It has been over a year since the last time I have left a post of this site of mine, I am not going to lie and say that I was super busy and had no time to post because that would be lying; so I will just tell you the blunt truth, I forgot. I didn't mean to but without wanting to I forgot the name of the site and just generally forgot that I even had a blog. But thanks to being reminded by one of my only fans last night I have decided to once again try and keep this blog updated with what has been going on in my life.



Though in truth this blog will not just be focused on myself but also on my roommate and best friend Jones; since it is pretty much a fact that whatever adventures I get myself into Jones is always apart of them as well. We work together, live together and this is why this blog will revolve mostly around the two of us; partners in crime....though I am hoping to avoid actual jail time.



Now I think it would be a good time to give everyone an update about what has been happening in my life since my last post, because there has been a lot of things; it has been a year after all. Since my last post both Jones and I have since changed the companies we are in. We are no longer 9th Comm Marines but are currently stationed with the 15th MEU, training and preparing to head out to sea for deployment in August of next year. Jones left 9th Comm about six months before myself due to a miscommunication during a PFT run which forced me to suffer through life in Bravo Company alone without my best bro to go through it all without her, which might not seem that bad but it really was. It is hard to explain hell in any other words besides just calling it hell. I went through two roommates and my fair share of bullshit before I just couldn't take anymore; being yanked off the deployment roster was my final straw and I jumped on the first open boat out of that hell hole which just so happened to be the MEU who was more then willing to accept me; even with the stench of 9th Comm still fresh on me, that says a lot of their character.

I have also picked up Corporal since the last time I posted and Jones is not far behind, she rates the score to pick up as off November 1st. We will soon both be apart of the NCO ranks, go us. Within this new shop that I am now apart of rank is still what it is but it is not taken to be as important as it was in 9th Comm which I highly appreciate. Yes I am an NCO but that does not mean that I am above everyone else. I like the way everyone can have a say in things if they simply stand u and say it, voice what they think and 9 times out of 10 we will take it to heart. But there might be dark clouds forming in the distance but I will pro ably get into that on a later post so stand by for that.But I am getting off subject, right now this post is simply supposed to be about just filling you in on things. So here are some other minor details that have happened throughout the past year.

I have gone from a red head, to a blond and then back to a red head again. I have been to the field more times then I have ever wanted to during work ups for deployment only to be taken off their roster and went to the MEU right at the start of their work ups...go figure. Anyway, Jones purchased a truck which she loves and which has taken us back and forth between our various adventures and even with a few hiccups and the need to visit the doctor as of late will still be running strong in the end. I have gotten my green belt and after a long time Jones finally acquired her grey belt, we have been all around California and have run more miles then I have ever wanted to run in my entire life with still more to run. We have celebrated Christmas with our very own chem light covered Christmas tree and suffered through the chow halls version of a thanksgiving meal.

Jones has gotten the opportunity to do some pretty amazing things this last year, she has flown through the sky in an F-16 and was the only female member of the 15th MEU softball team.





I am not at all jealous that she got to fly in an F-16...okay maybe a little but come on who wouldn't be. I means he could have had the softball thing and I could have taken the flight in the jet I think that would have been totally fair. Sharing is caring after all.

But besides those things I really don't know what to tell you. I think I tried to cover all the big things that happened and even some of the small things that are really not that important to know about. So now that you all are updated I will try to keep updating these posts so you guys will always be up to date.

Oh, I almost forgot. Jones cut her hair.

Safety THIRD'

This is Shawn.



And this is Shawn's cab.

One thing you realize when you get stationed at Camp Pendleton, or pretty much anywhere on any military base. If you do not have a car or have a very close friend with a car, you are going to get very used to riding in cabs from one place to another because that is pretty much your only source of transportation; besides your feet. And your feet are not going to get you to the mall which is a twenty minute drive from your barracks room. Unless you want to be walking for like five hours there and then five hours back.

Which no one does.

