A bunch of books and cash...

I unpacked a bunch of books today! There were a few in there that I had picked up a while back and haven't had a chance to read, so it was nice to re-discover them again in with the rest of the flotsam from my other apartment.

Speaking of the other apartment... When we first gave notice a month and a half ago, our rental manager, Crystal, indicated that we shouldn't expect to get our whole deposit back. Not wanting to scare her, I didn't verbalize this over the phone, but looking at how abused the carpets were in that place, I was more than a bit afraid they might not return any of it. A rug-doctor, two bottles of carpet shampoo, a whole lot of elbow grease an entire bottle of stain remover and a can of paint later, I met with Crystal for the final walk through.

She was pretty impressed with my paint job and said the carpets looked pretty good too. There were still a few hard-core grease stains in the living room from when we came in after changing out something or other on my roommates jeep, but she said she thought we could probably get them out if we used stain remover. She had a short list of other stuff that she wanted done too, and said she'd give us back the entire deposit if we did them, or she'd hold back $50 and have them done by her company. I paused for half a second weighing fifty bucks against scrubbing Kenny's tub and tried not to snicker at the thought of a whole bottle we'd already used on those stains, then grinned really big and told her to keep the cash. The horrified look on her face was priceless, apparently she didn't want to scrub out his tub any more than he or I did. I tried not to whistle as I finished signing the walk through paperwork, but man dd it feel good to only have one house to worry about.

Need to blog

The reason I haven't been blogging in forever is because I've been sidetracked by facebook. The one thing it doesn't have though, that I really like is a good place to blog so I figure I'll start using this one again and just link to it on my facebook.


Consider yourselves forewarned...

-Ace

I saw this at a museum the other day.

When I say that I was covered in drywall dust, what you need to understand is that it seriously looked like I had just finished wrestling a mountain lion in a vat of powdered sugar. On the up side of the equation I am now fairly adept at using a roto-zip to retrofit replacement pieces of drywall onto an existing ceiling.

I've been helping a friend work on his house, and today's project was taking down part of the bathroom ceiling that had a bit of mold. (Yes, we fixed the leak first). He began earlier in the day, by the time I got there the entire room is covered with blown insulation and little odd shaped chunks of drywall where he just got in their with a pry bar and took care of business. Two hours, three huge bags of trash and one light bulb later, I decided to call it a night and headed home to scrub the dust off.

I got to go to the Oklahoma Museum of Art on Saturday!

At first I almost didn't go because I was only going to have three hours to peruse through it, but I decided to anyway figuring I could always go back if I didn't get through it. As it turns out the museum is a bit smaller than I would have thought, added to that they have a whole section shut down for a new exhibit their installing on the Harlem Renaissance. I'm glad I did go, three hours was more than enough time to get in, take a gander, and grab a coffee. Altogether I'd say I was struck at how much work appeared to go into most of the works. I say most because some of the abstract works (I'm not even sure that's how they were titled) seemed to have been phoned in. I'm sure they are important for some reason or another, but when I compare Don Eddy's "Private Parking V" to something done by Sam Francis I can't help but feel confused that people can even take Francis seriously as an artist. I guess what it boils down to is that I think I need to do a bit more research on some of the schools of art that they have represented at the Museum and then go back for a second look because there's obviously something there that I'm not seeing.

My friend's son made this video.
It's a bit hard to see, but if you look at the bottom of the bottle he's drawn a set of eyes. With the motion of the car it looks like the bottle is singing along to the music.

So I took over the coffee bar yesterday and have big plans for it.
First on the list is a slight change in the sign showing prices.

Put up or Push up

Publish Post

Nobody Drinks for free...

Put up - $.50

Push up - 25

So I got tased the other day. This video wasn't me, but it may as well have been.
I also got Pepper Sprayed and have been doing a bunch of other fun stuff. I've been in training for a while now and it's fun, but man I can't wait to go back to a normal job again.

I always liked this song

I was in a car accident the other day.

I was on a three lane highway going about 65 in the far left lane. The guy in the middle decided to merge into my lane and didn't check before doing so.

