I'm tired, exhausted, and can't wait to get away from this place for the weekend. True, I'll be back tomorrow for the banquet and the dance, but then I get to leave again. Yay! I better start thinking of something to do Presidents Day weekend so that I'm not stuck here. I like this place, but sometimes you just gotta get out and regain your sanity.

Alyson, Mark, and I all have phones that don't work right now. Tara's does however. It's very strange. There's no dial tone or anything. Yesterday I tried to make a call on my cell phone, but the battery was completely dead even though I'd just charged it for a really long time and hadn't used it at all. Tara let me borrow her cell phone instead. She has better service in our room anyway.

I think too much and it impedes my ability to communicate because I'm too busy trying to think about what to say and trying to figure out what other people are thinking.

Friday at last :)

This afternoon I took a three hour long nap. It was great. The only reason I woke up was because some of the guys in my company came and banged on the door to get Alyson for dinner. Sleep is a fantastic thing. It's done wonders for my mood.

YWW is almost upon us. I'm determined to have a good time no matter what. This week has gone by rather fast. It's already Thursday. Okay, it's only 5 minutes into Thursday, but it's still Thursday. Gotta love it when time flies by here.

My new TACNCO is scary. He's fresh out of being a drill sergeant and so far he doesn't seem to have gotten it in his head that this isn't basic training anymore. (yes, that was passive voice) This is going to be an interesting semester. SAMI next week will most likely be hell.

This morning we had practice at 5:30. Instead of doing the tanks like I thought, we had to do a 30 minute piece on the erg. It was supposed to be at 70%. I tried, but lack of sleep and the early morning, plus the fact that I'm not in great shape at the moment, caused me to have a rather high 500m split. It was around 2:13 I think. At least now I don't have practice this afternoon. Leah emailed Larissa andI asking if we wanted to run and lift with her after E hour and so I might do that.

Yesterday I did my four picks for AIAD's since this summer I don't currently have a MIAD. My top pick I can't even get until next year because it's working with the NSA and it requires a Top Security clearance which takes a year to process. If I get a MIAD this summer then I think I might have a shot at getting that AIAD. My other picks for this coming summer were 2) working at the Pentagon preforming technical computer security work for the Army and working with "Army government personnel and contractors in the areas of Intrusion Detection, Firewalls, Security Engineering, Computer Incident response, Vulnerability Assessments, and other technical security areas." 3) Going to Redmont, Washington and getting an inside look at Microsoft and doing some stuff with them. 4) Working with the Electronic Crimes Task Force of the U.S. Secret Service and helping to evaluate the technology used to gather raw data on a hackers particular scheme and methodology through the use of Honey Pots. I hope I get to do one of these AIAD's. Right now I'd even be up for going to Air Assualt School this summer if it meant that I'd have a better shot at getting the NSA AIAD.

I hate emotions. Not really, but this week kinda sucks right now emotionally. I'm trying to figure out a bunch of stuff and I seem to be going in circles. What I really want to do is sit down with a friend and just spill everything out, but right now I don't know who to go to and part of me is afraid I'd end up crying or something. Back home everybody says it's okay to cry, but here it's really looked down upon a lot of times. I'm also playing the blame game right now and am trying to stop. It just started this week and I don't like where it's going. Never blame anyone else for your own problems. Don't try and pass your own actions or inactions off as the result of somebody else's actions or inactions. I just need to open up more I guess. I have a problem of trying to keep everything bottled up inside of me and not letting other people know what's really going on. For some reason I have a problem trusting people when it comes to my emotions and stuff like that. Right now I have the act going that everything is okay. People like happy, normal people. Now I've gone and made it sound like something is really wrong, which is not the case. It's just a downhill in the normal emotional rollercoaster called life.

