Back Again

Sorry its been a while. The last couple of weeks have been really busy between exams, projects, and Corps Trips. I have decided that Texas A&M football will not be a subject of conversation except to say that we are going to BTHO t.u., embarrassing them on national TV -- a least the soccer team has already made it to the Sweet Sixteen, and the volleyball team beat Baylor at Waco. I have eight more days of class before finals, but many of those days will have fewer classes than normal, so the semester is winding down. I am registering for classes this evening, but it looks like I will be taking eight o'clocks every day of the week next semester. Ugh. The sophomores got their brass this morning, so one more milestone down for them. I guess that's about it.

Pressing on

Not much of interest has happened this past week. After a very busy week turning in several large reports this week has been fairly laid back. I guess there was the election, but I cast my vote several weeks ago and have not really paid attention since. We have our last home football game as cadets this weekend. From here I can count on one hand the number of times I will pass in review in boots. I must admit I will be ready to get out of the Corps, the drama and tail chasing does get old after awhile. In general, this week had been about the usual, trying to get set up for next week, and waiting.

Report Completed

My MEEN 360 full report-all 23 pages, 10 figures, 3 table, and 24 equations-is turned in. I finished up at 11:00 pm and it was due at midnight giving me an ample cushion. So now I am sitting here on something of a caffeine high from that coffee I had around 6. I think I will write the spiritual journey part of my Pine Cove application and call it a night.

Crunch week

This is it! Sunday starts the most important week of my semester. I have two full reports due, one on Tuesday, one on Thursday, a presentation on Monday, and a Greek quiz on Tuesday. If I can do well this week, my grades will be mostly set for the semester. Tomorrow, today by the time y'all read this, I will be staffing a land nav course for the Army FTX. I get to sit at a water point for eight hours. I am going to be so ready for next Friday to roll around.

Drill!

Another extremely productive weekend at drill is over. Mostly I did inventory and paperwork. This next couple of weeks will be busy because most of my major coursework is due next week. Right now my focus is just on staying close to being caught up.
Yesterday I went to the MSC to set up an interview with Pine Cove. Turned out they had time right then, so I did the interview then. The interview seemed to go well, so hopefully they will want me to work this summer. I guess I'll find out later. I'm going to an informational with Camp Ozarka this week to see about applying there, to help keep my options open. This is my last summer before I graduate, so if I want to work at a summer camp, this is my last chance.

Greek

My journey through classical Greek has begun. I just spent the last hour translating four of assigned six lines from the opening of Plato's Crito. The vocabulary is much larger than mine, and the grammar is rather complex, to say the least. I am finding at bit easier to get hints from the context, so hopefully as my skills increase, the translating won't be quite so hard.

I'm still here

Due to popular demand, a.k.a. Mom said I had to, I am again posting.
I have reached the start of the hump of this semester. I am beginning to get a little overwhelmed by school, received my first "F" test grade (17 out of 35 in Greek), and started to not care that much about school. It happens every semester and it just means that the end of the semester will be here before I know it.
In happier news, last weekend was fun. I brought up three friends (Brianna, Sarah, and Esther) for the football game. They all came to yell with me and Esther went to the game with me while Brianna and Sarah "sat" with Andrew. After the game my grandparents took the whole group to an Italian restaurant. After my grandparents went to the hotel the rest of us went to Brianna's aunt and uncle's house where we talked, made smores, watched "Iron Man", and then talked some more. I think I got to bed around 0230. All in all it was very enjoyable and nice to spend time with people much more like myself than here at A&M.
It is strange, for someone so ready to leave home and do my own thing, I find myself more attached to home, and the people and places there, than I ever have been before.

