It’s been awhile..

We had a water shortage not too long ago. There was NO running water, so we had to take water bottle showers. The water bottles are pretty big so it only takes about two of them to wash yourself completely. About showers…

So the roomie who doesn’t like girly magazines..

Clean Roomie – Hey man, I’m not trying to be a jerk or anything, but when’s the last time you showered bro?

Girl Mag Hater Roomie –Ohh man.. its been about a week I think.

Clean Roomie – Well, is it because you don’t like being in there with other dudes? I mean, they have curtains.

Girl Mag Hater Roomie – Nah man, I just been tired and haven’t had time.

Clean Roomie – Alright bro, well theres something called FUNK, and your bringing it into this room!

Girl Mag Hater Roomie – my bad man.. ill go take a shower.

The Girl Mag Hater came back a few minutes later to tell my clean roomie that there was no water pressure.

Clean Roomie – How many water bottles do you have?

Girl Mag Hater Roomie – I got a few.

Clean Roomie – shower up baby.


Man good thing my other roomie told that guy to shower.. I had no idea.

Dust still fills the air every couple of days. We pass time with prank, brief dance parties, working out, and games of 21 in basketball.

My routine is pretty set now. We usually go to the pool twice a week, no more than three times assuming the weather is favorable. We don’t go on weekends because its super packed over there and we can’t even get a group of chairs together.

If we don’t go to the pool we grapple/box/workout at the gym. We go to the chow hall almost every day. I think I’ve had one milkshake in the last two weeks. Good milk is hard to come by over here. We have this stuff called SUT that’s kind of like soy milk, but not. It can get super warm without going bad. APPRECIATE all that GOOD MILK.

We had a BBQ a couple days ago. It was good times. The Guam/Hawaii guys were cooking all the goods so they had island music playing out there. The menu included ribs, chicken (a lot better than the chicken we get from the chow hall), and some smaller asian/Hawaiian stuff. We were going to have spam musubi as well but Uncle Louie said there was already too much food.

Uncle Louie is an old timer (56) who fought in Vietnam. All the islander folk call him Uncle Louie, along with myself. I guess we were raised differently, because all the other guys don’t listen to him as much, and they don’t call him Uncle Louie either. Uncle Louie is a good guy. He is constantly shouting out orders like a parent or grandparents. HEY! LET”S GO! Hey! EMPTY THE TRASH! HEY! GO HELP OUT!

AP graudated from SEAL training and is now an official SEAL! Congrats brother. What a HUGE accomplishment. Your strength, discipline, and determination is definitely admired and envied by us all.

Hahaha Frinky is getting mad at Uncle Louie because he’s blasting Mike Jackson jams right now.

I saw that the Lakers blew the championship. Lakers blow.

I was dreaming that I was getting together with some friends to go eat at chipotle, but the dream ended before I got there. I’m pissed. I bet that chipotle would’ve tasted delicious in my dream.

Alrighty folks.

Tak

Smurfed

DATE 1600 hours: 05JUN08
Mood: Grateful
Weather: Pretty Darn Hot
Worked out: Chest, abs, legs, ran 3 miles
Ate: Rice, Lasagna, salami and cheese sandwich, watermelon, yogurt, seafood salad
Milkshake: ½ vanilla ½ strawberry (mixin it up)

Today was my first day back since my day off and I was energized. I called Sammie and wished her a happy 20th bday. Its insane how old we’re all getting. Royce will be going to Rio next year and Casey will be in 8th grade! It’s nuts!
Work was actually pretty slow today. Oh man, my buddy walker got spilled on while doing fleet! And he didn’t even hit the yellow button! Whomever fleeted the plane last actually took out the cover that u screw on to seal the drain.. so when we opened the top latch everything just came out! At least this time we know it wasn’t our fault. Too bad for Walker though.. it was bad enough when it WAS my own fault! So the lesson is, be cautious of EVERYTHING and not JUST the yellow button, because you can still get smurfed. They call it smurfed because all the blue juice comes out.. and then your all blue. Yep, smurfed. So yes, Walker is now my fellow smurf. WOO!
After work frinky, richi, colvard, and the captn went to go work out at the gym. When I first got here I was dying at 7.5 on the treadmill… today I was knockin out 9.5-10 like nothing! I think its because we’re wearing that body armor to and from work and its making my legs strong? Whatever it is, im stoked about running at those speeds again. I realized how out of shape I really was. Hopefullly I’ll never let that happen again. … The sacrifices I make for all the beautiful women back home.
We headed to the chow hall after the gym. I got fancy and went ½ and ½ on the milkshake today. It was alright.. nothing spectacular. I think im actually starting to get tired of those milkshakes..how sad.
Frinky and Richi were talking about childbirth and how its nasty and how the placenta comes out or something? O man I don’t think I could stomach all that stuff.. im glad that’s nowhere in the near future for me.
Frinky and I were talking about how we have a great group here and how this deployment would have sucked if it weren’t for all the cool people. I think the last rotation had problems with each other and that’s too bad. It’s awesome that I came here at the same time as these other guys because theyre good funny folks. Everything happens for a reason. I am truly grateful for having these guys out here with me. It’s really making it quite an enjoyable experience. I hope that everyone I know has similar experiences in their lives, because it’s these experiences that make life truly worth living.
Alrighty folks, stay cool.

Tak

FIRST DAY OFF

DATE 1345 hours: 4 June 2008
Mood: Lazy
Weather: HOT
Worked out: nada
Ate: ham, mushroom and cheese omelet, cheeseburger, yogurt, pears, clam chowder
Milkshake: Strawberry Ice Cream cone instead
HAPPY 20th BIRTHDAY SAMMIE!

