math doesn't add up

i know this has been complained about many times over... but here i go.

is it really that hard to get the sausage and hot dog folks together at a negotiation table with the buns people?

why do i have to buy hot dogs in packs of 10 or 6 (if sausages) while the buns come in packs of 8?

it's frustrating and my money is on the conspiracy theory that they have gotten together and hatched a plan to market these items deliberately this way so we the consumer would have to buy more than one or two packs in order for things to "even" out.

bottom line... they owe us an apology for frustrating me enough to write this blog and subjecting you "all" to reading it.

love isn't all you need

i’m about to turn one of those corners in life where it’s time to reflect on all of my blessings. the last 2-3 years have not only seen major changes in kevin’s life, but potential roadblocks and trials. overall, i’d have to say i’ve not only weathered some rocky storms and times of solitude and great chances of depression, but i feel i’ve really come out ahead.

from deploying to iraq to buying a home to uncertain employment times, i can say three things have kept my head above the current of this crazy place we call earth.

faith, love & hope

while all work together, they also represent different points in my life…

faith: 3 years ago, i found something i’d always been looking for but had never realized it. i found the most important piece to this puzzle we call life. i found God, or perhaps simply just opened my eyes. of course i can’t take the credit. without His guidance and the help of my family and friends, specifically my dad, paul and andrea, i’d probably be just writing about how lost i feel in this confusing world. i was later baptized by another great friend, colby as a testimony to everyone who knows me and to God. i continue to learn more and hopefully grow more. this is definitely a chapter still being written and at times being picked through like a newspaper story on the cutting room floor.

love: 2 years ago, i married the love of my life and best friend. not a day goes by that i don’t thank God for his awesome power in bringing andrea into my life and for giving her the patience to deal with an overgrown nerd such as myself. i believe i have the best friends in the world and the most loving family, but i never could have imagined finding someone i enjoy spending so much time with, who allows me to learn more about what love is and how bottomless it can truly be.

hope: four months ago, my hopes and what i see as a major piece to my purpose came true. andrea and i found out our lives were going to change forever. in the first weeks of november, we were surprised to find we were pregnant. this is not to say we weren’t hoping for a child, we just didn’t expect to get the good news so soon. andrea pushed through trimester number one like a champ and is now plugging along through trimester number two approaching each shortness of breath or back pain with courage and a positive attitude i admire every day. our first baby, a baby girl is scheduled to arrive in july, a month that can’t come soon enough for both pregnant mom and jittery dad.

faith, love & hope

awesome

imagine a story that takes place during the iron age in ancient norway. a flash of light streaks across the sky. it's the burning wreckage of a spacecraft crashing through the atmosphere and into the sea just off the coast. one man emerges alive. his name is kainan and while he looks just like a human, he is from a distant planet. his people have just terraformed a planet to settle and were in the process of exterminating a species of large killer beasts with knashing teeth and razor sharp claws known as moorwens. just when they'd thought they were done killing the moorwens the beasts strike back killing most of kainan's people. he was actually on his escape when he crashed on earth. little does he know that a moorwen stowed away on the ship and also survived the impact. as he struggles to survive and inevitably begins to hunt down the moorwen he runs into a local viking tribe. joining with the forces of the primitive but fierce warriors, kainan uses his new allies to continue to hunt the moorwen, which they refer to as a dragon.

if this sounds like a ridiculous plot for a story... we agree. the above is a partial breakdown of a movie that apparently just came out called outlander. i doubt it's playing in a theater near you, and that's probably a good thing. while it stars jim caviezel, an actor i think very highly of, it looks really dumb. i almost wonder if they're just trying to outdo that fabulously terrible movie pathfinder (both are named after cars i think) or just have a modern classic like america 3000. either way, it will probably prove to be another great move to torture people with.

here's the trailer

long flight to a cold landing

for those who don't know... i'm in school for my next rank advancement in the army. the school is at ft. meade, maryland, the same school i attended 9 years ago for my basic broadcasting training. not much has changed, but 9 years is a long time to forget what a place is like. and with class not starting until monday... i have a couple days to settle in and remember this place. i do recall that the school is great, but getting here yesterday was not so great.
here's the breakdown:

0600 flight out of pdx headed to salt lake city. the early flight time meant getting to the airport around 0430, which meant not really sleeping that night.

0900 i get to salt lake city only to find out my flight to baltimore was cancelled. i'll let that set in because it took me off guard and i was checking every screen possible to make sure i wasn't seeing things or the screen wasn't just wrong. nope... officially cancelled. not a big deal when you're in your home-state airport, but when you're only one leg through your trip it kinda sucks.

1000 they re-route us onto a flight to dulles without saying why or anything. i figured at least i'd be on the east coast to closer to my destination, whatever.

0500 pm we finally land at dulles - one hour after i was supposed to land in baltimore. it was when we landed that we were told our luggage was flown to reagan national airport. nice delta airlines, real nice. our consolation prize was two taxi vouchers to drive us from dulles to reagan then to baltimore.

