MEPS, Part 1.

Okay okay enough already, I'm blogging. Ever since I found out the news got delayed three months I've been pretty apathetic about everything, but I guess that has to come to an end at some point.

The ride home was quite uneventful, just a lot of thinking about the whole concept of joining the Air Force in general. I really need to start hooking up with other people to make the drive, having someone else in the car just makes the time fly by. After a quick stop at home to pick up my Social Security card, I made the 15 minute or so trip back up to LAX, to check in at the Westin hotel. This was a lot more than I expected when it came to accomodations, I had no complaints whatsoever. I got directed up to the 3rd floor where they'd set up a sort of makeshift lobby for all the applicants to check in at. Turned out that you ended up rooming with whoever signed the check in sheet immediately before or after you. I happened to share the elevator with a man named Johnny, who was being shipped out the next day to South Carolina. He was a pretty cool cat, headed into the Army as a combat historian, which basically means he's a photographer that records history as it happens. Definitely a job I could see myself doing, if my whole plan doesn't work out. You should see me when I'm setting up a shot with a frikkin disposable camera, everything has to be perfect.

Anyway, so they have us sign this sheet with like 293487234 provisos on it about basically what we will and won't do while staying at the hotel, which basically covered everything we could possibly think of doing that was bad. Everyone seemed pretty laid back though, I don't think anyone was in a real hurry to get in trouble with the military before they even got anywhere. They had a few phones in there, and a few comps set up with internet, so you could busy yourself while they worked through your paperwork, and later once you're wandering around bored. There was also a TV, and a pool table outside in the patio area, which drew the interest of a dozen people at any given time. Quite the interesting makeup of characters, everything between your typical 17 year old enlistee right out of high school to 20 something priors heading back in to a different branch or different career. A whole lot of "what branch are you?" and "what are you gonna do?" It's always an interesting atmosphere when you're hanging out with people you've just met and quite possibly will never see again after the next few hours. There were a whole lot of rules about fraternization probably for that very reason. Can't say I've ever had a one night stand.

Dinner consisted of a buffet style meal down in one of the smaller ballrooms, which actually wasn't too bad. Your typical meat and potatoes fare, with some pasta and salad thrown in. Was plannin on hittin the pool afterwards, but ended up just playin a few games of pool until I managed to finally sink my pairing's winning streak by burying the 8ball in the wrong pocket after a difficult bank attempt. It happens. Decided to hit the sack around 8:30pm, knowing the wakeup call was schedule for "oh three hundred" I was quite impressed by the number of pillow they offered, there were like six per bed and then another lengthy one, along with like four sets of comforters, but I ended up kicking most of them off during the warm night.

We set the alarm a bit earlier and thus were relatively awake when the cheery recorded voice informed us of the time. After the usual shower and shave we made our way down to breakfast which wasn't quite as impressive as dinner, but still offered all the usual fixins. I'd decided to drive to MEPS to avoid the wait for the shuttle back to the hotel when I finished up, so I was on my way around 4. Quick stop for gas and I arrived at the L.A. MEPS around 4:25, and strangely enough saw people from the hotel already in there in the initial briefing, even though I was sure I'd left several minutes ahead. A shuttle must have left earlier, or something. I was disappointed since I was hoping to get in front of the initial line and thus expediate the process, but I wasn't too worried. Eventually the second shuttle showed up, and they filed us in to the initial "welcoming" room. A marine led the briefing, and after an initial joke of leading us in what was supposedly going to be a thousand jumping jacks to wake us up, he basically briefed us on everything we weren't going to do, unless we were in a hurry for our "procedure to be terminated." After giving up the pocketknife I forgot to leave in the car, I headed back to the Air Force service counselor to get my paperwork. I had been a bit worried since I wasn't on the check in list at the hotel, but I didn't run into any problems once I reached MEPS. After receiving my paperwork I was directed back out to the control desk to pick up another folder, and then headed deep into the medical area to the medical briefing room.

Once there, we were briefed on various aspects of our paperwork, and filled out various forms. In the meantime they sent around someone who took everyone's bp, and gave on the spot breathalyzer tests. No one got busted that I saw, seems like a pretty simple concept to me, don't be stupid, and you don't get caught. My bp was 140 over somethin, which is higher than I'd like. Since I stopped running due to splints though I haven't been doing a whole lot other than maintaining my weight, so it's not all that surprising. I've never been higher than that, so it's not cause for worry. Tends to be a good gauge of how in shape I am. Getting into swimming and cardio again, gonna have to stay off running as long as possible, which is frustrating.

Next up was hearing, although they were sending people to various stations all at the same time, and you basically rotated through to stuff you hadn't done as you finished the previous station. This test was actually much more difficult than I expected, the booth wasn't all that soundproof, you could hear people talking outside, besides which the other five people in it seemed like they were constantly shifting position and causing me difficulty. I've never had any trouble with hearing, in fact I always thought I was above average, but I still didn't score as high as some people, although I was still well within allowable levels. Could have been the fact I was sick during the week prior, and could have still been a bit under even if I wasn't feeling it.

