Our April is Over, thank god

It's finally happened.

The Birthday parties are officially over. Today was Maisy's and we braved through it. 12 Kids total. Mostly little girls.

It used to be cute that all the kids were born in April. The cuteness is wearing off. As each April comes around, the more we as parents seem to frown.

No, seriously though, it's over. 7, 6, and 3. 1st, 27th, and 19th. Incase there are some family members out there that have trouble remembering the dates. Hey, even I forget sometimes. Another year older.

Had a slight tragedy today. Maisy ate it pretty good in the backyard during her party, and Hayden came to the rescue while Maisy was inside Crying. Hayden gathered all the girls up and broke out his AirHog. A toy you step on and it makes a NERF rocket fly in the air. Think of the sledgehammer at the fair trying to hit the bell at the top. So, he had all the girls lined up and orderly taking turns on the AirHog. Funny stuff. Maisy was a bit pissed that all the girls had Hayden's attention and not hers.

Couple of minutes later and a tissue, she was back in the groove and playing. Good time, overall.

Coffee and Starch

My mornings usually start pretty normal... Get up at between 4:45 and 5:00 a.m. and start the day. Shuffle off to the kitchen, start the morning's coffee and head to the shower. After that... It's time to bust out the ironing board. Sidebar....

Before I joined the Marines... I must have only ironed about 11 times in my entire life. Since joining the Marines, I may iron atleast 11 times in a week. I used to hate it, now I sort of enjoy it. Almost a form of unwinding or in my case at times, winding up in the morning.

All this and then I check my email. Type a bit, here and there, check out Leslie's blog, the news, my bank account, and then the weather. Usually in THAT ORDER!! I suppose that could show some evidence of my priorities in life, if one took the Freudian look at it. By the way... When I wake up... Everyone wakes up. Did I mention we get the kids up at around 5:15 to start getting them ready. I'm not a huge believer in TV, these days, so as soon as I wake up, I turn on the radio. No TV. Sometimes it works, sometimes it backfires miserablely. Sometimes you just need your Jetsons to get your day started. So, there are exceptions to the TV rule, but very few.

So, here I am, getting ready to sign off, and head out the door, to pick up my V8, Vegan Powerbar (yeah, I know... Vegan. But, it's damn good though), and water at the C Store, and then it's off to work to get there by 6:30. Today, Heather is taking the kids to day care. She's a good girl, and I remind her of that, often. Tomorrow, it's my turn. So, the day will start about 15 minutes earlier.

See you tomorrow morning.

Mark

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

Since I started working, it seems I haven't really had time to do much.

Let's start with reading. I used to love to read books. Hell, anymore, I find myself firing up the computer just to keep up with the day's events. 5 minutes later... I'm off, and we're making dinner.

Writing... Well, that one's pretty self explanitory. As you can tell, I just haven't been keeping up with this blog lately. That should change in the very near future.

Arithmetic... Well, that's math, and math is numbers. Granted, we've been doing a bit of addition and multiplication at this house, but, the side effects are not having much free time to enjoy yourself with.

We did baseball games today. I will post that later. Funny as hell, though.

Went to Harley, saw a bunch of chrome and black paint. Nothing special. Picked up 4 bolts for my airbox and we were outta ther after we had a slice of free pizza and free beer. THAT PART KICKED ASS!!

Put some new tires on the Mazda today and finally.... after starting our day leaving the house at about 0940, we were home by 1600 (4 p.m.) Took a quick cat nap, and up for dinner.

Exhausting.

Should go riding in the morning. Looking forward to that. Weather here is getting hotter and hotter and more and more bitchin.

Monday I start class. ENV 101. Basically more HazMat classes. I love being on a Marine base, at times. Nothing like FREE Education. Plus, having a GREAT employer helps out, too. Basically, I've been told that if it's free, I can do as much as I'd like and not to worry about the time I'm not at work. Better yet... I'm still getting paid.

Awesome.

Well, I'm outta here.

I'm tired, and I wanna go to bed

(Had a little drink about an hour ago, and it's gone right to my head.) From JAWS (In the boat, drunk)

King Dork, I am so crowned

So, yeah.... 105 more days till the release of this book. I am truly a enormous Harry Potter retarded, geeky, freak about these books. Don't bother buying me any. I own them all. I read them more than once. I have all the movies. J.K. Rowling, may go down in history as the equivilant to Stephen King, Daniell Steele, and William Shakespeare as far as name / book recognition.

