Student: Do you think Colonel Gaddafi suffers from some paranoia issues? Instructor: No, I imagine he quite enjoys them.

Student: Do you think Colonel Gaddafi suffers from some paranoia issues? Instructor: No, I imagine he quite enjoys them.

The week started off... oddly. I hadn't really recovered from last weeks' duty (read: loss of sleep) by the weekend, and although I love having my boys here it certainly didn't make for additional rest. I actually dreaded going into work on Monday, and my trepidation was rewarded with a long, long day. I administered a test to my student soldiers, and one of them did poorly enough to require retraining. I arrived home at quarter til 6, missed PT, and ate meat and drank booze until I fell ...

I knew this was a problem shortly after I moved in, but it seems to have gotten noticeably worse recently. Maybe it's the change in weather, the cold bringing it out perhaps. It's slowly ruining many things for me. There will be a bit of a recovery process once I (eventually) move out of here, and that will take awhile to replace some things. Dishes, especially the pots and pans, my whites: socks, t-shirts and linens... yeah, the water's leaving a lot of mineral deposits. Stupid Co...

Yesterday, I started my new class of students. It's a different group of knuckleheads, but it's the same sort of knuckelheadedness I'm coming to expect. No, that's not a bad thing, it's just that young soldiers tend to be knuckleheads. After class, I pulled duty... all... night... long. I was very glad that nothing major came up, and was almost equally glad that minor things did keep coming up. I could make forward progress or even actually solve problems (!) without being too overwh...

The Highlander Collectible Card Game has been experiencing a bit of turmoil over the past year or so, which is odd since it was out of print for so long. Long considered one of the "dead" CCGs glutting the after-market, the Highlander CCG has enjoyed a very small but incredibly loyal fan base that have stuck with the game for nearly 10 years of inactivity. Last year, an upstart organization called SAEC Games put out a set of cards that were to be paid for by donating to charity (through S...

I visited a family of friends that I will likely not see for at least a year, and possibly several. We had a very nice Thanksgiving dinner, and the I visited them for a few days, Thursday through Saturday. I helped my friend haul lumber and cement mix, a rented two-man auger, and a wheelbarrow from various stores to his home. We dug all the post holes and set in a handful of the uprights for the fence he is building. Physical labor is rewarding to me, especially when there is visible ev...

53 Pushups 70 Situps 15:57 2-mile run 233/300 points

Scene: SSG Doe surveys his soldiers mounting a house clearing operation during nighttime operations. His squad leader is down in the prone, not yelling orders to his subordinate team leaders. The Staff Sergeant squats down to address the student, when... RRRRRRIIIIP! That was two weeks ago, and I hadn't given it another thought, until this morning. This morning, as I'm talking to my boss, and happen to look down. I happened to look down, only to catch sight of some black clo...

Just a minor note from this weekend. Actually, I've been doing this for some time and just hadn't mentioned it. Substituting thawed frozen pre-cooked shrimp for the canned tuna in Tuna Helper is a bit hit. Also, adding in a portion of frozen peas doesn't seem to faze them at all. Other food bits: I've been tearing through Lean Cuisines and fresh pears all week. I need to always have a can of low sodium beef broth on hand. I'll run through the milk I buy if I also buy kids' cereal. ...

The latest truth.org commercial concentrates on Sodium Hydroxide. "It's in hair removal products and cigarettes! That means cigarettes are bad for you!" Assclowns, WATER is also an ingredient in Nair! Just because it's part of something that is harmful to you doesn't mean that particular thing is harmful to you. Sodium Hydroxide is also more commonly known as lye , which is also used in the preparation of some foods. Are olives as bad for you as cigarettes? Is hominy ? By yo...

What I should've said to my students at some point on Thursday: Don't focus on how you may have it worse than others, nor how you may have it better. Looking at others' fortune in comparison to your own situation can almost always be balanced (or unbalanced) by those who are less fortunate than you. Instead, deal with the reality of your own current situation and overcome the challenges in front of you. There are those who would say that we've been playing at war this past week; I'd s...

In the THQ game, Scooby-Doo Night of 100 Frights , there seems to be an easter egg that I hadn't encountered before... because there's basically a 1 in 365 chance of seeing it. On November 5th, Guy Fawkes Day, fireworks can be seen and heard in the night sky as Scooby-Doo searches for Scooby Snacks and tries to solve mysteries. It's constant , so it's minorly distracting... it triples the normal amount of noise put out by the game while my kids are playing it. Still, it's nice to fin...

Woah. I'm beat. Grenade assault course. MOUT training. Pretty good stuff, but there were some... issues. I'm not going to get into it, nor into the interpersonal drama amongst the students, but instead give you a 'me' update. I did not break my arm. It's just a really really deep bruise that makes it look like my forearm is deformed. I think I doubled the number of bruises I had just from today. The cactus needles are still there, just pretty much broken off down to the s...