one of many in the wild, wild net.

Howdy howdy.

Day 1 of TDY to Fort Huachuca for a class I can’t say anything about. Loose lips sink ships and all.

But what was I thinking about… oh yeah. Change. Lots of stuff is changing, but such is life, right? My bro Alvin and I had the following exchange of words earlier today:

WheresMyRailgun: So you and [kulet] official?

TJ (USAF, Rank E-3): official?

TJ (USAF, Rank E-3): well we haven’t signed any papers or taken any vows

WheresMyRailgun: Like if someone asks me how many of my old roommates have girlfriends, I can say 2

TJ (USAF, Rank E-3): Haha

TJ (USAF, Rank E-3): yeah

Yep. You read that right. I have a girlfriend now, I guess. And the reason I say “I guess” is because I never really thought about what was happening between myself and my now-girlfriend “kulet”, I kinda just went with the flow of my own heart and never really gave a thought of what my “status” was with her or anything, but when you get to the point after the initial insane longing for your significant other and those insane feelings become replaced by more grounded-in-reality but nevertheless intense feelings for her, *and* the same is being reciprocated back to you, I think it’s safe to call her my girlfriend at the very least.

So what’s next? I’m just playing it by ear, really. We communicate our feelings, so there are no guessing games about that between us. What am I playing by ear then? Issues with my work. I’m involved in stuff that I can’t discuss, and if you don’t know what that means then I’m sorry because I can’t explain it to you, not because I don’t know the words to use but just because. And I mean “just because”. Anyway, it’s been so long since I’ve been at this point with a girl I’ve pretty much forgotten what to do, and what events happen when. I think in a sense that’s a good thing, though, because knowing myself I tend to screw things up when I over-worry about making things not as bad as “last time”, so now that I have almost no memory of my past romances, I feel I can court “kulet” without the pressure of jacking up, because inside I know I am a little bit older, a little bit more knowledgeable, a little bit more secure with myself, and overall a little bit more optimistic, or at least less pessimistic.

Anyway, my feelings for kulet have gone from longing to hold her in my arms (and all that other mushy crap that I never thought I’d feel) to longing to be with her. I call her all the time and we talk, and we had our first mental spar last night when we were talking about certain quasi-political groups in her country. It was a learning experience and an eye openner for me, a pleasant one regardless of the topics we discussed. But my girl loves to debate, and I love to spar analytically with politics, so in that sense we are a match. We also share very similar views on sex, relationships, religion, and personal goal-setting, and other things I just can’t seem to conjure from memory right now.

This weekend I’ll be dropping by LA to visit the fam and show two friends around my hometown. I’m pretty sure mom and dad don’t read my blog, so I can mention here that I intend to “introduce”, so to speak, my girl to them. I’m gonna show them my pictures that kulet sent me, her letter to me which is not so “hot” that I can’t show it to my parents, and hopefully I can have them talk to her for a little bit while I’m at the house. That’s what I’m really excited to go home for.

But enough about that. I’m still a bit leery about sharing *that* part of my life to the blogosphere, but feel like I should. After all, that’s part of my life, and my life should be noted in the device I built to note stuff that happens in my life, right?

So anyway, fact is that right now I’m in Sierra Vista, AZ attending a class on “stuff”. So far so good, the class itself is blah but what can you expect learning about “stuff” in the military. Me and the boys Reed and Waugh checked out Tucson, AZ yesterday afternoon, and they took a good amount of pictures. We checked out Davis-Monthan AFB and took pictures of the airplane graveyard (BTW Thank you Google Earth for tipping me to the fact that there was even such a thing nearby – http://earth.google.com). At some point this week I want to check out Bisbee and Tombstone, which are small towns in the local area that seem to be worth visiting.

My brain is hitting that wall, but I need to stay up so I’m probably gonna drive to walmart right now and buy some red bull or some kind of energy drink to wake back up. In the meantime, take it easy.

-TJ

I’m going to disappear for a little while. I might be gone for just a few hours and be back tomorrow, or I might be gone up until the middle of December.

I’m going on a business trip, and of course my laptop is coming too, but I’m not sure if I’ll be connected when I’m over there. We’ll see, I guess.

-TJ

Well, I’m glad to see that my buddy Law is taking the step into the blogger world. He can be found here: http://my.opera.com/noisewar.