After hearing I headed to give blood, which was the slowest part of the process, as some people had some problems. The line was about fifteen people long when I got there, and even the fastest person took at least a few minutes. Once it was my turn it wasn't a big deal, I got over needles at some point, although as a child they really bothered me, much like anything else involving pain. I've actually found that watching the needle go in makes it easier, since you know when to expect the pain. It's not the most pleasant thing, but it's not as bad as smackin your funny bone REALLY good, or getting your toe slammed in a door or something. They only took a small vial, but it was still pretty sore during and afterwards, which should make giving whatever number of pints they take next week more interesting than I'd like. Maybe they just didn't do as good a job, or something.

Last in my rotation was vision, which basically consisted of looking into a binocular style machine at your typical "read the smallest line you can see" test. There was also a book of those color blind number tests, where you find the numbers in the circles. Up after that was the depth perception test, which was actually quite difficult. You had to decide which circle in a row of five was closest, and the slide was dirty or something, with weird spots all over the place, so some of the rows appeared to be all at the same level. I ended up passing, but I'm prety sure I missed a few here and there.

I then went around the corner to urinalysis, which is more interesting at MEPS than normal due to the fact someone has to be present to make sure that it's actually your urine going into the cup, I guess. Pretty sure they use it for the drug test aspect, along with all the tests they do on it as well as the blood to make sure everything is as it should be. Somewhat interesting to be standing in a line holding your own urine before passing it off to the nurse who seals it and has you sign some more paperwork, but you do what you gotta do.

I next waited in line to see one of a few doctors in private rooms, where they went over your record and did the typical aspects of the physical, inspecting your eyes ears and what not, and the infamous "turn your head and cough" and "turn around and spread your cheeks" aspects of the process. Not a big deal for me, the guy was like 85 and could barely say three words in a sentence without taking a breath, and I'd rather know that something was wrong with me before it got too serious.

Then I was ushered into a large room where once a few dozen of us has assembled we were told to put all our clothes save our underwear in a basket, and form a line over by the scale. I'd hopped on before the guy came in and found I was 195 fully clothed, and given the max for 5'10'' was 194, I wasn't too worried. As it turned out, my official height ended up 5'11'', which bumps the max up to 199, and I ended up being only 191. Plenty of breathing room, even without being as fully active as I'd like. We then did a whole lot of exercises under the watchful eye of the practioner, basically to display that we didn't have any types of injuries, that our spines were all normal, we all had ten toes and fingers, and we didn't experience any pain when performing muscular activity.

After returning to the warmth of my t-shirt and shorts I headed back out to the medical control desk, where eventually I was given a copy of all the paperwork that had been completed, and was sent back to the service counselor. He checked everything over and then dismissed me, at appromiately 9:30am, five hours after I arrived. He'd told me as an officer's candidate I'd finish around noon, so I was quite surprised. It was still pretty strange to feel like you're midway through your day, check your watch, and find it's 7am. The process as a whole was much simpler than I expected, and after picking up my knife, I made my way across the way to the Rite Aid where I'd left my car, and headed on home.

Next up is the Flight Physical up at Vandenberg AFB, which I've heard very interesting stories about. Rumor has it I'm going to lose some of my chest hair during the EKG, and that the process will be a whole lot longer, with various aspects of the schedule taking place between 7:30am and 3:00pm. The other bummer is due to all the blood they take and the fact that my eyes get dilated towards the end, I'm not supposed to drive home. This basically means I can't drive there, since someone else would have to drive my car home anyway, unless they spent the day hanging out at the base or in nearby Lompoc, or maybe up the coast at Pismo or San Luis Obispo or something. Once I get confirmation on the exact schedule I'll go begging to my friends.

Can't say I minded lapping up the luxury for a couple days, even though it did mean I drove the oh so repetitive drive between here and L.A. a few more times in quick succession.

Something Worth Blogging...

"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989

Hee haw. Hee haw. Still getting around to a long blog. Been working on my 40+ page Business Plan with my group all weekend, and it's finally just about completed.

Neglect...

I'm back, everything went fine, I just haven't felt like writing. Full story soon.

I'll Be Bawk.

Heading South for a couple days, should be back late Thursday, more possibly more likely sometime early Friday. Page away if you feel the need.

You Better Lose Yourself in the Music...

Got a couple movie reviews to post tonight, as I've managed to make my way out to the theaters a few times in the last week or so. Two very different types of movies, I must say.

