The best thing happened yesterday...

This guy has owed me 15 bucks for about a month now. I've reminded him several times (in case he forgot the previous times) but he claimed to never have the cash on him. It was to the point where I was considering alternative options to gentle reminders when this parable from the bible hit me.

In a nutshell there was this moderately well off servant who owed the boss a lot of cash. The time to pay came and the servant didn't have it so he begged the boss to forgive him of the debt. Being the nice guy that he is the boss forgave the servant who promptly went out and found this other servant who owed him a little bit of money and demanded it on the spot. The other servant couldn't pay right away so the servant who had loaned him the money had him arrested and thrown in a debtors prison. The other servants found this out and of course turned him in to the big boss who was like "O yeah" and you can about imagine what happened from there.

My point is this. Towards the beginning of the month I found a huge amount of cash that has yet to be claimed in spite of my efforts to reunite it with it's owner. At this point it's pretty much mine unless someone comes out of the blue to claim it. The amount this guy owes me is petty compared to the amount that pretty much just fell into my lap so why was I being so adamant about his paying it back in a timely manner. I decided not to worry about ever getting it back and even prayed that God would take care of it so I didn't have think about it any more.

Shortly after waking up that morning this guy found me with cash in hand to settle the debt. Now tell me that isn't just cool.

Rollin Rollin Rollin...

Rollin Rollin Rollin
Keep that treadmill rollin
Though my ankles' swollen
Rawhide


I've rolled my ankle about two weeks ago and have been taking it easy on the PT ever since. I finally decided that I couldn't take sitting around anymore and have started running again at a fairly slow speed. My ankle doesn't hate it so far and is for the most part behaving itself so well that I'm tempted to start running at slightly higher speeds. Of course the second I do that I'll roll it again, probably while on the high speed treadmill, and will be right back to where I was when I first hurt it.

The good thing that has come out of this is that I've been trying to lose weight while over here and for the two weeks that I've been pretty much doing nothing my weight has remained relatively stable. That is to say that while I haven't lost any more weight I haven't gained any more either... I take that as a good sign that I lost it the right way and am encouraged to press on and see if I can't hit the 170s before I leave here.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

My New Walkman

I decided to get a Sony Walkman. Here's another review.
I know it's a bit of cash to drop, but I figure I bought a Sony a few years back and it has always served me well so this one has got to do the same. Plus, not that I'm trying to be elitist, but it's got the best sound of any MP3 player out there right now. I know that bluetooth and good sound may sound contrary to each other today, but science changes and codex change and pretty soon they'll get it figured out so that you don't sacrifice quality to send music over bluetooth.

At any rate, I like it and so do the majority of the people who've dropped the cash for one.

Tired

Man I'm tired...

In other news I found a sack with some cash in it today. Oddly enough the sack contained almost the exact amount I had just spent on a new Samsung P2. At first I was like "Sweeet! God's looking out for me!" but about half a second after that I was like "wow this is a lot of cash, someone's probably going to be missing it." Short story long, I inventoried the bag and it's contents and put up a found sign telling people to email me with a description of the bag and it's contents if they wished to claim it.

man I could have made a car payment with that much cash.

O well, they way I figure it only junior enlisted are foolish enough to carry that much cash money out here, so whoever lost it is probably really feeling the pinch. Hope they email me soon.

All quiet on the Middle Eastern Front

As my title implies, there's not a whole lot going on out here today.

I ran into my friend Webster yesterday and have made plans to stop by and see him in the next few days. I've been doing a bit of research into Sony's new Video player and it looks pretty sweet. In fact, I think I just might buy one. Also, I think I may be leaving Oklahoma sooner than expected. As it turns out, if my cross-rating gets approved then they'll cut me a new set of orders right there and ship me out to school as soon as possible. By this time next year I could be out of OKC and off to wherever their school is.

At any rate, things are going pretty good.

A good day

Today was a good day. They had an issue of Mental Floss at the store so I snapped it up with a quickness. Also I watched this great kung-fu movie called "The Royal Tramp" which was done by the same guy's who did kung-fu hustle and Shaolin Soccer. At any rate, it's a great comedy and well worth watching if you get the chance.

Other than that things are going pretty well. I've started mentoring a few youngsters at work and they seem to be responding pretty well.

My gym time has been getting a little slack lately. I've started using The body sculpting bible for men. At first I thought it was a bit of an easy workout, but my buddy swears by it so I kept up with the program and now I'm in into a bit more advanced stuff and it's kicking my heiny every day. It's one of those six day a week dumbbell workouts, with every third day being mostly calisthenics and running. The problem is that if I go to the gym it takes time away from homework and even though I'm doing a self paced class it's still aggravating to take two weeks for a one week segment.

Good new/Bad News

Well, I have some good news and bad news.

The good news, Quotas came out for advancement and it looks pretty good.
The bad news, God help them they might actually advance me to E-6.

I'm hoping I didn't make it because that would make my conversion out of the MA rate a bit hard, but if I do get it I guess it'll be a bit of extra cashola so I can't complain too much.

-Ace

I had the opportunity to get a shawarma a few days ago and man was it good. You can get them in a variety of ways and I always preferred the hot (spicy) way so I told the guy to make it spicy.
"Ok ok my friend" He waved me off.
"Naw brother, I want it really really hot!"
"No problem spicy hot."
"No you don't understand, I want it so spicy it makes me cry."
He just sort of looked at me, "Cry?"
"Cry."
He smiled and said something in another language to the guy who was actually preparing the sandwiches. It wasn't in Arabic, and I have no idea what he said except for the final word, "suffering".
The cook looked up "suffering"?
He said it again "SUFFERING".
The way he said it made me cringe in anticipation. It wasn't the two syllable "suf-ring" that you might have expected, but the fully articulated three syllable variety that he slowly and painfully rolled off his tongue. In case the point was missed, he accentuated it with a pinch of the air between his thumb, index and middle finger as a he shook his hand at the cook. "Suf-Er-Ing..."

