ScarBelly's Revenge!

2009-10-25T22:41:00.001+04:30

It has been some time since I have posted on my blog - I have been in Afghanistan for about 4 months now - it's hard to believe some times.

Time has gone by so quickly and I haven't had much chance to post about the experiences I've had here and that may be a good thing.

Life is more complicated than good and evil; other factors include ignorance, manipulation, fanatacism, etc...

I wish I had the answers to some of the more difficult problems in the world - but that's why it's easy to be a Soldier - you aren't afforded the luxury of an opinion, you simply enforce the will of the people as dictacted by their elected leaders.

I hope you're all in good health and happy!

Stewart

Here I go again on my own!

2009-06-29T10:10:00.002+04:30

Okay, maybe not on my own - but they don't have an 80's glam rock song for "Here I go again with my platoon of Cav Scout killing machines!"

It's almost 0200 and we are going to get on a bus for the airport and supposedly fly out of this lovely training base and enter a secret destination in the Middle East before we go to Afghanistan. I'll give you a hint, it's a country that end's in "stan" (if you don't get this joke, try looking at a map of the area).

I wish I had taken more time to enjoy relationships before I left - I think we take friends and family for granted. I am grateful for the opportunity to have met so many people, and actually gotten to know them on a personal level. My dad tells me that the purpose of life is learning to have successful relationships - I am probably misquoting him, and I'm sure he would include more than that.

I don't want to sound dramatic - I don't think I'm marching off to my death. I think I'll be back in a year enjoying gelato, wrestling with Eli, and blasting bunnies on the weekends again. I just want you to know that I am extremely content to be a Soldier. Regardless of the politics of this war, whether or not you agree with the current or past president, I am privileged to know these men, and I wouldn't trade this opportunity for a more glamorous or higher paying position.

Thanks for your support - for me and my family. I'll talk to you from the other side.

Stewart

The Road March

2009-05-29T01:08:00.002+04:30

The Mob (short for mobilization)

2009-05-10T07:01:00.006+04:30

These pictures are long overdue. I tried to make this all chronological, but I'm tired and I can't get the freaking pictures to drag up and down...

Here are the pics with captions:

Here we are at the air terminal in Las Vegas - all our gear laying out on the tarmac next to the buses. I clearly remember seeing a Soldier's wife standing on the sidewalk of the Luxor, waving as the buses pulled away to head to the airport, and I watched her try to be brave as she waved good bye. She lasted a whole 3 seconds and then broke down sobbing.

This is a picture of my Soldiers at the team live fire exercise getting some practice at 3 to 5 second buddy rushes.

1LT Manella took this picture of me at COL Warrior while I was "playing" with my M9 pistol.

This picture of me and SFC Anderson typifies the relationship between Platoon Sergeant and Platoon Leader. You can clearly see me trying to get a point across or ask a question. The look on his face needs no description.

Apparently I perform a functions check or clear my M9 about 50 times a day - people know I'm around when they hear the distinctive click of a Beretta deckocking lever being pushed.

This is me smiling as we are about to leave COL Warrior (a fake FOB) on May 9th.

This is a classic Soldier pose - the "flop". When you'd like to rest, but don't want to go to the bother of removing your body armor and assault pack.

Starting a ruck march. I just love walking. Everywhere. Seriously.

The m203 Range - we ran this range during the first week here.

I qualified in the prone, standing, at night, and as you can see - with an NBC pro mask on.

Firing the M203 from cover.

Here is 3rd Chalk getting on the plane for Indianapolis

Loading a round at the range.

View of the M203 range from the firing line.

Here is our barracks - our home away from home until some undetermined day in June.

Need I caption this one?

Overall, I am enjoying my job here and my time with the Soldiers I'll be working with over the next year. I find that I have very little time to miss the comforts of home, but from time to time I have little reminders of friends and family back home and your absence is more than notable. I'm glad I have just enough time to remember those I miss, but not enough time to brood over you. Besides, you're all having a huge party every day without me, so what do I care? ;-)

Take care all

2LT Brough

Camp Atterbury

2009-04-25T09:50:00.002+04:30

I've been with my platoon at Camp Atterbury for a few days now and I am enjoying getting to know them and train with them.

Pictures and more details to follow!

Various Updates and Thoughts

2009-03-27T21:24:00.006+04:30

I find myself at a crux in between periods of extreme activity where I don't imagine that I'll very much time to blog. So... here's some updates and random thoughts:

Resident Evil 5
Holy cow, this game is fun and crazy. I only need to say one word and you'll know why I like it - zombies. Becca and I have spent a lot of quality time together killing zombies and bioweapon/monsters.

Interestingly enough, some people claim that this game is racist because the main character of the game is a white male, who spends most of his time shooting dark skinned "bad guys".

This tells me that they didn't really play the game, since the "bad guys" are primarily white male scientists who invent zombie viruses, and the victims of their experiments are the oppressed african populations who have been exploited and turned into zombies by use of genetic experimentation. Also... in co-op mode, the other playable character is an indigenous African woman who is professional, intelligent, etc... Also, the characters are saved by a non playing character named Josh, who is also an African - and likewise is an adept, intelligent, professional soldier who is appaled at the experiments being performed on his countrymen.

None of this was really an issue to me since I just have fun trying to get headshots on zombies.

Concealed Carry
I signed Becca up for the class - she was pretty much kicking and screaming in protest, but she was a good sport in the classes. Will she be actually buy and carry a pistol? Who knows, so criminals beware because she's a decent marksman.

Job Woes
The company I work for has done done layoffs two months in a row, and fired 4 others for various reasons. The economy is hitting them hard apparently. I couldn't have picked a better time to be deploying since I'm guaranteed to have a job for the next year.

My Platoon Sergeant
I lucked out BIG TIME and got the best platoon sergeant I could ask for. I could go into details, but unless you have some time in the Army, I don't know that the details would mean anything to you. Suffice it to say that I feel very confident deploying with the strong NCO leadership in place in my platoon.

President Obama
During the past 8 years, I got soooooo sick of the infantile whining of liberal douche bags referring to President Bush by all sorts of demeaning terms. Especially puzzling were the ramblings of high school drop outs with ghetto grammar and bad credit, who in crude terms referred to former President Bush as lacking in intelligence. One doesn't graduate from Yale, become a rated Air Force fighter pilot, or become the President of the United States by lacking intelligence.

You can argue that a President isn't living up to your expecations, by presenting thoughtful facts and observation about his policies and actions, but as soon as you start of with "That idiot..." or a bigoted statement in regards to said individuals race, religion, etc... you lose credibility.

While I certainly did not vote for President Obama, and I find myself at odds with his political policies, you can be sure that I hold respect for the office of President and my Commander in Chief. In private company I will share jokes and discuss politics as only friends can, but I abhor those who use public and open forms to speak in overly familiar deragotory terms toward the President of the United States. There are many ways to express your dissent without becoming infantile and degrading the highest office in our great country.

Thus, you will never on my blog see me using playground style deragotory terms to describe President Obama, since they'll demean me more than him, since our current President (much like his predecessor) in spite of his faults has so far, has been dignified in the face of boorish criticism.

Afghanistan
I'm sure you've all heard President Obama's plan to increase the number of troops along the south eastern border of Afghanistan. Traditionally, this has been the area that has seen most combat action since the topple of the Taliban. I'm curious to see how this plan is implemented - I'll have a pretty good view of how the situation develops ;-)

Las Vegas
Becca, Eli and I will be heading to Las Vegas on the 12th of April to kick off my unit's mobilization. We'll be there for a week before we say good by to each other for a while and head to our mobilization training site.

Eli
I am biased, but I am blown away by how much Eli understands relative to his young age. I suppose we underestimate most children in this aspect. I have had the unfortunate task of explaining to Eli that I will be leaving him for a year and the reasons why. He has been very understanding of why I have to leave and has promised to take care of his mother for me while I am away "fighting bad guys" and helping the people in Afghanistan, so that they have access to thing we take for granted, such as clean water, hospitals, electricity, sewer, education, etc...

I don't know what public opinion is for the war in Afghanistan, but I hope that my platoon's presence in country helps make Afghanistan a better place. I believe that it is often the actions of individuals that make a difference, rather than the actions of armies or nations.

I hope to serve well, and eventually come back so I can be a daddy again.

Camp Roberts

2009-03-09T12:12:00.003+04:30

Cody, I am glad that my blog still has at least one fan. I need to be better about updating this blog, but to be honest I have been pretty short on time.

I am currently at Camp Roberts, having the time of my life! 18 hour days, filled with exciting powerpoint classes and lots of infantry battle drills in the mud. For those of you who are getting high readings on your sarcasm meters, you are actually incorrect. I have been enjoying my work here - I shot expert on the rifle range for the first time in my career, made a female lieutenant from another platoon eat/drink mud in the gun turret while I drove our HMMWV through giant mud puddles at 35 mph, and have eating scrambled eggs, bacon, and french toast nearly every morning for the past 10 days.

My unit is getting ramped up for deployment to the middle east - I'm not going to say where because it wouldn't matter anyways since I'm sure the location will change at least 3 more times before we get in country, and I took a class of operational security and now I'm trying not to post open source information that an enemy might use against me and my boys.

Needless to say, I'm very excited for the opportunity to serve my country and take part in an experience that few other people will get to have. They say that freedom has a savor that only those who fight for it will ever enjoy. I hope to experience that.

For those of you who wonder what we've been up to since this Christmas, here's the rundown (Becca's Blog has more/better info and pictures):

I graduated from Scout Leaders Course, unofficially turning me from an Armor Officer into a Cavalry Officer. During the course, I was party to one of the worst ice storms to hit Kentucky in decades (lucky me).
I went back to work at ADP for 5 days - yay!!! <--what does your sarcasm meter register for this comment?
Becca and I went with my parents to see my cousin Adam's wedding in Prescott, AZ, where I almost killed a fat hippy lady.
I went to Camp Roberts for some outstanding training in Army Warrior Tasks!

There's a lot more to it than that, but this will have to do for now!

Scouts Out!

Graduating the Armor course

2008-12-31T22:50:00.000+04:30

My apologies to anyone who still reads my blog. I haven't had a whole lot of time to post about life in general or any of the cool/lame/fun/miserable things that we've been up to.

As I type these words, I'm currently back at my civilian job - a somewhat surreal experience, since I've been gone for so long and yet I feel as though I never left.

As far as the Armor BOLC course is concerned, it was an amazing experience that I wouldn't care to repeat anytime in the next few months :-)

Over the last 2 months of the course, we spent 50% of our time freezing our butts off in the mud, rain, and snow. There is nothing like waking up on the back deck of a tank in subfreezing temps at 3:00 in the morning and fumbling to get your boots on as quickly as possible before you fingers get too numb to tie your laces. I actually prayed for subfreezing temps however, as this eliminated our "mud problem" - Kentucky clay defies physics and disproportionately large clumps of it will stick to any surface: the bottom of your boots, the track that just broke on your tank, the floor of the humvee that you are riding in, etc...

That said, we had a LOT of fun - it was very stressful, we didn't get much sleep, but we basically "played Army" with real tanks, humvees, machine guns, paint ball guns, etc...

I won't bore you with the details - IE the names and focuses of each phase of the course. I'm glad to be home for a while before I head back to Fort Knox for another month of training. We've enjoyed spending Christmas and New Years with our family and have enjoyed being able to spend time with each other (me, Becca, and Eli that is).

Light stick fun

2008-11-26T08:29:00.006+04:30

The other morning, I came home from PT at around 6:15 AM, and found that my little boy was awake and playing with two chemical glows ticks in bed. He was twirling them around like an emo kid at a rave, so I had to show him how real men twirl a light stick. So... we got some string (parachute riser cord - what's more manly than that?), and tied the lightsticks to it - the rest is history:

Eli's Master Plan

2008-11-14T04:35:00.006+04:30

Recently, my sweet wife posted this about Eli: The Plan

Not to take away from Eli's "Evil Genius" status, but he is emulating his dear old dad. There were a few nights when I spent hours drawing sketches for my OpOrders - either the concept of the entire operation, or the sketches for the various phases of the operation.

Eli was definitely more interested in my doodles than his mother was. Most of my sketches were drawn with sharpies on cardboard of the same approximate size as the white board (used for inclement weather in the field, since cardboard has a tendency to disintegrate in the rain) that Eli used with the dry erase markers I gave him last night. Eli had asked about the white boards previously, and his memory is pretty sharp at 5 years old.

We recorded him briefing his "OpOrder" last night. I thought Becca caught on to what he was doing, but I wanted you all to know that Eli is on the fast track to become a much better officer than his dad will ever be.

Compare this:

To these that Eli watched me spend time a lot of time on:

HMMWV rollover

2008-10-30T08:25:00.003+04:30

Not sure if I spelled Hum-vee right or not - don't care.

This little gem teaches us how to get out of our top heavy/prone to tipping vehicles:

This took place a while ago...

wow - I'm way behind in blogging - why doesn't the Army schedule time for this?

I loved this - it was so funny watching the guys inside the vehicle get pummeled with the rubber ammo cans and junk left loose in the cab. Getting out of an upside down humvee while wearing body armor/helmet was harder than I though...

Commanding tanks in the field!

2008-10-25T06:11:00.002+04:30

I just got back from a week of Armor STX (Simulated Training eXercises). It was INCREDIBLE! I and the other LT's in the class filled various roles in three separate tank platoons. We did everything from planning and commanding platoon missions, to driving the actual tanks.

Let me tell you, I thought it was fun taking my old 1995 Pathfinder off road, but it's NOTHING compared to driving a 67 ton tank, with a 1500 horse power jet turbine engine, across "undulating terrain" at up to 45 miles per hour.

Also, there are few things as exhilarating as pulling up into a support by fire position and suppressing an enemy defensive battle position, and on command watching your bravo section assault across the objective, spewing dirt trails behind them as they destroy the entire enemy platoon.

As far as spending time in the field is concerned, being on a tank has its advantage. The exhaust from the port at the rear of the tank reaches a temperature of around 800 degrees Fahrenheit. At a distance of about 12 feet, a group of shivering Armor/Cavalry LT's can get warmed up real quick on a chilly October morning. Also, the back deck of the tank (where the power pack is housed) retains heat for hours and hours - it's a GREAT place to lay out your sleeping bag on a cold evening.

This experience here is incredible - we are somewhere between exhaustion and elation at any given moment.

Here are a few memorable moments from the STX:

Observing an LT throw rocks at a skunk as it wandered among our lines of tanks, because he didn't want it to sleep under his tank.
Hearing CPT Stierwalt drop artillery sims in our TAA in the wee hours of the morning
Every time an LT drive (myself included) hit the brakes a little too hard, and hearing everyone over the intercom curse as they slammed into the gunner's sight/TC's .50 mount/front of the loader's hatch.

Finding the time to blog...

2008-10-07T02:22:00.003+04:30

It's been quite a while since I posted to my beloved outlet to the world, and honestly I had grand intentions of documenting exactly how much fun I was having at Armor BOLC III and how awesome tanks are...

The reality of the matter is this - the Army has kept me so busy that I am spending every "free" moment I have with my family, napping, or just trying to regain my sanity. Honestly, the Army has always found a way to occupy my time, but in the past my time was spent waiting for the next thing to happen. Now, they have me working, studying, rucking, writing, etc... from before 6 AM every morning until at least 5 PM every night - and now when I am "off work" I am writing seven page Op Orders, creating map overlays, phase sketches, etc... until the wee hours of the morning.

I'm sure I'll be a better officer after this experience, but am NOT having "lots of fun" - at least not right now... This is probably in the top 3 for the most difficult experiences of my life.

Just so you all know - here is what's going on with me for the next little bit:

I finish Armor BOLC III on December 17th - the course culminates with a 10 day field exercise in the middle of winter in Kentucky... wow. After that, Becca, Eli and I will fly back to Utah to spend Christmas, and then I'll come BACK to Fort Knox for Scout Leaders Course, which will be comprised 27 days (2 weeks or so in the field), once again in the middle of winter.

After I finish these two schools, I get a short break before I leave with my unit to train up for our deployment to Iraq.

I am really excited to be fulfilling a dream, and very excited to be serving my country. At the same time, I am sad that I am sacrificing precious time away from my family that I love so much, and I am obviously feeling a little worn down from my current training.

Please keep our little family in your hearts and prayers - we love and miss you all and I can't wait until we're all back together again with our friends and family in Utah!

Firing tanks!

2008-09-15T04:42:00.004+04:30

I didn't get the greatest shots - but a few of my classmates got some great footage that I will put up pretty soon. Meanwhile, this will have to do...