So back to Shawn, he is our awesome cab driver. For the first week or two of my stay in lovely Camp Pendleton, we were pretty much forced to call the taxi dispatch and simply wait for them to send the closest driver to us, which got us some very interesting taxi drivers along the way. Some of which we would rather not see ever again. But then we happened to be sent Shawn, and ever since that day he became our cab driver. For some very simple reasons, which include:

1. He is a great driver and gets us to where we are going in great time.
2. He is always available, well between the hours of eight in the morning and usually three or four the next morning, I swear this man never sleeps.
3. He always makes the ride interesting, and never seems to run out of stories to tell.
4. He plays the role of driving physiologist, whenever we happen to have something to share. Gives out pretty good advice to.
5. He has never over charged us and sometimes offers us an awesome discount.
6. He bought me a delicious breakfast burrito at around one in the morning on the way back from a hotel party one night.
7. He almost always makes a reference to at least one superhero during our rides
8. And last but not least, he follows his motto 'Safety third' with speed and velocity.

So, I would just like to say. If there ever is a contest for the best taxi driver; I will be putting in my vote for Shawn.

You are not just my friend, you are my FAMILY'

Lately I have not been very pleased with the Marine Corps for reasons I don't feel like explaining right now. So if someone was to come up to me and ask me to give them five reasons why the Marine Corps is a great military branch, I would be very hard pressed to come up with five. But I could at least come up with one, there has always been one thing that I have always loved about the Marine Corps and that is the friends you make.

But they are so much more then friends, from the moment you step onto those yellow footprints at Parris Island, South Carolina to begin the hardest three months of your life; you start forming the tightest type of bonds possible with the people around you. For me the girls I went through boot camp with became my sisters, a title they will always have. When I was still at home I never could have imagined how much it would hurt me to leave them when we graduated, on the way home I should have been excited that I was free, but as I sat there the only thing I could think about was how much I missed those sixty three girls that I had spent the last three months with and how much I wanted to go back to them because I did not feel right without them and on my own.

I still remember how sad I was and to this day if I really think about it, I still miss them.

But you cannot dwell on those feelings, the Marine Corps does not allow you too. They give you a week of boot leave, a week to recharge your batteries and become human again before once more you are thrown into a situation where the only thing that keeps you sain are the bonds you form with the people around you. This time it was at MCT. A month of what felt like never ending training, forcing your body once more to go to and past its limits. But once more the people around you became more then just friends, they became family. Became your sisters and brothers, the ones there and suffering through the same things with you, they could truly understand how you felt and what it is was like unlike everyone else around you because they were there.

For me, these people were there with me when it was so cold outside that you felt like your whole body was made of ice, where you could no longer feel your hands or feet and your body had gone past shivering and onto muscle cramps and just down right agony. Where even in these conditions you were ordered to lay on the ground and crawl over ice and through slushy water just because it was 'good training' these people became my family and once more I missed them when we left. Only a month this time but once again I did not want to leave them, the ones I had spent the last twenty four hours of every day with. I wanted to continue to be with them.

But once more, we were separated from each other and you were thrown into a new situation. Your MOS school, where there was barely any stress, hardly any pain and in truth could not be put in the same category as the last two situations you had just made it through. But we still formed the same bond but this time no with the majority of people around you, but a select few.

We may have not been under horrible conditions but I still feel like we built the same bond with the select few people around you that became your friends because you may have not been forced to survive together but you were forced to grow into the title Marine together. Forced to find who you were in this Marine Corps and forced to try to make the best of it.

The friends I have now are the friends that were with me in MOS school, we live together, work together and sometime in the future we may bleed together. We will always be there for each other because we understand each other, better then the people we knew in the civilian world. Because they did not do what we did. Did not suffer as we did. They know us, there is no doubt of that. But there is a part of us they will never truly understand.

They don't understand why we want to deploy.

They don't understand why we can laugh and joke about things that most people would find morbid.

And they don't understand how we will always need each other.

Because they don't understand that we are more then friends, we are family.

Gas! Gas! You have thirty seconds before you DIE'

Me and Jones were informed at the end of today by our Staff Sergeant that on June 10th, that we would be making our yearly visit to the very motivating gas chamber to once again show that we posses the skills to remain calm and collected under the ever present discomfort and pain brought on by a chemical agent.

