So I woke up this morning and went about my morning ritual. Halfway across the room, light still off, I heard the unmistakably dribbling... Either my roommate was peeing on the living room carpet whilst standing on the kitchen table, Oooooor a pipe had burst. Weighing the plausibility of one against the other, I hollered for Ken to get off the kitchen table and for God sakes use the head. In answer I received more dribbling and... a snore? Yup, the pipe had burst and Ken was still asleep on the living room couch. I got him up and we got stuff moved out of the way and buckets under the biggest drips then called the maintenance guy's. What can I say, it was an interesting morning.

So there I was, three hours into the counter top method of turkey defrosting, and the bird's still frozen stiff...

I have been invited to a Christmas Eve lunch at the neighbors and was going to make a Turkey to bring. I've never cooked a turkey before, so I asked my neighbor about defrosting it. She said that I shouldn't use the refrigerator method, but should instead put it out on the counter the day before for a few hours and then pop it into the refrigerator. My neighbor usually knows about this stuff so I took her advice, hence my opening sentence.

After a bit of internet sleuthing, I've decided to go with a modified cold water kitchen sink/refrigerator method in order to get the bird ready in time to cook tomorrow morning. I guess what it comes down to is that if defrosting a turkey is the craziest thing in my life right now then I really have no room to complain.

Baaaah!

Word is out on the street at my Church that I'm single and you can about guess where the rest of this rant is going, so I won't even waste my breath articulating it.

In other news, I'm going up for my Air Force Qual Cert. In theory this means that I will be officially able to do the stuff I have already been doing for them unofficially. The actual logic behind why a Navy person is getting an Air Force leader qual it is a bit more convoluted and honestly gives me a headache, but I digress.

My favorite uncle died today. He had been in an accident when he was younger and had suffered massive brain trauma. Honestly, I was told that nobody expected him to live this long. Still, that's a small comfort for the mother and brothers and sisters he left behind.

Also, I've been without power for the last two days as a massive ice storm came through and leveled a lot of the trees which also brought down power and telephone lines. My neighbors and I are trying to make the best of it, two of them have young children. What it's come down to is four families huddled into one apartment, sharing firewood, candles, and food. I spent some time after work tonight picking up fallen tree limbs for use as firewood because they called and said we were running out. Every store in the state is out of firewood, hatchets, axes and the like, but I did manage to pick up a camp saw so at least we have something to break this stuff down with. I had just walked into a Lowes to see if they had any axes hidden anywhere when one of my neighbors called to say that the power was back up. THANK GOD! It had been a long day and I really wanted a hot shower.

I realized last night that today was the day I volunteered to work with Habitat for Humanity!
I haven't worked with them for over a decade, but it was really a lot of fun. We didn't do too much, pretty much tied in walls and put up some sort of barrier up on the outside, but it was still a good first step which will hopefully turn into something I do on a regular basis.

Hee hee hee, Bunnies.

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun...
I drove up to South Dakota, ok that part wasn't much fun, but anyway... Everyone was gathering at my paternal Grandma's house and spent a few days just hanging out and playing cards with cousins and uncles and aunts. Now when I say everyone, you have to realize that my dad had 10 brothers and sisters, who in turn have spouses and children, and some grandchildren. In short, a small family get together for them is when only six or seven families can make it. Six or seven families may sound small, but when you extrapolate out to spouses and grandkids that's easily thirty people.

I swear Grandma should teach seminars on effective time management. With that many relatives around you would think things would get super crazy and disorganized, however they've all been doing this so long that everyone seemed to know what to do, when to do it, and how long to do it for in order to make sure everything worked out great. From apple pies and turkey to Black Friday shopping and all night board games this vacation was really a lot of laid back fun and I can't wait for the next time I'm up there.

An email I received:
Hi Asa, How are you? Are you finding things to love about the dusty OK?
Is your job gonna be as boring as you thought or are they shipping you around for special tasks?
What's in your fridge? What's the latest best thing you've eaten?
What's the most fun you've had there so far? What's the crummiest thing to have happened?
What's your favorite room in your apartment and why?
What's the prettiest thing you've seen lately? What's the ugliest?
What's your most outrageous impulse these days? Inquiring minds want to know!