This is me looking back at my crew partner from the gunner's seat. I've got my right hand on the breach of the 120 mm main gun.

I'm peeking out of the loaders hatch in front while my crew partner chills above the TC hatch before we start our evaluated runs. We are a pretty deadly combination.

This is a video I took of two other 2LT's beginning their first engagement.

First picture of a tank...

2008-09-08T06:35:00.003+04:30

It's been a long time coming - I haven't had a ton of time to take pictures... Anyways, here's the tank I've been working on the past week and a half. I am taking a page out of Eli's book and calling it "Tanky" ;-)

The two guys in the pic are members of my tank crew, 2LT Brett from Philidelphia, PA, and 2LT Deleon, from Florida by way of Hawaii.

All of our experience with this tank has been pretty much academic - we have learned how to do preventative maintenance, function checks, crew drills, etc... But we haven't ever driven in out of it's stall. Each member of our crew of 4 has started it up - it takes 11 gallons of fuel just to start up the tank's jet engine. Seriously - the sound of the tank starting up makes you feel like you're in the batmobile.

Fort Knox and Armor School

2008-09-01T05:29:00.002+04:30

I started Day 0 of Armor BOLC III on Monday of last week. You probably won't be hearing very much from me during the class - I have this labor day weekend off and then I don't have another day off until the beginning of October; we'll be working 7 days a week.

I plan to take a bunch of pictures of what I'll be doing - hopefully Becca will be able to post them on her blog.

So far, I've learned that if you aren't careful, an Abrams tank will kill, maim, or dismember a careless crew member. I'm really excited to learn everything, although I'll admit that I wish we weren't on such a compressed time scale and we had a few more weekends off thrown in.

BOLC III is a LOT more fast paced than BOLC II. We did all the inprocessing that took a full week at Fort Benning in only a few hours. We've also qualified with the M9 pistol and started the fundamentals of Tank Gunnery. It's going to be an action packed 3.5 months!

I got tagged

2008-08-30T08:12:00.002+04:30

High School Tag

Becca tagged me, so here it goes:

1. Did you date someone from your school?
A few - I even tried dating a DHS alum in college - bad idea :-0

2. What kind of car did you drive?
My mom's minivan when she'd let me borrow it.

3. What was the most embarrassing moment of high school?
I think high school was one great big embarrasing moment now that I look back on it.

4. Were you a party animal?
Not unless you count running cross country and playing computer games past midnight!

5. Were you considered a flirt?
I think so, but that is subject to opinion.

6. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir?
No.

7. Were you a nerd?
That's subject to opinion.

8. Were you on any varsity teams?
Yes - X-Country and Track.

9. Did you get suspended/ expelled?
I once got kicked off the bus for a week for holding up a sign in the rear window that said, "Help! Our bus driver is a drunk Mexican!". That was in Jr. High though, so it may not count.

10. Can you still sing the fight song?
Both my parents were Davis High Darts and they taught me the fight song from an early age - still remember it.

11. Who were your favorite teachers?
Mrs. Barker - my sophomore English teacher; she was SO NICE, and taught me a lot about cultural literacy and great literature. We read "The Princess Bride" in her class.
Mr. Dau - my AP U.S. History teacher; he taught me a LOT about leadership.
Coach Burhley - my running coach/history teacher; I can't explain this guy to you - you just have to know him.

12. Where did you sit during lunch?
With the cross country dudes in the lunchroom with the rest of the nerds.

13. What was your school's full name?
Davis High School.

14. School mascot?
The Dart or Dart Man - not really sure.

15. Did you go to Homecoming and who with?
Yes - I went once with a girl who was wearing a blue sequin dress and the next day my family found blue sequins all over the car... I had a hard time convincing them that nothing "funny" had happened.

16. If you could go back and do it again, would you?
Maybe - I think it would be fun to go laugh and point my finger at everyone that thought they were "too cool" for me, and spend more time being friends with the people that I thought weren't "as cool" as me.

17. What do you remember most about graduation?
I remember being amazed that I actually was leaving the public education system and that I would no longer be around all these people anymore.

18. Where did you go senior skip day?
I think I had to go to class on senior skip day because I'd already skipped a lot of school...

19. Were you in a club?
No.

20. Have you gained some weight since then?
Yeah, finally! I needed to gain some weight. I am 6'1" and I graduated at 155 lbs. Now I'm a 186 lbs steely eyed killer - I wish I could say it was all muscle though.

21. Who was your prom date?
I wasn't going to go to the prom - under protest I let my mom and sister talk me into asking a girl in my ward... We had a lot of fun and I'm glad we went together.

22. Are you planning on going to your 10 year reunion?
Ha ha - I was in the middle of training at Fort Benning when I got a phone call asking if I was going to be able to attend a reunion dinner that evening! I still probably wouldn't have gone if I had the time and had been in the area.

23. Looking back, what advice would you give yourself?
Don't take yourself too seriously! Don't ever think that you are above or beneath anyone else. Do your homework! Probably the most important advice would be, "Here is the phone number of this SUPER hot girl in West Jordan, her name is Becca and she's just your type so give her a call as soon as you can..." ;-)

I don't really believe in passing the tag along, so I'll probably have horrible bad luck

Graduation

2008-08-21T10:10:00.003+04:30

It's the wee hours of the morning on the day I graduate from BOLC II. In a few hours, we'll be waking up at 3:30 AM to clean this place up and get all our stuff out of the barracks. The graduation ceremony begins at 9:30 AM, hopefully ending within an hour of that time - at which point LT Genin and myself will get in our vehicles and forge north and west toward Brentwood, Tennessee!

Here is the video that will be shown at our graduation:

Here is another video that LT Thompson also made showing the "real BOLC II", in which we are always sleeping in our gear, waiting for the next training event:

Hope you enjoyed them!

More Army vids for you

2008-08-20T07:01:00.005+04:30

This mission was incredible. Our platoon's mission was to retrieve a High Value Target from a hostile town. My squad was tasked with providing support by fire - translation; we setup a LOT of machine guns and put so much simulated lead through the windows and alley's of the hostile avenues of approach that they can't move to attack our snatch and grab team. We had several M249's and two 240B's. The 240B is our bigger weapon with lots of range and punch. I was the 240 gunner for the far left side - you can see me lighting up the enemy in the 2nd and 3rd videos.

The first video shows the PL with the assaulting element in the village after they have entered the building where the HVT is believed to be located.

This second video shows the sergeant approaching the position where my machine gun is set up. If you pay attention, you can hear the machine guns "talking". In order to keep a steady rate of fire without burning out a barrel or running out of ammo, the machine gunners will fire a burst and then let another gun "talk", and another, etc... before firing again. Even using this method our barrels were blistering hot.

This third video shows me scanning my sector and putting simulated lead (laser transmissions) in various windows and alleyways. You'll notice that I'm am brushing the dirt under me with one hand. That is because I have fired over 400 rounds of blank 7.62 ammo at that point and that brass is HOT! I tried to get most of it out from under my elbows, but I just had to suck it up and keep firing. :-)

Please excuse the language of the NCO taking the video about the time that the Artillery sims are going off...

We got major props on this mission - the cadre observers stated that this is best run mission that they have seen in the last 6 classes! :-)

As much fun as this was, I'm glad to be done and headed on to the next phase now - Armor OBC at Fort Knox, Kentucky. BOLC II has been an "appetizer" compared to what I can see of BOLC III/Armor OBC from the schedule they have posted online. There's going to be a LOT of gunnery.

It has been an interesting experience hanging out with LT's who are on average 4-7 years younger than me. I have a LOT more patience now that I'm a little bit older and hopefully a little wiser than I used to be. I am VERY impressed with my "peers", I think that many of them are extremely mature for their age - much more mature when I was in my early twenties. That said, I am not surprised to see a good share of "that guy" types that find an excuse to get "buzzed" every night, including the night before we do a battalion run or a PT test.

Most importantly, I'll be picking up Becca and Eli this Friday at the Louisville Airport. I can't tell you how excited I am to be with them again! I graduate this Thursday and then I will drive with my buddy LT Genin up to spend the night with the Farr family in Brentwood, TN. From there, it's a short 3.5 hour drive to Ft. Knox, to check in with housing, and then a 30 minute drive to pick up my babies at the airport!

Cease Fire, Cease Fire, Cease Fire!

2008-08-17T19:47:00.002+04:30

Some diplomacy is in order here...

Becca's post here about me sending her flowers, has gotten me into a teensy bit of hot water. I added my own comments to her post, but I think it bears repeating.

I just want to elaborate on a few things...

In the Army, we do something called PMCS on our vehicles - PMCS stands for
"Prentative Maintenance Checks and Services". The idea is that you take
care of the vehicle BEFORE it breaks down. I haven't ever sent Becca
flowers as a way to get out of trouble - I imagine that I would find them
shredded and dispersed all over the front yard, and a big sign pounded into the
lawn that says, "Nice Try Jack#@$!"

I need to do a LOT of preventative maintenance, because I screw up A
LOT! Just ask Becca.

Other guys want advice from me about sending flowers about as much as I
want a punch in the face from them - which is a likely combination.

A few random video clips

2008-08-17T09:44:00.006+04:30

Here is a little video snippet I took to show you what the inside of Sleep Tent #1 at FOB Voyager is like - enjoy!

And HERE, is part of a trench clearing mission - can't see much? No clue what's happening? Good - now you know what it was like to be a part of that mission! :-)

1st Squad (the "best" squad) was tasked with providing support by fire to the assaulting elements - in laymans terms, this means that it was our job to keep firing over the top of the trench so the enemy wouldn't want to raise their heads and fire back. This also serves to distract them or keep them pinned down so it's easier for the assaulting elements of our attack to kill them as they sweep through the trench.

You can hear a whistling artillery sim that failed to detonate, and our squad leader calling for an ACE report (Ammo, Casualties, Equipment) Most of the Squad reported Amber (I have ammo, but not very much) or Black (I no longer have enough ammo to complete the mission or I am completely out) for Ammo, and "up" or "green" for Casualties and Equipment (meaning that we were uninjured and still had all of our mission essential equipment intact.

The yellow smoke popping up from the trees is from a smoke grenade that the assaulting elements used to mark their limit of advance - as they advanced to our left, the tossed smoke grenades at the bunkers they were preparing to attack, that way we could shift our fire to the left of the smoke in order to avoid "friendly fire"/fratricide.

Look carefully when I pan to the right - can you see two people lying in the prone? If not, then I guess our spiffy new camo really does work!

End of week 6 at BOLC II - goodbye FOB Voyager!

2008-08-16T23:52:00.003+04:30

Well, it has been: fun, boring, tedious, exhausting, restful, exciting, awesome, and stupid.

It is hard to generalize a week long experience with 15 hour days. It's the Army - hurry up, then wait. You don't have to love it or hate it - you just accept it.

I'll be honest with you - I LOVE to complain while I'm doing this stuff - eating cobwebs and I nagivate through the forest in pitch black, laying in the prone for 20 minutes while the PL tries to figure out where the hell the op for is, sitting in the back of a humvee as we bounce down the back raods of Ft. Benning, trying not to touch the forests of mildew as I shower in the tent at the FOB... it's all part of the experience, and when I'm sitting back in my cubicle at work I will miss it.

Here are a few pictures of this last week - enjoy!

2008-08-10T13:30:00.001+04:30

It's 3 AM - I just finished a CQ shift... it's the end of week 5 (out of 7) at BOLC II, and our last day before we go to FOB Voyager for another week. It's been a while since I updated the blog, so let me give you a recap:

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Squad Live Fire

This was very interesting. I've run "battle drill 1 alpha" many times (squad attack), but NEVER with live ammo. Here's the run down: My squad (10 people) moves in a squad column formation across a woodland clearing toward an objective where we expect to find the enemy (computer controlled popup targets). We encounter targets at a simulated listening post/observation post and take them out, then continue on to the main objective where we again fire live rounds at popup targets.

I had a lot of fun, but I have to admit that it was a little unsettling to have people walking behind me with loaded M4 rifles. In any case, it got my adrenaline pumping.

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CCTT

This was AMAZING - we ran another convoy operation, but this time it was in a giant simulator. We had two squads in four trailers with simulated humvees and weapons. You sat in the vehicles and used REAL WEAPONS that had been modified with compressed gas lines to power them with recoil and lasers to register hits on the screens that surrounded the vehicle.

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MOUT/Urban Ops

Most of this past week has been devoted to learning how to clear enemies from buildings in a coordinated effort. We started by learning how to clear a single room with only one entrance as a fire team. We culminated by learning how to clear part of a town as a platoon during the night using night vision optics. It was pretty awesome!

We used MILES gear for the earlier missions (think laser tag), and then simunitions for the later exercises (think paint bullets fired from real weapons). I was the squad leader this week, so I had the opportunity to direct my squad through the missions, while taking orders from the platoon leader and platoon sergeant over a radio - it got a little crazy at times, but I loved it!

Here are some pics from that day (I finally have a camera!):

The FOB and a dedication to Becca and Eli

2008-07-29T04:42:00.003+04:30

This week I am at the FOB

What is a FOB? It's basically like a prison, surrounded by guard towers and concertina wire, only you're trying to keep people OUT instead of keeping people IN.

Wiki definition

Of course, my FOB isn't a "real" FOB - it just simulates the suckiness of one. Here's a mental picture - 160 guys sleeping in a giant tent on bunk beds.

Anyways, I'll stop complaining since I don't have it bad seeing as how I can still strap on my M4 and wander down to the dining facility to get on the internet.

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Dedication to Becca

I ended up spending this past weekend at the barracks because I got screwed into pulling 6 hours of CQ duty - long story. Anyways, I finally saw The Dark Knight and I caught up on my sleep.

While eating lunch at the PX food court, I heard this cool song by Alicia Keys - I have been listening to it a lot (since I'm an obsessive compulsive freak) and I want to dedicate it to my one and only Becca - love you baby!

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Edited to add a dedication to Eli

Eli and I are developing quite the long distance phone call relationship. We tell each other stories before bedtime as well as jokes. I'm glad that he's mine!

Here's our song that we've sung to each other ever since he was about 3. It's so cute when he sings this one with you!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QCe2GwscXgo

Was it worth it? (all videos are up)

2008-07-28T07:30:00.000+04:30

Many of you might wonder why a person would be motivated to sell their soul to Uncle Sam. Some want to pay for college, some have ideals about serving their country... others (like me) know that they would NEVER be able to afford the opportunity to fire machine guns, grenade launcher, and GRENADE MACHINE GUNS without Uncle Sugar footing the bill.

Luckily, a buddy of mine in the platoon happened to have his camera with him. I'm extremely enthusiastic because I LOVE this stuff!

The best part is that my platoon was in charge of disposing of all the leftover ammo. That entailed firing a box of thirty-six 40 mm grenades as quickly as possible (my buddy 2LT Genin loaded while I fired), firing of 100 rounds of .50 browning machine gun rounds in two 25 round bursts, and linking together about 200 rounds of ammo for the SAW.

I'd fired most of these weapons before (except for the M2 and the Mk 19), but I love firing them so much that I forgot that it was about 100 degrees outside and that I was wearing 20 lbs of body armor over my ACU's plus a kevlar helmet. I couldn't stop smiling the whole time!

I have video of ME this time, so check it out...

Here is my "intro" to U.S. weapons

The M2 .50 cal machine gun

The M249 Squad Automatic Weapon
(I don't appear until halfway through the video)

The m240B General Purpose Machine Gun through the TC hatch of a Humvee

The M203 grenade launcher

The Mk 19 Grenade Machine Gun

And the plot thickens...

2008-07-25T08:47:00.002+04:30

...today while competing in a combatives bout, one 2LT Nolan had his nose broken by another LT who is his friend.

The IRONY here is that 2LT Nolan just barely had surgery to correct a deviated septum just before coming to BOLC II and didn't want to participate in the combatives portion of the course because of that reason. Secondary to that, he was afraid that a broken nose would result in his being "recycled" - doomed to be held back and start BOLC II again with the next class of LT's.

Luckily, Nolan will not be recycled and looks as handsome as ever!

I on the other hand, did NOT get my nose broken... However, while attempting to put the cross collar choke hold on 2LT Bracher from the dominant "guard" position, I had an NCO trainer tell me "not to execute a choke from a non dominant position". Confused, I released my opponent who then slipped out of my guard and took a dominant position on me. I spent the next 45 seconds keeping him from putting a bent arm bar on me.