Speaking of Stephen King, this is another Author in which I am stupid about. I think it all started with Cujo for me. Seeing that movie as a kid scared the shit out of me. Stuck since. Anyway, the Dark Tower Series... Totally bitchin'!! My little brother, Greg, and I are friggin freaks about this series. Greg... He may have me by 1/2 a notch on this one. They started putting out the Dark Tower Series Comic books. According to my brother, they are flippin amazing. He buys 5 copies of each one for various reasons. I can't find ANY of them out here, or I'd probably do the same. I guess, they're only putting out a certain number of issues, and that may be it. Like an appendix to the series or an addition in a sense. This has been going on for a few months. I still can't find ANY out here. I'm relying on my brother (who kicks ass!!) to take care of me on this.

T.A.D.

I'll be going T.A.D. here pretty soon (next week or so.) Heading off to MCLB Albany. That would be Marine Corps Logistics Base, Albany. What's there? Couple things... DS2 Headquarters and the birthing and burial place for all things Motor Transport. If it has really anything Motor T related in the Marines... it's either off to or coming from Albany. Gotta go there for some training and what not, for their version of Safety classes and what not. I really don't know what it's ALL for, but I don't really care. It's "old hat" as far as I'm concerned. Been there, done that. Have I told you how much this job RAWKS??!!

All the perks and job knowledge of the Marines, and you get to wear normal clothes and get off early. It reallly is nice working on base. I love being around the Marines. Marines are a great batch of people. Unique in their own way. Once you've worn the uniform, you get it, and they seem to get you (other Marines) Anyway.... if it weren't the Marines, it would be so easy... A caveman could do it.

Which will bring me to my next picture....


This is our MOST favorite picture. By the way.. I love the internet. I found this picture hanging up on the read board outside of some MgySgt's office in our building in which we share with the Marine contingent at our building. I took it, and brought it home to show Heather. 7 minutes later, it was on our desktop... Heather is a whiz with Google. So, some of you have recieved your Caveman email. Others that haven't... I knew you'd be looking here.

Heather and I have been laughing our asses off since yesterday afternoon with this one. Someone has to email this to Raul.. For you Browns... (that's a Heuer side relative.. he's in the Army... Used to be in the Marines) I'm sure Jim is on it.

Later, kids....

Mark

Duty

Yep... The hard charger has Barracks Duty today. ALL DAY and ALL NIGHT. Poor thing. Usually she gets lucky and has duty on the weekday... Therefore resluting in her checking in at 1630. Not this time. 0730 check in time. However, most of the kids there are gone I heard from Heather so it shouldn't be that bad. Nonetheless, around 1100 she showed up in the Gov-ster van wearing all her duty gear. She had to take a kid to the Naval Hospital (we live by it,) good way to kick off the Easter weekend, I suppose. Good Friday wasn't so great for this cat, I guess, resulting into a Shitty Saturday.

Well, all you tax payers are getting your money's worth today.

Districts

No... Hayden did not win at Districts... However, what he did win is "Classic Design Award." Not bad, it's a nice Cert. I didn't take a picture of it, I'm in a rush.

I gotta get gone in about 15 minutes to get the kids to Day Care and Youth Center, so I can get on the road and head to work. We all had a meeting of the collective former Marine Minds, and what we came up with was... A change in hours. We know that Overtime is just about a key punch or two away once Corrective Parts start coming in, so we felt that since it will be anywhere from 1-2 hours overtime a night, we'd like to come in at 7, get off by 1530, and if worse came to worse, after overtime, we're still out by 1730, giving us family time still. It was a no brainer... We bit and bit hard.

This is so far, a great job... It is comprised of Purely Former Marines and a couple of former Soldiers. So I believe that it is about 100% former military. So, nobody's late, they're all about 10-15 minutes early! We function well, we butt heads even better and most importantly, we seem to be getting the job done.

The big boss man is a former CWO5!! Yeah, so he's a god on this base and can pretty much aquire ANYTHING he wants. It funny to see Colonel's tripping over themselves to do this guy a favor for us. It's actually nice having a guy like Gunner Cooper on our side.

That's all I got for now. I'll try to get my lazy ass to post some pics soon.