My (mostly unedited) response:
Thanks for the email, things are going pretty well... Or at least they aren't threatening my existence on a daily basis, which in my book is almost as good. I've come to the conclusion that Oklahoma isn't as bad as I thought it was, but rather that limiting myself to hanging out with people on base is what was giving it such a one dimensional feel.

This job is going to be as boring as I thought it would be, although I will probably be doing a six month tour overseas within the next year or so. My fridge currently has juice, water, apples, three types of cheese and some sliced turkey for sandwiches.

I can't really say what the latest best thing I've eaten is, although I did have a spinach salad the other day that was pretty tasty.

By far the best thing that's happened in a while occurred last weekend while I was volunteering to do security for a football game. I noticed this girl assigned to my post who constantly had her nose in a book whenever she wasn't actively working. "At last" I thought, "A kindred spirit!" Eventually she came to relieve me for a break and I asked what she was reading. As it turns out she is in the Air Force, has been here for three years and is taking masters classes at night.
The book she was currently ravaging happened to be just one of several she had to get through for the semester. Seizing the opportunity I grilled here for the first third of my break on where to go in OKC to find theater and the arts. She admitted to having the same issues I was
having when she first came here and pointed me in several promising directions with regard to the performing arts...

The crummiest thing that happened was when my boss called to tell me I was being shipped to Iraq for 18 to 22 months. Don't worry, it fell through and I'm staying around here a bit longer....

The prettiest thing I've seen lately happened a few hours ago when I missed my exit on the highway and had to drive out of the city before I could turn around and come back. I was rolling up to the stop sign on the off ramp when the angle of my approach aligned almost perfectly
with the surrounding darkness to reveal this gorgeous, star-filled, sky.

So I was screwing around and made up a few new ring tones. The first is from Govt Mule's Lay your burden down and another is James Brown's It's a Man's world. Other than that, I think I'm going to file for a divorce from my cable company. What can I say, I've been dreaming of cable for the last two years, and now that it's been at my beck and call for a few weeks the blush is off the apple and we just don't get along like I thought we would. I find myself watching less and less T.V. and have come to the point where I'm just not sure the relationship is going to work. Minx that she is, the cable company struck first with lawyers retained for just such an event and is threatening to take me to the cleaners unless I capitulate and agree to live out this farce of a relationship for five more months.

What can I say, at least I get the discovery channel.

I finally took the plunge and bought a cell phone with a local company in order to get a local number. I had a phone with Version, but OKC is about the only place in the country where they don't have a service contract. Normally this wouldn't have bothered me and I would have just lived with an out of state number, but it became a necessity to have a local number for too many reasons and I finally succumbed to the pressure. At any rate, it's nothing fancy but I guess it'll do the job.

So I'm in an apartment and planning to buy a house in a few months. I just got back to the states and have had to buy all new (to me anyway) furniture. All I can say is thank God for craigslist... At this point I have held off on buying a bedroom set because 1) I don't want to shell out that kind of dough and then not have it fit in my bedroom when I buy the house, and 2) I'm trying to keep the amount of big stuff I have to move from here to there to a minimum.

Long story short, I'm tired of living out of luggage so I broke down and bought a ratty old chest of drawers for $50. Now I probably could have left it to it's spider-infested, nicotine-stained, rattyness, but I figured it would be a good learning experience to give those spiders the what old for, sand off at least the top few coats of primer, then finish it up nice and fancy like. In theory, the end product will have a pattern a bit like this one, but with a lighter base coat.

After it was all said and done I decided to get a 2001 Nissan Frontier. It's not as good on gas as my car was, but it's come in pretty handy already and I've only had it a week or so.

Also, I just moved into my new appartment and will not have internet access for a while, so probably won't be online to post for the next week.

Its official, I think...

It's official I think I'm getting a truck.

I found a great Toyota Tacoma, now I need to get my car to a mechanic for a clean bill of health and then it's onward to the lemon lot. I'm kinda torn because my car does get good mileage and is paid off, but the Tacoma gets pretty good mileage too and what they're asking for it is fair. I worked pretty hard to get out of debt, and don't really want to take a huge loan for this truck, but it's got low miles and will probably hold it's value pretty well. I guess the bottom line is that while my car is a heck of a lot of fun to drive aside from getting good gas mileage it isn't really that practical. A truck on the other hand, you can haul stuff with a truck.