I find myself looking forward to this event, mostly because I have a small obsession with wearing my gas mask. The need to wear it does not fuel into any kinky desire of mine, nothing like that. I simply really think it is cool, plus it may have something to do with my love of Star Wars and the fact that you can do a very good Darth Vader impression while wearing it.

So I am sure my entry on June 10th is going to be somewhat amusing. Or at least I will have a painful story to tell. Hopefully pictures and a video as well. We will see.

All hands DOWN'

I like to think that I am a smart person, I might not be a genius or anything. But I made it through high school with pretty much no problem, scored well on my asvab and really don't have any trouble when it comes to anything that is considered educational. All I really have to do is apply myself and given a short amount of time I will almost always grasp onto things. But the longer I spend time in the Marine Corps, the more I begin to realize how stupid they must really think we really are. It may simply be because the military does not put a lot of emphasis on education, they care more about whether you can run a first class PFT then if you can read, write or perform basic mathematical equations.

This theory was proven to me today when we were once again required to sit through hours of 'briefs' about subjects that we have received classes on before. And they never mix it up, they don't try and further our knowledge on the subject, they simply repeat the same things over and over again because they must think we lack the ability to retain things and simple things as it is.

It is not like they are trying to teach us calculus, everything they teach us is common sense to anyone with at least a elementary level education and since you are required to at least have a high school diploma before you can enlist that means it should be common sense to everyone. I mean everyone should know that rape is wrong, being an alcoholic is not a good career move, texting while driving can be somewhat distracting, suicide is not the answer and hazing is not accepted while in the military. But even though it should be common sense the higher ups in the Marine Corps believe don't believe we know these things even though we got multiple classes on the subjects during boot camp, MCT and our MOS schools.

I swear, we know. We may not agree or even listen to the advice given but I swear we KNOW.

Okay so maybe the reason we keep getting these stupid briefs is because we don't always listen to the advice they continually give us, but that does not mean that we don't know about it we just simply don't listen and do it anyway. Maybe we got the texting while driving class because not to long ago a driver smacked into a pedestrian and killed him on impact. And it is possible that we got the suicide prevention class because thirty some marines took their lives in the last year. But this is just a possibility.

I am still going to stick with the fact that they just think we are stupid and can't retain knowledge. In truth I believe if they really wanted us to really retain this knowledge and start working it into our daily lives, they would make the briefs more entertaining because picking out the most monotone human beings to talk to us for a straight hour is not the best answer. But maybe that is just me. Personally my brain shuts down when the speaker does not catch my interest within the first few minutes.

Today out of all the briefs we received the only ones I really remember were the ones were either the speaker themselves caught my attention or the speaker possessed at least a little bit of an outgoing personality. I remember that sexual assault is a 'no, no' and that when someone says 'no' they mean no because the lady who gave the class was energetic and made us laugh....which in truth maybe is not the best thing to do when you are receiving a sexual assault class. But it worked to keep our attention. Plus marines are morbid like that so whatever works.

I am sitting here and trying to defend me and my fellow marines intellectual level by saying that we really do understand and know the things that they continually teach us but if someone was to attend one of these briefs they would be hard pressed to think that we were anything other then a bunch of blood thirsty, sex driven, idiots who just happen to look good in uniform because all they would hear us do was grunt and growl in response to things, say killing someone is the best solution to all problems and get loud and rowdy when anything involved sex.

So maybe I should stop trying to defend their intellectual level and simply say that we do have the basic ablilty to comprehend things because if we didn't, we wouldn't be able to shoot things. Because you have to at least be able to somewhat comprehend things to be able to figure out how to work a rifle in a little bit of a proficient manner.

What I am really trying to express in this entry through everything I have just said is really rather simple.

I just don't want to sit through anymore briefs. They makes me want to kill myself.

But I can't, because suicide is wrong. I learned that today.

Go figure.

Sometimes you just need to DANCE'

I've come to realize over the last few months that there is one thing that every marine seems to do. Well at least every marine I have stumbled across or had the chance to meet. They all dance. It does not matter what situation they are in, who they are in the company of or even if they have any music playing in the background. It does not matter to them. We will break out dancing anywhere, for any reason. Though if I had to pick one reason that caused the dancing more then any other, it would be out of pure boredom.

