I have the new printer/scanner that Matt got me for Christmas and it works great!
Here's a pic of my brothers from back when we were all pups. (Matt's the one on the left)

I don't know if I'll be able to come back for Rob's wedding...
I ran a request chit for time off and they didn't even bother to send it up the chain of command, but just let it sit around until last night.

I'm going to rout another chit, but they don't really want to give me leave for only a week if I'm traveling back to the states. All they see is the thousand bucks it'll cost me for the tickets and so they want me to spend more time when I'm over there. What they don't understand is that I don't have more than a week I can spare and it's not like I need the vacation because I just had one and am transferring out in a few months anyway and so will be home for another month then.

Have you ever seen an honest man cry?

So I was at a post this morning trying to keep the person standing it awake when these three guys passed us and proceeded to get into a car that was parked about twenty feet away. I hadn't paid attention to them as they passed, but a third person who was also at the post mentioned that they all seemed piss drunk. I pointed them out and asked her if it was the guys in the car, just to make sure I hadn't misunderstood her, and then proceeded to stop them. The guy in the driver's seat swore up and down he was stone cold sober, but it was apparent he was drunk, scared, and about to cry. He said the other two had been drinking, but that he was just giving them a lift. The person who had first noticed these fools showed up and we both agreed that nobody in the car was sober enough to be driving. His two friends came with me, and I explained what an accessory after the fact was while the other MA had "a little talk" with the guy in the driver's seat about what an alcohol related driving offense would do to keelhaul his career in the Navy.
In the end, the guy in the driver's seat was given the option to submit to a breathalizer or leave his car and walk the five blocks to his barracks. Oddly enough, for a man as innocent as he claimed to be, he chose to walk.

The reason I haven't updated lately is that I'm a fool.

My cable internet was cut off because I forgot to pay it.
I thought I had paid for it when looking at my online payments for the month, but what I actually saw was payment to this other company with a similar name.

Anyway, 39.95 in late fees later I'm re-connected and will be posting more often.

I was reading about wealth today in Luke 16: 10-13. At first glance it struck me from the don't let it rule your world perspective, but upon reflection I realized that Jesus was taking it one step further and talking about using our wealth as a tool for helping others, rather than as a goal by which we measure our success.

Heartfelt charity is an awesome thing. Whether it's giving your money or your time, the rewards you get back are so much greater than what the investment costs to you. I sponsor a child overseas and it costs me less than one can of coffee per day. Do I miss the coffee? Sometimes. Would Lute miss the schooling, the food, the new well in her town that I got to help fund, or the vaccines? Ok, ok, there's not a kid in the world who wouldn't be happier without getting poked by the doc, but other than that I'm sure she's getting more use out of the cost of that coffee than I ever could.

Don't be a schmuck, suck it up and help the kids...

It rained today, and yesterday too come to think of it. I am wet, and lukewarm, and on my break for another thirty minutes before going back out to finish the shift. Luckily the lawless like rain even less than I do, so aside from this one guy who got a little too genki and threw the table he'd been drinking at down the stairs of a club he'd been dancing at, it's been pretty quite today.

Ok, Ok, for the most part the mountain kicked my butt; but I am getting better... The ski resort we went to is called Kawaba and is located on Mt. Hotaka, just east of Nagino. I didn't take this picture, but posted it because of how accurately it captured the layout of the runs.


I have owned a snow board before, and had every intention of learning, but never really got around to it. So yesterday, with a bunch of friends hitting the slopes, I tagged along and learned the ropes, counting it a major victory when I advanced from four feet before I fell to the point where I was able to go six.

I slept in till 0620 this morning!

That's right, it is my day off and I'm enjoying every minute of it. I went to work out with "The Big Wheel" at 0700 and spent the rest of the day after that pretty much relaxing and doing homework. Right now I'm working on a paper comparing Willa Cather's Geoffrey St. Peter with Fitzgerald's Gatsby, and am having issues with keeping it short enough to fit the four pages that the assignment is limited to.

Right click and "save as" to view this at it's full size...

From His Deathbed

Remember me and think of this
for though I've succumbed to the fight.
I once was young, as you are young
forget the day...

Seize Your Life.


-Ace

Well, I've been back to work now for a few days and if there's an interesting time of the year for my job, Christmas and New Years are it. Don't want to go into the details.

Lord Of The Rings risk is a lot of fun.
If you're not familiar with it, it's loosely based on the original risk type structure, but with entirely new lands, some "action" cards that let you break the rules in frustrating or interesting ways, rivers and mountains that act as borders which may not be crossed, and of course The One Ring. The action cards are the most interesting evolution of the game, and I was able to use one successfully to cross some mountains and give Steve, who was winning the game at that point, the old "Rear Admiral" and take his unfortified territories by storm.
hee hee hee

What a great day!