I got up, shook hands with my buddy Bracher, and we walked off the field brushing the dirt off our faces, smiling at the fact that we were finally done choking and beating each other for the rest of the cycle.

If you want an idea of what Army combatives at BOLC II looks like, check this out:

And another thing...

2008-07-23T05:50:00.002+04:30

For the past 3 days, the air conditioning in the barracks has made a sound reminiscent of a freight train at all hours of the day and night. This is NOT conducive to sleeping - is BOLC II a reality show and there are hidden cameras to measure our reactions to sleep loss?

While running the SMR range today (short range marksmanship), we had a storm move in. Apparently the Army can't conduct training outside once lightning strikes are visible - so we called it a day, packed it all in, and then sat in a bus for half an hour before the range could be "cleared". Apparently, in Georgia on a school bus, when you leave the AC running the condensation builds up rapidly and has nowhere to go. That is, until it overflows and spills onto 2LT Brough, who just happens to be sitting right under it. Also, apparently when the prior conditions are in place, when the charismatic NCO bus drive hops on the bus and punches the gas, the rest of the built up water will come pouring out onto where I was previously sitting (I had enough sense to move) and ironically it will come out of the other AC unit onto the only Lieutenant to make light of my predicament (Karma might actually exist).

Too make it all better, a few of us went to the Olive Garden in Columbus, where we enjoyed a delicious meal and acted like we were in junior high - commenting on the "20 pieces of flair" that the server was wearing on her collar.

Hope the rest of you are also enjoying your summer!

This week in the news...

2008-07-22T03:16:00.003+04:30

Cody Shepard turned 30 this past weekend - I attended his surprise birthday party at the Tarbet residence at Fort Rucker. This party took a few interesting turns - I went from being somewhat bored listening to a gaggle of pilot students and an instructor talk about the nitty gritty details of rotary wing aviation, and then within an hour we were on the post golf course to test out Cody's new golf clubs.

It was so late that the course wasn't open - but the lights for the driving range were on. The ball machine was empty, so we had to collect balls off the range on foot. If you're thinking "this isn't very adventurous and/or interesting", you might be right - that is until the skunk ran out into our little formation of people gathering golf balls. The next logical step (for some of us anyways) at that point was to begin lobbing golf balls at the skunk. Cody was able to hit it and get it to raise its tail. No one got sprayed, so it turned out well in my opinion.

Earlier in the day, Josh and I went to a place to go swimming (that is definitely within 150 driving miles of Fort Benning, GA - seeing as how I didn't have a weekend pass) with some of his friends. Josh and I applied liberal amounts of sunscreen everywhere - except the parts of our backs that we couldn't reach on our own. We were both a little reluctant to ask each other "Hey, would you mind rubbing a little sunscreen on my back?" thus we both got "homophobic" sunburns.

I went to sick call this morning for mine, being that it is very painful and our class started combatives training this morning (like wrestling, only you get your opponent to submit by getting them in a position where you can cause extreme pain, break a bone, or choke them into unconsciousness - fun huh?), and it seemed like a sunburn might be EXTREMELY painful for such an activity.

Well - for my efforts to go to sick call, I got the following:

a bottle of tylenol for my sunburn
an ass-chewing from the captain who is in charge of my platoon (for being dumb and getting a sunburn).

I STILL haven't seen batman, but I hear it's good...

By the way, I'm trying to convince Becca to fly out to Atlanta so we hang out in the middle of my training - so if you talk to her, tell her what an awesome idea it is to fly out and visit your husband while he's missing his family at Fort Benning.

Thanks for reading
Stew

My little Army man

2008-07-19T02:36:00.001+04:30

Becca's Post

Night Fire

2008-07-18T08:09:00.003+04:30

Maybe I'm easily impressed, but night fire is the most fun I've had so far here! It was just like a video game! I could see the green laser beam through my night vision and the bloom on the target... wow!

The best thing is that it's the first time I've been to an Army rifle range and it wasn't blasted hot.

That's all - just thought you'd like to know :-)

Here's a cool little video on youtube that shows what night fire looks like through a nigh vision monocular - you can skip ahead to 3 minutes 55 seconds to see the night fire portion of the video.

For reference, this is from A company of BOLC II, they were an earlier iteration this year - I'm in C company...

BOLC II, week 2 so far...

2008-07-18T00:15:00.002+04:30

Okay, here's the highlights:

We finally stopped filling out forms, getting EO briefings, etc...
We were issued a bunch of gear - some of it pretty cool (night vision, laser sights, etc)
We range qualified with M4 rifles
Tonight we are doing night fire with the M4 using the aforementioned "cool" gear

I was issued an M4 with an M203 grenade launcher attached to it. If you're like me, then you are thinking, "Cool! Grenade launchers are AWESOME!" and you'd be right - they ARE awesome. The problem is that EVERYONE in my squad will be shooting grenades out of the M203 I'll be carrying - but I'll be the one carrying an extra 3 lbs on the end of my rifle and cleaning after trips to the range.

I shot a 29 out of 40 at the rifle range - which is the best I've ever done at an official qualifying range. The requirements were that we shoot at 20 pop up targets (from 50 to 300 meters away) from the prone position while resting the rifle on sand bags, then shoot at 10 targets from the prone without the sand bags, then 10 from a kneeling position. All of this is done wearing a kevlar helmet, Interceptor Body Armor (20 lbs), a load bearing vest with canteens and extra magazines, and the hot Georgia sun beating down on you since you started marching to the range.

I won't toot my horn too much though - it took me 4 attempts to qualify (23 or better), which is a first for me. Ironically, I shot a higher percentage of targets from the kneeling position than the prone positions - I think I felt more comfortable shooting from the knee because of all my bunny slaying excursions :-)

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Enough Army stuff...

I don't want to sound all sentimental and non-hooah, but I'm kind of sad that I'm missing out on shooting the tube this summer, playing rock band at Danny and Emi's, shooting stuff with my bros in law, and hanging out with all my family.

Most of all, I have REALLY missed Becca and Eli! Every time I talked to Eli, he asks me how I'm doing, if I miss him, when I'm coming home... every word he says is a tiny knife twisting in my heart. I LOVE THAT KID! He's toughing it out pretty well though, and I expect that he'll LOVE seeing all the tanks at Fort Knox, when he and Becca come out to stay with me during Armor OBC/BOLC III in Kentucky. Hopefully he'll be pretty excited to see me as well.

I keep thinking about Becca too - I always say that she's my best friend, but this training has proven it to be so true! I spend a lot of my free time on the phone with her - I need someone that I can talk to. It would be nice if she were around so I could hold her... but oh well - there's a time and place for everything.

It's my mom's birthday this weekend - This Saturday she's turning 35 again - if you're reading this mom, Happy Birthday!

I'm looking forward to spending another weekend at Fort Rucker. Shanell Dawson has gone to Utah for the rest of the month, so Josh's house is a haven for wifeless/childless husbands.

And so ends the first week of BOLC II...

2008-07-11T23:36:00.002+04:30

Not with a bang or a whimper, but rather a smile and a sigh of relief.

I have just been released for my first weekend here at Fort Benning. I was PLANNING on heading down to Fort Rucker, but some freak schedule change has me pulling *CQ duty tomorrow morning from 4 AM to 6 AM. I still plan on heading down anyway, just a day later.

This week has been full of mostly administrative tasks, including filling out paperwork, getting shots, getting equipment issued, and learning about how hot it actually gets in Georgia. Training is going by a LOT quicker than at my other trainings as a cadet (where "weekend" was a meaningless term since Saturday and Sunday were no different than any other day of the week, and the term "being released" meant that we had finished several weeks of training and were going home, not "hey guys - it's 5:00, you're released for the day" and you can hang out it your room, go to a movie, go shopping, etc...

I still miss having my "babies" with me - Becca can attest to the fact that I've probably spent an excess of 6 hours on the phone with her and Eli this week. It will be nice to have them with me again when I head up to Fort Knox.

Well, if any of you wanted to send me an email or call, I'm usually off every day by 3:00 pm Utah time, and have every weekend off. (Can you tell I miss my family and friends already?)

*CQ : Charge of Quarters. A company-level position of responsibility for units who house troops in their areas. Given to a mid-level or junior NCO who is responsible for the company's barracks and area during off:duty hours when the company commander and First Sergeant are not present. Lasts from COB (usually 1700 hours) to First Formation (usually 0600 hours) the next day during the work week. On weekends, the duty hours are adjusted accordingly.

Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee...

2008-07-09T00:57:00.003+04:30

I am at the end of my 3rd day at Fort Benning (incidentally, the Chattahoochee River of Alan Jackson fame really does run through the base).

BOLC II is a LOT better than any other course I've done with the Army, with the possible exception of CTLT at Fort Hood:

I'm getting my first training in the "real Army", not cadet land.
I get off every day at 5:00 PM
I am getting paid as a 2nd Lieutenant, instead of the cadet rate of $25 per day
I have people calling ME Sir for a change
ACUs are much more comfortable than BDUs
I have my xbox 360 and a TV in my room
I have my laptop and an internet connection (so I can blog among other things)
I have a car and the freedom to drive off post if I desire

There still are a few negatives:

I miss my cute wife and son
Georgia is amazingly hot and humid in the summer
I had another "Army birthday" - the day after we checked in (thanks to the people who emailed/texted/replied to Becca's blog post with happy birthday wishes to me - it meant a lot to me!)

Lucky for me the positives far outweigh the negatives and it's only 46 days until I head up to Fort Knox and I'll get to have "my babies" with me again.

I don't really have any pictures to upload because I didn't bring a camera with me... I'm hoping to borrow one soon so I can post some cool pictures to give you an idea of what it's like here.

So far we haven't really done too much - we've signed a lot of forms, sat through a bunch of briefings, and took a PT test this morning (got my run back down under 14 minutes thankfully).

Anyhoo - I'll keep you all updated as we start to do the "cool stuff" - next week we'll start combatives (beating each other up).

Day 3 driving to BOLC II

2008-07-05T20:19:00.003+04:30

Last night, I arrived in Ozark, Alabama, at 6:30 PM - meeting the Dawsons at the local Sonic Drive In.

The drive from Monroe to Fort Rucker was the shortest, but probably the most "painful". I found out the hard way that Alabama public toilets (including those found at Wendy's in Selma) aren't ever supposed to be cleaned.

Approaching Uniontown, Alabama on State road 80, I waited for 1/2 hour at the worst semi truck wreck I've EVER seen. I was lucky, some people had waited over 3 hours for the wreckage to be cleared.

Also, as you enter Montgomery, exit 168 off of I-65 is closed - so in order to get back on the Troy Highway, I had to take a 20 minute detour past 2 more closed exits and then take the "scenic" route through residential Montgomery.

I also had the pleasure of having 3 Indian (think Apu from the Simpsons, not Geronimo) gas station cashiers refuse accept payment with a credit card for a few bottles of water, unless I purchased at least $5 worth of merchandise.

I was glad to finally meet up with Josh and Chanelle Dawson, and later with the Tarbets and Shepards. It's funny to be around all these guys now that they have kids toddling around. We enjoyed some fireworks on post and talked as we walked back home (last night it was the Dawsons' home as they were kind enough to put me up for the night).

I'm still looking around for the Andreasons...

Anyways, I am quickly remembering what it's like to be in the South - there are bugs everywhere, and the humidity is palpable. Last night's 4th of July festivities were marked by a color guard dressed in Civil War period Confederate uniforms.

Also, most of the drive had the same scenery - vast expanses of tall trees, with a narrow swath through them for the roads. It doesn't feel like "home", but it doesn't feel as foreign as the first time either.

Hope you had a great 4th of July!

Day 2 of driving to BOLC II

2008-07-04T09:36:00.004+04:30

I'm no expert, but I DID sleep at a Holiday Inn last night... (that's two posts in which I've used that joke, and it's still not funny).

Now I'm typing from the comfort of my hotel room in Monroe, Louisiana. I drove all day long... boy I'm starting to get tired of driving. Here's the highlights:

Started the day in Tucumcari, New Mexico, traveled through most of the northern half of Texas, and ended up in Louisiana.
Ate lunch at the most disgusting Dairy Queen ever at Childress, Texas - I seriously flicked 3 dead flies from my chair/table before I sat down. Oh yeah, and it looks like they're in the process of re-tiling... for the last 5 years.
Hit a freak thunderstorm in Texas - while I was admiring the huge raindrops (apparently some things really ARE bigger in Texas), I failed to notice the large volume of water accumulating on the freeway. This is a bad thing when you have your cruise control set at 78 MPH. I hydroplaned for about 10 "fun filled" seconds, until I was able to slow down and regain control. Ironically, I was more concerned that I not scratch/dent/wreck our new car, than I was that I not die in a violent auto accident.
Passed through Dallas, but failed to sight the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders or determine who shot J.R.
Called 911 as I left Shreveport, LA to report a brush fire in the median of the freeway (fireworks/discarded cigarette?).
Continued to get Kick A$$ gas mileage with the Yaris; 40-43 MPG!

I am slightly bummed - I had hoped to arrive at Fort Rucker tomorrow in time to enjoy most of the 4th of July festivities - but now it's looking like I still have 8 hours on the road ahead of me. If I leave at 9:00 AM, I'll arrive at 6 PM (allowing for entering a new time zone).

Hopefully I'll still get some pig hunting in on the 5th with the boys at Rucker and get a chance to relax/rest before I report at Fort Benning on the 6th.

Today's drive

Tomorrow's drive

PS - Becca just told me that she didn't get the Holiday Inn joke, so if anyone else doesn't know what I'm talking about... here you go

Day 1 of driving to BOLC II...

2008-07-03T10:15:00.000+04:30

I am currently typing from the comfort of a Holiday Inn Express, in Tucumcari, New Mexico. (I may not be an expert, but tomorrow I can say "I did sleep at a Holiday Inn last night...").

For future reference, if any of you happen to be passing through Tucumcari at 11:15 PM and think that the Travel Lodge might be a good place to spend the night, think again... After witnessing a man with a Pontiac Grand Prix filled with about 15 computers packed into the back seat argue with another man driving a GMC Envoy about who got to park closest to the rattiest apartments I've ever seen, and then having to contact the night manager 3 times because the key card wouldn't open the door, and then trying to determine the origin of the funny smell pervading the room, I was ready to cough up an extra $45 dollars to spend the night somewhere where I wouldn't have lay out my sleeping bag on top of the bed and wouldn't be starring in a "snuff film" a la "Vacancy"

Anyways... I drove almost 800 miles today - the Yaris did well. I bought 10 gallons of gas in Monticello, Utah at $4.48 / gallon (what a kick in the crotch). I later paid $3.88 / gallon in some little town in New Mexico, and did the math... the Yaris got 43 miles to the gallon!?!? Wow!

My good buddy Cody Shepard called me and kept me awake/alert for a little bit - thanks Cody. I tried to talk to a few other people, but for the most part spotty cell phone coverage made it difficult if not impossible to talk for too long.

I'm almost done listening to The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley, and tomorrow plan to start The Blue Sword by the same author.

Good night! Or morning...

PS - tomorrow morning I'll be passing through 'Amarillo by mornin'

Here we go again. Same old stuff again...

2008-07-02T19:06:00.003+04:30

As of about 10 AM this morning, I'll be on the road until about 9 PM. I'm armed with a snazzy GPS, an MP3 player full of audio books, most of my music on CD's, and I might stop for some concentrated caffeine on the way... I'll repeat this debacle tomorrow, and then drive about half that time on Friday, hopefully arriving in the vicinity of Fort Rucker in time to celebrate the 4th with some friends, then go feral pig hunting on the 5th.

The fun and games end on Sunday when I will drive up to Fort Benning to report for BOLC II.

Please feel free to give me a call while I'm driving - REALLY, it will keep me awake!

Goodbye civilian job! (for a while anyways...)

2008-07-01T03:05:00.004+04:30

As of 1:00 PM, on Friday, June 27th, I am on a "leave of absence" from work, and I won't be going back until after the 17th of December.

A few of my coworkers pitched in and got me this lovely cake:

Don't worry, it wasn't a moldy week old cake, it was an Army cake with camouflage frosting! Thanks Paul, Eric and Jeff - you guys rock!

We spent the whole weekend moving - Becca did a pretty good job of describing the exodus on her blog post. Seriously, we got rid of SO MUCH CRAP! We still filled up a 10" x 15" storage unit.