View Larger Map

dulles to reagan to get baggage - 1 hour
reagan to military base - 1 more hour
taxi fair - $200 (on delta airlines dime)
arriving at my school - priceless

that was just getting here. once on post i had to report in. easy enough... except when all the numbers and building numbers are wrong. i walked about 6 miles in circles in the freezing cold on the post trying to find where to check in. two hours later and 36 hours without sleep i finally reached someone who could help me out. i can only hope the school works out better.

love resides in the kidney

i saw this story and had to share.
apparently some guy in long island, ny is demanding his wife (whom he is divorcing) give back the kidney he donated to her or pay him for it - $1.5 million to be exact.
there are messy divorces... and then there are surgically gross and greedy divorces.
i've always been curious why people think love comes from the heart when it's just an organ that pumps blood through your body. so maybe love comes from the kidney?
i don't know about that... but i do know kidney beans are good for your heart. so perhaps this dr. batista guy is onto something. i'm selling my kidney. seriously, who needs a kidney anyway compared to $1.5 million in cold hard cash? what's the worst thing that could happen? i'll just use the money to buy gatorade stock and regulate my electrolytes that way. problem solved.

click click boom

saturday was quite the treat... as i was able to shoot testosterone straight into my vein by shooting several pretty sweet weapons. one of my friends/soldiers that i deployed with, invited me out to blast away with some of his many guns. from pistols to assault rifles, it was just what the doctor ordered after getting through the holidays.

one of the first weapons i fired was his ar "pistol." in his words the weapon is a:
"...rock river lower receiver with an olympic arms 10.5 inch upper on it, and an eo-tech cco."
it's very similar to the m4 i had when in iraq. we didn't have the eo-tech cco and so that was quite the treat to play around with after clocking so many hours on ghost recon using the sight "virtually." nonetheless, inanimate targets shook in their clay pigeon boots as i walked up to fire.

next up was something i've been dying to shoot for quite some time.

the infamous ak47. i saw tons of these in iraq and every male from the age of 14 up is legally allowed to carry one. it's supposed to be one of the more reliable weapons ever made - (you can drop it in a lake and come back days later to shoot it reliable) and it feels a bit more like a real gun than the m4... probably due to the wood stock and weight difference and the caliber. it was fun to shoot even if it was legal so there wasn't an auto on the fire select.

then we moved on to ridiculous weapons.

this was a rifle supplied by the other guy who came along. not sure what it was... but it seemed a bit overkill for what we were doing so of course i had to try it out. the scope made our 50-75 meter targets look absolutely huge and it was zeroed so you had to aim 2 inches high and 2 inches to the right of whatever you were shooting at. i think i missed everything i pointed it at.

the creme de la creme though had to be the m1a socom rifle.
there aren't any pictures of me shooting one... but here's a web image of what they look like.

by far one of the best rifles i've ever fired. it's meaty and pretty darn accurate. again in the words of the expert who took me out there and owns this beautiful piece of death:
"...used by the military during late korea and early vietnam as the m-14. It has been in rotation since then in about every special forces type outfit, including currently by a lot of snipery guys on straight infantry units in iraq and afghanistan. it fires the .308 or 7.62x51 nato round."
if they weren't so darn expensive and if we weren't trying to save our money... i'd probably try to go out and get one. oh well there's always Christmas 2020 to look forward to. for a look at all the types of m1as made today click here.
now for an "awesome" video of some really "cool" guy firing an m1a.
enjoy:

i am

most people see the new year as a time to look not only forward into the next year... but a chance to reflect on who they were, are and want to be. many resolutions revolve around a desire to improve and become a better person. self-improvement is great, but why wait for a specific day to start. that's why i hate new year resolutions.

that aside, i still find myself looking at who i am and where i'm going. a year ago i was sitting in iraq wishing i was home. now that i've been home for more than 6 months i still think about my deployment all the time. many veterans returning home from combat go through what's called readjustment. it's the time you try to stop thinking and acting like a soldier and instead assimilate yourself back into society. the government hopes it will be a simple transition with low rates of ptsd. but i don't think that is ever the case. even if you haven't seen combat, the transition from a 24/7 fast paced, life and death job to anything back here is tough (to put it lightly).

i'd say the 6 month marker is actually one of the harder ones. it's when reality sets in and the feeling that you're just on an extended leave and could be called back at any moment finally starts to wear off. many of us feel bored and annoyed by the general populace.

for me... i find i have little patience for complaining about things i find unneccessary. after living in a tiny cubicle where the water was unsafe to drink (unless bottled), power went out daily, walking was the main mode of travel and meals were only served at specific times i have a different perspective on needs and wants. convenience versus necessity.

i also have a very hard time with how much we as americans have mostly done away with the idea of respect. i never noticed it until i'd immersed myself so much into the military structure, which is built so much upon respect. we don't respect our elders, our spouses or even a stranger on the street.

mostly though... the hardest part is facing your friends and family who expect you to be who you were. and in all honesty... you battle with that every day. wanting to be who you were but not being able to even remember what that was like. what was life like before i left. i'd just gotten married and for the first time was living with someone other than my parents or a random friend in college. i was already in a state of readjustment so does that mean i'm actually now in the re-readjustment period. that's going to take some adjusting for me to get my mind wrapped around that.

i guess i've come to the conclusion that we should never try to be who we were. the past always has a rosy color given enough time for retrospect. i believe we are who we are. there is no old me... only me in the now and the me that will be. that's not to say we shouldn't learn from our past... we just shouldn't dwell on it.

my deployment wasn't just a year lost or a waste of time... it's part of who i am. now i just have to stare ahead and move forward looking for ways to improve, not regret or try to recapture some idea of who i was.