Up first is Jackass which is pretty self explanatory. If you enjoy the show, you'll enjoy the movie. There was actually a lot more funny, and a lot less gross out than the show usually averages. Just a whole lot of "OOOOOOOOH THAT ONE HURT EM" and pretty much constant hilarity. We'll go 4 M's out of 7, just because paying 8 bucks to see an extended version of a TV show is pretty lame. :)

Tonight's film earns 5 M's, which I must say is more than I expected. 8 Mile is Eminem's first performance as an actor as wel as a musician, and I was more impressed than not. The rhythms throughout are quite addictive, and there's a very interesting version of "Lose Yourself" in the middle, during a scene where he's shown coming up with the lyrics to it. This song is definitely in my top 3 or so rap songs of all time. Although it's not my preferred genre, I still recognize a good beat when I hear one. The group I was with gave the sex scene two big thumbs down, and I must admit the forty five seconds it took up did seem pretty ridiculously quick. The actresses in the movie weren't at all attractive, but I think that was sort of the point. Didn't look at my watch outside of a few occasions, so that's always a good sign for a movie.

My new pager finally came, so I'll be available for all your paging needs again. Strangely when I try to page myself it only seems to work about half the time. :/ Not very useful if ever there's an emergency. I always return pages within the hour, so if I take longer or you think I'm taking too long feel free to page me again.

Got stuff to do tonight so I can take time off to head down South tomorrow evening, guess I better get to it.

The Skys, They're Falling Again.

Off to go hang out at Carrows for a while and then head up into the mountains for the annual Leonid meteor shower, which absolutely floored me last year. They say it won't be this brilliant again until 2098. Get off your keesters all, and get out there and watch the fire fall.

Hurry Up And Wait.

I knew that was the military motto going in, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. After e-mailing my recruiter last Friday, and then again on Tuesday, and calling on Wednesday night, and then again Friday morning leaving messages both times, I decided to call one more time last night around 5 on the off chance he would actually pick up. Turns out for some reason he did, so I finally got the results I'd been waiting for. Well actually turns out there were no actual results. When he said "I have some bad news" I thought I knew what he was going to say, but it turned out that I hadn't been rejected by the October OTS Board, my package had never gone before the Board at all. Apparently on the way there somehow my interview was lost in the shuffle. I remember being surprised that I was able to get everything together for the October Board deadline, and the interview was the last thing I did, so I assume the rest of the package got accidentally sent without it, or something. Apparently my recruiter tried contacting the Captain who interviewed me to try to get another copy, but it got sent to him in a format he couldn't open, or something. He then tried to get in touch with him again and found out he'd moved to another base. Luckily from my interview I remembered him saying he was heading for Seattle, so my recruiter seemed like he was going to be able to track him down and get another copy of the interview. If that doesn't actually happen, I'll have to redo the interview with someone else, which would be qutie bothersome. I've always been talkative, it's not the stress or anything that's the problem, but I really felt that the previous interview was one of the best I'd ever had, and he genuinely seemed to believe in me.

So, since all this screwing around has managed to take us past the deadline for the November Board which meets next week, and there is no Board in December, it turns out I'll actually be meeting the Board that meets in mid January. The results for that Board will theoretically arrive February 7th barring the usual delays.

There is sort of some good news about this whole thing. I did manage to get both my physicals scheduled, with the MEPS portion in L.A. being on November 21st, and the Flight 1A portion at Vandenberg AFB being on December 3rd. So next Wednesday night I'll be heading down to the hotel they're putting me up in, then arising bright and early the next morning in order to be over at MEPS to start the process at 5am. I hear it's quite long. A whole lot of standing around, and waiting in line. It's probably a good idea I'm doing all this though given I haven't had a physical since high school and there might actually be something wrong with me (other than all the mental deformities, I mean really). So after I finish up with that I drive on back up here with all the paperwork from it, and then end up going back down to L.A. for Thanksgiving the following Wednesday or Thursday. I actually can take someone for free to Magic Mountain on Wednesday due to a special deal, so might do that who knows. Then after coming back up here on Sunday or Monday I end up heading out to Vandenberg AFB again for the Flight 1A portion of the physical, which is a bit more complicated. To give you an idea, he sent me a sort of basic schedule for the day, with the first Technical testing being done at 7:30am, the Doctor related testing at 10:20am, a full Dental exam at 11:00am, and a full Optometry exam at 2:30pm. So that looks like it'll be another nice long day. The real bummer with that one is they dilate your pupils during the optometry exam, so you're suposed to have someone else there to drive you home. Haven't yet decided how that's going to work.

So the one positive aspect of the whole ordeal is it takes about a month for the Surgeon General to approve each Flight physical, so I'll hear about that sometime in early January. That means if I pass both physicals, I'll have nothing else to wait for other than getting into OTS. Even if I had gotten into OTS this week, I would still have had to wait until January to find out if there were any snags medically. So by doing it this way, if I do finally get that phone call telling me the good news, it will be a sure thing, and I can be a lot more excited.

Guess that's all there is to update on that whole situation. I'm going to sleep for three months, someone wake me up in February.

To Quote My Away Message...

