Empty Arms No Longer, part 1

After 8 years of heartbreaking waiting, Dana and I can finally say the words we have wanted to say more than any others: We Are Parents!

The story would take a very long time to tell in its entirety, but I want to share the finer points here, both as a way to share the story with those who have expressed interest, and also as a way to record the events before they fade from memory. I am a miserably bad journal writer, so if I don't get this in black and white now, I may not get around to it until I have forgotten or confused the realities of anything that really happened.

Way back in October 2012, a wonderful young woman in Utah selected us to be the adoptive parents of the baby she was expecting. She was the daughter of a friend of the family, and when she found out that she was pregnant with a baby that she didn't want and was not ready for, she said that her first thoughts were; "better me than someone else." She thought this because she knew that she was "going to do the right thing" where other girls her age might not. For her, the right thing was to give this child a chance to have a complete family, with a mother and a father who were both ready and able to raise a child.

When we got the news, we were overjoyed but also cautious, since it had not yet been a year after our first failed adoption. We didn't want to risk going through the pain of retracting good news again, and even though every indication told us that our new angel birthmom was sincere and dedicated to her intention, we did not let anyone know what was going on until it had actually happened. We had already learned the hard way not to count our chickens before they were hatched.

The months passed, and things just got better and better. We had a great correspondence with the birth-grandma, and birth mom, as well as with the family member, who was helping birth-mom deal with all the emotional impact of her situation and her decision. All the concerns that we had with our other adoptions just never surfaced, and every good sign we could have hoped for was there in plenty. Her whole family was on board, and engaged in the adoption. They supported her and helped her follow through with her decision. The peace of mind that this gave us was already nothing short of a miracle.

In December we got an invitation to come to Utah and visit with our angel and her family over Christmas. We still had not made the adoption known to the world, so it was lucky that my family is in Utah, so no one grew suspicious. We met with our angel and her wonderful family on Christmas Eve for the first time, and that meeting went really well. Our birth-mom was shy at first, but very sweet, and completely beautiful. Her whole family was warm and welcoming to us. While their own emotional pain and heartache was also plain to see, so too was their conviction that this adoption was the right choice. We used that time to ask questions and get to know each other better, and to break the ice for our relationship going forward. Our angel had one main worry - that the baby would hate her for not keeping him. We reassured her in every way that we could that the baby would only ever be told that she was an angel and one of the most wonderful people in the world, who gave us a chance to be a family.

After that meeting, we were invited to celebrate Christmas Eve with the family at their home. It was so gracious of them to accept us into their family this way, in spite of all the conflicted emotions they were experiencing. They supported the adoption decision, but they were already grieving the loss of the child, worried about the birth mom's feelings, and in general just unsure how everything would really work out. They were putting an immense amount of trust in us that we would not hurt their family when they were already vulnerable, so for them to bring us into their Christmas was another huge sign that they really were intent on doing this, and that they were getting themselves ready for it.

While in Utah, we also had the wonderful opportunity to join our angel for an ultrasound. We "saw" our son for the first time, which was amazing. Our angel was so sweet the whole time, telling us what it felt like when he moved, laughing and smiling in spite of her shyness. We just wanted to shower her with hugs and kisses and love, but made do with a few squeezed hands and shoulders and a lot of smiles.

After the Christmas break was over, we settled down at home to get things ready for the arrival of our son. We already had most of the baby things we needed from our earlier failed placement, so there was not much to do, but we sorted out all the girl clothes, bought a crib and a playpen, and generally just made a plan for bringing the little guy into our home. And then it was back to waiting, writing emails and Facebook messages on a nearly daily basis, and building the relationship and trust with our angel and her family. Where with the other adoptions we had been nervous and anxious, with this adoption we felt encouraged and hopeful. We could definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel, and this time it did not look at all like an oncoming train.

In early January, I had to leave for a major, 3-week Army training exercise in Louisiana. It was a major undertaking, something that my brigade had been building towards for over a year. We were on the bus headed down there for 16 hours. It was pure misery. When we finally got to our destination on 9 Jan, I was completely exhausted from the drive, but still had to put in a full day of work with no rest until that night. It was rainy, cold and otherwise completely horrible. The next day, however, was when things changed for me forever.