I have practice tomorrow at 5:30am and so I really should be asleep, but I'm used to not getting to bed until 12:30 and so I'm not tired right now. It was a busy day. Tomorrow looks a little less stressfull. Good night

Five hours of sleep is not healthy. Actually, it was less than that because I stayed awake for awhile thinking. Last night I had all of my homework done by 9:45pm and so I stopped and visited a friend on the Q. I ended up staying there until around 11 and when I got back to my room I realized that there was a haircut inspection the next morning and my belt looked like crap, plus my shoes needed edge dressing really badly. I had gotten some help from Joel on a CS homework and decided to work on that to see if I could get it figured out. I didn't get to bed until 12:30, and then had to get up at 5:30 for a SOP platoon competition in the dayroom at 6am. My squad came in second because I missed the tie breaking question. It was " if there are 2 females and one male in the room, when must the door be open 90 degrees?" I said that it had to be if it was 2 plebe females and an upperclass male, which is a correct answer, but not the one they were looking for. The right answer is if one of the people is asleep. I don't think my squad minded at all that we didn't win, at least Billy didn't. When we tied with the winning squad he whispered to me that we should stop doing so well. We don't have to worry about getting up early for the company competition now.

Right now I'm eating Ritz Crackers like potato chips. Not a very healthy thing, but they are yummy. Lunch isn't very good. It's corn chowder, broccoli cheese pockets, and cupcakes.

Although it warmed up a bit yesterday, it's still freezing outside. I think it got colder today as the morning progressed instead of warming up.

Yesterday was an interesting day. I finally got to Matt again and it was for more than 5 minutes this time and then hung out in Josh and Joel's room for a while. Around 5:30 Joel said something about weekly reports and I realized that I hadn't done mine yet, so I packed up my books and ran out of there.

Perhaps everybody was right. Maybe I am too hard on myself. I don't tolerate myself making any mistakes. Failure is a moment in time. Success is a lifetime. I think I see it the other way. I've always been ashamed of the fact that in elementry school I had to stand on the wall during recess twice in all 4 years I was at that school. Once was in 1st grade and once was in 3rd grade. Both times because I forgot my homework. There were kids in my class who were always on the wall instead of playing and it didn't seem to bother them, but it crushed my world. I was in tears. In third grade I didn't get a star every week all year long for perfect behavior. I missed one week, and I think that too was because of a homework assignment. In middle school I never got a warning slip. Never got in trouble. In high school I never skipped a class. Never did anything wrong. I had to be perfect. Why? I don't know. I guess I figured that if I ever did anything wrong then poeple would look at me differently and I'd loose everybody's respect. Senior year I followed everything my parents told me to do. Never stayed out past when I was supposed to be home. When they told me I couldn't TP houses with my softball team because if I got caught then it could hurt my chances of getting to West Point, I believed them and didn't throw one roll of TP that night. I want to blame my parents and say that they scared me into believing that if I ever broke any major rules, then it'd mess up everything in my life, but I don't know if that's really the case. Do they actually deserve that? I don't want to say that they do. "What if I stumble? What if I fall?"

It is snowing again. The snowflakes float down from the sky, slowly falling to earth. They catch the light and seem to freeze in place for a second. Time stops as they hover in midair. Inside the super bowl plays on. It does not look good for the Raiders. The music continues playing and the beat keeps going. It calms, sooths, comforts.

“What if I stumble? What if I fall?...” How many mistakes am I allowed to make? Do I always have to be good? Is it all an act? “What if I stumble? What if I fall?...” Will people look at me differently? Will I be able to face myself? “What if I stumble? What if I fall?...” Will I be forgiven? What is right? What is wrong? “What if I stumble? What if I fall?... My love for you will never change.”

http://docl.blogspot.com/

Amazing how things change.

It's a Friday night, taps isn't untill 1am and right now it's only 11pm, but yet I am back in my room already. This evening I went over to Annah's room to say hi to her and some other friends, plus to eat a little ice cream, and then I proceeded onto Josh's room to watch a movie with him and Joel. The movie was pretty funny and I liked it.

