Friday, November 08, 2002

I'm just about spent. This week has thrown at me just about everything that it can. Was it Shake Kate's World Up week?

I really like the song that James told me about a few days ago. The lyrics are pretty cool. I feel like they fit my life right now.

Hello, good morning, how you do?
What makes your risin' sun so new?
I could use a fresh beginning too
All of my regrets are nothing new
So this is a way, that I say I need You
This is a way
This is a way

That I'm learning to breathe
I'm learning to crawl
I'm finding that you and you alone can break my fall
I'm living again, awake and alive
I'm dying to breathe in these abundant skies

Hello, good morning, how you been?
Yesterday left my head kicked in
I never, never thought that
I would fall like that
Never knew that I could hurt this bad

I'm learning to breathe
I'm learning to crawl
I'm finding that you and you alone can break my fall
I'm living again, awake and alive
I'm dying to breathe in these abundant skies
These abundant skies
Yeah, abundant skies, yeah

This is a way that I say I need You
This is a way that I say I love You
This is a way that I say I'm Yours
This is a way

That I'm learning to breathe
I'm learning to crawl
I'm finding that you and you alone can break my fall
I'm living again, awake and alive
I'm dying to breathe in these abundant skies
Yes I'm dying to breathe in
These abundant skies
These abundant skies, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
I'm learning to breathe
I'm dying to breathe in these abundant skies
Hello, good morning, how you doin'?


-Switchfoot I'm learning to Breath-

It's very peaceful right now. Finally. Now I'm off to crew practice and the first annual Hudson Scramble race.
Big dilema. Keep writing, or try and delete everything and never write again on this blog. I guess this page is going around the corps now. Maybe I'll just keep writing, but leave out all the stuff on guys.
I deleted a paragraph of a post from last april, but google hasn't updated the pages it uses yet, and so it's still there. Computers can be so annoying sometimes.

Thursday, November 07, 2002



Today for some reason I wasn't very hungry. At meals I would stare at my food a few minutes before making myself eat it. That's really weird for me, especially since breakfast and lunch were both meals I like. Okay, so I probably ate about the same amount as a female college student at some other college, but for me, I didn't eat very much, especially with crew practice thrown in there. Right now I'm feeling the effects of it. Ah well. It's all good.

Wednesday, November 06, 2002

This morning it was amazing, I actually was happy when I woke up, at that was at 5:50am. And that's not all, I was looking forward to getting out of bed! Of course, half of me was still tired and wanted to sleep a little more, so I stayed in bed for a few minutes past when my alarm went off at 6:01am. I had that feeling like I used to get at Christmas. The one where I'm so excited and happy and can't wait to get up and run downstairs with Heidi and Besty, turn on the tree lights, open our stocking, and count all of our presents. It definetly a wierd thing to feel at West Point, but I don't mind. I'm hoping that this happy mood lasts. I even managed to make it through spanish today and didn't even feel tired once. What is going on? The only bad part is that I keep thinking back to beast where if I was happy or comfertable for a moment, i knew it was all going to change again real soon and be even worse then before. It was like walking on egg shells.

Ah well, I'll enjoy the moment.
Wow! Today's been a day of unexpected things. I guess it makes up for yesterday. The first thing was that the physics quiz was a group quiz and I think we did okay on it. Then, the math quiz that at first I thought I aced, and then thought I failed, Igot back and got a 87% on it. The next good thing was the practice today was only a Dyno test and then a 3 mile run to Lee Gate and back.

Ah yes, and the last good thing about today is that I"m not an Air Force exchange Cadet. At least two of them have had their furniture moved outside and set up in the middle of central area, or on the porch roof of Scott Barraks. That really sucks for them,especially since it started drizzeling later on. I hope they had their stuff moved back in by then.

Go Army! Beat Chair Force!...I mean, Air Force!

Tuesday, November 05, 2002

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the Army Chief of Staff, or somebody, was at the boathouse yesterday. Mindy ran around reminding everybody to be polite and use "sir". The atmosphere at the boathouse is a lot more relaxed, but it's not so relaxed that we'd forget that basic stuff. At lunch today there were a bunch of White House Fellows. Alyson said that the person at her table went around asking what everybody planned to do in the Army. Tucker told him about how he's getting kicked out for sexual misconduct. Anyway, it was a funny story when she told it to me.
Some days are just bad days. I'm not sure if this was a bad day or not so I'll just start describing it and go from there. I was working on my econ spreadsheet this afternoon and realized that the spreadsheet and the memorandum had different times that they were due. I had assumed that they were both due at 4:30 this afternoon, but as it turns out the spreadsheet part was actually due at 7:30 this morning. That was the major thing that went wrong today. When I found out I immediatly emailed it to CPT Morgan, my teacher, and described how I hadn't paid attention to detail. I'm guessing I'll be marked as having turned it in a day late. The rest of the afternoon was spent with my feeling like kicking myself in the face.

I just spent too much time talking on IM to James and to Betsy. So much for talking about my day. Maybe later.

Monday, November 04, 2002

-They took my brain out of my head, beat it with a meat tenderizer and then made it into hamburger.
-Shoot me in the face!
-BOHICA

--My thoughts on the econ spreadsheet project

"Shoot me in the face" and "BOHICA" were commen phrases during first detail of Buckner, aka Buck-Nam or Buckghanistan. "Shoot me in the face" was first said by an NCO who was teaching us how to set up a claymore mine. It stems from "shoot 'em in the face" which I think was to remind us to position the claymore so that it detonated towards the enemy. "BOHICA" is an acronym for "Bend Over Here It Comes Again" reffereing to any seemingly pointless or stupid thing that we had to do during Buckner. An example being...hmmm, it seems I've blocked most of them out of my mind. I guess it was too traumatic.

