How long has it been again?

Yes, I've been lax in my posting, but in all fairness I'm expecting to deploy sometime in the next 6 to 8 years. Yeah, that seems like a good time frame. While we're on the subject of deploying, if I die then I'm going to start making funeral wishes. Yes, that's right, I'm planning my funeral, and it's going to be an awesome party, with me at the center. I'll do one a post for the next however long. Today's request is that it needs to be in North Carolina. Not only is it an awesome state, but Harry hates it and the only way he'll go back there is if I die or get married there(future wife, our wedding is in North Carolina, I hope you're OK with that).

Anyway, I'm getting really excited to deploy but these last few days I've been thinking of the awesome fun things I'm going to miss when I'm over there. This weekend was a great weekend to have near the end of this run in the US. On Friday I had some friends over and we had out Mac N Cheese/Cheddar Brat concoction and watched stand up comedy, so that was great. The next day, I did very little of anything all day, which was fun and not abnormal and last night Baxter, Ned, Harry and I went to Miller's Grill and ate. Looking back on last night and the last two years, Harry and I are some of the WORST people for strangers to be near because we are loud, are prone to laughing uncontrollably so hard we want to vomit, have way too many inside jokes, and it just gets worse throughout the night. All night(and today, too) Baxter's catch phrase was "I can't take you guys anywhere" because we laughing so much and so loudly which just made us laugh harder and louder.
Today the same group of us left to Springfield for no real reason at all, which is usually the best reason to do something fun. All the way there Harry and I were in the back seat talking and laughing about the dumbest stuff. I've realized that my favorite time EVER is spent in cars talking to people I like. With Harry or Frank or Old Man or ANYBODY then it's the best time in the world to be driving around, jamming out, and yelling at random people out your windows and just being happy(yes, you might ask "but how can you be happy when you're yelling at people?" Well, we don't yell mean things, but we do yell. EX:"Hey! You in the bug! Are you hot?" *she turns around to see who's yelling* "HOLY CRAP! You're gorgeous!" Yeah, bit obnoxious, but we're young and its alot of fun. Someone needs to do it, right?). Anyway, we went to Barnes and Noble and I finished buying the rest of the Y the Last Man series, and Harry got some headphones at Best Buy and we ate our favorite restaurant. We went to Pet World and played with their hamsters and rabbits and that was fun. We ended the night going to Bass Pro shop, which was HUGE and this got a bit out of hand.
Harry and I have no desire to be there except to play and the store is SOO big and Baxter went off and Ned just followed us, so with Harry and I leading the way we decided to go stare at their turtles swimming around and all the stuff animals. Yeah, this store is so big they have creeks and all sorts of stuff everywhere! After so long we found LIVE ducks swimming around, so we tried to sneak up on them and touch them before they could swim away and I was the only one to BARELY touch a tail in time. We found a stuffed bear and Harry got this picture. He likes taking pictures of stand ups and stuffed things, but I like this one alot.

Anyway, we wandered for a bit longer and were pretty bored and couldn't find Baxter, but we did find an ATV. Ned jumped in the driver seat and Harry jumped in the passenger seat and I said "What? Are we recreating that scene from Jurassic Park?" Harry said yeah so I jumped in the back and looked as hurt as I could. "Faster, faster, must go faster!" and we rocked it back and forth and there was an employee probably only 40 meters away, but luckily he wasn't paying attention. THEN(this is where it may have gotten a bit out of hand) we decided we should put it in neutral and push it away. So we did. Only about 10 feet away and onto a ramp so nobody could go up or down it.
We found Baxter and came back. It has been such an awesome weekend and I can't wait to deploy, but I'm going to miss things like this every day that I'm deployed I'm sure. And I don't want to go back to work tomorrow, that's for sure.

Late Night Reminiscing and Resolution Update

Or early morning, depending on how you look at it.

Regardless of the time, I was feeling productive and I had just finished the last lego I had(once I make them I don't unmake them) and I needed something fairly quiet to keep my occupied because my roommate was sleeping. So I headed over to my closet and pulled down these old blue bins I had with stuff I had packed before I was in the army. So, this was kind of like opening a time capsule of three years or so and the old me showed. And even though I like who I am now, it helped me recognize how much I've changed in the last few years, going from a young man into an adult(I don't throw the term man about loosely) but it did still point out the things that I miss about my old life and the old me. I ran across alot of old books, things like Garfield and Charlie Brown, but also ones like Great Expectations which is probably one of my favorite books and I remember Ben got it for me when I turned 17. I also found some old posters of plays I was in and that made me really miss doing plays and being around fun people all the time. Its a really hard feeling to describe what I'm missing, but its something more than the play and the people, not to belittle my friends and the people who are here. I do miss that I've gotten out of contact with alot of my old friends though, I feel like I always had great great friends, but I always kept them sidelined for the "cooler" crowd and that makes me sad because now all the great people have moved on without me it feels. I know that I get in these mopey moods alot, I guess that's something I should have expected when I joined the army at a young age, all well. No changing it now.
In other news, I'm officially 1 week sober on mountain dew and when my roommate came home tonight he grabbed one(I still have PLENTY in my fridge for social events) and I could smell it from across the room. It was a very "Come to meeeeee......" moment where I wanted to go and get one, but I guess this is the first step in losing my Mt Dew belly.
I haven't done real well on scriptures, mostly because I have no set bedtime, maybe I should try and set one to regulate my life a bit more? The teeth thing I've been doing good on, but again, the no bedtime thing affects it.
The gym I've been good on, considering I've been on leave, I haven't been going to the gym, but I'll do SOMETHING, a few days a week. I need to get better still though, baby steps though(Thanks, Dr. Leo Marvin!)