I was in the process of setting up the Behavioral Health Clinic at the practice base, around 10:30 on 10 Jan, when I got a phone call from our angel's mother, saying that she was going into labor, and that they were rushing her to the hospital. Of course, my heart sank into my stomach. The little guy was not supposed to arrive until March 3, so he was almost two months early. I knew many of the complications that could arise from such an early birth, and tried to prevent myself from prediction the worst. The remainder of that day was spent glued to my phone, sending texts and phone calls to Dana or to the birth family in Utah, trying to get information and figure things out.

The news trickled slowly out, in fits and starts. I got the news that she was in the hospital and that she was still in labor. Then heard that she was pushing. Then the word that she had delivered, but that the baby would need to be life-flighted to the NICU, since that hospital didn't have one. Then that the helicopter had arrived, and baby was being flown off, and that mom was doing OK.

Meanwhile, Dana and I had very different challenges to overcome. Dana had to pack up the house, the dog, and all her clothes, make two months worth of arrangements and get to the airport in less than 5 hours all by herself. If anyone can handle that kind of a deadline, it is Dana, but she still was not enjoying it. Her voice on the phone was so stressed and anxious, and I could do virtually nothing to help from where I was, stuck in the middle of the woods in an Army training camp. I was just happy that there were pockets where I could get cell-phone reception so I could stay at least a little connected to the events happening hundreds of miles away. Dana was somehow able to make all the arrangements needed, and was on a plane to Utah by 5 in the evening. By that time, my end of the drama had only reached half-time.

The nature of the training I was at was to simulate deployment. In other words, nobody who went down was allowed to leave except in the most dire of emergencies. My circumstances certainly counted as emergent, but the adoption situation clouded up the waters significantly. Everyone knows that having a child in the NICU is a big deal, but if that child isn't actually yours yet, and might still never be yours, the need and urgency is diluted significantly in the minds of others. So I had to sell my chain of command on my need to be there. I talked with my company and battalion commander, explained the situation to them as best I could, and tried to impress on them the need for me to be there in person. Their initial response was sympathetic but not encouraging - they didn't want to set a precedent that everyone who had a family issue would be allowed to go home. But they did assure me that they would take the issue to my Brigade Commander, who would make the ultimate decision. They would take it to him that night around 2100. I had a long time to wait and worry.

As I waited I prayed. I prayed over and over again that somehow these men could be made to know the urgency of my situation, and the need for me to be there to both support my wife, and to ensure that the adoption plan did not fall through because we did not both make it out to Utah. I called some very good friends and asked for their help and advice, which they freely gave. I was humbled by the amount of support that was freely sent our way by people I respect and admire. Even as far away from home as I was, I felt very protected and cared-for as I paced around the base with a phone glued to my ear. I continued to pray that somehow the urgency of the situation could be communicated to my chain of command. I got new pieces of information from our case-worker, that indicated a legal need for me to be present in order for the adoption to go through. I somehow needed to get that information through to my commanders, but they were all busy and out of my reach. As I stood in the dark wondering how to get a message across, our battalion chaplain "just happened" to walk up to me and ask me how I was doing. I told him about the situation, and he immediately got it. He understood the urgency and the need, and automatically volunteered to go find the battalion commander and tell him the new developments, impress on him the importance of the situation, and do whatever else he could do to ensure that I was able to leave the training and go be with my family.

I do not know what was said to my chain of command members that night, but I do know the end result. Around 2030, I was called into the command center, and my company CO told me that I was being granted emergency leave to go and be with my family. I was to find a flight out tomorrow, and there was a van already headed to the airport that would have a seat on it for me.

I instantly felt a huge wave of relief come over me. I knew that the adoption still had a few very crucial and difficult hurdles to clear, but my being able to be there at least ensured that I could actually do something useful, and did not have to sit helplessly on my hands. After feeling helpless for 8 years, it was torturous to think that in the final crucial moments, I would have to look helplessly on again. I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father that He blessed me so that I could leave the training, get a timely flight home, and be there with Dana as our little family finally started to grow.