Ah yes, the joy of lower back/butt pain. I think crew is slowly ruining my back. Hopefully it's not long term or anything. It seems to be only on the left side and somewhat deep inside. It's more of a sharp pain only when I move. As I told Alyson, we're no longer on the water and so hopefully the pain will either go away or just even out since I won't be leaning to port all the time anymore.

Yesterday was a good regatta for Army Crew. We medaled in almost every race we entered. My boat finished fifth out of around twenty in our race and the top five got medals. I was really hoping for first and so I was kinda dissapointed, but I guess it's better than nothing. During the race I thought we were doing really well because we pulled really far away from the boats behind us and then we passed a boat ahead of us. Oh well.

Last night I talked to Frank, Steph, my parents, and Betsy on the phone. I'm so happy for Steph because she just joined the Air Force. She reports to basic in Texas in March. I think it'll be an awesome experiance for her. Betsy's moving home and bringing Asher, her rabbit, with her. Mom sent me some pictures of Asher and Berry together. I can't wait to see them at Thanksgiving. Asher is so cute. I wish that I could see Besty longer at Thanksgiving, but she's going to go visit a convent in NYC the day after Thanksgiving. It figures, I come home from NY and she leaves for NY. I told her that we have to spend a lot of time together during Christmas. Frank, as usual, needs sleep. I feel like I'm getting more sleep here than most of my friends at home do. Perhaps I'm just better adjusted to a lack of adaquate sleep.

On the way back to West Point I talked to Annah about my feelings about the Army and West Point. Before I came here I thought that I'd stay in the Army and wouldn't do the five-and-fly option, but now I'm really questioning that. Sometimes I think I'm too idealisic and buy into things too easily. I expected West Point to really be the best of the best and the everybody in the Army to exemplify the Army Values. I have way to many thoughts swimming around in my head right now and their all crashing into each other. I want to graduate from West Point, be an officer in the Army, work for the NSA, marry, have kids, be happy. Right now I want it to be Thanksgiving. Only
23 and a butt days until I go home. That actually sounds okay.

I also talked to Annah a little about guys, notably the absence of one right now. I haven't really liked anyone in a few months and although it's been nice most of the time, occasionally I wonder if there will ever be anyone out there. Is there a nice guy out there? Anway, Annah offered to introduce me to Paul. She says he's a nice guy and Beth said that she could see us together. I've never really talked to Paul, but I've hung out with Annah a couple times when he's been around. He seems like a nice guy. Paul, however, likes Annah although Annah does not feel the same way about him. I do want her to introduce me to him, but I don't know if she'll remeber, plus I have no clue what'd I'd say after "Hi". Besides, Paul likes Annah as I already said. Then, I keep remembering about how in high school I kinda hooked Frank up with Sarah only to realize that I liked Frank. What if, on an off chance, somethine miraceoulsy did happen and then Annah realized that she liked Paul. I would never want someone to feel the same way I did sophmore year. Basically, I want something to happen, but I'm coming up with reasons why it shouldn't and why I should just forget the whole thing. I think I'm in the self-protect mode again. My solution is to leave it up to Annah. If she wants to introduce us then she can, if not, then fine.

Hmm, I make my life really complicated sometimes. Why?



Sunday, November 03, 2002

I just got back. It's late. I'm going to bed. Why am I even up typing this? I don't know.

Friday, November 01, 2002

I bought new running shoes today at the c-store. They're Addidas Sonva Cushion M. Not great, but they were the best ones I could find out of a very limited selection. What I really wanted were New Balance. My old running shoes were New Balance and they served me pretty well, but I didn't like the fact that they were trail running shoes. I got them about five months ago and Buckner and Crew have really taken their toll on them. The rubber on the bottom of the shoe is all worn away in some spots and the cushioning and shock absorption is almost all the way gone. I don't think I've ever destroyed a pair of shoes this fast just from working out in them. When I was little I destroyed many shoes pretty quickyly, but that was because I would play in mud and stuff. Anyway, I don't expect this new pair of shoes to last very long or even be extremely comfertable. I just needed something to get me to Christmas when I can actually buy another good pair of shoes.
Tomorrow I have one class all day. It's physics first hour and then I'm done. That's because I have a Calc drop and then am leaving at 1245 with the crew team to go to Washington DC for the race on Saturday. Normaly I have econ last hour on Day 1's, but I get to miss it tomorrow. Yay! The huge spreadsheet project is going along pretty well and I'm hoping that I won't have to stay up late Sunday night working on it.

Coach finally told us the results from last weekend. My boat finished 3rd in the JV boats. I don't know what our place was overall. The A boat did come in fourth which is totally awesome. This weekend I'm back rowing in the four. DCA hasn't even ordered the quad yet. It's pretty frustrating because we know that the boat is ready for us to pick up the moment they put in the order, but we're not allowed to get the boat before it's even ordered. Coach Hall said that it looks like it'll be a pretty good race and we have a good shot at coming out on top. Last year at the Occaquan my boat, a novice eight, came in second. Then, Coach suprised four of us and told us that we were rowing again in a varsity four race. I think in that race my boat came in 11th out of 20-some. This year I was going to row in the four and the quad, but since we don't have the quad we're only rowing the four. I'm kinda sad, but also glad that I only have to row six miles instead of twelve on saturday.

I wish that we could stay in Washington DC a little longer and go look around. I haven't really done that since Junior Year of high school at NYLF and then the Naval Academy Summer Seminar. Beth is probably really sick of Washington DC, but that's because she grew up there. Both her parents retired as LTC's in the military and I think at one point they both worked in the Pentagon so she actually spent many saturdays when she was little rollerskating inside the Pentagon on weekends while they worked. That sounds kinda cool, but musta sucked for her after awhile because she couldn't go play with her friends at home.