Another day

The scout committee is having a meeting over in the other room so I figured I would make good on my time and write another blog post.
Not much had happened since last I wrote to be entirely honest, but I think that is more related to my living in Nac. On the eventful side, one of my good friends got married this weekend and the next day half of my siblings went to camp. It is nice to be down a couple of girls, as this leads to a much quieter house (go figure Mary doesn't shriek when she doesn't have two sisters egging her on). Other than that, there has been little change for us.
On the less eventful side, I completed the painful task of ordering books for my brother and me. I managed to spend $500 on Amazon in fifteen minutes, but I think we still managed to save several hundred dollars. There will be a few books he and I will have to buy in College Station so we will be visiting Lupot's. I really like Lupot's for a couple of reasons. First it was founded by Old Army Lou who was a Cadet and was famous for doing things like bailing out cadets when the Corps went on Corps trips. The second is that Lupot's has the best cadet supplies department I have found which greatly simplifies my life. Finally Lupot's gives back money to the outfits of cadets who buy books from them.
All in all I am ready to start school (break out of the dulls) and look forward to wearing my boots.

Travelin'

I have spent the last several days visiting here and there. First I had make-up drill on the 24-26. Besides my unit not getting me a place to sleep the first night (I ended up staying with a friend on the other side of Houston) it went well. I was able to stay busy most of the time doing paperwork, so it went pretty fast. On Friday I drove down to College Station to visit some of my buddies. I stayed with Lans, saw "The Dark Knight" twice, and celebrated one of my "Q" (band) buddy's 21'st. On Sunday after church I drove home, just to turn around and drive with my family to Dallas. I was able to enjoy visiting with my Grandparents and Aunts and Uncle. All in all the travel was time well spent.
One of the coolest things I learned while in College Station was that my outfit is dominating the recruiting this year and we are looking at having as many as 32 freshmen. I hope that this bodes well for the efforts of our underclassmen and will lead to a strong year for our outfit.

Lazy Days

I have been enjoying getting to kick back and relax for the past week. Yesterday we had my birthday dinner of spaghetti and a strawberry cream cake. The centre piece of the meal was clearly the cake. It was a three layer chiffon cake with whole strawberries, a sweetened strawberry filling, and whipped cream (the real deal, not that "whip" stuff) in between each layer. I have never tasted a cake that has so much strawberry flavour and creaminess.
Also last night, my brother had his eagle scout board, completing the final requirment toward attaining the rank of Eagle Scout. It was quite and accomplishment and I congratulate him. While he was sweating it out at the board, I stayed home and enjoyed a few episodes of Dr. Who. The Doctor is the last of the time lords and spends his days hoping through time, "troubleshooting" time. Its a fun show because The Doctor lives to go see and explore the universe throughout time and he give one the greatest thrill to go see new things.

Lazy Days

I have been enjoying getting to kick back and relax for the past week. Yesterday we had my birthday dinner of spaghetti and a strawberry cream cake. The centre piece of the meal was clearly the cake. It was a three layer chiffon cake with whole strawberries, a sweetened strawberry filling, and whipped cream (the real deal, not that "whip" stuff) in between each layer. I have never tasted a cake that has so much strawberry flavour and creaminess.
Also last night, my brother had his eagle scout board, completing the final requirment toward attaining the rank of Eagle Scout. It was quite and accomplishment and I congratulate him. While he was sweating it out at the board, I stayed home and enjoyed a few episodes of Dr. Who. The Doctor is the last of the time lords and spends his days hoping through time, "troubleshooting" time. Its a fun show because The Doctor lives to go see and explore the universe throughout time and he give one the greatest thrill to go see new things.

I'm Back from LDAC!

Just a few days ago I completed the biggest training event I will participate in until after I commission. LDAC (Leaders Developing and Assessing Course, I think) also known as Warrior Forge is a 33 day long training session designed to help prepare future officers in the ROTC program to lead as well as to determine if they have the potential to be an officer in the US Army. Honestly it wasn't that hard to complete, but it was a good learning experience. We did a bunch of training including such events as BRM (Basic Rifle Marksmanship), Cultural Awareness (training focused on what it takes to operate successfully in a foreign culture), Land Navigation, and a ten day "deployment" to the field where we did battled drills, patrolling missions, and patrol base ops.
The weather was perfect. The entire time I was there is rained three times, and none more than a drizzle. As Ft. Lewis is only 39 miles from Mt. Rainer, we often had great views of that mountain. It was impressive how there were small mountains around Mt. Rainer, but Mt. Rainer was so much larger that they all looked like foot hills. While we were in the field, we were operating in single canopy rain forest which was pretty, if not that different from the swamps in East Texas. The most notable differences were that there was moss on almost all the ground and the monster ant beds. The state of Washington decided that they needed some way of controlling the pine needles other than routinely burning the forest, so the introduced these monster ants. These ants build mounds several feet tall out of pine needles and twigs. From the mound they will travel back and forth in "superhighways" collecting building material and dead insects. Invariably I would be in the prone behind some decent cover only to find one of these superhighways running over of under me. Thankfully these ants are fairly harmless, requiring a significant amount to provocation before they sting, and not possessing an especially painful sting. All in all the training was good, but it is nice to be home, sleeping in a real bed and largely off a schedule.