Matty showed up at around 0600, and the front door was iced shut so he came in through the bottom only to find that it had been plasticked shut on the inside. Unfortunately, he didn't relaize this until too late and so just finished the job and came in to add to stockings and have a bit of cider. I went back to sleep around 0630 and didn't get back up until the sun had firmly risen.
We had Yulekaga and EggKaka and assorted other traditional foods for breakfast and then the arm wrestling began.
But that's another story for another post, suffice it to say the day was well spent and ranks among the best Christmases I've had in a long time.

It's so cold here.
19 below zero when I got home last night.
26 below this morning.

Samui Tamatama

Christmas leave is going great. It's only been one week, but I already feel like a new man and have more or less cleansed myself of the military mindset. It's so stinking cold here that I'd laugh about it if I weren't afraid of freezing my lungs. You think I'm kidding, it was -19 when I woke up this morning! But I digress.

Looks like Chad and I might be able to meet somewhere on Christmas Eve, so I'm pretty happy about that. I've never met his better half in person, but she's a journalist, and she's managed to put up with Chad now for a bit, so I'm sure she's a stand up gal.

Check out my new site Ask Ace which also appears as a link in my sidebar.
Go ahead, hit me with your best shot.
-Ace

So I made it to Minesoooota alive and man is it cold here.
I've been telling all my friends in Japan about how cold it gets here but found that I'd forgotten how truly cold it is. I'm here to tell you it only got down to -4 here this morning and I'm officially ready to not have it get any colder.

So i did it!
well, almost did it.
I completed my last post and have gone home for the day.
Now it's a three day weekend to pack and then I sign out and am off to the states!

In honor of that, here's a poem about life in Duluth and eating a little bad chinese up on seven bridges road.

Stopping on a Sunday night
for teriaki beef,
I'm reminded of when you and i
ate barefoot on the river rocks
while rushing water passed us by
with laughter.

I have decided that since I'll only be back in the states for two weeks, I don't think I'm going to fritter any of it away on the second floor of UTC; the first floor however is a different story as those fools were always pretty nice to me.

Have yet to hear back from my brother, who's car I may be using to get around, so there are no hard and fast dates yet as to when I'll be in the Brainerd area but right now it's looking like somewhere around the 17th. I'll shoot smartypants and that can-guy an email when I know for sure and maybe we can put out the word for lunch at that Chinese place... Hey Canman, are you still on speaking terms with any of the girlies from Marketing?

Chad, if I don't get my brothers car I probably can't make it all the way out to your new place but if you're going to be in Brainerd or D.L. or even the Fargo area just let me know when and I'll get there if it means hoping one of the coal cars...

Thanksgiving was pretty good to me this year.

I had to work from the butt-crack of dawn till it was dark again, but since everyone else who has a normal job over here had it off there was a lot of foot traffic coming through the gate and everybody was in a good mood and smiling.
Total strangers started bringing us food around noon or so, and plates just kept arriving up until I left for the day. There was so much food we didn't know what to do with it all. The Japanese Civilian Police who work with us couldn't believe that these same people who cuss us out one day were bringing us hot turkey, and ham, and Cajun chicken, and sweet potato pie, and corn, and stuffing, and salad, and curried chicken wings, and more stuffing, and some sort of cornbread-chili-pie-thingy that was actually quite tasty if I do say so myself, and rice, and beans, and more stuffing, and more turkey... but i digress.

So, to answer MadChatthew's question from the previous post, I did have a great Thanksgiving, but not because of the food, it was more the happy people that kept coming in and going out. Nobody has extended family over here, so around the holiday times everybody welcomes everybody, and total strangers will open their homes and invite you on over for a feast you didn't contribute to in any way.

Homework :/

Homework I loathe you for you make me think, you question and frustrate and move me to drink. Another large latte instead of the gym, my waist isn't shrinking but my pocketbook's thin. If you've ever had coffee on the town in Japan, you know what I mean how they long for your ¥en.

In the same way they long I too have a yen, for a night without homework and a day to sleep in. Yet instead of my homework my English, my Psych, I find myself waxing profusely tonight. Which isn't so bad except as I've said I have two assignments before I hit bed.

I found out today that I did extremely well on my advancement exam!
I still won't advance because I don't have enough time in rate and my command doesn't believe in giving out awards. The good news is that I get to take the exam again in March. The bad news is that I don't stand a chance of advancing then for the same reason I didn't this time. The testing cycle they have in place discourages rate specific knowledge in favor of sitting there like a lump until you've built up enough time in the navy to advance at the expense of someone who's test score doubled yours.

What can I say, tomorrow's another day.