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A Very New Year

I am getting back on this dreadful medium for one very important reason; I am constantly away and my friends and family and those scarily curious acquaintances don't seem to know what is going on with me. So, just give a quick update:

I am currently in Ft. Benning, GA for Officer Candidate School. God willing, I will be graduating in about a week and a half as a 2LT in the United States Army. I will then be speed racering it to Ft. Huachuca, AZ for my MI BOLC class.

So, are we good and caught up?

Oh wait, I'm also married now. Oh, and I deployed to Iraq with the 1st Cav Div 2009-2010. Yeah, I think we're good.

Independence Day

I watched fireworks tonight for all the guys who couldn't this year. I woke up early and walked across the park to see my small hometown put on one heck of a parade. As the classic show cars rolled by, I thought about the 4th of July last year - spent on the parade grounds on Ft. Leonard Wood, with 2,000 other soldiers. I remember saluting the flag as we said the pledge of allegiance and getting misty-eyed as the detachment performed the 21 gun salute and the band played TAPS. I thought about how the 4th would be spent next year. Surely, I will be thinking many of the same thoughts; how many people won't be around, the heat, my family, and missing sparklers terribly. I will probably send a portion of the day, closing my eyes and trying to remember what this year had been like.

Mitomyocin

It seems like every couple of months, something new blows in with the wind and leaves me awake, widely aware of everything around me. The sun soaks my bones and the wind rushes hard against my face. This summer I am seeing everything with new eyes, literally (I just had PRK). I wonder how much of what I always thought I believed in, actually stands up to the reality that IS. This will be my last summer for a year, until I get back from my deployment in March. Maybe that is the reason for my savoring attitude. My new eyes itch against all the new experiences and scratch, but soon, they will be healed and I will be able to see the blue Texas sky and cotton ball clouds against prairie grass. This will be a great season.

The Roman Empire

I was too tired to sleep and so began searching through and old book for the answer to one of my ever constant questions, when I found this note scribbled in the margin of the index. It was right next to "Roman Empire", which makes it even more interesting. I didn't remember writing it at first. The feeling of the poem was a memory, but not necessarily the words themselves. I must have been sixteen:

The sun set in blue and purple
and the fireflies danced against our feet.
orbs of light
flashing on
and off
again and again they flutter
and dip against the faltering breeze.
We dare to glance
a little sideways
at each other
hoping to find
the same delight
of twinkle and mind.
What was once the beginning
is soon the middle
as the spell of light breaks
and the citronella dies
the end moves quickly now
swift and somewhat painful
for the fairy lights will not survive
the night in the glass jars
with "mason" as their last memory.

-Just thought it was interesting and since no one reads these things anyways - it doesn't matter in the end. This blog is sort of like a boob job. It's not for anyone but me - right?

Friends

So, I finally talked to a friend today that I hadn't spoken to in almost a year. In fact, the last time we traded barbs was at her wedding, which I was in. Yes, I am that friend. You know, the one who simply falls off the face of the earth at the most random moments. It was really good to hear her voice. We just picked it back up. I really think I should present all wouldbe friends with a document, stating all my bad-friend tendencies - the bizarre story-telling, boring play-by-play details of my day and weird off-the-wall comments. All of this is of course, in conjunction with my talent for disappearing. If you have any doubt, just ask Tammy Cox. She will be more than happy to back me up, I am sure. I do have a feeling that my unnamed dear friend and I will always maintain this pattern. We have known each other for way too long. I mean, when you have grown up with someone who KNOWS what you looked like as a fat kid, it's pretty impossible to surprise them with any behavior. She knows me too well to give me a hard time about my nonsense ways.

Trees

So, when I finally came home for Christmas, after an 18 hour drive from Arizone (don't feel sorry for me - my Dad flew in for graduation and to drive me home, apparently), I saw a city full of dead, broken branches. While I was on our FTX (final requirement for graduation), Oklahoma had an ice storm. My nextdoor neighbor had temporarily moved in with my parents and our entire front yard was covered with apple tree branches. Never plant an apple tree, by the way, when they split from the cold - right down the middle. It's horrible. Anyway, the second piece of news I receive is from one of my best friends. She will not be in town while I am home, neither will three of my other close friends. Awesome. I guess all I am saying in my rant is that my life is covered with broken apple tree branches and all I want to do is go home.