To Rant Again

Been a long time since I had a good rant. I feel like I need one, so here it goes.

Things I resent:

- People who get drunk/do drugs/sleep around somehow feeling like they get to define the word "party." What you do is not a "party." It is a life-long regret waiting to happen. My parties never cause guilt, remorse, hangovers, or liver failure. They are just fun. So I win. You lose. Now give me and my people back the term "party" and you can start using the real title for what you do: serial stupidity.

- Political extremists on both sides posturing as if passion for a cause equates to intelligence, treating others who are less vehement or who disagree with them as not simply having a difference of opinion, but rather having some form of pervasive mental retardation. News flash to the radicals - we don't agree with you because WE THINK YOU ARE WRONG. The key word there being THINK. We have thought our positions through just as much as you have, and came to a different conclusion. This means, by necessity, that whatever probability there is for us being incorrect or misguided, the very same probability exists for you. So come down off your ivory towers of delusion and play in the sandbox with the rest of us. Yacking away up there just makes you look pedantic and silly. Or stay up there and look pedantic and silly. Your call. Either way, you look silly.

- People who claim the world was a so-much-better-place at some vague, undefined point in the past. The "good old days" are like Bigfoot. Everyone knows about it, but nobody has any evidence that it actually existed. Every major indicator: health, life-span, quality of living, liberty, independence, wealth, education, equality, you name it, does not get better when you look back in time. People who pine for the good old days are suffering from selective memory delusions. They are remembering only the good things, and forgetting all the bad. Like complaining that people are "out-of-touch" nowadays, while simultaneously Facebook chatting with a friend they have not thought about in decades. The old days are just old. Not good. If they were good, we wouldn't have moved away from them. Oxygen is very old, but we still use it. Ergo: oxygen is good. Indentured servitude is also old, but we don't use it anymore. Ergo: not good. It is easy math. Automobiles = good, leaded gasoline = bad. Telephones = good, telegraph = bad. French fries = good, French military prowess = bad. See how that works?

- The American media during election cycles, who eagerly report on how vile, hateful or negative the campaigns are while simultaneously accepting money from those campaigns to run the negative ads. Either you support it or you don't. If you don't like it, don't let it buy your dinner. Conversely, if you do let it buy your dinner, this implies some form of consent. It is like dating. Girls who don't like me usually don't let me buy them dinner. The TV networks are like that girl I dated once who was all too happy to let me buy her dinner, but meanwhile told everyone else she talked to that she didn't like me. The moral of the story - I only bought her dinner once. I wish our media, specifically the networks, would pick a side and stick with it. Stop pretending to bite the hand that you are so eagerly eating from.

- Democrats

- Republicans

- The idea that those two choices are somehow all that there is, and that we should be satisfied with it. Ever go to a restaurant that had only two items on the menu? Didn't think so. Ever been presented with a list of 5 options and been so overwhelmed by the variety that your brain melted? Didn't think so either. The political parties in this country are blatantly insulting our intelligence by telling us we have to chose from Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Worse every election. But we keep drinking the cool-aid, so they will keep serving it up.

Aaaaaaaaaand I'm spent. For now. That is all, carry on.

Musings on Large Numbers

So I had a client no-show today - and rather than do what I normally do in that circumstance (surf the web, chat with co-workers, catch up on notes, etc.) I decided to entertain my curiosity and get smart on something.

See, on my drive in to work, they were talking about the election. What else could there possibly be to talk about, right? Anyway, they mentioned a number off-hand that caught my fancy. They said that between the two Presidential candidates, more than $6 billion has been spent on campaigning. That includes party contributions, Super PACS, and grandma's $5. All the money that has thus far been spent on the election in any fashion. But that is just the presidential race. The state and local races weren't factored in.

So that got me thinking. I once worked with a guy who had a real fondness for large numbers, and helping people to realize just how big these numbers are. So I wondered just how big the number 6 billion is.

