I picked up on the cruise. One of the girls that went with us is pretty fair skinned and the next Monday at PT you could easily tell where she'd missed with the sunscreen. Her lower legs from just below to just above her ankles were beet red. I made fun of her.
This past Saturday Josh, Sheff and I went back for more tubing fun. Sheff ended up getting so drunk he couldn't get out of the river at the end, it was hilarious. Josh got sunburned so bad he had to go to the doctor and get a waiver so he could wear tennis shoes with his uniform because it hurt too bad to wear boots. Noob! I made fun of both of them, too.
We've got another group from work going back this Saturday, I can't wait!
Angie and I went on a cruise last week from Miami to Grand Cayman, Honduras, Belize and Cozumel. We had a blast and took lots of pics.
We stayed with Angie's friend Courtney and her boyfriend Alfredo in South Beach the night before the cruise. I think I'm going to have to live there at some point. They had an awesome place right in the middle of South Beach, everything was within walking distance.
We got on the boat Sunday, and we snuck a bottle of Captain Morgan and a bottle of Grey Goose on in our luggage. The Captain was gone the first night and the Goose was gone the night after that :( Monday we were at sea, so we just laid around in the sun and ate lots of food. We may have had a couple drinks too I guess. We met half of our dinner table mates. Angie and I had been drinking, but Dave showed up to dinner pretty much wasted. He had been in a fight with his girlfriend and was hilarious. Our waiter didn't think he was so funny, but eff him if he can't take a joke. Dave ordered his food and then left, so we ate it. Didn't matter because it's all included and you can order as much as you want.
Tuesday we were in Georgetown, Grand Cayman. We slept in a little since we had been up late the night before, so we only had a few hours in port. We stayed pretty close to the port and just hit the shops around there. We had a drink at Senor Frogs, then at the Hard Rock, then at Margaritaville. By the time Angie found some Big Black Dick that she liked it was time to get back on the boat.
Wednesday we were in Isle Roatan, Honduras. We met up with a couple we met the first (or second?) night and caught a cab to the beach. The island is pretty much just like a mountain top sticking out of the water and the beach was on the other side of the summit from the boat. The cab we were in had seen much better days, but that didn't stop our cab driver Enrique from pushing it to it's limits. We paid him $10 each for the ride and he waited there at the beach until we were ready to leave then took us back to the boat. Smoking deal. While we were walking down the street looking for a cab there were little kids trying to sell us bracelets and junk. One little kid held up his stuff and said, "$2, $2!" and the kid next to him held up what looked like the exact same junk and yelled, "$1, $1!". Ah capitalism.
Thursday we were in Belize and we had scheduled a cave tubing excursion through Carnival at the suggestion of my buddy Joe who was on vacation in Belize the week before we went. It was an all day deal, but it was totally worth it. We were on a bus for about an hour and a half, then we changed into our swimming clothes and took another bus about 5 minutes to pick up our inner tubes. We hiked with the inner tubes through the rainforest for about 45 minutes, then tubed back down the river to where we started. Most of the trip down the river was inside a cave, and it was a pretty awesome. It's the dry season right now so some of the places had pretty shallow water, but we only had to carry our tubes once. Back at the place where we changed they served us lunch and we bought a couple bottles of rum to sneak back on the boat. This night was probably the drunkest of the cruise, but it was a blast. We made a lot of friends the first couple days on the cruise and ended up partying with them almost every night. We ended up in the Karaoke bar at one point and Dave and I sand a few songs. Sam, the chick that was running the Karaoke asked me if I'd be Ricky Martin in the show in the theater on Saturday. The alcohol in my body told me this was an excellent idea, so I signed up.
Friday we were in Cozumel, the last stop on the trip. It was an early morning arrival and I felt like a can of smashed assholes. I didn't drink a drop of alcohol all day. Christine (the other half of our dinner table mates) tagged along with us to the beach and we just laid there all day. I'd lay on the beach until I got too hot, then go float in the water for a while, then repeat. Angie and Christine started drinking again, but they're clearly professionals. Once we got back on the boat, Angie and I went to bed. We woke up at around 11pm and went up to eat, then went right back to bed until the next morning.