The good news is, the news isn't bad. The bad news is, there is no news. Long story short, my package didn't meet this board, and won't meet the next, so I'll actually get my first shot at getting in during the January board, and won't find out until February 7th. Three months later. Will fill in the details later, quite agitated due to thinking about it too much at the moment. Anyway, could be better, could be worse, I guess.

Feellikecrapmobiles R Us.

Sorry, been a bit under the weather these last few days. Combine that with sitting by the phone basically around the clock waiting to hear from my officer recruiter who will let me know whether my life is heading in a new direction, and you have quite a lame way of living. Going to call for a second time tomorrow, and if that doesn't work spam some more e-mails. I'm certainly not planning to wait through the weekend.

When I hear the news, you'll hear it here, first.

A Lot of Rocks, But They're Cool.

I think forgetting to take my Centrum with me this weekend is going to cost me, I feel the beginnings of a sore throat coming on tonight. How irritating. Anyway back to the recap.

We took the back way into Death Valley, which involved getting lost along the way on a bunch of dinky little highways in between dinky little towns, as we made our way through Mojave, and eventually up to Trona and beyond. We weren't smart enough to bring a California map, but we did have a portable GPS receiver with us, so we at least knew when we were going in the right direction. I ended up suggesting a shortcut based on the small mapquest map we did have that ended up being a little more than we bargained for, but who would want to just drive in straight lines across valleys when you can skid around switchbacks in the mountains? We got to the hotel around noonish, and the first thing we did was drive up to the campground where we used to camp on a yearly basis. I instantly recognized a lot of the rocks and "mountains" (i.e. hills from todays perspective) surrounding the camp, and was able to climb up and take a picture on top of a few of them, reliving my youth of 15 years ago. Quite strange thinking I'm old enough I can remember things from 15 years ago now. Seems like just yesterday 10 years prior was the earliest I could remember. I'm gettin old.

We then headed up with the rest of the relatives who had made it out there to a place called Dante's View. This view is officially somewhere in my top 10 greatest views of all time. It's the peak of a 5,000 foot mountain, looking down on the lowest point in the United States, that being Badwater at 282 feet below sea level. So essentially you're looking across a 5k foot dropoff, and across the way is a mountain range that rises quite swiftly to 11,000 feet. The world's deepest valley they call it. Quite breathtaking. This is where we had the ceremony to scatter my aunt's ashes, quite a fitting place. After reminiscing about some of the 27 years straight she and my uncle came to Death Valley together, we headed back down the mountain to a place called something like Gold Canyon. This ended up being one of my favorite parts of the trip, as the sun began to go down as we started on the 3 mile hike from one end of the canyon down to the other. Along the way there were beautiful rock formations, and the colors of the canyon and the hills as they changed through the years created something of a striped rainbow effect. We had a bunch of flashlights with us, although once it became pitch black the moon was still shining brightly down upon us. There were also some really neat caves where they'd drilled for gold that went back a good twenty or thirty yards, quite spooky. We eventually made it down to the bottom where my grandpa had brought around the truck to take back the drivers, but we decided we'd all ride back instead. This meant that about seven of us would be crammed into the bed of the truck, with four of us sitting on the little shelf storage thingy behind the cab. I was luckily enough to be on the edge, and given there was no type of safety restraint, this meant I was basically clinging onto the sides of the truck and the handle for the storage compartment for dear life as we swung around curves on a deserted desert highway in the dark of night. That was my first experience riding open-air in the back of a truck, and I must say it was quite neat. When you look up in the sky in the desert, you see about 100 billion times the number of stars you see when you're on the coast, or in the city. I could have sat there staring up at the sky for days.

Alas I'm bored of talking again. More later. Apparently I have plenty of time, nothing at all of interest been going on since I got back. Just a lot of things to do this week that I don't want to do. Yippee.

Back from the Valley of Death

Exciting repetitive title I know, what can I say I'm dead tired. You wouldn't believe how annoying it was to try to blog on that pay per minute web access thing they had at the hotel, I eventually figured out that I had left numlock on, and since there was no keypad that the numbers were over most of the letters on the right side of the keyboard, so trying to type www.hotmail.com turned out to be www.h6t0a85.c60 or something like that. I eventually figured it out, but it was certainly a pain.

Going to bust through most of the story as fast as I can then hit the hay.

Left around 1pm Friday, showed up in L.A. around 4:30 after various amounts of traffic, rain, and road construction. I must say I do love driving in the rain though, contrary to most people. It's a totally different feel. Highway 1 was pretty much deserted, I guess the beach isn't a very popular hangout during a storm other than for the diehard surfers. Eventually made it into L.A. and hung out with a friend, we ended up heading over to the 3rd St. Promenade in Santa Monica to enjoy dinner and a poetry reading... Yes you read right, a poetry reading... Two weeks straight now I've gone to some sort of "broaden my horizon" type cultural event, with the previous one being that very very left wing political propaganda of a film I saw. The two poets that read weren't too bad, although I must say I would never use the word cunnilingus in one of my poems. I think she was going for the shock factor, to me it just wasn't appropriate in the context. Wandering around the bookstore beforehand I did find tons of neat stuff though, as I generally do when in those places. One was this great book called "If" which consisted of very entertaining "what would you do if" type questions. Some were stimulating, some were puzzling, and some were darn right difficult decisions. It was great conversation none the less, and seems like a very good coffee table type book. Not that I'll ever have a coffee table.