Once again tonight provided me with another example of how I interact with people. I'm most comfertable one-on-one instead of in groups. If I meet someone and it's not in a group, then I'm pretty comfertable and will talk to them and get to know them right away. However, if I'm in a group of people and I don't know anyone, or even if I don't know someone in the group, what most likely will happen is that I'll stay quiet and let everyone else talk and just listen and watch for awhile. Some people like to talk a lot and so I let them talk. I get to know people before I let them get to know me. It gives me a chance to become comfertable and when I get used to the person and eventually I'll start talking again. I get to know what type of person they are by watching and listening. Of course, I wish I were more comfertable in groups instead of always being the quiet one, but I don't know if what I have to say will be valued or just shot down, or even worse, totally ignored.

I like talking one-on-one because there's nobody else there talking the whole time about stuff I have no clue about. It sounds weird. I have stuff to say and I like talking, but I'm not very talkative in groups unless I know the people really well. I am shy I guess.

Crap! I was going to call Matt tonight. Now it's too late.

After lunch today all of the 3rd class had a briefing about YWW. Up untill then I hadn't really cared that I don't have a date for it, but all of the talk about what to do with your date and everything made me wish for awhile that I had one, or at least had a friend that I was going with to it. The other day James A. asked me, as I was initialing a chart for YWW that said if you were bringing any people, why I didn't have a date. I told him that I couldn't tell him, mostly because I was in a hurry to go meet some friends, but also because I just didn't feel like being reminded of that fact. It's really not that big of a deal. Many people don't have dates for the weekend, but yet again it seems like everyone else does. I'm going to the cottage with a group of friends that weekend before and after the banquet and hope, but I don't know how many of them won't be brining anybody. I was looking forward to YWW untill that briefing. I just want to have fun and feel special that weekend.

Well, I passed the IOCT so I guess I should be pretty happy right now, but unfortunatly I'm not. One of my roommates, one of my best friends here, one of my teammates, and my PL from last semester didn't pass. I wish there was something that I could do for them. It may not sound like a huge deal to some people because it's just an indoor obstacle course, but half the firsties failed it last year, including the first captain. Because of that fact, the Comm made it mandatory for all classes this year and those who failed have to go into the Commadants Physical Remediation Program (CPRP), retest at the end of Feb, recieve and F on the test, plus I think they might get a D for intermurals this semester, and they also loose all of their privilages until they pass the test in Feb. I heard from someone on my team that Coach Hall also said that if we failed then it's basically the end of our rowing career here. That was what really scared me.

I was just talking to Anne on IM and she said she heard that so far 65% of the females have failed so far. We both agreed that that number seemed a little high. The passing time for females is 5:29, which is a D. I got a 4:38, which is a C. Although I knew, and also pretty much planned, that I wouldn't get the shelf, I now feel like I failed because I didn't make it up and instead had to go up the cargo net. It's all a mental thing. I don't think I seriously tried to get the shelf because I was more scared that it'd tire me out too much if I did make it up. I feel like I cheated somehow. A few of my attempts I pretty much had it, but then gave up very quickly for fear that I'd get really close but not make it and waste too much time and energy. I hope that next year I've overcome that mental obstacle.

Web Assign sucks. 2 hours for 3 out of 4 points. Now I'm exhausted and am ready to fall asleep anywhere, but of course I can't. More stuff to do, or else I should start working on some homework assigned today. I just finished making my bed and it looks really comfy. Oh well. I'll get there eventually.

Grapefruit. Yummy.

Done with classes for the day and it's only 10:50am :) This morning I had the yuck suck run from the first floor of Thayer to the sixth floor of Washington with all of my books in my backpack. It's going to be a fun year. At least I'm used to living on the 6th floor, so I have a slight advantage over a few people.