We finished packing yesterday (yes, we had to move stuff on Sunday - it had to be done as we needed to be out by Sunday night), missing a family reunion that we'd had on the calendar for 1/2 a year. Today, we spent our day at the Utah National Guard headquarters in Draper, and the 96th Readiness command at Fort Douglas, getting necessary paperwork for me and the family before I take off for Georgia. I also got the last of my uniforms purchased and everything is packed up so I can stow it in the car and drive over 2000 miles east... what a concept. Tomorrow we'll find some time in the midst of the paperwork/errands to go see a movie together.

On a side note, I'm really pissed that my boss cut my leave of absence short by 3 days because we were "understaffed", and then she took time off for vacation on Friday. That's three days that I didn't get to move my stuff, prepare for my training, or spend with my family before I leave them, so that I could train to defend our country. I hope she doesn't have a Caribbean cruise lined up when I'm getting ready to deploy - some people...

I'm going to Hell for loving this, but...

2008-06-16T19:46:00.004+04:30

...I love seeing people get hurt sometimes. Enjoy.

Allow me to put this kid's thoughts into words:

Watch me pull this cool trick in a stoic fashion - I won't even crack a smile. I hate "the man" and my parents!

Wow, I see trouble ahead, better dismount.

Oh man - that really hurt! It's okay - just need to walk it off. Walking it off... Okay... walking it off isn't helping. Let me grab my shoe and see if that returns any of my dignity... Crap - I wish I could draw enough breath to tell my buddy to turn off that stupid camera.

Honestly, can you imagine getting hit in the junk so hard that it knocks your shoe/headphones off?

Camping with the boys

2008-06-16T00:41:00.008+04:30

Well, the Brough clan headed down to our favorite part of the world again for one last hurrah before we part ways for the summer. For a while, it didn't look like it was going to happen due to work schedule conflicts and military training...

Eli was INCREDIBLEY excited to go fishing - I think these pictures say it all. He helped his grandpa catch a fish, which got off the hook right before they got it in to shore. My dad was pretty quick however and he reached into the water and "slapped" the fish out onto the bank. Eli thought this was AMAZING and spent the next 5 minutes slapping the fish while my dad tried to clean it.

Here is Eli telling about Grandpa's fish - there is also a minor reference to a certain pine hen incident:

Eli spent a LONG time dipping his lure in the water while he stood on a big rock - here is his explanation of what he is doing:

Apart from the fish slapping, the other main interesting event of the night was a result of the fact that we only brought 4 jakes lures for 5 spinning rods. Carl lost the first one, and then my little brother Jed got his snagged. In the process of handing me his fishing pole so I could try to un-snag the lure, the top half of the pole came off and slid down the line into the water. It's one thing to lose a $1.00 lure, but quite another to lose the top half of an Ugly Stick, so we goaded Jed into stripping down to his boxers and swimming out to get his lure and pole.

Eli thought it was pretty amazing and funny that Jed went into the water - he laughed uncontrollably when Jed stated that he couldn't breathe and was experiencing heart failure (my son shows tendencies similar to his grandmother who ALSO laughs at the pain and discomfort of others). Jed retrieved the top half of the spinning rod, but gave up the search for the lure - however after my dad and I offered him money (a total of $15), he went in for another trip which was unsuccessful.

Here is some EXCELLENT footage of Jed suffering - enjoy (I know my sister Leesa will!):

We spent quite a bit of time on the 4 wheelers during the trip - Jed and I got "lost" on the way to Pine Creek resevoir and ran into some "light resistance" (pictured below)

Don't worry, it was nothing the AR-15, Remington 870, or Jed's Ruger 10/22 couldn't handle. We survived against all odds. As I like to say, the only good rock chuck/rabbit/coyote, etc... is a
dead... whatever. Also, we may or may not have hit a pine hen with our four wheeler... while it was up in a tree - I don't like to talk about it.

Eli stayed up until 11:00 PM the first night, waiting for his peach cobbler. He wolfed down a few bites before he finally asked to go to bed. He slept through a LOT of noise until about 8:30 the next morning when we had to wake him for breakfast.

The next day was a lot of fun - my dad took Eli to Pine Creek where Eli and his famed Spider Man pole caught 8 fish. In the mean time, the brothers (that includes our brother in law Carl) went for another ride on the ATV's - through Dark Valley and up the Cartwheel Trail toward prospector lake. The trail was reminiscent of "death row" on the Bair Gutsman only it was about a 1/2 mile long and vibrated our fillings out of our molars.

We tried to find a trail that looped around back toward our camp site at Cook Lake, but we ended up having to back track. Todd was able to dispatch a ravenous muskrat that was trying to bar us from crossing a stream - thankfully we survived and Todd racked up another kill.

Eli became so dirty at times that his grandpa had to remove his shirt and shake the dirt/dust from it throughout the day.

Due to time/vacation constraints, we were only able to spend two days down on the Boulder. We had a lot of fun and the grimy/dirty smile on Eli's face made the trip worth it to me.

Still "good to go"

2008-06-13T17:00:00.003+04:30

I got another one of those letters from the hospital- the kind that say I still am in remission. It's weird to think about it - Becca and I have convinced ourselves that this whole "cancer thing" was just a fluke and we're back on track. We make jokes about it. Honestly though, every time one of those papers comes in the mail, I reflect on how lucky I am for every day I get to spend above ground with the people I love.

Have a great weekend - Eli and I are going fishing!

My orders finally came through!

2008-06-11T02:31:00.007+04:30

I've been waiting to post this for a little while since it wasn't 100% that it was going to happen this summer... but I finally got orders for my officer training! I've been waiting for two years to get to this point, so it feels really good arrived here.

Soon I'll start BOLC II at lovely Fort Benning, Georgia, on July 6th and will spend 7 weeks in training that all U.S. Army 2nd Lieutenants must pass before getting training in their branch specific job. BOLC II is a fairly new training that the Army has come up with to help better prepare new Lieutenants for combat operations in the Middle East, regardless of whether they are in a combat oriented branch/position. The only downside to this training is that I won't see Becca and Eli for 7 weeks.

Becca will be quitting her job as an apartment manager; she and Eli will be moving in with her parents. Becca is ecstatic that she won't have to be dealing with the shenanigans that come with her job, and I am pretty happy that she won't be home alone dealing with strangers while I am in another state. Eli is going to be the happiest of all since he'll have a huge back yard to play in and he'll get to hang out with Grandpa and work in the garden.

After BOLC II, I'll be headed to BOLC III/Armor OBC at Fort Knox, Kentucky and thankfully I 'll get to bring Becca and Eli with me! The last time I was at Fort Knox was to attend LTC; where our instructors dressed like this:Drill Sergeant Flowers will be happy to know that I am a big fan of flutter kicks now.

I'll go through 12 weeks of Armor OBC, and then break for Christmas - after which I head back to Fort Knox for 2-3 weeks of Scout Leader Course training - this will give me designation as a cavalry officer instead of an armor officer.
If you can't tell, I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. It also makes a really good excuse to miss my 10 year high school reunion (yeesh I'm old!).

Xbox 360

2008-05-30T03:22:00.002+04:30

Well, I'm very disappointed in myself - I hopped on the band wagon and bought an xbox 360

I had been saving money for a new pistol, but then the urges overcame me and I blew my fun money on a video game console that will no doubt be a sponge for absorbing time that might have been spent on more noble pursuits.

By the way, I've had it for less than a week and I've already beaten Halo 3 and COD 4.

On the bright side, at least I was smart enough to wait until I had finished my last semester before committing the stupidity of the year.

It's so much fun :-)

Drill Weekend

2008-05-19T09:35:00.003+04:30

I finished my first drill weekend as an el-tee (sorry if you're tired of hearing about this, but I worked really hard to get hear so SUCK IT UP!), and I have to share my amusing anecdotes:

Customs and Courtesies
I have a friend (who shall remain anonymous), let's call him B. Mower... no that's too obvious, let's call him Ben M. Anyways - Ben decided it would be hilarious to dramatically salute me in grand style, but then he turned and walked right past the battalion commander, and wished him good morning WITHOUT rendering a salute. Oops - the BC let PFC Mower know he wasn't impressed.

Where's PFC Brough!?
At the end of the first day of drill, our company 1st Sergeant was making a lot of noise looking for a "PFC Brough". I made my way over to him, and the look on his face told me that he wasn't sure if he was supposed to punish me for impersonating an officer, or stand at attention as he addressed me. If you're wondering why a 2nd Lieutenant is listed as a Private 1st Class on the unit roster, then you've never experienced how slowly paperwork travels in the National Guard. In any case, this poor NCO wondered aloud if I planned on being promoted to Colonel before next month's drill.

The Rappel Tower
I've been on MANY rappel towers, but I've never been able to rappel off the simulated helicopter skid - until today. I was pretty pumped to go rappelling again today, but I have to admit - I was disappointed. It wasn't BORING by any means - but I seem to remember the rappel tower being much more exciting - and the helicopter skid was less fun than the rappelling wall. Oh well...

Do unto others...
One lesson I have learned in the Army is that it pays to be respectful of others - regardless of whether they are your subordinates, peers, or superiors. I learned this lesson first hand when I returned to ROTC this spring. I suddenly found that my subordinates from two years ago had become my peers. I was EXTREMELY happy that just about every one of them had a kind word for me and was happy to see me again.

There were a few individuals at drill this month that appeared to be noticeably nervous in my presence now that I outrank them. Their unease is probably due to the fact that they treat all of their subordinates poorly, and wondered if I might return the favor. Of course, I'm not a vindictive person, but I'm not going to tell them that *insert evil laughter here*.

The moral of the story is that while it may be fun to be an jerk, sometimes that guy that you put through hell could become the guy that you have to salute.

The Major is back

2008-05-16T19:04:00.006+04:30

I spoke with Major Roberts yesterday, fresh back from deployment to Iraq.

For all you vintage USU Army ROTC guys (circa 2004 - 2005), you'll remember Major (then Captain) Roberts. He was my first ROTC instructor and he never missed a chance to brainwash his cadets into thinking that the Engineers are the best branch of the Army. (Fact - The first Medal of Honor recipient in the GWOT, was given to an Army Engineer)

I remember very clearly sitting in a chair in front of Major Robert's desk while he looked me over to decide if I was worth sending to Leaders Training Course at Fort Knox, Kentucky back in the summer of 2004.

My favorite memory of Major Roberts goes back to the military history trip in the summer of 2005. Mrs. Roberts yelled (as she tried not to laugh) at the Major as he inched a 15 passenger van closer and closer to an over zealous and cranky employee of the Maryland Department of Transportation on the highway running past Camp Frettard.

Incidentally, we were on our way to a dining establishment called "Beef Shakes". Major Roberts instructed me to approach the takeout window and ask for a "beefshake", as advertised on their billboard. They gave me the stink eye and tried to justify their lousy diner name - maybe you had to be there... it was hilarious.

Others of you might remember a certain "coming out" ceremony as well - involving a sleeping bag at several dining in ceremonies...

I better limit my stories to the information I've already given, being that the Major has MUCH more incriminating information about me.

The Turkey Hunt

2008-05-16T01:43:00.002+04:30

I am still trying to get a hold of some pictures of our "alleged" turkey hunt, but here is the skinny:

Within hours of being made a Lieutenant, I was half asleep in the back of my father in laws truck, heading south to Wayne County for the turkey hunt. John (my father in law) and Mike (brother in law) were lucky enough to draw out for the Boulder Plateau, and I came along as a guide/cook since I have spent a lot of time in the area and was foolish enough to guarantee John a turkey if he drew out there.

Before marrying Becca, my hunting experience was extremely limited, being that my father is a die hard fisherman more than a hunter. John has taken me hunting several times over the years, so it was kind of nice to be helping him find the game for a change.

There was still snow on the ground, so we had to ditch the truck. John and Mike got on their ATV and left me at camp to cook dinner (how did that happen?!). The next day, we went out with one of John's friends (Ron) and his daughter Jenny. John got a poor shot at a tom and missed - but Mike and Jenny were able to get their turkeys before we left for home.

Luckily, John is benevolent and he forgave me for not delivering on my promise to get him a turkey. I also forgot to bring the ingredients for the dutch oven dinner and dessert - but I think I'm forgiven for that too since I didn't burn either of them.

John did exact some small form of revenge by giving a turkey leg/claw to Eli as a "back scratcher".

The Shotgun

2008-05-15T21:05:00.006+04:30

It's been kind of crazy for the last few weeks - I haven't had time to post all of the substantial events that have occurred recently

I think that both Becca and I have mentioned this, but Becca and my parents were kind enough to pitch in and get me a new firearm for my "anti-zombie" arsenal of freedom. It's a Remington 870 Express with an extending magazine tube and an 18" cylinder bore barrel. For those of you who AREN'T rabid gun fanatics, it suffices to say that it is black and evil looking.

Here is Eli, modeling the shotgun in true manly/Brough style:

My mother in law will be pleased to note the trigger lock is in place and the gun is not loaded for the picture ;-)

Within 48 hours, the 870 had already drawn blood down on the Boulder Mountain. It did its part to reduce the jack rabbit population, which is part of another story...

The Big Day

2008-05-07T04:29:00.001+04:30

Well, I finally am a 2nd Lieutenant and a college graduate.

It's been a long time coming and our family is very happy. Becca has done a pretty good job describing the event here.

I cleaned up a few of the photos for your viewing pleasure (or displeasure if that's the case).

Oh yeah

2008-05-02T03:13:00.000+04:30

The bachelor party

2008-04-28T18:02:00.009+04:30

My brother in law Danny is getting married May 9th, and we helped him celebrate the final days of his bachelorhood in grand style.

Look how truly BA we are!

Seriously, we had a lot of fun - I'm glad I ended up with brothers in law that love to have fun.

You can read about it all here: Linky

Back in the saddle again

2008-04-28T18:02:00.006+04:30

Well... my two week leave of absence from work has ended and I couldn't be happier. Well, I could ALWAYS be HAPPIER (think independently wealthy, with a cabin in the boulder mountains, ATV's, snowmobiles, guns and ammo to shoot critters, etc...), but within the realm of immediate plausibility I think I'm doing pretty well:

In the first place, my employer was kind enough to grant me the leave of absence I needed so badly in order finish my bachelors degree at Utah State University this semester (thanks ADP!).
Second, I ACTUALLY DID IT!!! I had to complete a Science of Sound class, which turned out to be more of a physics/math class than the "history of music" class I hoped it was (be warned!) - I haven't taken a math class in years and I had to hire a tutor to help me get started. Still, I was able to finish the entire class in about 1.5 weeks, which is amazing to me.
I also finished my Senior thesis, which is another story...

I commission in the Army as a 2nd Lieutenant on the 2nd of May, and then I will officially graduate on May 3rd. I am so happy that I don't know what to do! If you listen very closely, you can hear my parents breathing a sigh of relief that their oldest son has finally graduated. You can also hear my mother wringing her hands at the thought of her son in a combat zone.

I am very happy to be done - life seems to have so much savor now. My dad says that life just gets harder, but I have to echo my sister's sentiments - next year I won't be working 4/10's so I can get up at 5 AM every Thursday to drive to Logan and "play Army" all day, while I write my senior thesis and finish a physics class.

I commission at 10:00 AM, May 2nd, at Utah State University - my long suffering wife and my patient mother will be pinning the gold bars on me, Sgt First Class Lawrell Cook (the man who was perservering enough to make sure I got into LTC at Ft. Knox at the last minute back in 2005!) will give me my first salute, and Lt. Colonel (Retired) S. Rand Curtis (who is everything I want to be as an officer) will adminster the officer's oath to me.

I'm almost sad to be leaving the USU ROTC - even though most of the men and women I've met there have moved on. They are all over the world now - in various bases in across the United States as well as Germany, Korea, Alaska, Iraq, Afghanistan, and probably other places I don't know about. We all went through the same initiation:

Looking for that blasted missing land nav stake at Temple Fork
Suffering near cardiac arrest as we crossed a freezing river/lake under a zodiac boat
Turning around at the 1 mile mark by Aggie Village during the APFT
Having Jacob Harris kick you off "his" computer in the cadet lounge
Playing Halo and talking trash in the cadet lounge
Trying to hoist a ruck sack up the side of a cliff for the Jim Bridger Challenge
Having LTC Curtis greet you with "Hello Handsome!" and then seconds later comment that your ears, hands, face, or nose is the "freakiest body appendage in our organization"
Listening to Clint Edwards and/or myself muse on the benefits of a Red Dawn or Zombie Uprising scenario
Being brainwashed into thinking that no real man would play Ultimate Frisbee or wear ankle socks

The list could go on and on. I can only look forward to what the future holds. Keep your fingers crossed.

