29 October 2004 was my very first post here. The linkage it included has died so I’ll link back to A Brief Introduction. Wow…some things have changed a lot. Some things haven’t.

My legs now work. My lower back doesn’t want to and high blood pressure, the scourge of my family on both sides, has finally decided to settle in and stay. Meds are being taken and the headaches have been replaced with a spinning head when I work out. Me and the Doc are working on that. Although great for listening to Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd, dizzy spells are something I try to avoid these days. Being dizzy just doesn’t have the appeal it used to.

I still want to be a First Sergeant, but life happened a lot in the past year and that means that sometimes people you love and cherish die or get ready to die. That makes things hard. I didn’t want to be splitting my time between my family and my squadron. Not now. Not yet. I still have time. If it doesn’t happen I have no regrets over chosing my family first. I’ve watched guys pick their careers over their families. Not a one of them was ever happy about it. And I mean career, not duty. Duty is different and my family understands that which makes me a blessed man.

We thought we were going to Kadena next spring, then for Mt Home next month. Now we have no idea again. I’ve been here before, but I have to tell you, it’s starting to get old.

Life and death happens. One of my favorite books has a quote along the lines of, “If you truly believe in this spiritual life than you have to accept that dying is just as much a part of life as puberty…hopefully less dramatic.” That one makes me grin because it reminds me of that ol’ Marine Colonel I worked for, “You’ve got to have some vices otherwise God has to get creative when it’s time to take you home. Give Him something to work with otherwise he has to make things interesting. Nobody likes it when God makes death interesting. Tends to be dramatic.”

I need to thank some folks out there in this cartoon town of opinions we call The Blogisphere.

First of all the gang right here at The Daily Brief. Mom and the rest of you are just a barrel of laughs and a hoot and a holler all at once and it’s oodles of fun working with you. You do keep life interesting. Every now and then I wonder what the hell happened to Sparkey.

Stryker. My blogisphericalspiritual twin. Heh…that ought to make him gag for about a week…oh…wait…he has no gag reflex…he listens to Abba. Seriously though, thanks for the chats on Google and for letting me know, on occaission that I’m not as weird as I think I am…all the time.

And I could try to list all the people I read and try to draw material from, but there’s just too many.

Big thanks to the wingnuts on the far right and the moonbats on the far left for proving that sanity is a relative thing. Remember, as long as you guys are fighting, the terrorists are laughing.