I love this car...
It's sitting rather low in this picture, but that's normal as it comes stock with an adjustable air suspension system that lets you take it from a low riding, fast responding, turn on a dime boxy type sportster, to a high riding, smooth sailing, sweet road tripping, honey of a luxury ride.
But I digress...

I found out last night that I have a friend at work (Mullins) to thank for the hook-up on this car. As it turns out he was interested in purchasing it and had called the owner (Danny) last week to set up a meeting. As they are both car enthusiasts my Mullins and Danny ran into each other a day before the meeting and they started talking about the car. The hook-up comes when the Danny doesn't realize Mullins is the one who has already called him about the car.

You have to realize that these two had never actually met face to face, so when Danny tells Mullins that he's holding the car for someone from security who's pretty much agreed to buy it already. Mullins is a bit put off but continues his car hunt in other areas and of course doesn't meet Danny the following day to look at the car. Being the stand up guy that he is, Danny holds the car for a few more days hoping one of his perspective buyers would purchase it, but when that didn't happen he again put the word out via fliers, one of which I was lucky enough to see being posted.

Friday, Mar. 14, 2003 - 6:17p.m.

Things are looking better tonight... It's still hot and humid, but not so bad as yesterday or even the day before. These past few days the humidity has been in the 96-100% range pretty much non-stop and to be honest I was getting rather tired of it. The week has been long and early, with my average day starting somewhere around 0400 (that's in the a.m. for all you civilians) and ending around 2200. A number of good things happened today that made the frustrations that embodied the earlier portion of this week seem to slip into the void. First, I was awarded phase II which means that after three months I can officially wear civilian clothing once again. Also, my federal and state tax returns came back and were enough to pay off two loans entirely and give me a bit of an edge on a third as well. Even better than that though, I was issued orders just before lunch... Although I don't yet have them in the form of a hard copy in my hot little hands, and probably won't for a few more weeks, unless something major happens to change my status as a sailor they are not going to change.
Bahrain is where I'm bound for although I don't yet know when I'll detach. I've heard a lot of mixed reviews about it, everthing from skirmishes and open street fighting every few weeks to 140 degree temps (in the shade) and limited off base liberty, but it's only a one year billet and once I've served my time there I'm told I can pretty much have my pick when it comes time to choose my next duty station.

Sunday, Mar. 02, 2003 - 9:07 a.m.

So, I joined the Navy to see the world and decided to post this journal as a way for friends and family to keep track of me...

I graduated from boot camp a few weeks ago and was transfered to a holding company in Lackland Air Force Base, Texas where I was given orders to work until the Master At Arms Achademy started to push through a new class. The opening actually came earlier than expected (I was only in holding company for one week) and I have to say they're not screwing around with educating us. After a brief orientation we were thrown right into 9mm/combat shotgun weapons training, which is way more fun than school has any right to be. To my utter astonishment I was the only one in a class of 40 to be qualified as an Expert Marxman. Yes Expert is better than Sharpshooter, in fact, it's the highest rating you can get in the navy for 9M qualification. Now that we've finished with 9M's we have a week of report writing training to look forward to and then it's time for our M-16 qualifications and hand to hand takedowns.