Eventually we headed back to her place and she was kind enough to let me crash there, after a few more hours of jabbering up a storm. It ended up being a pretty pointless effort given a mere couple of hours later my watch alarm went off and it was time to head home so I could leave for Death Valley (planning to sleep most of the way in the car, of course). It was very nice as usual seeing her again, kind of sad to consider the fact that these types of meetings with people will soon become few and far between, if things proceed according to plan. Speakin of which, word on the street is the possibility of me finding out the big news tomorrow, but it remains to be seen if it will actually happen. Anyway back to the story. I arrived home two minutes early at 5:28am, but of course the father was not yet ready to go. We eventually struggled out of the house and after a quick jaunt over to McDonalds for breakfast to go we headed for the freeway around 7.

Alas all this talk about sleep has me wanting to get some, so I'll finish up the rest of the trip either later today or tomorrow.

Hello from the Valley of Death

Checked my e-mail already and I have a few more minutes to waste so hear I am! I'm alive so far, more later tomorrow night when I return to civilization. This is quite momentous, it's the first time I've ever paid to blog! Well not exactly and it's become more trouble than it's worth, more on that later.

Wet. Very.

It appears the first storm of the year is making its way across Southern California over the next few days... Today it came down pretty good at times, causing havoc on the roadways and giving excited students a new reason to messy up their clothes. Of course it also became a universal ditch day as it always does when it rains, which unfortunately I couldn't partake in since I had to turn in a rough draft at the one class I did have. I leave later on this coming afternoon for L.A., then I'm off the following morning to Death Valley, so the site will be blogless for a few days until I'm back from the weekend sometime on Monday most likely.

Tonight we ended up doing one of my favorite activities ever, that being playing in the rain. It was really pouring when I had the original idea, but by the time we got out there it had become more of a drizzle, so we decided to head on down to the ocean to make sure we got our money's worth. After the usual splashing of puddles making every effort to get the other members of the group soaked, I eventually decided I wasn't gonna take no for an answer and was gonna go thrash up the waves, even though the Pacific ocean in November isn't exactly balmy. Temperature outside was a decent 57, although it was a bit windy. Had a blast running around showing the waves who's boss, and making our best efforts to get pneumonia. One of my friends got pretty hammered by one of the breakers, but she popped up giggly as ever so we knew no harm was done. Nothing like getting out there and forgetting about life and its worries for a while.

When was the last time you jumped into a puddle with both feet instead of looking for the safest way around it?

Something New Happens Every Day...

And in yesterday's case, the new experience was a campus wide power outage. I have vague recollections of something like this happening a few years ago, but it seemed like this one was much more broad. I happened to be upstairs watching someone play Halo on their XBox, when everything in the room shut off. First thing I did was turn around and look out the window, and was greeted with total darkness from all directions and vague silhouette where the other two quads used to be. This at first caused mass panic and screaming and yelling, with exclamations such as "WHO FORGOT TO PAY THE ELECTRIC BILL" and "WTF IM IN THE SHOWER!" Luckily my indiglo served me well enough to get down to my room, open the door, and track down the high powered flashlight I had there. It's funny, I had it by my bed within arm's reach for the whole year til like two days ago, when it occurred to me that with the architectural lighting keeping my room somewhat bright 24/7 along with the sun, I'd probably never actually need it, so I moved it over onto a shelf. The outage ended up lasting only a few hours, as people had fun shining their lights into each other's rooms across the quad, and using various other methods to blind the passers by. Many a firecracker was set off, and there was talk of looting, but as far as I know most of the people either trooped off to friend's houses in IV or spent the whole time talking on their cell phones.

Luckily I wasn't working on the Market Analysis section of our Business Plan that I have to turn in today, or I woulda been peeved. Yeah Word autosaves every five minutes, but if you're a quick enough typer than can still be quite the pain in the butt. Took care of a bunch of stuff yesterday, including heading over to the bank to deposit a check and withdraw money inside thanks to my check card disappearing and a new one having not arrived yet... Then headed downtown to buy a pager where I was told I had to do it by phone, but at least they had the right number so that ended up pretty painless. It would be nice if both the card and new pager was there when I arrive home on Saturday morning, but I'm guessing they'll both have to be mailed. Guess I'll go get a haircut today at some point, probably after my group meeting with the professor at 4 to turn in our drafts. Then I'm off tomorrow to head towards the general direction of L.A., making various stops and visiting various people along the way before arriving home sometime early Saturday morning, ready to depart for Death Valley with various family members at apparently 5:30am. I'll definitely be sleepin on the way up. :)

Another World...