For starters, and obviously, it is 6,000,000,000. That is a lot of zeros. Or another way - if you had a room full of millionaires, there would be 6,000 of them. That is a lot of custom tailored suits and sports cars to valet park, and way too many over-priced purses and shoes.

Here is another way of looking at it. According to the magical interweb (US Mint website) the US Quarter is 0.069 inches thick. So, $6 Billion in quarters is 1,656,000,000 inches. That is 138,000,000 feet. These are all still very large numbers, and hard to wrap your head around. So lets make it even more simple. $6 Billion in Quarters, stacked in a column, would be 26,136 MILES high. To put that into perspective, the circumference of the Earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles. So you could literally walk all the way around the earth on a cable made of solid quarters and still not have walked on $6 Billion. Or another way of looking at it - you could drive round-trip from Anchorage, AK to Panama (as-in the country of Panama) twice before you hit 26,136 miles. Either way, that is a very very very large amount of Quarters. I was going to try to figure out how many hours of old-school arcade games you could play with all those coins, but my brain melted.

We are talking about real money here, though. Not cables of quarters. These are amounts of money that could seriously change people's lives. I can't even begin to imagine what I would do with $6 Billion to spend. So I broke it down into numbers I can start to fathom.

The first house I ever bought cost approximately $250,000. 6 Billion get you 24,000 of those.

The average US Household Income for 2012 is $50,502. 6 Billion is the a year's income for 118,807 of these households. That is more people than live in either Beaumont TX, Evansville IN, Lansing MI, Provo UT or Norman OK. So essentially, you could hire an entire city's population, for a whole year, and still not spend all of your $6 Billion

But Americans are really really rich compared to the rest of the world. The average household income for the world is roughly $7000 (that is rounded up from several different sources). At that rate, $6 Billion would pay a full year's income for 857,142 people. Now we are talking about all of the people in Jacksonville FL, San Francisco CA, Denver CO, Indianapolis ID or Ft. Worth TX.

$6 Billion is significantly more than the entire annual GDP of Haiti.

That is what I was able to discover about $6 Billion during my free hour.

All this money is being spent on the world's most expensive job interview. And no matter who wins, that money has virtually no guarantee on return, because the President has to fight with Congress to get anything done. So in all likelihood it will be another four years of ineffective partisan bickering, letting the country come to the verge of bankruptcy, with looming fiscal cliffs, enormous deficits, and other real problems that need solving remaining unaddressed because neither of the punk kids in the sandbox know how to share.

If you spread that money out equally among all Americans, each of us would get $19.06. That is not a lot of money, of course. You couldn't really do anything significant with less than 20 bucks. But if you piled that money up just for the 46.2 million Americans officially living below the poverty line, it comes out to $129.87 each, or roughly $520 for a family of four. I could definitely do something very meaningful for my family with $520. There has got to be something better we could do with that money than produce annoyingly bad commercials, print bumper stickers, and fight with each other.

As our elections keep burning through more and more money, I am not seeing that we as a nation are benefiting an any way. Politicians keep telling the same lies, making the same ridiculous promises they don't have the power to keep, and then going off to work in Washington where they don't care about you and me, they only care about their party bosses and their lobbyist buddies. I certainly don't feel like the $6 billion spent on this one election is going to do anything for me. I would have much preferred the $19, so I could have at least gone to a movie with my wife. I will still vote my conscience, and my conscience can't be bought.

Politics. Sort Of. . .

This will be my one and only blog post for the political season. I was originally going to write a lot of blog posts about a lot of my thoughts. But I am lazy, and didn't get around to it. Meanwhile, I kept reading a lot of other political stuff from other people, and I realized something - almost all of this political ranting and gnashing of teeth about this or that candidate/policy/debate/gaff/whatever just starts to be pathetically futile background noise. It reminded me of something I saw on Facebook once that struck me as being particularly true. It said something to this effect:

"Your political rants and tirades on Facebook have really convinced me that my previously held beliefs are wrong. I have decided that I should now think like you.

-Said nobody. Ever."