Breaking Todd into the derby

2008-04-20T10:09:00.005+04:30

My little brother Todd (who is now taller than me), accompanied us tonight on what has become a family tradition (thanks to my brother in law Mike) - THE ROLLER DERBY!

I told Becca that before the night was out I would get a picture of Todd with his arm around a derby girl. Little did we know that it would be the QUEEN of all derby girls: Dirty Pirate Hooker! (I can only wonder what my mother will think when she reads this - you might want to call me Mom.)

As it turns out, Dirty Pirate Hooker (or Jenny as she is known when she's not on the flat track) is the aunt of a girl in Becca's primary class - who'd a thunk it?!

Eli doesn't look very happy in this pic, because he was cheering for the OTHER team. He'd rather have a picture with our other favorite derby girl, Honey DeLunatic! We got to meet Honey after the bout - she gave Becca some helpful advice on becoming a derby girl - I just wish I'd been handier with the camera so we could have gotten another pic of Todd with his arm around a derby girl! I guess we'll just have to wait until the next bout...

Eli is a fan... :-)

Are we there yet?

2008-04-18T20:34:00.005+04:30

I'm taking a break from my school work right now to preserve my sanity:

My semester ends the 28th of April, and I am feverishly working to complete an entire online class in a period of two weeks (it's a long story).

Anyways... yesterday I was able to ride on a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter yesterday for the first time in about 2.5 years. I was slightly disappointed with the ride, as the pilot had the crew chief close the side doors and he didn't really do any cool maneuvers to make our stomach's jump. I guess I shouldn't complain because any ride in a helicopter is a treat.

As you can see from the pictures, there is still plenty of snow up Temple Fork Canyon.

This is me totally bragging, but yesterday I was able to physically subdue both of my brothers at the same time. Even though I'm about 20 lbs overweight, the extra weight still gives me some leverage - enough to put my brother Todd in the rear naked choke hold (I own you man!). Needless to say, Todd will probably be kicking my butt very shortly after reading this... (Todd, just remember when you have ME in the choke hold, that when I start tapping your arm, that means I give up/am about to pass out and you can let go.)

The funny thing about our little grappling match is that my little sister Leesa was worried that Todd was choking (that's why it's called a choke hold Leesa) whereas my mother was mostly concerned that we didn't break her bannister - you can tell she's been the mother of three boys for quite some time now.

What I'm really trying to say is that I'm SO HAPPY that my brother Todd has come home from his mission! I've missed that kid so much; our family feels complete again.

And happy birthdays this week Leesa and Laurie!

Here we go again...

2008-04-07T19:43:00.005+04:30

...same old stuff again.

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My little brother Todd is nearing the end of his two year mission service in Peru! My parents, and my two youngest sibling are in country with him right now - touring some of the amazing wonders of the country and meeting many of the people Todd associated with while he was down there.

Todd is amazing - he's overcome many challenges that life has thrown at him and has become an outstanding individual that anyone would admire and emulate. I'm excited to see him when he gets home this Thursday - I only wish I could have gotten the time off work to go down and pick him up.

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President Monson can wiggle his ears - who would have thunk it?

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DON'T QUESTION AUTHORITY!!!

I talked to certain county's Sheriff's office about the legality of a certain activity regarding hunting - I like to stay within the bounds of the law most of the time... ;-)

Anyways, the overzealous officer/dispatcher (the man on the phone wouldn't give me his name/title) told me emphatically that the bounds of the law were much stricter than I thought (in regards to this activity).

When I asked him if he knew where I could look up the laws that he was quoting, he told me that I didn't need to - his word on the matter was sufficient. I insisted, that in spite of him appearing to be an honest individual, I'd rather lookup the law myself rather than just take his word. He finally confessed that he didn't know where I would be able to look it up (I suggested the library, the internet, the county sherrif's office as places - if he could just give me the name of the ordinance/law/section of code I should look for or point me in the right direction).

This is confusing to me - I have a few friends in law enforcement that are NOT pompous jack asses... Had I asked them such a question (they aren't representatives of the county I was calling) and they didn't know the answer to my question, they would have told me as much and probably offered to get me to someone who did know the answer - anything to help an individual who is trying to comply with the law.

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Filliing out my ROTC accessions packet... what branch do I want? 2 years ago, I was all set to become a helicopter pilot - now I'm not sure what I am going to do.

My top three choices are: Aviation, Engineers, and Armor

We'll see what I get :-)

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Scouts!

I have been an assistant scoutmaster for the last 3 weeks. I work with 12-14 year old boys, and let me tell you - I have had to pull a few tricks from my Army background to help me out. My old Drill Sergeants would be proud to see me doing my part to keep these kids in line. It's quite the task since there are all extremely bright boys for their age and every single one of them has a cell phone that they are constantly talking/texting/gaming on.

Anyways, I'm pretty excited to have an excuse to go camping/fishing at least once a month now.

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Politics

Have you ever had the feeling that the transormation of America into a socialist state is an eventual inevitability?

I'm not talking about "the apalling behavior of kids these days", but rather the appalling behavior of the craven masses who willingly sacrifice freedoms so that the government will take care of them and protect us from ourselves.

John McCain is a Repulican In Name Only, not much better than Hillary Cinton or Barack Obama - the people who are intent on taking away the last our personal freedoms for our own good, and lowering America to a prosperity level that will be less enviable to the rest of the world.

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Becca's new haircut

Becca, her mom, and her sister all drove down to St. George this weekend - sole purpose of the trip was to get haircuts from Becca's aunt Teresa - the only person they truely trust their golden locks to.

Apparently it was worth the trip - Becca's hair is much shorter now - but the results are stunning. Thanks Teresa!

Guns for Grandma - Death of a Tape Deck

2008-03-31T10:35:00.005+04:30

While we were hunting bunnies on the Burr Trail, we took a moment to destroy the old tape deck from the pathfinder. We hadn't had very much luck killing bunnies at this point, so it was nice to have a stationary target for a change.

This old tape deck was a gigantic pain in the butt - the LCD no longer worked so you had to guess what radio station you were on, or wait for the DJ to identify the station. My brother in law Mike helped me switch it out with a new stereo - long story short it wasn't easy and/or pretty.

I'm afraid that someone or something had to suffer for the hours of frustration we endured - this tape deck had it coming:

The little voice you heard saying, "I wanna shoot one too!" is that of Eli, my pride and joy! I could hardly deny my own son the opportunity to reek revenge. Sorry Valerie, you aren't going to like this one:

Thanks to Mike for taking the video!

The great Brough migration - Spring 2008

2008-03-31T06:02:00.008+04:30

Every once in a while, Becca get's this homicidal look in her eyes (okay, maybe it's a little more frequent than that) which lets me know that it's time to get her out. Out of these four walls, out of this city, as far away as time/money will permit. A little over a month ago, I recognized the early warning signs and realized that I needed to take action immediately. We decided to use some of the precious little vacation time that hasn't been used for my final ROTC class, and head down to Capitol Reef.

Becca is planning on blogging this trip as well - if you want the "warm fuzzy" version of the trip, then you'd better read her blog - this version is the "hardcore awesome" version.

Day 1 - We left Salt Lake in the afternoon, the same day that I took my first Army PT test in about 2 years (I still am hurting, but I passed). We drove for about 3.5 hours until we arrived at our hotel in Torrey. I know that a hotel is not very "hardcore", but after a long day of hiking, off roading, and shooting stuff... relaxing in the hot tub seemed like an acceptable alternative to sleeping in a tent in Fruita.

You can see the picture of Eli setup for the road trip with his portable DVD player and big glass of rootbeer. We ate dinner at a cool place called Slackers - which had the BEST burgers we've tasted in a long time.

Day 2 - We woke up early in the morning and headed into the park - looking for any hikes that Eli would be able to complete on his own legs.

Amazingly enough, he dawdled during the short walk through Capitol Gorge to The Tanks, but he led the charge up the side of the Grand Wash to Cassidy Arch - a 3.5 mile round trip hike that ascends over 1,000 feet from the valley floor. Apparently all he needs is motivation (bring on the suck - Eli loves suffering and pain!). His primary motivation is that he was our leader - he carried the GPS the entire trip and pointed out over sign or trail marker we came across.

The pictures we took on the trail to Cassidy Arch don't do justice to the views we experienced.

Later on that night, Becca's brothers, Danny and Mike showed up - Eli was a little unhappy that this meant he now had to sleep on the floor - but that's a sacrifice that I was willing to make (I'm not making father of the year any time soon).

Day 3 - we took the Notom road along the Water Pocket Fold (ancient coral reef that runs the entire length of the park) down to the Burr Trail. Close to the intersection of these two dirt roads is a stretch of road on the Burr Trail call "The Switchbacks". I don't know how high they climb, but it was an amazing drive that made Becca very nervous in the passenger seat.

We climbed the Strike Valley Overlook where Danny and Mike got some awesome pictures of themselves looking cool in an equally cool setting, and then set out for our main event of the day - killing commies... er... rabbits. We drove around on a dirt road off of the Burr Trail, looking for the hordes of rabbits that had menaced us in that area last year.

We executed a few bunnies, and then along the way, we somehow got the pathfinder stuck on a part of the jeep trail which had been washed out by the spring rains (the cause of this incident is something we don't bring up in conversation around our house). We used an e-tool (folding shovel), a jack, and a lot of rocks which Becca found to lift up the pathfinder, which had been high centered, and spent close to an hour getting it out of the hole I drove it into on the road that Becca didn't want us to drive on :-)
In the end, we all agreed that we had a lot of fun getting the pathfinder unstuck.

As a bonus, on the way back to the Burr Trail, we saw a bunch of rabbits just STANDING/SITTING (whatever the hell jackrabbits do) STILL BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD!!! I stopped the car and was about the shoot the first one, and Becca told me to give her the gun and let her shoot. This was a true test of our love, and I almost failed. I finally gave Becca the gun, and let her shoot at the passive rabbit - which she missed. Three times. She gave up, so I grabbed the gun, and went "tactical". For those of you who AREN'T in the Army, "tactical" means that while wearing shorts and a t-shirt, you go prone in a pile of thorns so you can accurately shoot a rabbit with an AR15 from about 80 feet.

After killing a few more rabbits, we drove on to Boulder, where we ate a delicious meal at the Boulder Mesa Cafe, where Eli played with a bucket of toy trains (his highlight of the trip, on par with swimming at the hotel in Torrey - just ask him if you don't believe me).

We drove across the east side of the Boulder mountain as quickly as possible in the dark, so as to make it back to the hotel before the pool closed. We took great care to avoid the skunks, deer, and elk that were crossing the highway, but managed to add a vehicular kill to the number of dead rabbits for that day (score one for the good guys!).

Day 4 - we were so sad to be coming home - we hiked up to Chimney Rock and ate lunch in Fruita before driving home to all of our problems back in SLC. Our timing couldn't have been better though, since it snowed/rain the entire drive home!

The "Sorensen Snort"

2008-03-19T09:33:00.003+04:30

Becca's family has an endearing way of taking things they like, modifying them ever so slightly, and then renaming them with their own moniker.

For example, you know those delicious chocolate and coconut squares? You may know them as "magic cookie bars", but if Becca makes them for you, you'd better call them "Sorensen Squares".

Also, there's a delightful card game known in some circles as "Swiss". If you're playing with Becca and her family, you'd be surprised to find out that you're playing "Sorensen Swiss".

I don't know if I'm allowed to do this, but I've decided that it's MY turn to give something the Sorensen name: The "Sorensen Snort".

If you get Becca to laugh (not just giggle, but really laugh) sometimes she'll do this little snort. It's funny, because she'll get a little embarrassed and blush (it's really cute), but she won't be able to stop laughing.

An sample of the jokes that evoke the Sorensen Snort (courtesy of Alicia Carter's sister):

What do you call four bullfighters in quick sand?
Cuatro Sinko!

The funny thing is that Eli does the same snort if I viciously tickle him... It's genetic

The "DB" incident...

2008-03-13T08:25:00.002+04:30

I'm referring to this incident. Seriously, how bad is the word "douche bag"?

I forgot about saying "Bastards" too - thanks for reminding me Stacy.

Ghost Towns and Gunfights

2008-03-02T20:16:00.005+04:30

Yesterday, we decided we'd had enough "normal" Saturdays, so I managed to convince Becca and Eli that we could have fun visiting a few ghost towns in the area.

For those of you who don't know, Utah has quite a few ghost towns, mining boom towns and railroad towns that dwindled as quickly as they started up when the ore became scarce/difficult to mine or the railroad stopped using that stretch of line. Many of these old ghost towns are nothing more than a graveyard and a smattering of old foundations. Luckily, there are a few that still have some standing structures from the period when these towns were in their hay day.

We went to Ophir, Utah, in Tooele County. Ophir isn't a TRUE ghost town, because there are some people living there - as of the 2000 census, there are 23 people living in the down (the population fell from 25 in 1990 - wikipedia link).

The road to Ophir cuts through a winding canyon from the west side of the beautiful Oquirrh Mountains. Other than a small ranch at the mouth of the canyon, as you drive up the road, there is hardly any indication that there is a town at the top. After about 5-10 minutes of driving up the road, we came to a sign that told us "Welcome to Ophir! Quiet hourse between 7:00 AM and 10:00 PM"

Becca was pretty much freaking out that the people who lived here were psycho murderers who were going to kill us, so we didn't get out of the car, we just slowly drove through town taking in the scenery. I'm kicking myself for not taking our camera - but here are a couple of web pages that have some of the highlights of the town:

From ghosttowns.com and ghosttowngallery.com

If you get a chance, browse through these sites, pick a destination, and take a weekend to explore some of these places.

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After exploring the ghost town, "hunting" for rabbits at Eli's request, and visiting the Haight family in Tooele, we picked up some of the coolest things ever:These nerf guns are soooooo much fun. They have light sight that activates when you depress the trigger a little bit, allowing more accurate fire so you can be sure to hit your opponent in the eye (even if they are wearing glasses *wink wink* - Link) We bought three of them, with extra whistling darts, to strike fear into the hearts of our opponents, and then went home and declared Jihad on each other. Basically, my superior combat skills lead to Becca and Eli forming an alliance against me. Becca shamelessly and unethically used Eli for cover as a human shield, but I deprived her of this tactic by shooting at them regardless. Eli also discovered that if he was out of darts, his best option was to revert to hand to hand combat and attack me with a combination of tickling me until I curl up into the fetal position, then kicking me until his mother calls him off. After about an hour of battle we decided to hold a cease fire until the next day.

Why is everything breaking?!

2008-02-15T09:06:00.003+04:30

As many of you know, the pathfinder has been unable to drive in reverse for quite some time now. I am VERY relieved to state that as of today that problematic issue has been resolved - saving me great inconvenience and embarrassment.

However, I've realized that now the pathfinder is the ONLY thing that seems to be fixed now. Here's a short list of broken things:

The switch for the ceiling fan/lamp in our bedroom - Eli broke it.
Our natural gas powered car we purchased off Ebay - I don't even want to go there...
My favorite shoes are full of holes - I guess it's time to go buy some new ones.
Our vacuum cleaner has bit the dust (pun intended)
My computer - the hinges that hold the lid/screen up are both broken

The last item on the list is the latest in the series. One of the two hinges broke almost 8 months ago and I've intended to get it fixed, but never found a place that does that kind of repair. Then, tonight when I opened the lid, it flopped back shut as soon as I let go of it.

I'm using my broken laptop right now to type this post. Yes, that's pencil I duct taped to the computer to keep the lid from flopping shut or flopping all the way back. Such is the current state of my affairs.

Why is it that multiple things always seem to break within a short time span?

Anyways, things are going swell - and as soon as I "get a real job" (the words of my good friend Mr. Tyrell Denton), I'll be swimming in cool unbroken schwag - right?

Politics

2008-02-12T02:07:00.000+04:30

I am not very happy with our presidential prospects. I'll tell you why...

RINO's (Republicans In Name Only) like McCain, and Democrats are happy to impose taxes that are 10 times harder to get rid of than they are to vote into law. They'll always tell you that they are going to "tax the rich", which is laughable to anyone who took Econ 1010 and learned about "Tax Incidence".

Liberals are always happy to take away our freedoms - particularly the 1st and 2nd amendments - all in the name of "protecting the children" (unless of course they aren't born yet, in which case they are merely a fetus). They don't want us to say anything "hateful", unless it's about President Bush, white people, or conservatives. We have speech codes on college campuses and don't you DARE use a racial slur against anyone who isn't white, male, and/or of Christian faith! Oh, and guns? For some reason, liberals have an irrational fear of weapons, and believe that violence in America is caused by weapons, not criminals.

