Slot Jockey

I married a real loose slot.
It has been a good weekend. Visiting with the family has been good, seeing my mom and aunts and the g-ps. Uncle Charlie Dresselhaus is getting up there in the years. I am glad that I'll have the old lady to look after me and be my companion when I'm feebled.
CK has been pumping quarters into the one armed bandit, I've been playing 21 and hold 'em. Together we are up 6 bills, which means $300 to Portland orphans for coats from CK, $300 to booze and loose women for me.
This morning we drove to a bakery in Genoa, the oldest town in Nevada. It is beautiful country here, in the parts they haven't turned into golf courses or trailer parks. The bakery had wicked pumpkin muffins and ham and cheese scones. We then drove to Lake Tahoe, where CK convinced me it wasn't a good idea to throw her in.
Now it's time to pack up and head home before the casino gets their cash back.

Navy Sux

Leaving AL was hard because I knew I would miss my girlfriend. She was great, she put up with most of my crap AND brought me pizza. I still felt I needed a change to get my life into motion.
You know, me and the navy full speed ahead.
Boot camp sucks. Weeks of sleep deprivation and crappy people really wore me down. Without the daily letters from CK I would've had a hella sucky time of it. I really expected the Navy to lay off the suck after boot, but I was wrong. About 3 months through a 6 year stint I realized that I had choosen poorly. Any job that you can't quit, and they don't have to pay you overtime, is for suckers. It is unfortunate that so many bright young men waste so many years of their youth fighting and dying for a system that doesn't serve their interests. Teds' (typical enlisted dogs) efforts are wasted so that Lockheed, Northrup, Haliburton and all their Cronies can keep a trillion dollar a year Federal feed trough full.
It wasn't all bad. Lots of really cool guys wind up in the shit ass Navy. The weeks when we weren't working 70 hours were really cool. I was stationed in WA where there was all kinds of hiking, partying, camping. I was in a rock cover band. Life was good. CK moved up and we got married. I had to spend all my time beating my wife to keep her in line.
Since the Navy sucks, the good times had to end. My last 2 years were spent in VA, in a shipyard working like a dog. The crew kept leaving without getting replaced, making the hours long, which I hear is still the case. By this time I was getting kind of short-timed, and anxious to get out. I knew that I didn't want to stay in Norfolk. We wanted a city that had good public transportation, wasn't too expensive, and generally had a low suck quotient. We decided to move back to the Pacific NW, Portland OR.
So here I sit.
This weekend we are going to Reno to see some of my family. I'm going to gamble away the kids college funds away, and CK is going to drink til she drops.

AL

With no cash and no place to go I took the easy solution and called up my mom's parents. They sent me up a plane ticket and I flew down to Mobile. I originally planned to hang out for a few weeks, but with no where to go up north and an invitation to stay down south it was AL for the next couple of years. My grandfather wanted me to go to school, so I enrolled in the local university. I was at my third school and my third major, but the same old story. It was up and down grades , but I was working steady, bought a small car and got in with a tight group of friends. Mostly I hung out with the foreign kids, who annoy me less than Americans. I bought a sailboat and spent alot of time on Mobile Bay. The days were easy and life was good, I met a cool girl, my time was mostly spent hanging outdoors, canoeing, fishing, grilling, sailing. By the time I turned 19 I was getting restless. I couldn't really see what I was going to do with my life. I still didn't have the focus to make school work, and the job outlook for a non-college graduate in that part of the country is really weak. Knowing that I needed to sign up for the selective service I stumbled into a recruiting office one day after work. The Navy seemed like the ticket to get away from Mobile, and at the time I felt that was what I needed.

Next time: 6 years with seamen.

CK want's a drum set for Christmas, so I am thinking Hart Dynamics Studiomaster 5.3 with a Roland TD 8 brain. Sean and Dex, I need to know what your thoughts on the issue are.

DKM

CK and I just got back from the Murphys. My ears are ringing worse than usual, but I needed it to rinse out 42 hours of middle America broadcast radio from my brain.
Last couple of mornings I woke up with country in my head. Not the good kind of country like Cash or Nelson, but top 40 shit that makes me want to put a gun to my head. This god damn tragedy has been occuring because of 42 hours on the road with no cd player, no tape player, no ipod to speak of. If I ever see Toby Keith on the street he's getting a swift kick in the nads.
Last tuesday afternoon my partner called and said we needed to do an emergency bearing change in CO Springs. It took 21 hours driving on wed, 12 hours work thursday and friday. Then some shit broke in Hillsboro so we had to drive straight through saturday to get back and work all day sunday. I didn't even get in touch with Tom while I was there, making the entire trip a total suck.
I was totally digging the Murphys opening band, Darkbuster, until they played 'I Hate the Unseen'. I had never heard of these guys before, but they were really good. Like the Street Dogs or Brain Failure, they were good enough that I would see them as openers even if the headliners suck. I was in a mood, and decided to buy their CD to crack in half and throw on stage in protest to their anti-Unseen lyrics. I guess I wasn't in the mood for sarcasm. The lead singer picked it up before walking off stage, and informed us he preferred women's panties be thrown at him instead. Lesson here is not to take anything to seriously, but I always have been kind of an uptight prick.
Seeing the Murphys again reminded me of Nate Threlkeld. Last spring we flew to Boston with him to see Brain Failure, the Casualties and Dropkick Murphys in concert. I need to get his e-mail address before I lose track of him.
I'll continue the story of my life tomorrow, now it's time to crash out.