I think that is basically true. I can't think of a single political rant that I have ever read that really gave me pause to reconsider my own stances. It is all propaganda. The Nazis could not have dreamt of a more effective way to spread dissent and hatred. Worse yet, it is almost always misinformed, half-baked and terribly biased. Plus, the amount of venom and vitriol that is spread around on Facebook and other sites about politics is just plain rude. We would never lambast each other like this if we were in the room together. But in the anonymity of our living rooms, we can wax grandiose and belligerent about things we aren't qualified to teach, smugly belittle others while wearing sweatpants and slippers, and for the most part, get away with it.

All of this political fighting doesn't reveal nearly so much about our politics as it does about our character as people. If we are willing to offend, alienate and disenfranchise our friends and family just to make a politically inflammatory statement, then this necessarily means something about us. It means that we suck as people. And if we do this harm to others without being aware that we are harming them, it means we suck as people and are ignorant of it. That is infinitely worse.

I think a lot of people who do this political posting are unaware of the harm they are causing. Unaware (or maybe uncaring) about the feelings they are hurting, the disrespect they are showing, and the lack of civility they are betraying to the world. It is one thing to show support for a cause you champion. It is another thing entirely to mock or belittle the stances of others. Even as a kid playing pee-wee soccer, we were taught that good sportsmanship is cheering for your team. Bad sportsmanship is cheering against the other team. If you score a goal, you cheer. If the other team does something stupid and you cheer, that means you are a jerk. You are celebrating their misfortune. You are a bad sport. You shouldn't be allowed to play. In fact, I can remember a time when just this thing happened.

I was playing basketball in the Jr. Jazz league in Riverton. I wasn't very good, but I was very tall. So I played center. I remember that the other team had a power forward who was a very good shot. But he was short. So I kept blocking his shots. And people in the tiny crowd watching the game would cheer. That felt good to me. But then someone began making fun of him. Whenever he got the ball, they taunted him to try and shoot again. That did NOT feel good to me. I was ashamed. I was ashamed to have been pulled into something that became tawdry and cheap. I became part of persecution. I hated it. I kept blocking his shots when I could, but I didn't enjoy it anymore. I wasn't mad at myself or at the kid. I was mad at the person who turned my good game into his cause to make someone else feel like they were somehow less. The jerk kept it up, though. And was ejected from the game. He was the father of one of my team-mates, and when he was ejected from the game, I felt relieved. He was ruining it for me and for everyone else.

That is what all this political/philosophical/theological abuse really is - we are trying to make other people feel like they are less. This is the essence of persecution. It is bad sportsmanship, bad citizenship. So if you do it, stop. Doing it means you suck. Don't suck.

We don't have to agree. It is healthy to disagree. But if we do so in an ugly way, it necessarily means that we are ugly ourselves. All the anonymity in the world doesn't change this. Ugly is as ugly does.

So here is my plea as the election winds down - next time you have something political to say, make sure you are cheering for your team, and not against the other one. Make sure that, in your zeal to promote your cause, you don't simultaneously degrade yourself. There was once a pretty smart guy who talked about how we should treat people we don't agree with. If I remember the story right, there was nothing mentioned about criticizing, being mean, or making anyone feel like they are less. I am paraphrasing here, but it was something like "do good to those that despitefully use you."

If Jesus thinks we should be nice and understanding to people who are literally crucifying us, I shudder to think how He feels about it when we are rude or dismissive or harsh to others who have only done us the grave offense of disagreeing.

Betrayal of American Democracy

I have expressed this sentiment several times in various forms, and it looks like I will unfortunately have cause to continue expressing it: we are being betrayed!

When I say we, I mean the American People. Not Republicans or Democrats. I mean all of us. We are all being betrayed by our own political system and the politicians that profit from it. See, there is a cancer that started growing around the US Constitution from almost day one. George Washington was wise enough to see it for what it was, and he spoke out against it, but his concerns fell on deaf ears. So the cancer was allowed to grow and spread until it has now become larger and more powerful in many ways than the original system that spawned it.