Let’s see…. I guess I just want to note for the record that I’m feeling fine. Last Friday I collapsed in the Gym because apparently I’m a weak motherfucker. We did suicides, and apparently I did some extremely bad combination of sprinting cold and sitting down right afterwards, combined with not enough water that morning. That sucked… well it was more embarassing, but it’s times like that when I feel lucky to be where I am. My co-worker caught me, 2 of my co-workers, my supervisor watched over me right as I fell down, and having CPR training the first thing that someone did was “YOU! Call 911!”

Before I knew it, my commander was there along with one of the flight captains, staff from the Gym… then the fire dept, and then the paramedics….

Boy. I love the Air Force. I loved it since the day my TI back at Lackland told me to pick up my bags/put them down/pick them up/put them down.

I also love my girl. We’ve been talking for 3 months now over the phone, and I guess she really is my girlfriend now, even though she’s thousands of miles away. My heart is more stable now, though, and the passion is ebbing away, making way for the truth that remains. There are lots of decent looking girls around here, some I wouldn’t mind being with. But when I think about them, I find myself comparing them to my girl, let’s just call her “kulet”. And kulet always wins, because I think about the girl that’s always thinking of me, that tells me she misses me, and goes home grumpy when she goes to check her IMs at a cafe and finds nothing from me because I have a particularly busy week. Don’t get me wrong, we hardly ever talk due to the time-difference and our busy schedules… I’m busy with my work and CDCs and volunteer stuff, and she has her work which takes up alot of her time. We end up talking *maybe* once a week. That call once a week seems to be working for us, though.

…

Sorry. I was daydreaming. Anyway, I gotta go now because I still have to mop up the bathroom and clean the toilet.

More life to come later!

-TJ

Good morning.

Yep, it’s Friday, and I’m posting during the day. I was given the day off because I passed out in the Gym during PT… a freak occurence. Anyway, the Fire Dept came, ambulance came, I got my blood pressure taken like fifteen times, but I was OK.

I’m OK now, I think. If anything I just feel a bit embarassed at the whole situation. Shop sup told me to take it easy today, so that’s what I’m gonna do.

-TJ

Dear God,

Please please please let me visit the Philippines soon. You know why.

-TJ

W-w-well… I f-found out ab-bout a ne-n-n-new k-kind of rain just now.

Right now, it’s “slushing”. It’s not quite rain, but it’s not quite snow, it’s somewhere between. It’s like someone is grinding alot of ice hundreds of feet above us, so we’re just getting alot of ice flakes (not snowflakes). As soon as the stuff hits my head, it instantly melts into cold cold water and dribbles down the back of my neck and into my shirt… not fun

Anyway, time to take a warm warm shower and dress like I’m not moving for the rest of the night. PEACE!

-TJ

Well good morning.

So last week was “short”, but only technically speaking because I had alot to do. Something good happened a few weeks ago that now allows me to work more freely in my shop, and work is what I am definitely doing. I did alot of… stuff… last week, and come a certain point in the week I find out that a certain thing didn’t happen that needed to happen by a certain time, so now the ensuing work period to the end of the week I’m working feverishly to get that certain thing accomplished. For the most part we took care of it, because we’re cool like that, but I guess I was frustrated because some people are dropping the ball in some aspects of the stuff we need to do at work.

I guess my gripe is I felt like I pushed so hard to get stuff accomplished and it felt like I did nothing. Not to mention I’m going for my big O-1 now, and every little thing that goes wrong is really tearing me up. I know I have to change, or at least “adjust”, because freaking out is not conducive to being an Officer. I guess at the very least I can recognize that I still have alot to learn, and that fact in and of itself qualifies me for future redemption and possibly greatness.

Anyway since the start of our long weekend in which we honor our veterans of war, I spent it playing World of Warcraft. I KNOW I KNOW I just said I wouldn’t play it but damnit, I deserve to have a little fun now and again, right? Anyway I think after busting my ass at work all last week, I deserve to be a total slacker this weekend. I need to balance that chi.

Well, I hope this has been vague enough for you. I don’t think I mentioned any details, and people dropping the ball that you eventually have to be picked up by the rest of the team happens not just at my job but every job, every day.