"There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men."- Robert Heinlein

People in my office know that I own firearms and often go shooting and hunting. Every once in a while some smart ass will jokingly say, "So, are you going to come in to work and shoot up the place someday? Hee hee!"

One time, when said smart ass asked me that question, I replied, "Chad, don't worry about getting shot, when I decide to kill you, I'm going to use my bare hands". What the Hell is WRONG with these people!!! When he showed up to work on his first day at my office in a beat up Honda Civic with a 2 foot high spoiler on the back, I didn't ask him, "So Chad, when are you going to freak out and plow your car through an elementary school playground during recess?"

Real Life

2008-02-05T20:13:00.000+04:30

A short while ago, life got very real for one of my ROTC friends who is serving in the Army - he was in a firefight and some of the men on his patrol were killed. I don't want to delve into the details and circumstances of the engagement on the internet for more than one reason.

Suffice it to say, this makes things very real for me and most of the people I've had the honor of knowing in our commissioning program, who also know this person.

Life seems to be composed of phases; we seemingly enter the next phase without realizing it and are surprised to find out that we have arrived there when reality throws a cold glass of water in our face. The gravity of being a missionary, a college student, married, a parent, a soldier... suddenly takes effect when you are walking the dirty streets of Colombia, or trying to sleep while a little boy who had a nightmare fights you for your pillow all night.

Hearing about my friend in combat was another epiphany - entering the Army will bring an end to the days of running around in the snow up Logan/Green canyon yelling "Bang Bang!" or shooting paint balls while we practiced combat drills. It will usher in an era of real bullets on a two way shooting range, with the lives of American soldiers placed in my care.

I am genuinely concerned for all my friends who are in harms way or training to be placed in harms way. They are all incredible soldiers, husbands, fathers, and friends. To me, many of them are brothers.

To them I say, keep your head down, stay alert, put the hurt on the enemy, and come home in one piece.

Stew

AR15 stuff

2008-01-30T06:46:00.000+04:30

Becca and I had a disciplinary talk the other day - I bought three Pmags, and she wondered why I needed MORE. I simply told her that when the zombies hit the fan, she'll be glad I have the magazines instead of the money.

Besides, these mags are TOUGH - see the video

This is when we got into the debate on whether a shotgun (Becca's choice) would be better than an AR15 (my choice) for zombies... It wasn't pretty. We finally reached a compromise - Becca said we need one of each (my evil plan worked!). Although she said she'd rather be sniping zombies from a rooftop rather than taking them on in the streets. We both agree that we'd much rather have the slow "shambling " undead from the Night of the Living dead, as opposed to the marathon running spastic carnivores of 28 days later.

Also, I made a cool tactical sling for the rifle for about $15 bucks - you can order the materials here - the instructions are here.

Here's some pics, because every post is better with pics:

The sling...

You'll notice have a windowed Pmag - great for zombies because they get really scared when they see how many rounds you have left. I like how you can use the clips on the sling to give you more slack, or even remove the rifle without pulling it off over your head (handy if you are wearing it under a pack/ruck).

Just so you know, it's Becca's fault that there isn't a hot model for my sling - she didn't want to be in the picture - but here's your weekly Becca fix...

Oh yeah, and as per Becca's "random bag of crap" post:

Eli will crush you!

One of my favorite authors...

2008-01-24T22:06:00.000+04:30

I found this website the other day - wikiquote

I was trying to attribute a quote to someone when I ran across the entry for one of my favorite authors, Robert Heinlein. This man was a graduate of the Naval Academy, a brilliant mind and author of great literary works.

The most recent work of his that I've read is Starship Troopers - many of you who have seen the movie of the same title might be rolling your eyes. Be assured that the only thing the two have in common is their title and a few character names. The book is EXCELLENT - it has great commentary on the role of citizens, the military and the government, as well as visionary descriptions of the future of warfare and society.

One of his quotes that I had never read struck a deep chord for me:

'Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.'

Heinlein appears to be an atheist, very mistrusting of religion, but I'll forgive him that based on his solid morals and values. Here's a few other gems:

Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool.)
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
An armed society is a polite society.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
The more you love, the more you can love — and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.
You live and learn. Or you don't live long.
Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly.

Valentine

2008-01-24T11:48:00.000+04:30

Here's an early song for Valentine's Day, from the Old 97's:

I first heard this song from a friend at Utah State University back in the fall of 2000 - has it really been that long ago?

The Old 97's are a Dallas bar band - I dig their sound and I like this version of the song almost better than the studio recorded version from the album Fight Songs.

I think that songs are probably the closest we'll ever get to a true "time machine" - this one takes me back to some good memories.

Heartbreak, old friend, goodbye it's me again.
Of late, I've had some thought of movin' in.
Of all the many ways a man will lose his home,
Well, there ain't none better than the girl who's movin' on.

True love, I knew some thought of leavin' you.
Bad thoughts I had, when valentines were due.
Of all the many ways a man will break his heart,
Well there ain't none meaner than he pulls his own apart

Valentine, the destroyer, Valentine, you belong
In the stars, where you are, always rollin' on.
Cried, I've cried till I couldn't carry on.
It's a lonely, lonely feelin' when your Valentine is wrong.
It's a lonely, lonely feelin' when your Valentine is wrong.

Of all the many things that you were countin' on,
Well, there ain't none better than the girl who's movin' on.
No, there ain't none better than the girl who's movin' on.

George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

2008-01-23T20:09:00.001+04:30

My brother in law scored some tickets to see the Romero zombie flick (or zombie training film if you prefer) at the Sundance Film Festival. We caught the 9:00 pm showing at the Tower Theater in downtown Salt Lake City.

WOW!!!

This movie was AWESOME!!!

Let me preface this by saying that Romero basically cast the film with a bunch of no name actors that give it the feel from his earlier work. A girl who came with us said that it had a "campy" feel to it.

Two of the actors from the movie (Michelle Morgan and some guy I can't remember) introduced the film and answered questions about it afterwards. They said that "George" started working on the script for this film right after Land of the Dead; he had to do it "for the fans". The film was shot in less than 20 days on a budget of $5 million. He did this small and low budget so he could call the shots on the film, and get away from the big budget work where he had to appease "the money". In their words, this is an "Indy Film".

Many fans have been critical of George A. Romero's recent work, most notably Land of the Dead - I implied from the statements of the actors tonight that Mr. Romero has been working inside a very small box, and this film is an attempt (a very successful attempt in my opinion) to get back to his roots.

I was able to ask one of the lead actresses a question on behalf of all zombie fanatics:

Scar Belly - "What weapons do you plan on using for the upcoming zombie uprising?"

(The audience laughed pretty hard at that one - the actors didn't quite understand what I was asking...)

Michelle Morgan - "Um... I don't know, I hope that in the next film we get to find an Army base and use tanks to run them over - as long as we crush their heads that would be cool"

I highly recommend this film - it had all the critical elements of a good zombie flick:

hot girls - check
guns - check
creative methods of zombie brain destruction - check
over the top dramatic acting - check

It also settles the age old question of whether zombies "shamble" or run.

It was funny to see the audience erupt in applause whenever a zombie was "put down"/character killed in a dramatically unique way.

In case you aren't sick of these...

2008-01-20T22:55:00.001+04:30

...here's another picture of me holding up a dead rabbit.

The crazy thing is that I swear you can see the curvature of the earth in this pic... I love going to the desert in the winter - everything looks amazing, especially the mountains.

Also, I converted another coworker into a bloodthirsty savage:

I'm not going to include a picture on this one...

2008-01-14T00:05:00.000+04:30

...because it is just gross.

Apparently this morning, Eli decided to use the bathroom while he was chewing a mouth full of cocoa puffs. All was going well until he sneezed. If you have no imagination, you can email me and ask for a description of said incident - otherwise I'll assume you all can guess what this mess in the bathroom looked like.

Of course, he was embarrassed and didn't say anything to us before we discovered it on our own.

Shooting at poor defenseless animals.

2008-01-13T08:33:00.000+04:30

Well, we went on another rabbit hunt. I often go with my buddy Tony from work, and my little brother Jed has gone with me in the past. This was the first time that my cubicle neighbor (and push up buddy) Dirk has come along.

From the lousy cell phone pics, you can see that we had a pretty successful hunt in the desert to the west of the Oquirrh mountains.

My little brother Jed was the "dark horse" who scored the first rabbit of the day using his Ruger 10/22 with iron sights (his red dot ran out of batteries). The rabbit made a break for it when Jed was about five feet from his hiding place and didn't make it further than ten feet. Jed may be a cold hearted killer, but thanks to our mom, he dressed warm and had a thermos of hot chocolate.

The second bunny of the day. I was amazed at the difference my new optic (Eotech 512) made; I could adjust the brightness to make the reticle highly visible even with the reflection from the snow and I was able to acquire targets much more quickly than with irons or a standard red dot scope. I'm thinking of naming my rifle Anne, after a woman I've spoken to in the past. Anne is a lot like my rifle, you can try to have an intelligent conversation with both, but all you get in return are loud, annoying, unintelligible and unpleasant sounds. Maybe I'll just keep calling her (my rifle) Irene...

#3 - Tony dispatched this one to bunny heaven. Or bunny hell - we really couldn't tell by examining his corpse. I like to think that this bunny beat his wife, dealt crack to young bunnies in his neighborhood, and that our vigilante justice made the world a better place.

As Jed and I were walking over to inspect the dead bunny #3, we jumped this jack who was really good at playing hide and seek until we practically stepped on him. I got lucky enough to hit it before Jed (AKA Mr. One Shot One Kill) was able to plug him.

Dirk spotted lucky bunny #5 heading behind our line and was laying down a heavy volume of suppressive fire which allowed me to clock him (the bunny, not Dirk) as he ran across a flat.

Tony broke the legs of bunny #6 - and we all expended an embarrassing amount of ammunition trying to put an end to it's suffering. Somehow, we forgot to take a picture... just as well, we probably would have missed with that shot as well.

Bunny #7 would have lived to die another day, except he decided to pause and look back at us from a clump of sage brush. Jack Rabbits blend in with the sage brush amazingly well; I put two rounds where I thought I could see him. The first shot yielded a small burst of what appeared to be snow getting blasted off the brush. I thought I had missed, but as I walked away I remembered that snow doesn't drift on the wind like rabbit fur does - I went back to the clump of brush and found the dead bunny.

Dirk got the 8th/final kill of the day. As we were walking back towards the Pathfinder, yammering on about the price of pork bellies, Dirk still had his mind of getting the last jack of the day. He pegged this guy as he ran directly away from him. The crazy thing is that after getting knocked flat in the snow for 5 seconds, this "Bruce Willis" of bunnies stood back up. I yelled to Dirk to hurry and finish him off, when Tony decided to do it for him - you'll notice from the pic that the visible hole goes all the way through the rabbit.

I don't think Tony was very happy that someone shot more bunnies than him on this trip (hee hee); he usually gets more than anyone else.

Final Tally:

Scar Belly - 4
Tony - 2
Dirk - 1
Jed - 1
Jack Rabbits - 0

AAR (After Action Review)

Sustains:

Eotech sights rock.
Snow on the ground makes for a good hunt.
It was a beautiful day and we got some good exercise while we pissed off PETA

Improves:

Don't listen to guys in Toyota Tundras who tell you that there's a great spot, teeming with bunnies, just 5 miles down the road.
Don't take your Nissan Pathfinder, which still can't drive in reverse, on a dirt road covered with heavy snow unless your passengers don't mind getting out and pushing your vehicle to turn you around, when you should have never listened to the guys in the Toyota Tundra in the first place.
Never assume that you friends wouldn't actually use their cell phone camera to take a picture of you from behind as you are relieving yourself in the snow.

In memorium

2008-01-10T08:10:00.000+04:30

It has been just over one year since my grandfather died. The night he passed away, I wrote down some of my thoughts on his passing. I later refined these thoughts to deliver them publicly when I spoke at his funeral, but there is something about what I first put in words - spelling errors and all... There is a fine line between dwelling in the past and preserving memories that shouldn't be purged from our consciousness. I think this bears being repeated - thanks for reading it:

January 3rd, 2007
Tonight, my grandfather died at 5:30 pm, at the age of 86. 15 months ago, he suffered a stroke that took away his ability to talk, walk, and feed himself. Tonight he returned to his Heavenly Father and was reunited with his departed family.

He was one of the better men I ever had the privilege to know and beyond that I was able to call him Grandpa. I was his first grandchild - at a young age he taught me to shoot and first and foremost to respect firearms and to be safe when handling them. He, at around 60 years of age, often took me up the side of the mountain with a knapsack of hot dogs and marshmallows to cook over a fire before we would shoot targets. I remember riding in his truck with him on errands to the store while he sang, "don't sit under the apple tree with anybody else but me" and "Over there".

When he worried about me being bullied in school when I was about 7 years old, he brought two pairs of his old boxing gloves over and taught me how to box so I could defend myself. As I child, when I saw his old Army Air Corps uniform, I was amazed and asked him if he had been an ace. He laughed out loud and said, "Yeah, only it was spelled A-S-S".

My grandpa was John Wayne to me - his deep voice, natural swagger, and crooked smile reminded me of the duke so much that once as a child I asked him if John Wayne was his cousin. He only laughed, but he was better than John Wayne to me because he was my grandpa.

I the 8th grade I once saw him cry - when I interviewed him about his time in WWII, while I was researching an English paper. He voluntarily enlisted and served as a gunner on B-17 bomber crew - they never were in theater but saw training casualties weekly, "One a day in Tampa Bay" referred to the air crew death rate in training, he said. He witnessed the bombing of Pearl Harbor, while serving as a missionary for his church in Hawaii.

When I was running track and x-country in high school - he came to most of my meets with his camera. He was a better marksman than a photographer - he would line up his shots, holding his camera as though he were in a pistol match. He would give me the photos in person and tell me how well I had performed.

He served many years as a district judge, he was politically active and a grassroots member of the NRA. He always told me that the 2nd amendment protected the rest of our rights. His service and willingness to fight for his country inspired me to join the military.

For almost 15 months, I've watched him lay in bed - unable to talk or even move his left side. I watched his eyes meet mine when I came to visit him in various medical facilities as he was moved around by my aunt and grandmother. He would try to communicate verbally, but only groans came out of his mouth. He would grip my hand tightly and often I would have to leave the room so he wouldn't see me cry. Sometimes I would visit him and he wouldn't open his eyes. Worse wer the times when he was in pain or distress.

Monday we were told he was close to death and we visited him only to find him in great pain. He was barely able to breath and the fluid filling his lungs made a raspy sound my wife identified as the "death rattle". I left that hospital wishing for death to visit my grandfather as a tender mercy from the Lord. Tonight I arrived ten minutes after his passing to find his body, growing cold, but at peace and free from pain.

If I were a drinking man, I would be raising a glass to him tonight, for he truly was my hero. God I miss him - it was his time to go, but that doesn't make me miss him any less.

Here's to you Grandpa - I have things I still have to do here but I can't want till we can go up the mountain, cook hot dogs and shoot targets again.

The last semester

2008-01-09T09:47:00.000+04:30

If you didn't think I was a nerd before now, this will help you make up your mind...

For Christmas, we got the last two parts of the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD. I watched them both over the course of last weekend and I found many chilling similarities between the fellowship's quest to destroy the ring of power and my quest to finally graduate!

I have to compare myself to the entire fellowship, NOT because I have multiple personalities, but because we... er... we mean I have personality traits that match many of the characters in the films. Principally, I would say that I most resemble Pippen, the hobbit that keeps getting the rest of the group in trouble, especially when he dropped the bucket/skeleton/etc down the well in the Mines of Moria.

I say I resemble Pippen because most of the "obstacles" I've encountered along the way to graduation have been of my own making. Luckily, Becca and Eli haven't been required to flee for their lives from hordes of orcs, trolls, and other various beasties composed of flame and shadow.

I feel like I'm climbing up the side of Mt. Doom so I can finally chuck that ring into the lava. I'm incredibly wary, waiting for some cataclysmic event to stop me from getting my diploma now that I'm so close!

Eli the heckler

2008-01-07T23:58:00.000+04:30

This morning, I didn't work until 9:00 AM, a nice change from my usual 7:30 AM shift. I took advantage of the extra time by working out in the morning rather than the afternoon.