Saturday we were at sea again, and I had a song to learn. I had to learn Ricky Martin's Living la Vida Loca. Great. Sam had given me an mp3 player with the song on it and a lyric sheet, so I listened to it on repeat for an hour and a half while Angie was laying out in the sun. I sang it to myself all morning and got pretty sick of it in a hurry. At noon I went for a rehearsal, we were going to be singing on stage with dancers and a live band. We got one shot to rehearse, then got fitted for our costumes and had some pictures taken. The show was at 10:30pm and there was only one show, so it was packed out. The theater holds 1500 people... I forgot the words a couple times, but Angie said you could only tell once. Plus the microphone wasn't turned up when I started and it took the sound guy a few seconds to fix it. It was fun when it was over, but it was nerve wracking getting ready for it. I have a video of it, maybe I'll put it up later.
Click the pictures link on the left to see the pics.
When I went to let Laci out this morning I noticed some pigs on the other side of the pond behind my house.
Not much else going on right now other than work and school. Finals are Monday then I have a couple weeks off before the next semester starts. Angie and I are meeting up in New Orleans next weekend, can't wait for that. I'm flying in on Friday and coming back Monday, should be a pretty good time. We're also planning to go on a cruise some time in April, hopefully we can book that next week. Work's been pretty busy but I just finished up a huge project last week so I'll be looking for something else to do.
I think I've ridden my motorcycle a total of about 10 times since I moved here to San Antonio, so this weekend I'm going to fix a few little things that are wrong with it and put it up for sale. It needs new headlights and sparkplugs, and there's a short somewhere that blows a fuse whenever I turn the high beams on so I'll see if I can chase that down. It may be the voltage rectifier...
That's about it for now, I'm really going to try to be better about updating here...
So, I decided to get out of the Air Force. It wasn't an easy decision, but I think it's the best thing right now. With the retraining program I'd be forced into a job I may not like, but I know I like programming. I talked to some friends who have gotten out and none of them regret it. One of my friends who was a programmer in the AF got out about 18 months ago or so and just turned down a job making $65 an hour to take a job in Africa for $12,000 a month. I know the streets aren't lined with gold in the civilian world, but I think I can do well enough to make up for the lost retirement.
To go along with that, I'm back in school. If I'm going to get out, I want to get out with a degree in my hand. Class started today, and I'm taking Concepts of Statistics. I'm starting out just taking one class to ease into it, but next semester I'm going to add another one, then the semester after that I'll add an online course too. I need 25 classes to finish my degree, but I can CLEP 5 or 6 of those. I'm going to Park University, and they have 8-week semesters, 2 spring, 1 summer, and 2 fall. I should finish my degree next spring if I keep up my plan. The first day of class was pretty boring, and I'm afraid I'm not going to learn a whole lot. There are lots of majors at Park that require this class, so there are some not smart people in the class and he's going to teach to the lowest denominator. He told us he goes over the homework before we turn it in, so we can do it then. The midterm and final are both open-book... Should be an easy A, but I was really hoping to actually learn something.
I've been playing a lot of poker too. Back in November I started playing a lot of sit and go's. I started at $2.25 buyins and I'm trying to work my way up when I have 50 buyins for the next level. I've played 813 $2.25 tournaments so far, and I'm up $315 on them for a 17% return on investment. I've taken a few shots at the $6.50s, but ran bad. I've lost $95 over 121 games for a -12% ROI :( The skill level of the players doesn't improve that much between these 2 stakes, I've just had bad luck. On the poker forums they say you need a 1000 game sample to really get an idea of your performance, so I'm not too worried about losing after 121 games, I'll keep at it. Here's a small sample of hands just from tonight so you can see how my luck has been. The hands were converted to look pretty and my name is changed to Hero:
River: (950) A (2 Players) Hero bets 920 and is All-In, CO calls 920
Results: 2,790 Pot Hero showed K Q (two pair, Kings and Queens) and LOST (-1,380 NET) CO showed 6 A (two pair, Aces and Sixes) and WON 2,790 (+1,410 NET)
Pre-Flop: (900) K K dealt to Hero (UTG) Hero raises to 3,030 and is All-In, BTN folds, SB raises to 4,850 and is All-In, BB folds
Flop: (6,660) 2 A 4 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)
Turn: (6,660) T (2 Players - 1 is All-In)
River: (6,660) Q (2 Players - 1 is All-In)
Results: 6,660 Pot Hero showed K K (a pair of Kings) and LOST (-3,030 NET) SB showed K A (a pair of Aces) and WON 6,660 (+3,630 NET)
To give you an idea of how unlucky that is, the first 2 hands I was a 75/25 favorite, the 3rd hand I was a 70/30 favorite with only a 2% chance of a tie. On the 4th hand I was an 80/20 favorite on the flop and a 90/10 favorite on the turn. In the last hand I was a 70/30 favorite again.