-TJ

Well, we have the day off tomorrow.

More to come later. I’m exhausted, and I need to eat and use the Cee Arr.

Well, as far as upsets, the Army won by 3 points… it was close. People were still in their seats watching the game up until 30 seconds before the end, where we fumbled the ball and apparently Army regained control of it and just sat on it. Oh well. There’s always next year, I suppose.

As far as inner smiles, I keep listening to a couple of tracks from my We <3 Katamari OST, and I keep thinking about what it would be like to be stationed in Okinawa or Kadena AB. I’m going to put it on my dream sheet once I become eligible for PCS.

I also keep thinking about my girl in the Philippines….. and those are my thoughts to keep.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

-TJ

Well, I *believe* this is the last home game for USAFA this season. It’s gonna be big! It’s between USAFA and Army, I can only guess that would be Westpoint.

I’ve been thinking about a couple of things lately. One, I’m going to explore what kind of garbage I can create using cafepress.com. It seems pretty cool how you can create your own shirts, and once in a while I can come up with something witty that makes people laugh, so let’s see how successful that’s going to be.

I’ve also been thinking about my future and my future with gaming. Lately I’ve been having alot to do on my plate, and I don’t foresee that changing. I haven’t really been gaming that much, except for the few minutes in the early morning I spend playing KOL… and I would hardly call that gaming. I miss running around and blasting people online, or playing BF2 or original EQ, WOW, DAOC, etc…. But every time I think about starting up a game, I think of all the time I’d be wasting when I could be doing something else, like *not* gaming and getting work done, or going out or visiting friends. It kinda makes me sad, I miss the escape that games bring, but I know I spent alot of very quality time “escaping” back in the day, and every time I feel that urge to game, I think about the debts I still owe to the world, and I just get sad and resign myself back to a fate of hard work. Well… I wouldn’t say “sad”, but just not ecstatic. I’m still happy for the most part. Or maybe it’s just contentment? I at least like the fact that I have alot to do, and it’s all important somehow. I remember during my gaming days, when I would go out for my occasional breath of air between 5-hr long bouts with mobs, NPCs, and stupid players, I’d always feel ashamed of something, what that would be I would never know. But I somehow felt like shit after gaming for so long. Maybe deep down I knew I was wasting an entire day on my epeen, and not enough time on my real life that I needed to get shit accomplished in.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be gaming. I was just having a few conversations on it tonight, and this is the final conclusion I’m coming to. No WoW… no EQ… no more. There’s too much at stake in my real life, it would be a waste of what little time I have left here on Earth to be gaming so much. Maybe when I’m retired or late in my career where I might have more time, but somehow I doubt I’ll ever see the kind of “spare time” I cleared during college.

Other things I’ve been thinking about: Japan. My We <3 Katamari OST CD came in the mail the other day, and it’s been in heavy rotation on my computer and in my car…. I don’t know why, but I really really really love the songs from the Katamari games. I’m insane like that, as Lynch would say. I usually don’t listen to the J-POP, and I’ve tried it and only liked stuff from Ayumi Hamasaki and no one else for some reason. And at that I liked only her club mixed music. Somehow I keep thinking about Asian dance clubs and how much I would like to see one. Or maybe just a Japanese dance club. There’s this one song by Ayumi Hamasaki called “Fly High” I think… the video is pretty cool. She’s in some club, sexy as hell (of course), and it’s just a really nice vibe. Like a raver party without the drugs and the passing out and the general ugliness. Maybe that’s why I like Japanese stuff… when I think about it, I see a blunt honesty in many aspects of the culture. Very little reservation, ready to adapt. That’s what I see, anyway. I’m sure people can prove me wrong, but that’s just the way I see things.

Also, I was thinking about the prospect of visiting the Philippines, and I was discussing it with my good friend, my brother from another mother Lorenzo. I was thinking specifically about terrorists and criminals abroad who target Americans and how dispicable I thought the whole thing was. Terrorism is the reason I signed up, so at least I’m doing my part in hopefully one day making international travel and culture mingling less scary than it currently is today. I really do want to meet a Muslim on the street and not be scared, but these days the times make people crazy and do crazy things.

Anyway, good night. I’m tired, and I have a thing tomorrow.

-TJ