Now, it does not always have to be a complete dance where they are totally rocking it out, bobbing their head and shaking their hips or some stupid shit like that. Most of the time it is short and really simple. Just a quick move. Just enough to make everyone laugh and to ease whatever situation we were in. Like today, we knew that if we encouraged Jones enough she would 'bust a move' and she did and it was just enough to amuse us for the rest of the time we were forced to sit there waiting in the shop.

But in truth when it comes to my friends, our dancing is not very little and not very short. When we start dancing it seems we never stop. We will spend minutes just dancing around. When I was in my MOS school, it never seemed to stop. All we ever seemed to do was dance, we danced in the barracks, in the smoke pit, in the classroom, during our breaks, in the chow hall, and pretty much anywhere you could be we would dance. We danced so much, we made videos about it. And not the normal type of videos, we went as far as making our own dance group. And through some messed up turn of events that I couldn't even begin to explain the group was entitled 'The next bandaids'



Dancing just seems to be apart of being a marine, I am starting to think that they should start putting it into the commercials, have the marine doing some bad ass shit, maybe have him or her blow something up. But then out of nowhere start up some music, something with a good beat and have the person break out some major dance moves. The catch line could be:

The few, the proud.....The dancing MARINES.

Okay so that was kinda of retarded but you get my point. I just think that it is cool that people involved in the baddest of the military branches and all we seem to do is dance. And I am sure we will continue to dance, because we will continue to have long days and moments of boredom and the easiest way to get through them, is to just dance.

Though now that I actually think about it, it could just be us. It could just be the way my friends do things. We may be the only group of marines that spend more then the usual amount of time dancing. Because if I really put some thought into it, I doubt this is how everyone does it. I don't think the marine corps is made up of a bunch of dancers. And if this is true then I personally think this is how everyone should act. It is very enjoyable, puts you in a good mood and tends to keep you happy. Not to mention it is a good source of exercise, and the marines do like to exercise. So I don't see why the would dislike the idea.

Okay, so that is my new goal. I am going to get a national dance day in the marine corps which will hopefully lead to the marine corps commercial I talked about earlier.

I am sure I can achieve this goal.

Totally going to happen.

I just took it for a two day long TEST DRIVE'

If there is one thing I have learned since being in the Marine Corps is when your NCO's or Staff NCO's [Non-commissioned officers] tell you something it is best to listen to them, because the knowledge they are passing onto you is not just something they are saying so they can sound like they know what they are talking about but actually because they 'do' know what they are talking about and the information can actually be very useful to ones self. Which at the beginning is a very hard concept to grasp, especially for young marines like myself. So when one of my corporals came up to me one day and asked if she had heard correctly that I was interested in buying a car, my brain automatically went into hibernation mode as she started on about what to do and what not to do and how I should wait and so on and so forth. At that point the only thing being processed in my head was; "Blah, blah, blah..." though in truth I might have been considering what I wanted for lunch but that is not the point. The point is I should have been listening but I am stubborn so I figured I was old enough to know what I was doing and was not going to get into any trouble. In the end I agreed that I would think about it and went on with my day. I actually had no plans on buying a car that weekend, it had never actually crossed my mind. But it is amazing what we do on impulse.

So Saturday rolls around and I find myself relaxing in my barracks room, with my roommate Jones. We had no real plans for the day so we were simply going to lay there until something happened or didn't happen. I was actually quite pleased with that idea, I am never one to turn down a relaxing weekend of doing absolutely nothing but that was not meant to be. Because over the course of the next hour, we were informed by a friend that they had gotten a great deal on a car and that we should come down and check it out. Just to look, of course. I had considered staying but after a short consideration with myself while Jones was out of the room I decided to go check it out. What's the worst that could happen?

Well this could happen...