I didn't count on the fact that Eli gets rather punchy in the mornings. I stuck my toes under our couch while I did sit ups, and Eli perched on the couch above me and laughed hysterically. I'm not sure if he was mocking me or not, but I found the act demoralizing none the less.

I did manage however to stop him from throwing his stuffed animals at me while I completed my sets - he laughed a little less heartily after that.

Let it snow...

2008-01-07T05:57:00.000+04:30

Eli was really sad when we left church today, and the only way we could console him was with the promise of building a snowman when we arrived home.

Thus...

Of course, his mom had to encourage him to get into trouble...

I hate cars

2008-01-04T11:32:00.000+04:30

Seriously - we are on the verge of replacing our third transmission in as many years...

The pathfinder for some reason does not want to let me drive it in reverse. What does this mean? It means that when I want to go home at the end of the day, my co-workers get to look out their windows at me as I push the pathfinder out of it's parking spot, then hop inside and drive away.

In the morning, the same occurrence will be witnessed by any of my neighbors that are fortunate enough to be wandering around the parking lot at 7:00 AM.

If you happened to be fueling at or passing the Texaco on 10600 South, and 1300 West, in South Jordan tonight, you witnessed me doing the same thing after the pathfinder slid into a snow bank after I drove onto the ice as I came out of the car wash. Eli (my back seat passenger) was EXTREMELY amused and shouted commands and words of encouragement.

I would take the pathfinder in to be repaired tomorrow, but our other car (recent ebay purchase) is already at the shop to have all the brake pads, rotors, and calipers replaced - being that they are comprised almost primarily of rust.

Did I mention that I hate cars?

Called an old friend...

2008-01-03T10:37:00.000+04:30

My buddy Clint found this blog through another friend and left a comment for me suggested that we get in touch. Clint is one of my favorite people from ROTC, so I dialed as fast as my fat fingers could mash numbers on the key pad.

We had a very enjoyable chat about knives, guns, and surviving a Russian invasion using only our wits and cool survival gear.

Clint is living up in Idaho (staying true to his roots - I'd rather not say which city, since several law enforcement agencies and various loan sharks are no doubt looking for him), student teaching seminary!

Clint and Sara are apparently loving life, and enjoying raising their little "scrub" (term borrowed from our buddy Chris) - one big happy fam-damily.

I'm really glad that I've started this blog and that I've been able to read the blogs of other friends I've met over the years - even though many of you are living in other cities, states, or countries, it's nice to know that you're still in the fight and can remember my name!

Stew

In case you were wondering...

2008-01-03T10:23:00.000+04:30

...yes; Eli IS a ladies man.

That is all.

No you're not hardcore...

2008-01-02T08:03:00.000+04:30

... unless you live hardcore!

We went snow shoeing today with our friends Joe and Jeri down in American Fork canyon. You can read about this adventure on Jeri's blogs here.

We rented snow shoes on the cheap from the Outdoor Recreation Program from the U of U. It was tons of fun (except when I took over for Joe breaking the trail through the powder - talk about hard work)!

Becca hates the cold, and hates being cold (not sure what the difference is), but I took care of her and made sure she was dressed in warm (albeit not figure flattering/fashionable) Army gear.

The new rig.

2008-01-02T06:10:00.001+04:30

If you aren't into rifles, you might as well skip this post as you will find it extremely boring.

For those of your who are either into rifles, or just decided to ignore my disclaimer... I bought a holographic rifle sight to put on my rifle - an Eotech 512 to be exact. Chances are if you are into rifles then you already know about these sights. If not, I'll break it down for you:

A holographic weapon sight projects a reticle into an optical window that you use instead of lining up a front and rear iron sight - this concept has been used for Heads Up Displays in fighter aircraft since the 80's. The Eotech reticle has a circle with a dot in the middle of it - shown in the picture on the right. The idea is that since you aren't lining up iron sights, or trying to find the correct eye relief and focal point behind a traditional magnified scope, you save time when trying to acquire a target. Also, when you are engaging targets at close quarters , you simply put the large circle (which is easier to find) on your target. For targets beyond close quarters (think the 300 meter popup target on the BRM range), the small dot in the center allows the rifleman to make more precise shots.

Here is a peek through mine:

These sights have been out for a few years, and L3 communications (the company who makes the Eotech series of Holographic Weapons Sights), pretty much has a corner on the market. They make a pretty rugged and reliable product with excellent battery life.

I'm pretty excited about this purchase, since I had to save my "fun money" for some time to make the purchase and even sell my SKS (so sad...). Part of my excuse for making this purchase is that I will probably use a similar sighting device in the Army if I get assigned to a "high speed" unit, seeing as how most of the line companies are using Aimpoint CCO's, Trijicon ACOG's, or Eotech HWS's. But the real reason is because gun gear is fun! You can bet that most of my "training" with my new rifle setup will involve killing bunnies and coyotes, as well as making small groups of holes in paper at the range.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T20:47:00.000+04:30

We spent the New Year with our family - the people we care about most. My sister Laurie and her husband Carl were kind enough to invite us to their home to welcome 2008. The funny thing about this party is that I usually keep Becca up past midnight anyways... oh well, any excuse to throw a party.

We had fun playing various games and telling stories, but perhaps the funniest occurrence of the night was Eli's attempt to blow a noisemaker horn at midnight. Somehow, he had a difficult time with the concept that the HORN was supposed to be making the noise, not him. He'd puff up his cheeks, then make some kind of a kazoo sound as he softly blew into the horn. Becca had to hold the horn for him so that he could manage to "kazoo" hard enough to make any noise at all.

I managed to get a rare picture of Laurie and Carl kissing - cute couple!

My mother, sister Leesa, and brother Jed were in attendance. Unfortunately my dad was home sick (we still called him on speaker phone to pester him multiple times during the night), and of course Todd was down in Peru - probably lighting off homemade firecrackers (I hope he comes home with all his digits).

2007 was kind of a rough year - we had hoped to add another member to our family, and we've all worked to be "beholden to none" and to get my education finished and my military career back on track. Along with the monotony and hard work we've enjoyed fun vacations, enjoyed each other's company, taken advantage of how close we are to our families and become more active in each others lives.

2008 promises the realization of many goals and a higher standard of living for the Brough family. I hope that all of you have a happy new year!

Homo Sapiens vs. Lepus Californicus

2007-12-30T05:19:00.001+04:30

You'll have to pardon the crappy cell phone picture, but I just had to make a post about rabbit hunting. I recently went bunny blasting with my brothers in law Mike and Danny, and I had to show off some of the carnage. This was the result of an incredibly good (IE "lucky") shot taken from about 80-100 yards while this lucky bunny was at a dead run. I say the bunny is lucky because he's no longer freezing his bunny butt off on the snow covered valleys of Utah.

I enjoy a very special love/hate "relationship" with Lepus Californicus. Why do I hunt jack rabbits? I don't know for sure, but I have a few theories:

My foremost theory involves the binomial name for jack rabbits, lepus californicus. Perhaps my aggression toward this species of rodent is a latent manifestation of my dislike for Homo Sapiens Californifornicus, who are also multiplying in the rural and wilderness area of Utah.

Other theories include the fact that my ancestors were farmers and ranchers, the arch enemies of range pests such as jack rabbits and that it is in my genetic makeup to continue the good fight. I really just think that hunting rabbits is actually practice for the impending zombie invasion (it's not a matter of if, but when).

For all you bleeding hearts who can't believe that I'm killing poor little innocent bunnies... don't worry, with the way I shoot most of them aren't really in any danger. Besides, jackrabbits carry a multitude of parasites and diseases, including Tularemia. You'll notice that I'm using a glove to handle the partially decapitated specimen above.

The truth of the matter is that man is a natural predator. Our eyes are situated on the front of our heads (as opposed to the sides, like many species of prey - such as jackrabbits). Hunting is therapy for me, considering that most of my time is spent inside a "cage" tethered to a telephone and computer.

A few months ago, I was chatting with one of my company's clients in Florida. They asked me what I was planning on doing that weekend and I told them that I intended to "viciously assassinate as many jack rabbits as I could find, and strike fear into the hearts of those I could see but could not kill".

The client laughed hysterically at my mock psychotic rant and requested that I send him a "Blue petrified rabbit's foot". On a subsequent excursion, I was able to bring back what appeared to be a disease free foot from a lucky donor, and I proceeded to mail it to the client. I included a note that I was not practiced in dying animal fur blue, and that given a few million years and the right environmental variables, he would have a bona fide "petrified" rabbit's foot.

This was a big hit at the client's office - he called me the same day that his "package" arrived to thank me for his "gift" and we arranged that if he ever came out to Utah, I would take him Bunny Blasting. I'm no expert, but I think my brother in law Danny (who is an expert) would agree that I have a promising future in Public Relations.

In the mean time, don't the winter blues and $50 lift tickets get you down - suit up, pack plenty of ammo, and persecute the local rodent population.

My son, the skateboarding sherpa.

2007-12-29T09:32:00.000+04:30

Victorious once again at Chutes and Ladders.

My son the skateboarding sherpa.

A truly evil genius.

What are you doing to my beloved show!?

2007-12-28T19:50:00.000+04:30

I don't admit to watching very much TV, but I used to have two shows that I loved watching whenever I could: The Office and The Unit.

I'll assume that most of you know about The Office already, and if you don't I'll ignore your heresy and pray for your soul. The Unit, was an excellent show that detailed the lives and exploits of a team in The U.S. Army's Special Forces Detachment Delta (AKA Delta Force).

The Unit has a winning cast - including Dennis Haysbert, who plays the NCO leader of the team, and Robert Patrick (AKA The T1000 from Terminator 2) as the Colonel who commands the team.

This show used to be great - it detailed the gritty military missions of special forces operators working around the world while showing what life was like for their families back home. I put up with a lot of the over dramatic Army wife crap, because of the intriguing story lines and well written dialogue. Then the third season came out... what a load of crap.

First, the opening sequence with images of armed men clearing rooms with grenades set to a military cadence was ditched for a spy themed song and images of men in business suits.

Before:

After:

The Unit excelled as a show about a clandestine military unit - it sucks as a show about "spies"

The third season can be typified by the episode in which the team is tasked with guarding a spoiled country music star who is performing for the troops in Iraq - the show culminates with the country music star stealing the poem book of one of the team members and turning one of his poems into a hit song. What the hell!? It sounds like an "Armyfied" version of a Punky Brewster episode.

If this is the caliber of show they'll be producing, I have an idea for a new episode. The Colonel is going out of town on vacation, and the team is tasked with watching his pet hamster Fluffy. The only problem is that Fluffy dies. So the team goes to the pet store to buy an identical hamster and kills a terrorist along the way - hilarity ensues.

Good grief. A great show has been flushed down the toilet.

What the deuce...

2007-12-27T08:23:00.000+04:30

So, I walk out of the house today around 7:30 PM and lo an behold what do I see just outside the door of our laundry room? One of Becca's socks (used to be my sock, but it has become a spoil of conquest) and a PAIR OF MY UNDERWEAR! Becca has confirmed that she brought in the laundry shortly before I arrived home around 4:30 PM, which mean that for approximately 3 hours my private underclothes were on display no less than 2 feet from the neighboring apartments front door!

I'm still trying to figure out how I missed seeing them on my way in, other than the fact that I was chatting on the phone with my parents when I walked in the front door.

This might however explain the break in the constant stream of annoying residents knocking at our door (Becca is the apartment manager here); perhaps mens underwear acts as a warding talisman to fend of unwanted guests...

For our friends whom we WANT to come visit us, please be aware that we have implemented a risk mitigation procedure to insure that you will never witness such a calamity at our residence ever again.

Sincerely,
The Management

Jiminy Christmas!

2007-12-27T01:22:00.000+04:30

Christmas was excellent this year - I keep waiting to fully "mature" and not want any more "toys", but that's obviously a goal that will take several more years to come to fruition. My lovely wife gave me an electronic dartboard and actual darts to replace the cardboard box with cartoon character targets and darts constructed of office supplies.

I've enjoyed watching my 4 year old open his Christmas presents - the cute facial expressions and gasped statements of euphoria made me completely forget the careful budget that we'd disregarded and overspent. As usual, I got more than I deserved and at the end of the day I cackled evilly at having raked in another haul of awesome gifts.

One gift in particular held a notable interest for me. It was wrapped in a flat white box. Unfortunately I can't remember what paper or ribbon were on it, because until I opened it up, those details didn't matter. Inside the box I found an old knife and a note from my dad.

This almost resulted in an event that I tend to refer to as a "I have dust in both of my eyes at the same time" moment. In order to understand this gift, there is a fair amount of history you must be made aware of. From the time I was a "little fetcher" (a term borrowed from my mother), my dad has always taken me on fishing trips.

We fished the Green River in Wyoming, where my dad underestimated the depth of the river at the point he chose to cross with me on his shoulders. Somehow, at 6 years of age I managed to hang on tightly to his hair while he somehow crossed the middle of the river much like a submarine crossed the Atlantic. I rememember that water as being extremely chilly, a fact that I verified about 19 years later during an ROTC FTX in the fall of 2004.

We also hiked several miles into Spirit Lake in the Uintah Mountains - one of our fishing buddies packed in a float tube and waders in addition to the rest of his gear, and was extremely disgusted when we found a canoe in completely serviceable condition, tethered to a tree less than 100 feet from the lake.

However, the place we visited the most was the Boulder Mountain in southern Utah. I've camped at Cook Lake more times than I can remember. Our scout troop used car jacks (a suggestion from our adult supervisors) to roll Volkswagen sized rocks from the cliffs above Cook Lake into the water several hundred feet below. I've had my teeth jarred as I've tried to hang on to the inside of a Chevy Blazer on the road to Donkey Lake. I've hiked for hours on what my dad claimed was a "4 mile" hike into Lost Lake (it's lost for a reason - and no there weren't any fish in it). I rode my mountain bike from Cook Lake up to Horseshoe Lake (a ride that my dad purported to be of a distance of 3 miles), riding up many steep grades over a long distance - to finally reach a fork in the road with a sign stating "Horseshoe Lake - 3 miles" pointing to the right. Lately, we've ridden quads all over the Boulder top and hunted for arrow heads among the lower trees. We've hunted turkey near Posey Lake and shot rock chucks and bunnies any time we got the chance.

My dad found that knife in the reeds along the shore of some beaver pond on the Boulder when I was close to 8 years old. It was covered in mud and rust. He took it home, polished and sharpened it - and used it religiously on pretty much every trip we went on after that. He cut potatoes, gutted fish, removed slivers from our fingers (I hope he sterilized it first), and it could always be found in camp.

When he gave it to me yesterday, it came with this note:

Stewart
This is more of a memory than a gift. I always loved taking you places like Boulder Mountain.
Love Dad

Because "the dust" made it a little hard to say this yesterday, maybe I can write it better than I can say it.

Thanks dad, it is a really great memory for me too!

Needs

2007-12-23T22:34:00.000+04:30

I was listening to a CD I hadn't heard for a long time when I heard this song:

Collective Soul has been my favorite bad since junior high - their songs seem to have a spiritual meaning for me that I have always been able to connect with. This song has an immense value for me as it mirrors a certain point in my life.

In late 2001, I was having a real internal struggle finding my "place in the universe". My life's labors at that time were mainly failing classes at USU while I worked a minimum wage part time job at the computer lab. Life seemed to lack the savor that made it enjoyable - there was a hole in my soul that I could not seem to fill. I had dated several girls, always breaking up with them within a month after I figured out that they were definitely not "the one" for me. I was considering dropping out of school, joining the military, running away to South America - anything that would have been a big enough catalyst to give me the fire that I had lost when I had left Colombia and home.

Enter Becca - a rushing stream of water that burst the dam that was keeping my world stagnant; bringing life itself to my parched soul.

In two weeks and one day, it will have been 6 years from when we met and she's still here; the hole in my soul has been filled. She's given me a beautiful little boy and helped me to find our dreams, encouraged me to work for them, and inspired me to love our family. She's also patiently watched me fail and helped me to continue on; once she held fast to me when the shadow of death briefly passed over me and threatened to separate us much earlier than we expected.

Time lends an incredible perspective which gives greater meaning to our lives. There was a purpose in my experience before I met Becca; one must suffer misery for a time before true happiness can be appreciated.

You're all I need
When the water runs deep
You're all I need
Now I cry my soul to sleep
You're all I need...

Merry Christmas!

I am Legend = Sweet Flick!

2007-12-23T09:29:00.000+04:30

By the way, did I mention I love just about every *SHTF/Zombie movie ever made?