For those who have seriously thought about getting a SCUBA certification, I highly recommend taking the plunge. Ohmigawd I'm so funny I forgot to laugh. Ended up waking up at 4:30 yesterday morning after getting my solid eight hours of sleep, and just hanging around taking care of stuff until 8 when we left... I picked up a guy in the UCSB class at the dorm on the other side of campus then headed down to my friend's place downtown... I took the class originally with him two years ago so we've been diving buddies on multiple occasions... The group in the car ended up 5, myself, my friend, his girlfriend, her friend, and the other guy I picked up along the way. All those people along with five tanks, regulators, B.C.s, weight belts, let's just say the car was quite loaded down. Basically any bump of any size caused the car to scrape over something. We eventually made it down to Ventura in one piece, and onto the boat. It was a much smaller boat than we took two years ago, but it had a jacuzzi, so that was a huge plus. We ended up going out to Anacapa Island instead of the much larger Santa Cruz Island we went to on the prior trip. The conditions were pretty close to perfect, current was very minimal, visibility was great. My friend brought along one of those underwater camera things, so we took some great fish. At times you'd turn around and suddenly be in a huge school of fish, unable to see anything but swarms of them, as they all turned back and forth in unison. We also saw some of those cool animalish plants that dart into their holes when you get close to them, whole rocks full of them that would end up leaving tons of little craters before slowly inching their way back out. There were some bright bright totally orange fish that I chased around for a while trying to get a decent pic of, and there were various claims of seal spottings, although I some how managed to miss every single one. Overall it was just a blast, I'm really going to have to do that more often. Maybe not in the Pacific, where you have to wear 34 pounds of solid weight to go along with your double wetsuit and heavy as all heck tank and gear, maybe a jaunt to the Caribbean or Hawaii is in order. My friend and his girlfriend drove down and flew out of LAX to Hawaii for a week this morning, real rough life they're leading. :)

My favorite part was the sunset later on, as we were on the South side of the island so the mainland wasn't even visible, and it was just really beautiful colored clouds and the sun dipping into the sea. I snapped away some pictures, gettin on towards halfway through the roll I started in like June. What can I say, I'm stingy with film. After that I just relaxed for like an hour in the jacuzzi, as those who were certified for night diving (none of us) donned their very cool looking LEDs and flashlights and went for another dip. Looking down into the water and seeing all their beams of light darting around, bluish glows in the sea of blackness, was a very neat effect. That and you're sitting in the middle of the ocean in very comfortable 100 degree water with cliffs and waves all around you, looking up at an endless expanse of stars. I was really livin the good life.

Slept most of the way back, and then we made a quick sugar run to McDonalds for some ice cream cones before making the half hour drive back to SB. Then came the endless process of rinsing all the gear at my friends place, then loading it back into the car for me to take back the next day. I got that taken care of today with the help of a few friends, after attempting unsuccessfully to sleep most of the day, due to the incessant knocking of one friend in particular who disagreed with the idea of letting me recuperate. I'm quite sore especially my wrists and lower back, but it's lessening as the day goes on. More annoying are the ends of my fingers, I ended up cutting a few of the nails a little too close the day before, that combined with them being in gloves most of the day has them a bit puffy at the edges of the nail and quite sensitive. Making it hard to type, so I'm gonna lay off.

No class tomorrow since the one class I do hvae is cancelled since we turn in our Business Plan section drafts on Thursday. Hence, I won't be waking up any time soon.

A Show Of Power

I'm not sure that I've ever seen a military plane in action before today. Spent part of the day up at Vandenberg AFB at the Centennial of Flight airshow, and it ended up being well worth the trip. I was under the impression it was irght off the 101 north of the tunnel, but it turns out once you get off at that Vandenberg AFB and Highway 1 exit, you have another 25 or 30 miles to go before you actually reach the base. That puts the travel time up to around 45 minutes to an hour, but still not all that gigantic a trip. They had just a ton of stuff on display, and there was always something going on in the sky overhead. My personal favorite was the demonstration of the F-16 Fighting Falcon, a jet very similar to the F-15 Eagle that I'll be shooting for. They had it do all sorts of stunts, but I was most impressed by it just buzzing the flightline at what apparently was only half its top speed of Mach 2, and making enough noise to vibrate the concrete under your feet. Earplugs were a common sight, and believe me, they were generally necessary. You see these things on TV and you don't really come to understand how loud they really are. When a jet flies over your head at 700 mph, you take notice in a hurry. I wasn't intelligent enough to bring a camera, but it was very cool to see the planes up close, they're suprisingly not much bigger or smaller than I expected. That is, unless you're talking about the B-52. That thing is just monstrous. My neck is a tad sore from staring at the sky for so long, but it was worth it, I have very few memories of airshows as a kid, and there definitely weren't any F-16s involved.