This cancer is the US Political Party system, and as long as it remains in its current form, no true democracy is possible in America.

The parties exist for one reason only: to consolidate money and power, and thereby ensure their own power and survival. The parties have no vested interest in giving the people what they want. Far from it. Rather, the parties both have a long and tedious record of becoming consumed in their own ideological bickering, the needs and desires of the American people be damned. The events of the past year are a case in point.

Congress has the job of authorizing funding for the federal government. This is one of their basic duties. But rather than finding a way to get this relatively kindergarten level problem resolved, the issue devolved into partisan fighting and bickering that almost resulted in all Federal employees and programs experiencing a pay freeze that would have been catastrophic to our already limping economy. Only in the eleventh hour, when all the politicians realized their jobs were on the line, did they close ranks and DO THEIR DAMN JOBS.

And now they are at it again, and over a very similar issue. This time it is the debt ceiling, but the results threaten to be similar. Their complete unwillingness to actually represent their constituents, and insistence on playing political gamesmanship is likely to take us again to the very brink of disaster before either side will give way. And who suffers in the mean time? The American Middle. Almost all of us.

The parties dictate the votes of our Senators and Congressmen. If a representative steps out of line with their party, they invariably are censured, miss out on funding, lose committee appointments, etc. So in order to be a powerful rep, you have to also be a powerful lackey. And the really anti democratic element is this: the People of the United States of America do not vote for the party leaders. They do that themselves. It is a voting process open to a very few select people, and only to those who are already members. These people then go about the business of making the decisions that rule our lives, and there is little to nothing that we can do to influence their policies.

I seem to remember another time that something similar happened. But that time the closed group was called the British House of Parliament, and the Party Leader was a man named King George. What has happened in the two centuries since then that Americans no longer want democracy? How have we been so duped as to allow these two feuding oligarchies that call themselves Parties to claim possession of our futures and political destinies?

Well, I am not so naive as to believe that the parties will ever willingly release their grasp on power. And as long as they have one another to deflect blame onto, they can convince the American Middle that they are both necessary to prevent some unspeakable but also undefinable ideological horror from sweeping the country. No, I do not think that we have the power, as sad as it is, to dislodge the parties. But there is something I think we can do: we can fire them all.

And that is what I propose. If any employee at any company repeatedly fails to do his job, or even if he puts off doing his job until he has placed the company in a crisis, that man would be fired. He should be fired. And so should our sitting government. We should fire all of them, and keep firing them, until they get the message: we need a government that works for US, not for itself. We need a government that empowers the American People, not the American Politicians.

So in this next election, and every time thereafter, when the government is failing you, protest the only way the system still allows you to - vote against the incumbent. Because as long as the old guard keeps winning, we are telling them one thing clearest of all: that we will continue to allow them to tread and trample all over us.

Training Update

I just spent a week doing a Field Training Exercise, or FTX in Army speak. Basically, the FTX is like a week-long Army themed camping trip. We trained at Camp Bullis, which is inside a sort of wilderness area just north of San Antonio. We stayed in big tents, slept on Army cots, and ate MREs every day (much to the regret of my digestive system.)

The camp is actually quite comfortable. The tents are air conditioned, and there is hot chow for breakfast and dinner. However, there is one amenity that is very much missing: plumbing. No running water for showers, drinking water, or toilets. So we have to use wet-wipes to clean ourselves, portajohns to relieve ourselves, and water trailers to hydrate ourselves.

The training we did was largely interesting and enjoyable, but not always. Things like weapons training, casualty evacuation and care, and land navigation were a ton of fun. There were several simulators that we used to practice convoy movement, engaging the enemy, etc. There was also a simulator for practicing escaping a Humm-V in case of a roll over. That was hilarious.

