Archive for August, 2008

That’s it.  As of tomorrow I am off to my school and then Alaska.  I’ll be back here for about a week to finish clearing housing, but for all intents and purposes I am now “en route” to Alaska.

I wanted to give everyone a quick update on our dog as well.  Several people have sent supportive messages and even an offer to help defray the cost.  My family and I really appreciate everything.  You just can’t imagine how nice it was to get comments and e-mails offering to help.  It’s nice to know people like that still exist.  However, today we were able to adopt her out to another soldier’s family.  It was extremely heartbreaking for us, especially my daughter, but the dog went to a good home and hopefully they will love her as much as we did.  We wish it could have worked out differently, but we just ran out of time.

So, I don’t know how regular updates will be while we are in transit, but if you read regularly, don’t stop.  I’ll post when I can, and I plan on posting pics of our trip while we are en route.  It’s time to get underway on the next great adventure.

Guardian Angels For Soldier’s Pets is a wonderful organization that helps find foster families for soldier’s pets.  A lot of times family pets end up in pounds when soldier’s deploy because they can’t find anyone to take care of them, or don’t have the funds to send them to a family member.  I have even heard of pets being set free to roam or locked in their now empty houses.  I wanted to bring this organization to attention here, because until a few days ago I had never heard of them. 

When I start something simple it usually grows into an enormous project whether its at work or at home.  Putting up DVDs leads to organizing DVDs, CDs, etc.  Cleaning up after dinner involves cleaning the dishes, which leads to counter tops, which leads to the kitchen floor, etc, etc until the whole house is clean.  All of which kind of annoys my wife because she can’t get a hand in to help, its my project to do.  The two projects I did this weekend, both of which left me sore and a bit scraped up, are pretty standard for how I focus on a project and work.

Well, I have about cleared this post and I leave for school this week.  Things have finally started to move toward that end.  I managed to sell my truck, we have acquired the most important baby things to ship ahead, and I have tickets to get us there.  We are planning on driving to Dallas, turning our truck into shipping, and get on a plane bound for the frozen north.  Almost everything is falling into place.  Just two major things left.

Just saw the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated movie.  We had a free screening here on post a week before it hit theaters.  I have to admit is was pretty good.  I think its the kicker movie for the upcoming TV series, but I didn’t mind.  My daughter wanted to see “Yoda” so badly, and it was rated PG.  I was just a little older than her when the original Star War hit theaters in 1977, so I took her to see it.  She loved it!  Every time Yoda hit the screen she would point and say “Yoda!” quietly.  She would bounce in her seat and she followed the movie intensely.  She really enjoyed it, and she seems to enjoy Sci-Fi in general, much to the shagrin of my wife.

This picture came out better than I thought.  It looks like one of those weird telescope images of the universe.

Its actually a shot of the audience at the free “The Sesame Street Experience for Military Families”.  All the kids got this free Elmo spinner thing and in the dark, this is what I got on film.

I finally found my old articles!  Everything back to 2002 when the site started is back online.  Well, almost everything. About 9 months that are lost for good due to a hard drive crash (October 2002, May 17, 2007).  One of the advantages of this is that all the comments are preserved.  The re-posts of select articles I did back when I re-launched don’t have all the comments with them, so the discussion around different articles and their context in time was lost.

I am asleep in bed.  The dog begins barking wildly.  My eyes shoot open and I see a dark, hooded figure dart from the end of the bed followed by a flash of white light.  At the same instant I hear my daughter let out a blood curdling scream.  I leap from the bed and across the room, hurdling my wife, and start down the door chasing the man determined to tackle and beat the life from him.  As I cross the threshold, I glance another man in my daughter’s room.  Dressed in khaki and dark skinned is all my eyes glimpse as I am racing down the hall.