Greek

I got my Greek exam back today. I made a 76, which isn't bad for me-engineer taking language-but I really thought I was going to make a B on that exam. This week our prof introduced principle parts of the verbs. The principle parts of a verb are the first person singular conjugation of the present, future, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, and aorist tenses of that given verb. Surprisingly enough this is one of the few things we have learned in the past month that really makes sense to me. I think I understand it because the parts change one section at a time, so that I can see a clear progression in forms from the present through to the aorist. On a completely different not, three exams till spring break!

The Weekend

Aggie Eagles is done! I just not a big fan of being a herder for an entire weekend. This weekend I was in charge of moving and keeping accountability of 38 high school eagle scouts through a series of events and a basketball game. It really wasn't that bad, its just that, not only did out basketball team play a completely limp game and lose to Nebraska, but this weekend was one of those weekends where there is an explosion of homework all due on Monday. After we sent the Eagles home (we were done by about 6:30) I did a bit of homework and then went and saw a the Spiderwick Chronicles at about 11:30. The movie was okay, the story was pretty weak, but the company was great. It was also my last weekend at Westminster for about a month as I have an FTX this weekend, and then I am going home for both weekends in spring break. If I go home for Easter as well, then it will be an entire month of which I will be absent.

The music to which I listen

Music is an important part of my life. At any given moment I am usually either listening to it, or it is playing itself back inside my head. The band that had managed to make it to the top of my list right now is Relient K. Relient K plays music in a style similar to blink 182 and is on those bands that, while all the members are Christians and they look at life from a clearly Christian perspective, stay away from the CCM label. I didn't begin to start liking Relient K until my second year in college, probably because I needed to grow up some to appreciate much of what they sing about. One of their most common themes is the emotional ups and downs in life (being guys a lot of them are about girls-who woulda' guessed?) and how many times, even when we strive to live our lives doing the right thing, it still seems like we are messing up stupid things and getting just about everyone mad at us. I have to say it is a welcome dose of reality compared to much of what I see in CCM, even some of the groups I like.

Army Lab

Today I had the wonderful privilege of teaching a squad of ms I's and II's (read freshman and sophmores) the squad attack. The squad attack is one of the basic battle drills we learn to be able to do almost as a formula which are the basis for our squad sticks at LDAC. Squad sticks is where you as a squad leaders leads your squad in a short (less than 2 hours) missions and are one of the more important parts of your evaluation. While the squad attack is terribly complicated, there are a lot of good teaching opportunities involved. It really felt like my squad was getting a pretty good handle on how to execute the drill and better yet, I was able use many of the teaching opportunities to give them tools they can use in many other drills. I hope that I did good enough to get a an "e" on my evaluation. (E stands for excellent, the highest possible rating)

Phillip is healed!

That's right poor little Philip isn't blind anymore. Philip is on of the main characters in our Greek primer and he was hit in a fight at a festival and became blind. So for the last maybe four months he has been riding to Epidiarus (sp?) so that he can go to the temple of Aesculapius to be healed. So yesterday he took this drink from the priest and was left to sleep in "the holy place". Today he had a weird dream and offered Aesculapius his knuckle bones to be healed. And then when he woke "he could see both the heavens and the sun rising above the crest of the hills and the tree moving with the wind." It is interesting reading out of a primer, cause many times the sentences don't sound quite right, especially when they are translated very literally.
PS I am impressed, my spell checker had Aesculapius in the dictionary!