Needless to say the shawarma was Delicious, with a capital D, but after a buildup like that it was not all that spicy and turned out to be rather unimpressively sufferable.

Lots of stuff has happened not much I can talk about.

I weighted in at 188 the other day, which is about 20 lbs less than when I was on leave. I've been talking to one of the Sergeants I work with who also works in govt and he has explained in detail the govt hiring process and how to tweak my resume to increase my chances of getting a civilian job in case I decide to get out.

My Cantonese is getting a bit better, I can now tell the difference between the Cantonese language track on a kung fu film and the language track in Mandarin.

It's getting steadily hotter here every day and they say it'll reach 115 this weekend. Thank God I work nights...

Mom, I've always thought of you when I hear this song and since I couldn't be there in person to wish you a happy Mother's Day I thought I'd let this video do it in my place.

Love ya lots,
Asa

We had the weigh-ins for our PRT yesterday morning and everyone was a bit anxious to get the results. For the most part we've all been PTing out here and although I've been checking my progress weekly, some of the guy's hadn't been on a scale since they started working out in January...

I'm now down to 192, and a lot of the other guy's had lost some as well. Short story long I was talking to one of the guy's about my goal to hit 185 before we left and he said he wanted to hit it as well then drop another ten. A bit of O-Yeah!ing ensued and you can about imagine the rest of the story. It's a prorated race to see which of us can lose 17 lbs within the next three months. We picked 17 because that's what I have to lose to hit 175 and since he's got a bit on me it's only fair to hold him to losing the same poundage. I guess we could have calculated loss based on body weight percentage, but it was 3am at the time and the very idea of anything more than basic mathematics gave me a headache.


So anyway, that's what I'm doing for fun.

Bored bored bored bored bored.

So I'm learning Chinese from this online course and I guess it's going ok. My problem is that it's self paced so I want to do everything perfectly before moving on to the next lesson. Of course nobodies perfect, so I now find myself a month into the course and just starting week three. On the other hand, I've self prescribed homework in the form of watching Kung Fu movies at least once a week so at least there's a bit of pleasure with the pain.

The last movie I watched was called "Fatal Contact" and was about this naive farmboy from the mainland who finds work doing a Kung Fu act in the circus. Mobsters see his act and offer him lots of money to fight. Kid says no but his friend overhears how much they offer him and talks him into it. A whole lot of 18 fingers of death later, the mobsters turn him into a mindless killing machine and his friend into a prostitute. When they both come to the realization of what they've stooped to doing for money it makes for an interesting ending...

The bottom line is that I guess this class must be working because I could actually pick out individual words in the film, and see how I had been mispronouncing others.

Next on the list "Infernal Affairs" the trilogy that Scorsese ripped off as the basis for his own movie "The Departed".

If u type How to find chuck Norris on Google and click I'm feeling lucky you will laugh at what it comes up with =)

I'm Feeling Lucky

Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried...

I was standing post last night and someone told a Chuck Norris Joke. I guess I've heard that the Army is infatuated with him and I asked them what it was all about. I was stared at with disbelief and for almost a minute trying to decide if I was really that ignorant or if I was trying to pick a fight. Finally, someone spoke up, then they hit me from every direction...
"H-H-H- He's CHUCK NORRIS!!! What do you mean, why do we like him? Have you ever seen a Chuck Norris movie"
"That guy's badder than the illegitimate love child of Curt Russel and Bruce Willis.
When Chuck Norris runs with scissors, other people get hurt...
Chuck Norris is Luke Skywalker's real father...
Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse, horses are hung like Chuck Norris...
He's counted to infinity - twice...
Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light. Not because he's afraid of the dark, but because the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris...
Chuck Norris' calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd, no one fools Chuck Norris..."

Apparently I had broken some sort of unwritten law and since these guy's all have guns I decided to take another tack and asked them for a few more jokes.

Short story long, I've compiled a list of Norris jokes and will, in theory, be passing them along with each post.

It's starting to get hot out here.
Highs are in the 105 to 107 region. They are only going to go up from here and I have a feeling we're going to be looking back fondly on 105 in a few months.

I was sitting on post during a particularly slow portion of the day today, it was in the morning and all of us there were looking out over the approach to the post while a warm wind whipped down from the north. There was a halfway brewing sandstorm so visibility wasn't very good and for some reason Otis's "Dock of the bay" kept running through my mind.

"WE'RE NUMBER ONE!"

So the guy's in my PCB decided we need to change the room up a little. We all kind of got thrown in here at different times and in different ways and now that we're going to be here a while we decided to make it a little more comfortable. I'd have some before and after pictures, but I lost the cable for my camera and will have to buy a new one before I can put up some pics.

Also, I can now do one handed pullups!!! I look at it as a milestone... I've never been able to do one them before. Of course they're not true one handed pullups as my free hand is clasped around the wrist of the arm doing the pulling, in a nod to fairness though I did my best to only use the one arm.

I was working the other day and a military photographer stopped by...

In other news I ran into a good friend from Japan today while doing laundry. We used to stand a lot of post together and he'd tell me about life in the Philippines. He's about to head home in a month or so but I got his email and told him I'd look him up on my next day off.