The training that was less enjoyable was the gas chamber. After being instructed on the proper use of the gas mask, we all then entered a room where tear gas was being pumped into the room. The first thing I noticed was a sensation like an intense sunburn all around the exposed skin on my face and neck. But my mask was working fine, so I had no problems breathing. We had to do jumping jacks and stretches to get our hearts pumping, and then, to top it all off, we had to take our masks off and answer a series of questions to the best of our ability. That was awful. As soon as the mask comes off, the gas gets into your eyes and burns like madness. You can't breathe, but the pain makes you gasp, so you end up coughing, which brings even more of the painful stuff into your lungs. I was not fun. On the other hand, it was also nowhere near as bad as some of the prior service people were making it out to be.

We were lucky that the weather cooperated with us. Not too hot, not rainy. Just right. Even sleeping in a tent with 29 other guys wasn't too bad, since they were all pretty decent cats. We had a lot of fun.

Failing, Growing Older, and Other Things I Did in the Army.

Wow, it has been ten days since my last post. That is both disappointing, and completely understandable. I started out with every intention of making a record of every day of training, both for my own amusement later on, and for the sake of anyone who enters BOLC in the future. I wanted to write a post every day. But that was before I knew how little energy I would have after a day of listening to tedious power point lectures and walking around in the Texas heat, and before I realised how much of my time would be spent trying to get, and then waiting for rides, or waiting in traffic at the gates to the base. Commutes suck, but especially so a O-Dark-Stupid in the morning. If you come to BOLC or any other Army training where living off post is an option, DO NOT DO IT if you don't have your own car. Don't do it even if you do have your own car. Driving sucks, and you will never have enough time to really do all of the things you need to be doing if you have to drive all over the place. Just live on base. Trust me. The best evidence I can give for this theory is this very post. I had a very hot, tiring day today, and still have time to write in the blog. See?

Alright, so: failing. That is what I did yesterday. I failed my PT test. For an Army PT test you have to do a certain number of situps and pushups and run two miles in a certain time, based on age and gender. If you fail any single event, you have failed the entire test, and have to retest later. Well, I failed. And, since I don't do anything half-way, I went ahead and failed all three events. I failed pushups by 2, situps by 5, and the run by 10 seconds. I used to be fit and trim and athletic. That was 12 or so years ago. But there is some good news, which is actually caused by the second thing:

Growing Older. Yeah, today is my birthday. Officially 32 years old. Almost 1/3 of 100. Honestly, I really don't care, and I don't feel old. It doesn't feel much like a birthday, either. I got all of my presents already, either before I came to training or last weekend when Dana visited. (Oh yeah, Dana visited. It was awesome, but I completely was too busy having fun to write about it. But she drove over 1000 miles to spend two days with me. If that is not love, then love doesn't exist. That is right, I said DROVE. In two days, nonetheless. My wife = Road Warrior Princess) So today I didn't have a party or ice cream, but I did have cake at lunch, and the Army was so kind as to give me a birthday present: since I am now 32 I fall into a different testing bracket for PT. If I test again, and get the exact same scores as last time, I will pass with flying colors! Sweet! This may be the first time in history that someone has been deemed to be in better physical condition simply by virtue of getting older. Gotta love the Army!

As for training, it has been mostly very dry Army/Military doctrine for the last week or two. Some of it is more interesting, but some is seriously laughable in it's monotony. We spent two hours (that I will never get back) talking about the various stages of casualty transport. This is something that I will never do, no matter what capacity the Army places me in. Or there were the three hours talking about the various kinds of companies and battalions etc. that you can be assigned to, after which our instructor said "but these are just templates. The Army can create any kind of unit of any size, based on the current need. So your own units may look nothing like these." Well great. Thanks for taking my afternoon telling me things that I may or may not ever find remotely applicable to myself. Next up: a list of people who have gone blind from intentionally staring at the sun.

Today was a change of pace, though. Today I learned how to field dress an M-16, which was really cool. For you non-military types, field-dress is Army speak for "take apart" or "disassemble." Don't ask me why they don't just say "disassemble" because I am pretty sure nobody in the Army could tell you that, either. But I digress. The training was simple, straight forward, and I went away knowing for sure that I had gained a skill that I previously did not have. We didn't get to shoot the weapon yet, but that is coming soon. I am really pumped for that. Now that I can field dress and M-16, I almost feel like a serious GI. Almost.