N9YCV

When I was younger, Junior High age to be exact, I had 2 buddies, Jon and Mike. The 3 of us were thick as thieves. Roaming around the shit ass 'burbs finding all kinds of trouble to get in. After 10 fucking years guess who drops a comment on the old blog, no one but Mike himself.
2 months ago I renewed my ham license online and got to thinking about them both. A lot changes in 10 years from 15 ish to 25 ish, so I thought I would bring everyone up to speed.
After Junior High I hung around all summer mentally preparing for High School, you know smoking cigarettes behind the Quikee-Mart and popping zits. Late summer rolled around and my old man decided he didn't want me to go to HS. I'm not sure exactly what his problem was, but what I have been able to cobble together from mixed [first and secondhand] accounts of that whole scene is that he had had the oppurtunity to skip HS and was always pissed his old man didn't let him. Or alternately, he was worried Rolling Meadows was the source of all the drugs in the Cook County Schools Districts. Heck, it had been where he got all his during his 5 and 1/2 years of HS.
All I knew was that I wanted to go to HS. At the time I wanted to play soccer and hit on girls my own age. Newt Gingrich was promising state sponsored dating and I wanted my fair share.
Alas, it was not to be. I spent a year being home schooled, which meant I hung out in the backyard reading books on programming(which I hate) and mathematics (which came easily to me). The summer when I was 15 I started attending the local community college. I had never really learned how to apply myself to my studies, so my results were fair to middling. I had good semesters and poor ones, but since my heart wasn't really in it I spent most of my time in the lounge shooting the breeze with Nazia B. Haque, the artsy girl who sure could make a dress look good.
The fall when I was 16 I went away to college. I transfered to IIT, where I joined a fraternity, got a girlfriend, and payed nearly 16,000 to get a total of 3 credits (a D in german) over the course of 2 semesters. Again, I wasn't very motivated, didn't know why I was there, or how to succeed. I never got into the groove, and filled my time with diversions. Drinking, making out with Christine and internet games were much more fun than studying. As a side note, these forerunners to EverQuest ruined my sex drive, and when I forsook my boyfriend duties for the 'EverCrack' my old lady dumped me like a bad habit. She was right to do so, Wally and Kimi need learn from my folly and go cold turkey, before it's too late.
In my 17th summer I was in a sucky place. I was living off of Top Ramen and cigarrette butts. I had blown it at IIT and was homeless, so I headed back out to the suburbs, back to my folks house. That night Pops stayed up all night working himself in to a frenzy, pissed off about how his son had turned out, and woke me up before sunrise to let me know. He spent the morning violently screaming about how I was a failure, then sent me out to the garage to clean. No Shit. You're worthless, now go clean my garage. I spent alot of my early life listening to him scream, mostly about Ma or their parents. I had spent 17 years listening to his crap. I guess I was at a point where I was sick of his bullshit, so I stuffed my clothes into a rucksack, hopped the fence and started walking.
I had two pairs of threadbare pants, second hand boots, and 12 dolllars in my pocket. Nowhere to live , no job and the nuclear family unit had detonated. As I walked down the road to catch the subway downtown I remembered feeling scared.
I'll finish the story tomorrow, I need some sleep. I just put in my time card, I worked 93 hours last week(which is what happens when you don't apply yourself in college).

Hiking with the Wifey

CK and I rolled up to the NW corner of OR to a State Park Rails to Trails project on Sunday. It was good times, but the damn state was working on part of it with heavy machinery. This made for a muddy half mile or so in the middle that caked our boots with clay. We opted for the less developed end of the trail, which was a good call. The guidebook we were reading mentioned the north end was paved and by the road, and they weren't kidding. We would have been walking ten feet from the highway, which would've pissed me off something fierce. Luckily we choose wisely and had a good walk in the woods. We then went to conveyor belt sushi, which isn't worth writing home about, except that dinner for the both of us is less than $20. Dinner that cheap is rare when CK's discerning tastes and my large stomach are involved.

back home

NY was alright. I went to the MET and walked through Central Park. Manhattan was nice, it was good to inhale the atmosphere of a city. Tons of tourists though. I was sitting on a park bench and was asked 3 times where various parts of the park were.
It's good to be home. I missed the wifey alot, but it was nice to have a break. No one to bug me while I was working, no one to present me with problems they don't really want solved, but without someone to beat I sure was lonely.