Shoes, Running, and Being Fat

I said yesterday that I was going to be doing a APFT today (refer to yesterdays posting if you have memory problems). For the most part it went pretty well. As it turns out I maxed the Pushups (I did 78) I got a 70-ish on the situps (57) and I got a 65-ish on the run (15:50). The interesting thing is the weigh-in. The Army wants people to not be fat, understandably. It turns out that since last month I have lost three pounds, shrunk more than an inch and gained 3.7% body fat, also my neck is 1/2 an inch smaller. To say that the system of measuring health and fitness is flawed is similar to saying that my NCOIC has the occasional alcoholic beverage or that Jesus accidentally got stuck in some wood. You see somethings aren't just a little bit (for those of you who are currious Jesus really did get on the cross on purpose, so don't panic you can reference the Lord in analogies and still be a nice person... and my NCOIC is a drunk).

No one cares about what I have to say about the military though, sorry for boring you (no one is reading this and I know it) with needless details and rambling similies. On the other side of things my wifes parents dropped by the other day. I thought we were a little out of the way, but they got caught up in traffic on the way home from Kansas to Kansas and decided to go 20 hours out of there way to avoid the frustration of deer migrating at night. Everything has been going pretty well. We have found a new shoe store too. The Shoe Carnival. I feel weird going to a store that has the word Carnival in the title. for whatever reason Carny's have never been people that have inspired a lot of trust in me. So to go to a store that models itself as a Carnival is somewhat out of my comfort zone. On the bright side those Malasian kids do a heck of a job with their stitching. Well I think thats probably enough for today, prett soon I'm going to start offending people.

Fortune, Fitness, and Chinese Buffet's

The other day my wife and I went to a Chinese buffet. The food was okay… it was after all a buffet (I don’t like buffets very much). What really got me was the fortune cookie. Everyone has their own particular brand of funny when it comes to fortune cookies “After...hehe…after you read it you should say ‘in bed’ heh. Get it? Then it’s funny because it’s a fortune, hehehe, in bed!” right well that stopped being funny years ago, but keep on doing it if you find it so terribly amusing. My fortune cookie was quite possibly the most eerie thing I have ever seen. It said “Pick another fortune cookie”. How often do you see a cookie refer to itself in the first person? Or at all?! Most of the time they seem to be pretty content being a carrier for a message, as opposed to being part of the message itself. I refused to get another, I will not have dough control my life.

On an unrelated note I have an APFT tomorrow. The APFT is the Army Physical Fitness Test. It makes sure I’m not too slow, too weak, and not too fat. So far I have not failed. I have to run 2 miles in under 16 minutes, do more than 45 push-ups in 2 minutes and more than 50 sit-ups in two minutes. I can do the allotted push-ups and sit-ups in under a minute. The run however is where I tend to suck. Oh and the better you do the more “points” it is worth. Just passing is 180 points (each event is worth up to 100, but a minimum of 60 is required). I usually score somewhere in the mid 200 range. I come close to maxing the push-ups do okay on the sit-ups and pass my run panting and wheezing and just barely eking by. I can’t seem to bring myself to care all that much, so there you go! Well have a nice day on the internet.

On down to San Antone...

So, for the past two weeks I was in San Antonio. The reason I was there was for Army training. To be specific I was learning some extra drug and alcohol training tips and tricks (on a side note I had the highest scores on both the written and oral tests). It was mostly something the enlisted folks go to, but some civilians are there too. During the day we would learn about the dangers of alcohol and in the evening almost everyone would get drunk. There were two exceptions myself (Justin) and a man named Stewart. Stewart is a Mormon Bishop and president of his ward in Hawaii, he was a pretty cool guy. Stewart and I were the designated drivers. What I would like to tell you about are the dangers of being a designated driver. I was sitting there minding my own business at this piano bar (here I will explain this concept- the idea is that there are two grand pianos on a stage and two guys playing on them taking requests from the audience and generally being silly, they were pretty good and knew lots of songs). All of a sudden all the drunk people decided to order Jaggier-bombs (a mix of Jaggiermeister and redbull) and one drunk man spilt his all over me (1). Later I was being shouted at by a drunk man to order a Shirley temple and a margarita was spilt on me (2) which caused someone’s vodka and something else to spill on me (3). Afterwards a full corona and a Shirley temple were spilt on me at the same time (4 and 5). At this point I decided (using my designated driver powers) that it was time to leave. I finally managed to round up everyone who came with me and eject them from the bar. It was about 1230 in the morning and then I got them back to the hotel, took a shower and went to sleep. The strangest thing was the next morning I woke up to find the strangest rash on my body were all the alcohol and been. Needless to say I was unhappy. There were two things that made it worthwhile 1) no one died in a car accident 2) everyone that was not me or Stewart had a terrible hangover which made my last day that much cheerier when I shouted good-bye to all the sleepy people after our last half-day of class. The lesson: don’t drink and drive and don’t be a designated driver just stay home and don’t drink (if you do go Shirley Temples are too sweet).

Bow-dit-dit-bu-dow-dow!

That’s the sound ‘The Shield’ (a television show on FX) makes when it starts. On a different note (both figuratively and literally) I was walking towards the Hospital I work at today and I noticed (this was around 1400-ish(2:00 PM-ish)) that there were some bagpipes playing Amazing Grace somewhere off in the distance. I found it a little surreal for some reason. After all, how often do you hear someone playing bagpipes (outside of the Renaissance Faire) and playing Amazing Grace at that, maybe at a funeral, if you happen to know a Scotch/Irish policeman or fireman? Outside of those rather limited times it seems to be something of a rarity. I’ve been over to people’s homes and have heard them strum a little on the guitar, or casually play the piano but it is uncommon in the extreme for someone to nonchalantly play the bagpipes in your normal everyday life. I think it has something to do with the fact that you CANNOT play a bagpipe nonchalantly. I believe that it requires a person to be fully chalant (ßthis is not a word) in order to pull out a set of bagpipes and start playing. I don’t think that bagpipes are really good background music for conversations either. It’s like trying to have throbbing club music as a background piece. “Did you hear that so and so was doing…” “WHAT?!” they would reply. So it is with bagpipes. On the other hand they do have a certain ethereal quality that makes you enjoy them. I don’t know what to tell you, bagpipes are loud, cannot be played casually, but people love them.