Without spoiling the movie for you, I'll just let you know that I love the concept of NYC being empty of people while I roll around town in expensive cars shooting at deer with my tricked out AR15 rifle. This movie was a dream I didn't want to wake up from!

Seriously though, I really liked this movie - it had a well written story that wasn't driven by either a sappy love story or a sequence of pointless action scenes. Will Smith is a pretty decent actor in my opinion - you ladies can go catch the flick for the part where he does pull ups with his shirt off.

The highlight of the movie occurred when a fight broke out near the front row when someone decided to have a conversation on their cell phone about 30 seconds before the film started to roll credits. He must of been a "West Jordan Gangsta" because when someone yelled "Stop talking on your cell phone!", he yelled back "Shut up #$%#$! The movie's over!".... Bad move, since most of the ladies I know don't like being called that word... In any case, we got more entertainment than we bargained for.

*SHTF = Sh*t Hits the Fan; refers to a cataclysmic event that requires the assistance of Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or in this case Will Smith, in order to prevent the end of the world as we know it (also known as TEOTWAWKI).

My brother in law does it again...

2007-12-22T11:00:00.000+04:30

I didn't open this one - I already knew what was inside of it. I just verified my suspicions with a flashlight.

I simply wrote a note on it:

"To [insert our boss's name] with love from Danny"

and left it on our boss's keyboard.

Bread and Circuses?

2007-12-18T23:21:00.000+04:30

Alicia's post on the the screen writers guild strike made me think; I absolutely HATE that a high school teacher is STILL doing that to me! Instead of turning in my perspective in a 2-3 page essay with 1" margins, I'm "sticking it to the [wo]man" and blogging my thoughts instead as an act of non-conformity.

I have a certain coworker who when presented with ANY question about a television show (IE "Hey Andy, did you see last night's episode of the The Office?"), he simply responds with the muttered words, "Bread and Circuses". Being a curious individual who is NOT a cat, I figured one time time that I would be safe to ask him, "What the H*%# are you talking about Andy?".

He explained to me that during the decline of the Roman Empire, the powers that were decided that in order to distract the unwashed masses from the horrible conditions and corruption, they would provide cheap entertainment (in the form of the gladiatorial games) and food (bread).

Wikipedia (take that High School English teacher, I'm citing Wikipedia!) states: (link)

"Bread and circuses" is a phrase that can criticize either government policies to pacify the citizenry, or the shallow, decadent desires of that same citizenry. In both cases, it refers to low-cost, low-quality, high-availability food and entertainment that have become the sole concern of the People, to the exclusion of matters that some consider more important: e.g. the Arts, public works projects, human rights, or democracy itself. The phrase is commonly used to refer to short-term government palliatives offered in place of a solution for significant, long-term problems.

Honestly, TV fits the above description exactly. Joseph Stalin prophetically stated that television would be the greatest tool for propaganda the world had ever seen. Doubtless you could find more Americans that know who won last year's American Idol, as opposed to finding citizens of voting age who could find Iraq or Afghanistan on a map, or tell you who their state senator is.

Please don't misunderstand what I am saying. I, like most people enjoy a good TV show that has good acting and a well written script - I don't fault the SWG for seeking compensation for the additional use of their work. I enjoy watching a few shows like The Office immensely, but lately we tend to download the episodes to watch them later (commercial free) - I don't sit around watching useless drivel while I wait for my favorite show to come on and you can bet I won't watch whatever garbage the network has slapped together to replace a funny and well written show.

Now that my favorite shows are playing reruns, I plan to do better things with my time - like go running, play with my son, talk with my wife, or plan crazy hikes in the middle of the night during the winter.

My wife says, "Yeah right! You'll just be on your computer!"

Am I the weird one?

2007-12-18T10:16:00.000+04:30

Saturday morning, I got a GREAT IDEA!!!

I planned a night time hike to the peak of Mt. Olympus!!!

I invited a few friends/family members and all of them took very little time in telling me that the were otherwise occupied. I was pretty bummed about the situation when my wife suggested that such and activity was "weird".

Weird? The suggestion provoked a stream of thought that left me perplexed the rest of the day... I love doing random things like hiking to the top of Mt. Olympus at night in the dead of winter. The day that I don't come up with strange impulses like that will be the day that I know that my soul is dying.

I'm tentatively planning on executing this idea this coming Saturday, the 22nd. If you have your shopping done and no parties to attend, you are welcome to join me.

SB

Stan in the sand box

2007-12-18T02:53:00.000+04:30

For those of you who don't know my buddy Stan, let me give you the run down:

I met Stan in the Fall of 2004 on a Saturday morning while shoveling sand onto a part of the Ranger Challenge obstacle course at USU. Stan's kind of a shy kid who smiles a lot, but I managed to find out that he spent his summers working as a river guide. He was also a newlywed who had managed to overcome his shyness enough to successfully woo Georganne, whom he had met while river guiding. I got to hang out with these two quite a bit over the years and I was pretty sad when Stan commissioned and left Utah.

Now Stan has been deployed and as luck would have it, he gets to do what he's always dreamed of doing - lead troops into combat. It's kind of funny to see one of your friends in a role that seems suited to John Wayne or Mel Gibson, and yet Stan is more inspiring than than any actor, because he is "real life" as opposed to being "larger than life".

I still have to give him a hard time since due to operational security, Georganne hasn't been able to reveal where he will be deployed to or what he's doing. Since Stan has now achieved legendary status in my eyes - doing classified thing and is now a freaking ninja - I hereby award him the status of "Secret Squirrel" - don't worry Stan, your patch is in the mail - I hope you'll wear it with pride!

PS - as an elite secret squirrel, I trust you to learn from my mistakes and be careful not to lose any of your nuts.

What motivates little boys?

2007-12-16T23:36:00.000+04:30

Yesterday, I got a call from my brother in law Mike - he had car troubles and needed me to come pick him and his date up. I said I would be right there, and we asked Eli if he wanted to come. Eli emphatically stated that he did NOT want to come, until we told him that Mike had a cute girl with him. Eli could not get dressed and out the door fast enough.

We picked up Mike and Josie and took Josie to her house, while she sat in the back seat with Eli who shamelessly flirted with her for the entire ride; showing her his favorite place mat with floating fish inside of it, and telling her stories and jokes.

News from my buddy in Iraq!!!

2007-12-15T07:02:00.000+04:30

My good friend Kal wrote me an email today!

I've missed this kid immensely - I've seldom seen him since early 2006. He was diagnosed with cancer, and treated about 3 weeks before me. Thanks to him I had plenty of courage to endure any treatment that might come my way, because he was always 3 weeks ahead of me and he wasn't dead yet...

Kal stayed at USU and finished his degree and ROTC, even though he had medically been dis enrolled. He married a beautiful girl with an affinity for bald men (I know the type); and they are both lucky to have each other.

Kal deployed as an NCO with the Army NG this past year, and is enjoying sunny Iraq! I bet right about now he is really missing the sadistic STX lane we set up in the river running under the bridge at 3rd dam. That was in Logan canyon, in the late fall of 2005 - that water was COLD!!! For some reason, Kal insisted on testing that lane more than once...

Kal is a great human being - unlike me, he was always a man of few words, and extremely tolerant of my excess of words. He tells me that he's leading his own platoon, due to a shortage of 2LT's - life certainly has it's ironies as Kal is now doing the job of a 2nd Lieutenant, the rank that the Army denied him because he had cancer... I'd like to hear the justification for that one (other than the fact that it's saving the Army a lot of money, and that platoon is still getting one hell of a leader).

Kal is one of my heroes - I know his job isn't glamorous or exciting, but I can guarantee he's making me proud to be in the same classification as him - a Soldier. On target on time!

I seem to be all out of tissues...

2007-12-15T06:54:00.000+04:30

Just read this on KSL.com, "Man shoots and kills home-invasion robber"

Long story short, two guys try to rob the house of a family of three. The husband takes a gun from one of the thugs, and shoots/kills him.

I thought I might shed a tear for the dead criminal, but can't seem to find any tissues right now, so I think I'll crack open a soda and celebrate instead.

I guarantee that next time, this family won't open their door to an unexpected stranger...

Like the saying goes, "Be polite, be courteous, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet..."

If you love your family and want to stay alive, don't be naively over trusting like this family. The world is full of good people, but that "damned 10%" out there ruin it for the rest of us.

Who stopped/killed the Colorado church murderer?

2007-12-15T06:26:00.000+04:30

A few days ago, I wrote this post about the woman who prevented Mathew Murray from killing more people at the New Life Church in Colorado. A few people have expressed that they think this post might be inaccurate, because they have heard on the news that the gunman shot himself. It is true that the gunman killed himself, but this fact is often reported out of context. From an MSNBC article discussing this fact:

Link to Article

"Murray, as promised on the Web, came “armed to the teeth” with an assault rifle, handguns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. An armed church security guard, a new Christian believer, cut him down in a spray of bullets before he could carry out even more violence. An autopsy showed Murray delivered the final, fatal shot to himself."

There is a difference between incapacitating a threatening person and killing them. In basic training, soldiers are trained to shoot at an enemy's center of mass - because a shot to the COM is the best compromise for ensuring a hit and causing an injury that will prevent the enemy from continuing to fight. The general idea is, "Who cares if you kill the enemy! Stop him from trying to kill you!" Ms. Amman stopped Mathew Murray, and I'm sure she's had no trouble sleeping at night knowing that she saved lives and didn't even have to fire the shot that snuffed out that killer's life.

My belief is that Mathew Murray (the killer) had not intention of leaving the New Life Church alive - in my opinion, it is most likely that he intended to kill as many people as possible, and then force the police to kill him by refusing to comply with their commands, or shoot himself once he had run out of "targets".

Jeanne Assam disrupted whatever plan Mathew Murray had, by putting several bullets into him, which physically impeded him from shooting any more unarmed targets. I can only imagine him lying on the ground and realizing that he'd failed for the last time. The last fatal bullet that was meant to deny justice for the murdered, was instead used to bring an end to his embarrassment from being thwarted at his intended act of ultimate cowardice.

Please read/watch/listen to the news very carefully! This story has been reported in such a way as to try to take away from the fact that an armed citizen stopped a dangerous criminal!

Wolverines!!!

2007-12-14T10:51:00.000+04:30

"You American?"
"Red-blooded. "
" What's the capital of Texas?"
"Austin."
" Wrong, commie! It's Houston!"

If you've never seen the movie Red Dawn, then you are missing out! It's an '80's cold war flick which muses with the idea of the Communist forces of the time period invading the United States, and the youth of a Colorado high school fighting against the invaders with successful guerrilla style tactics.

I recently watched this movie again, and it reminded me about some of my buddies from USU ROTC - Namely Clint, Josh, Stan and Brandon, since they are the ones who bought into the idea of my "Red Dawn" fantasies and what we would do if our country was ever invaded.

Clint, being more spiritually/religiously minded than the rest of us, often pondered the possibility of the Wasatch area reverting into a theocracy, should the Russians actually invade the area.

Stan once confessed to me that in class he daydreamed of fending off terrorists who would try to take over the lecture hall he was sitting in - and then leading a group of guerrilla freedom fighters to defeat the Soviet invaders.

Brandon and Josh really just humored me, knowing all the while that Josh had the brains and Brandon was ruthless enough that the two of them would have been able to rule with an iron fist!

Stan is now with his infantry unit in the Middle East, Josh and Brandon are at Ft. Rucker learning to fly helicopters, and I haven't heard from Clint since he got back from learning to command tank platoons at Ft. Knox.

I am grateful that my friends serving in the military are helping to insure that a "Red Dawn" won't occur on American Soil any time soon - even though it would be cool to have commie machine guns and to be able to spray paint "Wolverines!" on the side of burned out combloc armored vehicles...

Throwing Mommy under the bus...

2007-12-13T10:56:00.000+04:30

Take a close look at this picture which was taken at 11:20 PM tonight.

That's our 4 year old, eating a chocolate ice cream cone and watching TV.

The weird part? It isn't ME who let him get away with this - it was his mother!!!

Being "committed" to getting back in shape.

2007-12-13T09:30:00.000+04:30

Back in the day at scout camp, we hiked into Calf Creek Falls, which has a beautiful but FREEZING cold pool at its base. My dad told us that he was going to teach us a lesson in "commitment" and told us all to hold out our hands. He then walked by each of us and put a dollop of shampoo in our hands. He then told us that we should apply the shampoo to our hair (this is a LONG time ago when I actually had hair...) and lather it up. He then pointed to the freezing water and said, "Boys, you are now 'committed'", and then he walked away chuckling.

Well, the nice thing about publicly stating that you are going to get in shape, is that you are committed.

So tonight, after Becca left to run errands, I bundled up Eli and put him in the jogging stroller and off we went. He lasted about a mile before he stopped asking questions, at which point I stole back my MP3 player and made sure the blanket had him covered. Then I finished my first run in about 2 months.

Oh, and to the person that told me that "competition" is the best motivator... you better hope I don't challenge you to a race (but seriously, that's not a bad idea)!

And by the way, thanks Dad!

Gifts from my brother in law

2007-12-13T01:24:00.000+04:30

Lately, Dan (my BIL) likes to toss presents to me over the cubicle wall that separates our desks. We're up to gift number two now...

They're post it notes wrapped up to look like a piece of candy, containing a live housefly.

I opened the first one, which was delivered yesterday, while I was on the phone with a client. I'm proud to say that I only gasped, as opposed to screaming like a little girl.

Today, I got the "present" pictured at the left - being a little older and wiser than I was yesterday, I took the "present" to my boss and told him that Dan had asked me to give it to him.

Thankfully for Dan, our boss found it just as startling and amusing as I did when the live housefly emerged.

Motivation to get in shape - what's your Zombie?

2007-12-12T10:04:00.000+04:30

I'm positive that everyone reading this statement has at some point remarked, "Wow, I need to get in shape". I can also positively state that most of you have started and then quickly abandoned a workout regimen after making such a remark.

I have made that statement 4 times since the end of February of 2006 - that was I was able to start walking again after being gutted like a fish to save me from the big "C" (Note that the picture to the right is NOT me - it's Tom Green after he had the same surgery - I don't think any of you want to see MY bare stomach).
The last time I made that statement, I was so incredibly motivated to succeed, that I increased my weekly running mileage way to quickly and went from loping like a gazelle down 21st East, to hobbling like an old man up 13th South.

Now that my injuries have healed, I'm having a hard time getting off my butt and starting to run again. I am lacking motivation, and as I told my buddy Jake, "I'm not getting any fatter, but I sure ain't getting any thinner". Jake helped me to remember the greatest motivator of all - the Undead.

Any of you who have watched 28 days later, Dawn of the Dead, or any other "Zombie Training Films" as I like to call them, you know that the physically unfit will be the first to have their brains eaten.

Prepare now, because when you have a flaming zombie chasing after you, it's too late to realize that you should have been putting in 30 miles a week in your running shoes. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I plan on seeing "I Am Legend" - not exactly a Zombie flick, but it has the same principle and Will Smith's character obviously gets it as you can see him running on a treadmill in the trailer. Until I get out to this movie, I plan on watching a healthy regimen of Resident Evil, Night of the Living Dead, etc... to motivate me so that someday I won't be shuffling around the streets of SLC, with only one arm as I moan for "Braaaaaaaaaaains!"

Interesting fact about the Colorado shootings...

2007-12-11T21:06:00.000+04:30

If you haven't heard this by now, you might be interested to know that the shooting at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs was stopped when a "volunteer security guard" pulled out her own legally concealed weapon and shot the murderer who was killing her fellow church members.

Her name is Jeanne Assam, she's a former police officer and concealed weapon permit holder.

She saved an unknown number of people from being murdered by having the presence of mind to be carry a defensive weapon and be prepared to use it effectively. She has also virtually guaranteed that any would be mass murderers will choose another target for their rampage before they try to shoot up the New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

If an individual with murderous intent entered your place of worship this Sunday, and started killing the members of your congregation - would you be prepared to stop them? Does your church's policy advocate that you be unarmed and vulnerable in your place of worship, like mine does?

I hope that if anyone ever tries to hurt you, your friends, or your family while you are attending your church's services, that there will be an individual like Jeanne Assam, prepared to protect you. But, wouldn't you rather control your own destiny than depend on the hope that someone else will save you?

Pretty much everyone who drives a car has a spare tire in the trunk- even though they will probably never need to use it. Most drivers would tell you that it's wise to be prepared to fix a flat/blown out tire, rather than to rely on someone else to have the equipment, know how, and the disposition to help you in such an emergency. Make sure you're prepared for just about anything.