Today was my first day off. I slept in 6 extra hours. YIKES! Colvard came by at around 0530. I guess he’d been up the whole morning cleaning his room and doing some other productive stuff that I should have been doing too.
We usually have to eat the same ol’ stuff that they bring to us at work for breakfast, but today we had a chance to go to the chow hall and get omelets! It was great. The fruit was fresh and the beverages were ice cold. We were in heaven.
Breakfast was done in about 15 minutes. I went back to my room and cleaned for a little bit. After that I read more of my book that Mr. Nitake sent me.
Colvard came back around at about 1000. We went to the pool and kicked it there for 2 hours. I definitely got sun burnt this time. Hopefully that farmers tan wont be so bad anymore.
We went to the chow hall again at 1230 hours and met our other friends from work. Colvard and I concluded that there isn’t much to do on a day off except sleep. I actually felt bad for leaving my other buddies at work while I did nothing all day. At least I’ll be well rested for tomorrow. Man that breakfast was good.
One month down, 3 to go.
Tak

HEATED WORDS

DATE 1536 hours: 01 JUN 08
Mood: Tired
Weather: Even Hotter
Worked out: Chest / abs
Ate: biscuits n strawberry jam, pork chops, carrots, eggs n rice, top ramen
Milkshake: none

There are a couple people that I work with that are only looking out for themselves. Many already know that I’m not okay with these things. I was running the show for my team yesterday, and one of the people on my team was giving me lip and attitude the entire shift. I laugh and smile a lot out here so I suppose they figure they can act up when they’re dealing with me.
The main issue is that these people are slowing us down and aren’t focused on the job. I believe that some people came to feel pretty because there are no other females to compete with out here.
One of these people decided to go about things their own way at the end of our shift, and it pretty much screwed my other team member and myself. I took the supervisors aside along with the individual so that we can solve the problem. This “individual” started chippin’ off at me, and I chipped back. Before you know it someone’s crying like a baby and the meeting is brought to an abrupt end.
There are always going to be problem people in the workplace, but being in a war zone definitely changes the way its handled. We can’t afford to be slowed down because of selfish people. It’s a WAR! I know that I could have been more professional about the way I handled the situation but I can’t stand liars and problem makers, and that’s exactly what this person is. Someone had to do it, and they had it coming to them.
Someone made rice and brought it into work today. Oh man that stuff was good. It was your regular Japanese rice but it was great after eating the same stuff every day.

The Pedicure

DATE 1600 hours: 28 May 08
Mood: Comfortable
Weather: Hot
Worked out: Chest, abs
Ate: Biscuits n jam, corn, black eyed peas, funions,
Milkshake: none

The bathroom smells worse and worse everyday. I don’t know if they haven’t been cleaning it right or what. It doesn’t help that the water pressure goes out every now and then. I had to wash all the soap off in the shower with a trickle of water, it took me about 5 minutes.
The food is the same every day. We look in the tubs every day to see if theres something new. I don’t know why someone doesn’t just shout out, “It’s the SAME THING”. It really puts down your appetite. I’m going to have to start forcing myself to eat this stuff. We make more trips to the chow hall after work now only because the stuff there actually changes.
I want sushi.
Right now im trying to sleep but they are changing the handle/lock on the door of our room. Why couldn’t this have been taken care of during the 13 hours I was at work?
Yesterday, I walked into my room and noticed that all the magazines with the cool pictures of girls in bikinis were gone. I asked my roommate what happened to them..
Me- What happened to the magazines?
Roomie – I gave them away to some of the other guys in the dorm.
Me- WHAT?! Why would you do that?
Roomie – I donno. If you care so much go and get them back.
Me – I don’t feel very comfortable sleeping in here with you giving out our only girl magazines, knowing that we wont be seeing any hot girls for four months.
Roomie – are you ok man? Your starting to offend me over here. Are you calling me gay?
Me- I didn’t say that. I just said it makes me uncomfortable that you dislike the girl magazines enough to give them away while we’re over here. I feel good just knowing that theyre in here.
Roomie - …
Am I wrong? Why would you do that? What a dummy.
I was heated. I did what any good man does. I went and got a pedicure with my buddy Walker.
It cost $7 I couldn’t handle the part where they were scrubbing the calices off of my feet because my feet were to ticklish. Walker was laughing at me big time. The girl asked me if I wanted to shiny nail polish. I asked her if any other guys get the shiny nail polish. I finally realized that she was just playing a joke on me. I did not get any nail polish. They do the deal and then massage your legs / feet for a little bit. The only time we get to see our feet is in the pool, or in the dorms.. so no one really gets to see the finished product except me.
I woke up today, looked down and thought, “Damn my feet look good.”
So should I be uncomfortable with my roomie for giving away the magazines, or should he be uncomfortable with me for getting a pedicure? It was a GIRL who gave me the pedicure.
I asked for a 0 on the sides and a 1 on the top.. but they must have understood because they shaved my entire head bald. Now I look like an alien with those crazy lumps in the back of my head.
My friend Colvard was giving out his grandmas oatmeal cookies today. There weren’t any raisins in them! Isn’t it mandatory to put raisins in oatmeal cookies? Colvard says to me, “They’re oatmeal cookies, not oatmeal RAISIN cookies, idiot.” Weird southern folk.. It was still a good oatmeal cookie. Thanks Grandma Colvard.
Tak