Sunny and clear

As some of you may know, I do bible studies for some of the cadets in my outfit. Last night I was doing a bible study for the sophamore class that went really well. I am going through the book "Knowing God" by GI Packer and we were on a chapter focused on God's wisdom. The chapter went through how we can see God's wisdom working in the lives of the Patriarchs as well as our own lives. The point he was driving home was that the trials that we go through have a purpose. I was encouraging to see how God started with someone as weak as Abraham and built him into the figure. The best part of the night was that the one sophamore I was teaching to really seemed to go from not understanding the point, to getting it and then really appreciating the power of what was said. Oh and the weather here after the storm has been beautiful-not too hot and not too cold.

Exam!

I'm off to the wonderful heat transfer exam. To borrow from those most eloquent poets
"Arts and crafts is all I need
I'll take caligraphy
and make a fake degree"

-Relient K

Love?

In the spirit of Valentines I wanted to share some thoughts on "Love"
I don't know if my experiences with love have been especially similar or dissimilar to others, but it seems first that I don't struggle as much with sexual temptation as emotional loneliness. We have all heard the talks about how hard it is to be pure and all that, but I hear precious little about how hard it is to be filled with a (not sure this is the right word) loneliness, that neither friends, or distractions, or even church and prayer, seems to be effective against. And then I start to say, "But I'm a Christian, I'm not supposed to be lonely/empty". Then I realize that this feeling makes me very vulnerable emotionally. Yes its true, I get moody when I'm lonely. And then it doesn't make things much better when I see guys who have little respect for women and don't think about honour in the ways I do, seem to get the satisfaction I so desire. What's wrong with me!? (Please don't answer that). I suppose patience and trust are my only option; patience with God's timing, and trust that He will fill my heart in one way or another. But that sure doesn't make me feel better now. Sigh.

Post 1

Sorry about the wait. I guess its been over a month. I am taking this free weekend to relax a bit, write a post, and catch up on some homework. The morning I went to the women's basketball game and watched us BTHO tu. It was very good bull. As you all know, Mitt Romney has withdrawn from the Republican primary, leaving John McCain, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul left. If you listen to the media, you will be tempted to believe that this race is already over and that the Republican party is going to nominate McCain. But one must remember that there are still over 900 delegates to be assigned, and with Romney no longer steeling votes from Huckabee, this race is still far from over. Well I still support Huckabee and hope for his eventual nomination. He is the only candidate who's ideas and passing excite me and matches what I would want to see in the president. And look at McCain; besides being historically weak on so many important conservative issues, McCain will be very hard to elect because much on the conservative vote will refuse to vote for him. I remain hopeful that we will not be subjected to a McCain vs Clinton race and will do my utmost to prevent such an occurrence.
To be honest, the outlook does look difficult, and in light of this situation my mother was wondering what I would do in the event of a McCain vs. Clinton, of even Obama presedential race. This race would leave me in quite a quandry. On the one hand, there is no way I will vote for either Clinton of Obama. But what about McCain? To be honest, I don't know. He would be good for the Army and the war on terror, but there are many domestic issues on which I don't trust or agree with his stated platform. That decision is one I hope to not make, but if I must, it will be sometime later when all the other options are clear.

Elections

This being the first presidential election that I will have a voice in, I have been paying attention to the different candidates to find which ones I think I could vote for. To be honest I have been fairly disappointed with the slate, as I really felt that there weren't any major candidates that I could vote for, leaving me with the option of trying to find and independent I agree with or not voting in the presidential election. Last week my mother suggested I at least look at Huckabee and after reading his website and looking at his position on many things I care about I think I have found someone to vote for. While he is still more fiscally liberal than I might go for, I like his stands on changing tax law, national security, and foreign diplomacy. He is also a supporter of Fair Tax which would greatly improve the tax law in this country. You should go take a look at his website.

Winter Break

Oi! its been a while. Winter breaks is over half done and I find myself looking (somewhat readily) to the start of another semester. I have been spending a bunch of time with one of my friends who just finished basic with the Air Force and has two weeks leave for Christmas. He back to tech school tomorrow, and then off to his post and new life. It is strange to see many of my friends taking off into their lives leaving me behind. Soon (or something) I will be graduating and heading off to my own life. But right now I must worry myself about more mundane things like buying books for the next semester and co-ordinating drill weekends. Here's to life dragging on.