I know the same people getting lucky against me are the same ones I'm winning money from long-term, but man is it frustrating.
If you want to track my progress, I made a page that shows some graphs of my winnings per day and winnings per tournament. It gets updated automatically when I play. It takes a few seconds to load because it generates the graph every time, so be patient. Here it is!
Wrestling season finally started back up, I worked my first meet of the season this morning. It was just a practice quad, but it was good to knock the rust off and get familiar with some of the new rules changes. The first real meet is the 29th and the first real tournament on the 1st. There was a call I didn't agree with today and I happened to notice a guy videoing the match from the stands. I went over and asked to see the video after the match and it dawned on me that I could probably learn alot by filming my own matches. It always seems like you notice a lot more when you're watching somebody else so it'd be nice to have the same perspective while watching yourself. I have a camcorder and a tripod so I'm going to give it a try at the first meet and see if it's beneficial.
Work's been pretty busy with a couple projects I'm working on, but most of my work has been taking care of my guys' training records. We used to have paper records and everybody below E-7 had a folder. When somebody got trained on a task you signed them off, it was really simple. Then the AF decided that was too easy and that we should use some software that was designed to track aircraft maintenance and try to adapt it for the training records. I got all the paper records loaded into the new system (IMDS) in time for the unit compliance inspection back in August. Now 3 months later we're told we have to go to a new system. I have 3 guys that are ready for upgrade and I can't get them upgraded because we can't use IMDS anymore but nobody knows how to do it in the new system yet...
I'm still shooting in the league at the Bullet Hole. I'm 14th overall and 4th in my division. Somebody filmed my 2nd run last week and posted it up on Youtube. It was pretty much the worst run I've had. I bought some cheap reloads at a gunshow a couple weeks ago and was shooting them. Before this run I'd shot over 1000 rounds of factory ammo without a failure to feed or a failure to eject and between the two runs last week I think I had 3 FTE's and 1 FTF. I also almost forgot to shoot the last paper target and missed some steel shots. But here it is anyway, I'm not proud:
Last weekend I shot in a steel plate match. It was the first time I'd done anything like that and I finished 5th, which I'm happy with. Alot of folks there had souped up guns, and I was shooting my bone-stock Glock 35. The whole match is shooting at steel plates that fall over when you hit them. Here's a video clip of the 1st stage: Movie That's not me shooting, but it's the exact setup they used. We were shooting for time only, so just one person was shooting at a time. One of my bullets ricocheted off the steel and through the railroad ties they had set up between bays and hit a guy in the ankle as he was walking back from resetting the steel. It hit him just above the ankle bone on the inside of his right leg. The bullet didn't lodge in his leg, but it cut him pretty good. I'm sure he's got a nice bruise now too.
I'm also shooting in a weekly league. It's action pistol, which looks like this:
It's a lot of fun, but it's not nearly as easy as it looks! I'm 8th in my division right now. They have different divisions for different types of guns. I'm shooting in the production division which doesn't allow any modifications. It's nice because I'm not competing against the guys with guns that cost a couple thousand dollars.
Well, that's about all that's going on for now besides work.
A
dealt to Hero (BB)
T
(2 Players - 1 is All-In)