Theoretically next week is the last of the waiting game, but we'll see whether delays are involved. I'm gonna hit the sack early, I've gotta be up at 7:30 to pick some people and gear up and drive down to Ventura and move everything onto the boat for the SCUBA trip. Apparently it's staying out later than usual for a night dive, but since none of my group are night dive certified, we're gonna spend the time relaxing in the jacuzzi on board. Doesn't sound like all that bad a deal. :) Looking forward to dressing up like a black and blue penguin and taking a whole lot of pictures. ;)

Happy Spooky Day.

Technically it's over now, but the party never stops around here. The booming music from the quad next door shut down, so that's a sign it's past midnight. I got several visits from people throughout the night, most of whom were displaying their amazing concoctions of costumes. Blue ribbon goes to a friend of mine who had on the coolest black hat ever, which I'm definitely going to steal at some point when she isn't looking. I've never been too into the whole costume concept in college, although I think if I had someplace to go I could probably come up with something pretty spiff. Unfortunately around here the occasion is synonomous with something other than fun. I was originally going to be filingl the familiar double D role of designated driver for a few of my friends, but they later called and said one of them decided to lay off for the night and I needn't make the extra trip. So I spent the evening mostly entertaining guests, and listening to louder music than usual. That's the one nice thing about these types of nights, you can be boomin away whatever you want in your room and it can't be heard three feet outside your window because someone else's is always louder.

Not surprisingly some of the fireworks last night carried over into today... The night of sleep was definitely useful in helping me gather my thoughts, and I think I was somewhat more coherent this time around when it came to speaking my mind. Unfortunately when people are pretty much set in their ways when it comes to their morals or lack thereof, it's difficult to ever gain any ground. At times it's almost like they space out while you're talking to them, and everything just goes right out the other side. Sigh. I just hope to eventually understand their reasoning, and figure out what they want from me, if anything.

Welcome to November everyone, for me it's shaping up to be the most interesting month in quite some time.

Arrogant. Conceited. Cocky.

Interestingly enough, the preceding terms have all been used to describe me in the last few weeks, by three different friends of mine, and even a couple total strangers. They all have different ways of saying it, different ways of approaching the topic, different ways of phrasing their words, but they all essentially end up making the same point. I don't deny the fact that at times I possess all of these traits. I'm a very competitive individual when it comes to just about everything. I don't know what it is lately though that's causing a strange influx of negative comments. Tonight the focus was the fact that it's been said that I always think I know what's right, and that I'm constantly condescending towards other people when I think I'm more knowledgable about a subject than they. Condescending is another term brought up by multiple people recently. It's strange, it's like suddenly a huge magnifying glass has been placed over my personality, and everyone is taking turns discovering what they think is a glaring problem with it. Got into a pretty decent fight with a friend of mine I'd never had more than an argument with before about a subject I've been told countless times I'm "oversensitive about" a few weeks ago. A few days ago I managed to start a war of words with someone I've never actually met after finding out something I didn't like about them regarding another such "sensitive issue". Earlier today I ended up deciding to take some time off from the online gaming group I was a part of, because I've been having continuous disagreements with one of the members of the leadership that don't look like they'll be resolved any time soon. Again, a clash of personalities and egos. Then tonight, after lambasting me about everything wrong with myself as a person, one of my newer friends whom I just met this year lets me know that the fact that we disagree on an important ethical issue is going to prevent her from being able to talk to me in general. I'd thought we'd become pretty good friends, and was genuinely interested in learning more about her as a person, and instead she walks out of the room while I'm in the middle of trying to explain where I'm coming from, with your classic "have a good weekend, since I probably won't see you before then" statement letting me know that she'll do her best to avoid me. It REALLY annoys me when people do that. The fact that people decide to avoid issues, or hide from them, just delays the inevitable. Eventually you have to deal with this stuff. The sad part is that's essentially what the ethics issue is about, eventually coming to terms with a mistake, admitting wrongdoing, and working to get past it. I know I'm a hypocrite, I as well as everyone in my family has great trouble with admitting the fact that they were wrong, or that they made a mistake. It's something I'm working on, along with apologizing more often, and I like to think I'm making progress. To just hide from the mistake though, or worse yet continue making it, or making it worse, does nothing to help solve the problem, and only pushes the solution further away. Unfortunately I can't go into detail as to what the actual disagreement was about, due to the fact that I don't like to break people's trust, even if I feel they deserve it, or even if they've broken others' trust in the past, or present. I just don't understand her plan for a solution, other than the fact that I'm aware her goal seems to be just to avoid facing the problem.