I could try and say that it was not my fault and that I got a really good deal, or maybe that the fates aligned and they gave it to me for free; but that would be so far from what really happened. The simple fact is I was sweet talked into buying a car at what I thought was a deal, but it really wasn't. And if it was not bad enough I went for the biggest and most expensive one on the lot, it's not my fault that I have a weakness for pretty things. Anyway, less then five hours after I left my barracks room to go 'look' at cars with no intention of 'buying' one I left the dealership in my shiny new car and was ever so excited. Everything appeared good to me, I had applied for a loan through Navy Federal and had signed the contract with the dealership, no money down. No nothing. Just sign here and take the keys. Everything was good. I enjoyed the car thoroughly for the rest of Saturday and Sunday, not once thinking anything was wrong, well besides for the fact that I had bought a car without really planning for it. But I figured I could handle it; no sweat.

Well that all changed on Monday when I received a call from my bank informing me that my loan had been denied for the amount I had requested. I had been approved for a loan but one that was a good five thousand dollars short of what I needed to afford the car. Though the bank was nice enough to inform of my options which included:

Option 1: Force dealership to sell me the car for five thousand dollars less then originally agreed on price. <----Fat chance of that one happening.

Option 2: Come up with the needed extra money before frist car payment was due. <----No chance of this happening.

So in truth my only option was to cancle the application for the loan and take the car back to the dealership and try to find someway out of the contract I had just gotten myself into, I doubted that was going to be easy. I called the dealership and informed them of my situation and that I would be returning the car. The receptionest infronmed me that, "It would be NO trouble". But she lied. I should have figured that one. I told them that I would be there before eight, which was when they closed to return the car. Of course I did not take into account 'field day' which for those of you who don't know is an awesome day the Marine Corps came up with to get everyone to clean their rooms.

You would think the fact that we are all considered adults we wouldn't need to be forced to clean ours room and to top it off be supervised while we do it. But that would just be the ridulicious to think we could be trusted. So clean my room I did. And luckily, thanks to the fact that me and Jones keep the room pretty much spotless throughout the week there was not much to do and we were finished before six. Which left me pleanty of time to return the car. A mission I set off to do right away, with a much needed blessing from Jones, of course.

Fifteen minutes and more then enough nerves later I arrived at the dealership once more to return the car I had bought just two days ago. I found myself somewhat terrifed when I stepped into the shop and the owner lead me into the back. I was unsure of how I would handle myself and I barely had time to figure out a gameplan before the interrigation began. And if you didn't know this, when someone is extermely nice it is so much worse then when they are screaming at you. A nice interrigation is just unbearable. Not to mention somewhat creepy at times.

So it started off pretty simple, he asked me what had gone wrong and I informed him of the circumstances at which my bank had denied my loan. And it was at this point that he began to infrom me that he did not believe my story and forced me to call my bank. Placing said call on speaker phone so that he could hear the bank representive inform him of what I had already told him. He then told me what my options were, around this time I was really starting to hate options.

Option 1: Buy a car from the lot for the price that my bank was willing to loan me the money for. <----Really did not want to do this.

Option 2: He would refinance the car through himself and force me to pay all of the money to him, without a loan. <------Would have had to become a whore to get this amount of money, so that was not even a choice.

So around about this time, my throat was closing up rather tightly and I could only nod when he brought one of his dealers in to show me around the lot again and try to find me a car for the amount I could afford and I spend the next fifteen minutes walking around in circles with a very large cloud hanging over my head. At this point I was more then sure that I am screwed and I had no idea what to do. All I could figure was that I had no choice but to get a car that was withen my price range but more then anything I just wanted out of this. If I thought it would work I would have just ran away.

But I am not a good runnier.

So when I thought all was lost, the dealer came back and informed me that the owner wanted to see me again, so once again I went into the office and right before I was even able to sit own he told me the best news I had ever heard in my life, he was going to let me out of the contract and I watched him void it right infront of my face. I felt free as bird, a very stupid and implusive bird but a bird all the same. It seems walking around looking like someone had just killed your puppy and hung it from a light post works to make people feel really bad for you.

So I somehow mangaed to get myself out of a very comprising situation. One I never want to go through again but one I am glad I experienced and was able to learn from. I know to listen to my NCO's a little better now and trust them when they say they know something because more then likely they really do.

I can use this as an example for other people to learn by, well that is if I ever tell it to anyone because as of right now....

All it was, was a two day long test drive.