What it comes down to is that I'm gonna get my car ready for sale, and in two weeks if I still want that Tacoma the car and I part ways.

Well, it's been an interesting few days...

(You know, it occured to me just now that the elipsis is probably my favorite punctuation mark, but I digress...)

As I was saying, I went down town this weekend and got a bit of information on theaters and it turns out they are just about to start their fall season. Also I stopped by the outdoor programing center is base. Immagine my surprise to find that they not only rent a lot of different gear, but have a 12 climbing wall that runs about fourty feet and has two arches. Because you can never be higher than 12 feet, there's no need for belaying (sp?) gear, and it's only $2 an hour. They were almost closed when I got there today, but I'm already making plans to try it out for lunch tomorrow. I also signed up for their mailing list of upcomming events. They have a lot of ski/snowboard trips but what really got me excited was a climbing trip and a backpacking trip that they do once a year. The climbing trip is for somewhere out in Colorado and consists of 16 hours over two days and isn't until next June, while the backpacking trip is much longer and spread over easier terrain and a number of days.

The guy at outdoor programming also told me about this great biking trail just south of the base. It's supposed to be a pretty good trail for getting into shape, which is exactly what I need right now. I've been doing a lot of running, but would like to mix it up a bit and this looks like just the ticket.

Like I said, it's been an interesting few days...

I've been in Oklahma City for a week now and have decided that while it may be a bit premature to say that this place has no soul, it would seem to either be extremely small or very well hidden... This place seems to be the stepford wife of citites. On the surface everything is normal hustle and bustle, but if you push past that there just doesn't seem to be anything culturally substantive beneath. I'd like to believe that I'm wrong, and that I just haven't chanced to stumble across kindred spirits, but the longer I'm here the more likely it seems that perhaps those spirits do not, in fact, exist.

I find myself with a lot of extra time on my hands these days and have decide to start back into working out and check out a martial arts school that teaches Tukong. If those guy's don't pan out, there's a place that teaches fencing, and that would just be fun. The base gym here is pretty nice, and they have a great running trail on base. I ran a couple of miles a few days ago and made it 6.5 today. I also went tried out a church this morning that is located a few miles down the road from where I'll be renting for the next few months. It's a non-denominational church, and although the cameras (apparently they televise their services) kinda wierded me out the message was pretty good.

God bless joint service commands.

Man I joined the wrong service...

- We showed up for work this morning at 0900. (my last command we left for work at 0430.)
- The person we were supposed to muster with was busy at another office so we were told to go home and return at 1300.
- We reported back at 1300 and met with was there and told us to leave and report in to him again on Tuesday at 0800. Not Monday, Tuesday!

I haven't had this much liberty since I don't know when, and all I can do is feel guilty and think things like "Man did I join the wrong service."

I paid a deposite on an apartment today, they're doing the background check and will call me in two days. Even when I'm approved the appartment probably won't be ready for two weeks :( ... Now it's a matter of finding some funiture for it. I bought a matched set of tweed chairs with ottomans. It's not the old 70's tweed, it's more of a neutral-beige, clean cut tweed.

I swear I almost spent a couple of grand today, but stopped short because I just have this thing about not wanting to make impulse purchases. I figure I'll sleep on it for a week and when I've moved into the appartment I'll make a decision about what I want and what I don't.

It was cold today... 46 degrees when I went outside this morning.

I don't really have any cold weather clothes, so I bought a sweater, bought a coffee, and sat down to write a few lines...

It's been a long time since I wrote anything, but it's good to get back into the swing of it and just dust off some mental tools.

MAN MY DAWGS ARE BARKING!

My kid brother and I helped the old man shingle the roof today. One of his friends came over and it was a lot of fun, but man am I sore. My back is sore, my legs are sore, my head is sore and man are my dawgs barking...

I guess Pop's roof is a bit steeper than normal, and it's a two story drop on one side, so we had a bit of a time of it laying those first few rows of shingles right at the edge of the big drop into a mostly well kept lawn. I'm so glad this is done and nobody got broken, or nailed, or maimed for life...