Dirt almost put me to sleep and it was only the first day. We got out early and so I had time to go back to my room, drop of my CS and Dirt books, and then go to Grant and get a small coffee. It was my usual mix french vanilla, hot chocolate, and a bit of hazelnut. Today it was unusually good and reminded me of s'mores. It gave me the jolt I needed to stay awake during AP. Perhaps I should start trying to get to sleep before 1am. This morning I didn't even hear my alarm initally go off. I woke up at 6:20 when I pushed the snooze alarm for the second time. I don't remember pushing it the first time.

Last night I ran through the IOCT again and passed even though the person timing me wasn't paying very close attention and I messed up on a few things. Tomorrow is the real test.

"Boys are like buses. There's always another one coming."
~ Coach Hall

"Boys are the scum of the earth"
~My Dad

"Boys are bad"
~Coach Hanlon

There seems to be a trend going. Are boys really that bad?

I want to be the best that I can be. No, I am not trying to copy the older Army slogan of Be All That You Can Be. I just don't want to short change myself.

I got a package from home today. My mom sent me my sweater that she dry cleaned for me, plus some bread chip things and some pretzel sticks. Packages from home are awesome. She also included some farside cartoons in the letter.

I bought a new backpack today at the C-store. It's a Jansport one that can hold a laptop. My dad bought me one from Eddie Bauer over break and it's a really nice one, but for crew trips I'll need one that can hold a few more books. Now I have a nice selection to choose from. It seems like I can never have just one of anything. I always end up with a few. I guess that makes me a very privaleged person, but not to confuse priveleged with happy. Possesions and money don't make people happy. Only one thing really can fill that hole.

Crap it's late. Bedtime.

This evening MAJ Shumacker told us that the windchill for the next three nights is supposed to be around -40 degrees. He warned us to not go running outside.

Tonight I was talking to a friend on IM and our conversation really got me thinking. During the conversation he accused me of somewhat just accepting the views of the majority of society as my own. My reply was "i don't have to go through the experiences myself to realize that there are somethings that i don't want to do and that do not lead to happiness and a good life. i've watched my [extended] family be torn apart by drugs, alcohol, abusive relationships. close friends have babies when just the year before they said that they'd never have sex until marriage. In high school i looked at the lives of the people who partied all the time and did drugs and watched them go from intelligent human beings to vegetables who only care about the next time they can get high. talents wasted, goals flushed down the drain, happiness confused with lack of pain."

Mrs. Pinard really influanced my life in 7th and 8th grade during health class by challenging me to think and make long term and short term goals. When I set a goal for myself I stick to it and don't let anything stop me from achieving it. The only way that goal changes is after I've thought about it for awhile and talked to people I trust about it. I don't know if it's fair to do, but I think that some of the poeple I know let their goals slip away from them and instead choose short term pleasure and long term pain over short term pain and long term happiness.

In high school one of my goals was getting into West Point. Many people thought it would be nearly impossible for me, but that didn't stop me. I chose to ignore them and focus on the goal. That meant that I didn't participate in many things that I saw as possible deterents to my acceptance. True, sometimes that was taken to a bit of an extreme, but I don't regret anything. I've always leaned more to playing it more on the safe side.

I'm not saying that this is what everybody should live by, or that it is a perfect philosophy by any means, but so far it's worked pretty well for me. Sometime I think too much about things, but occasionally that's saved me. When have to make a decision I try and look at all of the possible outcomes and see if it's worth it. If the consequences are too high, then I don't do it. As my dad always said about risky stuff: "high risk, low return." Think about what is best in the long run.

What is happiness and a good life? That's a topic for another night.

The music world can bite me. Everybody does a version of everything and I have no clue who does the original. Blah.

Tonight looks like a busy night. I just got back from practice and dinner and now have to shower. Then I have FCDT at 7, OCF at 7:20, IOCT at 9, and then have to go try and help someone with Problem Stats. Thankfully I managed to get my Dirt homework done this afternoon and so the only thing I have left for tomorrow is reading and answering questions for AP.

I think I should start up another web page with translations of all of the acronyms that I use. It'd probably help a few people out.