Life is good today

It's a trend I'd like to keep going. Harry got home yesterday, and even though I like to think of myself as an independent person, I'm not, and I got to missing him, so it was awesome to hang out with him last night. Harry, Old Man, and Baxter came over and we ordered pizza and watched Once Upon A Time In Mexico, which I love. I love random action films like that, the ones you can make fun of but still watch the action. If you feel like watching a comedy or an action film it has you covered.
Anyway, my friend Lauren is always making these awesome lists of awesome things, so I think I'll give it a try.

-I have a bedroom that looks like it could belong to a very smart collected person, but he shares the room with a 9 year old from the 80s, and I'm ok with it.
-On my days off then I can play 16 hours of video games and not consider it a waste.
-I like to drop any pennies I have in change, because I'll never use them and maybe someone will pick one up and get good luck from it.
-I could drive for hours with a person I like and never get bored or have to stop.
-You can tell I really trust you when you suggest a song I should hear and I buy it on iTunes instead of just looking for it on youtube.
-Sometimes my habit of not lying about stupid things gets me in trouble a lot and sometimes when I tell people my reason for doing some things then they think its so funny that they just sit and stare at me for a minute then walk away laughing.
-I think Twitter is retarded. It's only Facebook status updates. I don't want to get updated that often on what people are doing. Isn't it bad enough we already have people that abuse their status to tell us stupid things? "I ate a bologna sandwhich, yum!"
-When the Jazz lose then it ruins my night.
-When the Jazz win then I can do no wrong. I'm going to start buying scratch tickets and saving them till a night they win.
-I can't go to sleep without listening to something.
-I'm so nerdy, I watch other people play Starcraft 2.
-The movies I really love, I don't watch with anybody that has never seen them before because if they don't like it then it will taint my view of them forever.
-I'd rather go out of my way to avoid talking to a stranger than ask them the tiniest questions or interact with them at all.
-I really miss my friends, but I'm not sure if I want to go back to Idaho to live.
-I really want to be the "cool uncle" that all my nephews and nieces want to hang out with.
-I have more fun with kids than I have with adults most of the time.
-I have no idea how to end this post.

Frank's Visit

Ok, I meant to have posted again much sooner than this, but I refuse to accept that it's Tuesday already. At any rate, pretty normal work week, on Friday then I was helping in the arms room for a while and that night we all got called in and told a weapon was missing and because I had been in there I had to have my room searched. Sgt Will(my old squad leader from Iraq) searched it and after a while they found where the weapon was, it was a clerical error and a civilian company had it, they just didn't realize it at first, but that was fairly nerve racking.
On Saturday then I ended up going with my buddy, Frank, who I had deployed with. He was in town visited for the first time since the summer, and he got a fight in Osage Beach and me and him drove down there for it and got to catch up on the ride there. When we got there we met up with his sister, Jen, and we went to eat before the fight. We ended up meeting a few more people at the fight there to support him and he was fight 10 out of 14, so he had a long wait, and none of the fights were that great, it was fun to hang out with Jen and Britney that were both sober and watch Daniel, who was not sober, hit on Jen and Russ, also not sober, sink more and more into the stages of his drunkenness.
When it came to Frank's fight then he was up against a slightly older person who looked pretty strong(Frank said he was) and it was a really good fight. The first round was pretty lopsided for the other guy, he took Frank to the ground and Frank panicked(standard for Frank in the first round) and Frank got saved by the bell at the end of the round. The second round went to the ground again and Frank began to get some composure again and it was a pretty even round with a few good hits. The third round then Frank almost got a lock when the guy speared, but the guys' neck basically dissapeared(he was a really good grappler) and it ended up going to desicion. Frank lost 30-27, but he was happy. He said he was worried about his first loss and now he knows he's not going to be depressed he's happy with it.
After the fight we stayed for the last few which were all really good and then left to various bars(no worried, Jen, Britney and I were all DDs) and went back to a condo that we had reserved earlier and we ended up being up till about 5 or 6. The bars closed at 2, and then we went back and I left to get food and Frank and I went to Dennys and got back around 330 and he went to bed and I saw Britney getting hit on by Duke and Master P, two people I don't know really well, but I could tell she didn't like it, so I stayed up and sat with them till those two went to bed. I was SOOO tired and Frank ended up getting me up at 10 and we left. Jen, Britney, Frank and I went to Denny's and the service was awful, its put me off from Denny's for awhile, but we ended up splitting up afterwards. Me and Frank talked again on the ride back, which is way more fun that I can put into words on here, and I'm not going to try and recreate an hour and a half of conversation to show you, but he's one of my favorite people, I really missed him, I look up to him alot. On Sunday night then I was at home and Frank texted me saying they were playing beer pong at JCs so I took Old Man and Lurch over there to play for a while. Me and Lurch almost beat JC and his wife, who had a monopoly(don't worry Lurch drank for me) and after a few hours we left again.
On Monday then Frank and I left to Jeff City to visit a friend of ours Becky, who neither of us had seen in about 8 months, so that was nice to see her again. I stayed at my house with Old Man and Lurch last night and this morning, Frank had to leave today in the afternoon, which was sad, but it was a really fun day. Lurch, Old Man and I watched old video game reviews by Angry Video Game Nerd, who is hilarious(parental advisory:swearing. Don't say I didn't warn you) and then Lurch left and Old Man and I just played games and watched TV and hung out. Not I'm here. This weekend was a really great weekend, I'm sad I probably won't see Frank for over a year unless we get to see eachother when I'm on midtour leave, but its OK, I suppose. He did mention that when Tavis(our buddy from Iraq) gets back from his next tour(around when I get out) then they were planning on doing the appalacian trail and he said I should get down on it, which I think would be a great way to celebrate being a free man again. I guess for now then I'll just have to keep doing what I'm doing and let life happen.