After a shower and some Excedrin, with a Pepsi to wash them down, things are definitely looking up. My headache is gone and I can now manage to make it from one room to the other without hobbling like a cowboy with jock itch. I am really glad I got to do this, not only because I'm sure it really helped Pops out, but because I've never roofed before and now I feel like I could probably do my own. Of course knowing what I know I'd just hire someone to do a job that size, but I'd totally be up for re-shingling a garage or entryway or something on a smaller scale.

My kid brother and I were going to help Pops tear the shingles off his roof today, but the rain came down and granted a reprieve.

Postponed until tomorrow? Great, I'm going back to sleep!!!

In other news the micro sd reader I have doesn't work for the micro sd card I have. :( It's looking more and more like I'll have to bite the bullet and drop some green on that stupid usb cable.

It's official... I broke down and bought a cell phone.


For all the normal cell phone stuff it's pretty nice, but for texting it's a dream. I have to confess that the main reason I bought this model over others is it's video capture and playback capability. So imagine my surprise when I tried to obtain a USB cable to transfer my video off of it. Of course you have to buy a 30 dollar cable for this from a qualified rep, so I went down to the vendor I bought the phone from and he gave me this tap dance about how you can only use the cable to transfer mp3's through it's proprietary software and that you can't use it to transfer anything else. I.E. pictures or video...

"You're such a tool..." the words rose without warning and nearly escaped my lips before I fought them back with the rationalization that I may yet need this man's pseudo-expertise.

Me: "So you're saying that in this day and age there's no way to get images off this phone?!"
Rep: "Of course there is, you have to email them..."
Me: "So I can't just buy your cable thingy and plug it in and have this show up as a USB drive?"
Rep: Narrowing his eyes "Why would you want to do something like that???"
Me: "Data transfer"
Rep: "I suppose you could buy a memory card and use it along with a Micro SD reader on your computer."
Me: "Do I have to buy the cable from you, or can I get it somewhere else?"
Rep: "You have to buy the LG music package, it's got the dongle and the drivers."
Me: "I can't just buy the dongle and download the drivers, you want me to spend 30 bucks for them!?"
Rep: "You might get it cheaper on ebay."
Me: "So this driver CD, does it include software to let me make ringtones?"
Rep: "Why would you want to do that?"
Me: "Cause I want to make my own ringtones."
Rep: "No the CD doesn't support that function."
Me: "So if this USB connection is crippled, how do I update the firmware?"
Rep: Eyes wide open. "Why would you want to do that?!!!?"
Me: "Come on. Newer, better functionality... Who doesn't update their firmware."
Rep: "Just bring it in to us if you want that done."
Me: "I travel a lot. Like other side of the world a lot, I'm pretty sure you don't have reps where I'm going. Can't I just hook it to the web and download updates from a site?"
Rep: looking around to make sure the boss is somewhere else, he leans in. "Look man, there are... programs out there, you can do that stuff yourself but we aren't supposed to tell you about them..."
Me: "Yeah kid, I know..."


In the end I didn't buy the dongle, but opted for the cheaper sd card data transfer option... (I already had the memory card and a reader was dirt cheap.) Once I get set up in Oklahoma I'll probably get the USB cable just to see what I can do to this phone... I've been looking into "... programs out there" and have decided which one to use and how to go about enabling my phone to function the way it's creators would have wanted it to.

On a road trip across the country, we stopped to visit two old friends in Tennessee.
Yesterday, while one of them was doing his best not to bite the fingers off the family dentist, the other took us hiking on the Tennessee and North-Carolina border at a place called Roan Mountain.

I felt bad that Mike had to visit a tooth-wrangler, but the mountain was pretty darn sweet.
This picture doesn't do it justice, but does serve even in it's limitation as an example of how absolutely beautiful it was up there.

Almost Home

One by one the pieces are falling into place.
My truck is sold, my travel paperwork has been submited to the budget people who will purchase my ticket, and my housing inspection is scheduled for tomorrow and Friday morning.

It's hard to believe, but my time here may actually be coming to an end.

I've decided to start writing again; partly out of boredom and partly out of wanting to keep my hand in at it. I think I'll start by going over some old stuff and see what happens from there.