Nobody got hurt, the other guy didn't even stop, but my car is still in the shop getting fixed.
I didn't have the chance to get a plate until he was about fifty feet down the road and by then he was just to far away to see. It blew out two tires on one side so I had to get it towed and now it's a waiting game to see how much actual damage was done. So far it's the front bumper and engine guards, both drivers side wheels a tie rod and that's before he got it on the lift.

I'm glad I have full coverage.

Gas is going down!

I almost caused an accident today when driving by a station. $2.39 for regular! I was listening to NPR the other day and they commented that OPEC is having a summit, or probably has by now as this was more than a few days ago, to discuss what they refer to as harmful price fluctuations, and they are calling for restriction of barrels per day output because they are alarmed at the price drop and want to artificially raise prices. You gotta love capitalism.


Chuck Norris Factoid # 112: Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice.

I'm sending this out for Christmas this year. It's my favorite Christmas card and it's pretty old, I'm not even sure they still print it. However, it's not like I need a lot of them, so I'll probably find a printer who can do it cheap or see if someone sells card kits for home printing.

I almost forgot. On the inside the caption reads:
"Merry Christmas!
Hope you get everything you wish for too."

-Ace

BLACK LIONS!

Here's a pic of the Navy half of my old platoon.

Although some of us joined the platoon a little earlier or later than the main group, almost every one of us was part of the "Black Lions" platoon back when we were training and mobilizing.

They already had a motto when I arrived, "Black Lions, Rawer!", but I thought it was pretty stupid. When I was mobilizing and training, the platoon motto was "Black Lions, B!@#$!!!". The important thing to understand here is that when a platoon is in formation and whoever is out in front calls you to attention you snap to and belt out your platoon motto as loud as possible. The funniest thing about it would be when all four platoons in the company were mustering in formation and the brass was out. One by one our platoons would be called to attention at which time each platoon would sound off with their motto. We were the third platoon, and the first two platoons had pretty generic mottos, so when it came to us we would grin ear to ear and really belt it out. I tried to get the change to carry over when I joined up with these guy's and found out they were all Black Lions, but I think they were too afraid of offending the chain of command.

At any rate, that's my post for the day.

Long time no see...

If I was to give this picture a caption, it would be "Old habits die hard".

Speaking of habits, a bad one I've picked up recently is apathy for my blog. It started with not haveing access to a computer and just sort of ran rampant from there. I wish I could say that there was a good reason for my overlong absence but really there isn't. At any rate, I'm now getting settled back in to a day to day routine in Oklahoma and things are about as normal as they ever are for me. I ran four miles today! I have been off my running regimine for so long that it really whipped my butt, but I guess I'm ok with that. I look at it as a baseline, and from here I can only improve.


Anyway, more posts will be forthcoming.
-Ace

Well, it's getting closer and closer and I still don't have an official itinerary, or even an unofficial one for that matter. On the plus side, I saw the new Batman today and it was pretty cool. It was looooong and I can see where they warned parents from bringing young kids to it. The best part of the movie was when the six-six guy in front of me hunched down in his chair and for about ten minutes I could see the whole screen. After that he sat back up and I was forced to watch the left and right sides of the movie and extrapolate anything that took place in the center. At any rate, at least two thirds of it was a good movie and I think I'll try to see it again before we leave.

Coming home...

Got the word that they won't tell us for certain but we're going back some time in the next month.

We won't know until three days out but we're pretty much breaking camp and preparing to chuck deuces.

Some pics from Qatar:

Vacation!

So I've been on pass for a few days now and I have to say it's pretty nice. The first two nights we watched the last of a three day battle of the bands, tonight I played in a free holdem tournament and tomorrow my friend and I are going to a mall to watch a movie in an honest to God real movie theater!

I did ok but not great in the tournament but it was fun and I think I'll start playing in them regularly when I get back to Kuwait.

Going on R&R!

Well, it's day two of trying to go on R&R. I started my journey yesterday at the crack of dawn and got one hop into it when we were told to stand by for a while. A while turned into "you better get temp billiting" and what do you know I'm still here today. The good news is that our R&R doesn't start until we set foot in Qatar so all this sitting around waiting doesn't count against us.

At any rate, things are going pretty well at work and although it's been in the high one-teens and low one-twenties every day is one day closer to being home for a while.

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.