Frankly I don't expect any of this to make sense. I just pondered deleting that whole paragraph and talking about something boring. I'm just bored of censoring myself. I write to release, not to withold. If anyone has a problem with something I write, they tend to let me know, but it really sets off a chord when someone brings up a topic that has nothing to do with them that I never even brought up that they happened to read about, and then proceeds to try to give me their two cents, as if they were commenting on the latest episode of a TV series. If I want your opinion, I'll ask for it. Until then, do me a favor, and keep your thoughts to yourself. Feel free to read this journal whenever you want, find out my side of what goes on, but don't bring it up as if I told you myself. There's probably a reason it doesn't involve you. Guess that's a good example of condescending if I've ever read one.

I'm actually angry tonight, for the first time in quite a while. Maybe it's pent up energy. Maybe the fact that I find out about my future sometime soon after next Friday might be gnawing away at me. Then again, maybe I was just treated like shit, and am having more trouble than usual bouncing back. It's interesting, there are still some close friends of mine who have never referred to me as one of the above negative terms, but you have to wonder, is that because they disagree, or because they just haven't come clean yet?

One Shot...

Those who have turned on the radio lately will probably recognize the above reference to the initial single off the 8 Mile soundtrack called "Lose Yourself." This is right up there when it comes to my favorite song from Eminem. Quite different from any of his other works, this one is almost totally lacking when it comes to controversial material and foul language. The rhythm is infectious, it's impossible to keep from bobbing your head to the beat. The rhyming is amazing too, words that aren't even very close together end up sounding the same as the constant beat mixes them into a continuous sound. The verses tell a story, which for me at least is very difficult to do while trying to maintain a rhythm and rhyme. Poetry has never come easy for me, mainly because I prefer the kind with meter and rhyme, and finding the right word to describe an emotion or setting while still rhyming with a totally unrelated word tends to be impossible. Even if you despise Eminem, I recommend at least giving this song a listen if you haven't already. It's "outside his box" so to speak, and has been getting heavy time on my playlist.

Found out there's going to be a big airshow up at Vandenberg AFB this weekend, which sounds very cool. Tons of exhibits, demonstrations, and flybys, along with simulators you can actually partake in and tons of setups from various Space and Missle and Aviation companies from all around Southern California. I'll probably head up on Saturday, since that night and Sunday I'll be on the SCUBA trip. I haven't been to an airshow in forever, and the list of planes they'll have on site and in demonstrations includes the F-15E, the plane I'm hoping to get into a track towards, which to my recollection I've never seen in person. Should be a very neat experience, maybe I'll drag a friend or someone. :)

Owned By A Wall.

So yeah I headed down to the local YMCA to play racquetball with a couple friends of mine... Unfortunately unlike the Reccen which has glass/plastic type material on the rear walls that is quite forgiving, the YMCA merely has some sort of impenetrable and unforgiving material instead. Was running full speed chasing down a tough shot and managed to make it, but instead of slamming into the wall with a resounding thud and bouncing back into play like usual, there was just sort of a crunch and I collapsed in a heap. My right elbow seems to have one more bump protuding than normal, and my right shoulder isn't feeling so hot either, but I don't think anything's broken. No pain, no gain, as they say. Between the good three or so games of racquetball and the morning weight routine, got my fair share of exercise today. Tried to open up a can of whoopass on the wall though, and failed miserably. It sure showed me who's boss.

Took a midterm today, after having a very well structured cram session between noon and three... Went over all the notes from the five chapters it was going to cover and worked through most of the application problems from the back and read through all of the detailed answers... The actual test ended up being sixty true/false and sixty multiple choice, along with some short answer. I came out of it feeling pretty good, probably got something like a B. Got my 2nd quiz grade back from the class in which the grade is 75% quizzes, and I got an identical score to the first one, which with the different curve was a B+. So far everything looking good grades wise, we'll see what my first paper (which was crap) turns out like in my third econ class, and how today's midterm actually went in reality.

Might actually be somewhat busy the next couple weekends, turns out one of my friends is finishing up the SCUBA class here, so her and her friend as well as her boyfriend and I who took the class together originally a year or two ago are gonna do the whole Channel Islands trip again. It was really sweet the first time, and looking forward to getting out there and underwater again. For all those looking for just an awesome class to take, getting certified for SCUBA and learning how to just hang out underwater with the fishies is an incredible experience. Besides which the Channel Islands are quite beautiful, and right there for exploring. Looks like we're gonna go down to the dock Saturday night and spend the night on the boat, then leave early the next morning and spend the day out there before heading back that night. My friends are then leaving Monday morning out of LAX for Hawaii, rough life they're leading. :)

The following weekend the rumor is the family is going to be headed out to Death Valley, although I'm not entirely sure if the plans for that have been finalized. So my plan of not going home til Thanksgiving might fall through, but I seem to have made plans for that Friday in LA as well, so spending the rest of the three day weekend travelling with the family wouldn't be too inconvenient. Might as well get off my butt and out of the dorm room every once in a while. :)