well last night me, julie, liz, and dave went to the city. it was a blast! we walked around the streets for a bit, rode the farris wheel at navy pier, and went through a haunted house; The FEAR. it was pretty fun! today we are going to melrose park to see Dream Reaper's haunted house; voted one of the top haunted houses in Illinois for 8 years! so it should be good.

H A P P Y

H A L L O W E E N ! !

Operation: Orange Blast is off to a start. i had duty yesterday, so i stood an afternoon watch, and took off right after! about 5pm i hit the road; got in at 8am this morning. it was a stressfull drive....raining/snowing in the mountains, raining in VA, raining in KY, and finally dry roads in IN and IL, but of course that ment all the construction traffic. i was so exhausted. me and mother went out for a quick breakfast, came back i went directly to bed where i slept till about 2. im all set for the rest of the day now!

David graduated army boot camp today!
he will stay in OK until December for his job training; something to do with heavy artillery.

congrats to him.

well. only 4 more days until Operation: Orange Blast.

and now there are two more ops in progress.
Operation: Pilgram Pad Party (over thanksgiving, kyle might be able to come home!)
and
Operation: Broski Bash in Badass Batavia (over christmas or new years break; which ever one i can attend! again, Kyle will be home.)

right now: "Beer and a World Series Game".

well this weekend was a spur of the moment. thursday at 8pm Steve and i were chatting, and we came to an agreement that i should come up to Fort Drum. so i did.

and 10 hours later i was there. it was pretty cool. not too much to do up there really, since its in the middle of farm land and forest, but it was cool to see his base. and we stopped in a neighboring town; Watertown, where the gilbert's grew up. pretty neat. we drank one night with some of his fellow soilders, and played some PS3 and watched some movies. it was freezing the whole time up there, but all in all my three days was well spent in New York!

looks like Steve will be trying to come down novemeber 1st to the 4th!

Operation: Orange Blast is still a go, so that would be even better!

tomorrow is the command wide Busch Gardens trip. which i will be attending. its going to be a blast!

back in VA!

Operation: Plastered in PA was a success!! definitely drank, and definitely had a great time.

DEFINITELY going back for a visit soon!

oh wow.
so last night i was cutting out the letters for the OP: plastered in PA shirt, and because of a dumb mistake the scissors slipped and sliced a big chunk of my left hand's middle finger right off!!

man did it hurt. i grasped the finger and just clutched it for a couple minutes wincing in pain.
finally i got up and went to the bathroom to clean the wound and whatnot. it just kept bleeding; actually it completely stopped about mid afternoon today!!
i thought at first i might need a couple stitches, it looked deep and that fact that it wouldnt stop bleeding! but the doc just wrapped some gauze around it, and it was fine. i cleaned it after work today with some rubbing alchol...of course that stung like hell. but all is good now.
ill have a nice missing chunk of skin for awhile!

and all for some fun in PA this weekend....

well, this coming weekend looks to be a 3-dayer! sooo that means
Operation: Plastered In PA!!
called up Mark P, and let him know i might be up for a visit! just got to be 100% sure things are as they say they are...though even if its a 2-dayer im still going; duty free weekend!

anyway, thats the plan.
AND i might scam the navy and use my 72 hour lib card in conjunction with my leave.
OR
theres a ship-wide fun event at Busche Gardens next, next friday, so maybe i could us it for a sunday-monday-tuesday deal.

either way, its a few free days at home!!