Updated 8:45 PM April 5, 2003 - Oops. I forgot to tell you all that I stopped updating this page. Instead, I've moved this site off to my own domaind. You can read all about me and my adventures at www.hokie.us now.

Updated 1:45 PM August 17, 2002 - Wow, time flies when you're working your butt off. I started working full-time at the armory, and that's been taking up all of my time now. I'm up at 5, drive in the 80 miles, do PT, shower, work all day except for a short 15 minute break when I go into town for lunch, then drive the 80 miles back home. That's been my ritual for the last week or so. Besides that, I got a new phone that I'm pretty happy about (even though I paid too much) and I had a "Last will and testament party" with my family last week which was pretty fun. If I have anything you want, feel free to e-mail me or call me. If I like you, I'll probably leave it for you.

Anyhoo...I spent all morning today looking at my free credit report that I signed up for. I was going to cancel it because I'd only signed up after some telemarketer guilted me into it. But it's actually been pretty helpful. I cancelled 4 credit cards this morning already. I'll probably end up cancelling the service anyway, but it was fun to play with. If you want to try, it's here. Also, I was reading the fine print on one of the dozen credit card applications I had in my junk mail pile and found a phone number I ended up calling to get my name taken off of their list. So hopefully, I won't have to worry about that any more. If you want to try that, it's 1-888-567-8688.

Oh well...that's it for now. I just wanted to get back on and update this page. I'm sure I'll have more to say soon. Until then.

Updated 2:30 AM July 29, 2002 - It's amazing all of the things that can happen in a few short weeks. For those who I haven't told yet, I didn't end up going to Ranger School. My bloodwork didn't get back from Fort Sam Houston in time, so I didn't have an HIV test on file, and that pretty much brought me back home to Virginia. In other news, it looks like I'll finally get that chance to visit Europe. It appears that my National Guard unit is going to be mobilized and deployed to Bosnia sometime within the next year or so, and I'll finally get a chance to put all of my training to use. I'm not going to talk about that too much though because nothing is official yet and I shouldn't be blabbing about that kind of stuff anyway.

Besides that, I've just been floating around since I've gotten back home. I've been playing a lot of scrabble and tennis, and I've been loitering in Blockbuster and Circuit City a lot, looking for DVDs. I've spent a lot of time online too, mostly watching the market, but also playing my share of chess and literati on Yahoo! Games. I also bought a digital camera on eBay for a little bit of change. I'll post some pictures up soon, so you can see what's been going on around here.

This weekend was actually pretty busy. I went to a wedding and my sister made it back from Blacksburg just in time to celebrate her 21st birthday....

Updated 6:30 PM July 7, 2002 - So lately, I've been an example of what we kindly refer to in the Army as an "oxygen thief." For the 48 or so hours surrounding July 4th, I spent about 42 hours playing Literati on Yahoo! Games, around 150 matches total. It's basically a version of Scrabble online. I took a few pauses to go to the bathroom and to get some food at Subway down the street; but besides those few moments, I was sitting on my bed in my underwear with a constant rotation of MTV, CMT, VH1, and CNN Headline News on the television while I competed with various random people around the world. Now if that sounds pathetic to you, that's only because it is.

I was rescued around midday yesterday by a friend of mine that I went through IOBC with, 2LT Daniel Fenton. During a brief 10 minute break when I actually got offline, he called my room and invited me to go see the Men in Black sequel with him. After that, I started spending a little more time on lesson plans, went for a 5-mile run, and even did a little shopping for some slightly healthier snacks (Kellogg's All Bran, Honey Crunch Corn Flakes, tuna fish, Campbell's Chunky potato soup, and some Ocean Spray ruby red grapefruit juice - the real kind that's 100% juice, not the stuff that's 35% juice and full of sugar). Now, if only I'd brought a can opener, I'd be set.

Anyway, that pretty much covers everything I've done since arriving back down here at Benning late last Monday. I'll probably update once or twice more before I head off for Ranger School. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to get back to some work.

Updated 1:00 AM June 27, 2002 - I guess the highlight of my day was when the UPS guy dropped off my new Scrabble board. It's actually quite impressive. All of the letters snap into the board and the tile racks so you can pick it up and pack it away without messing up your game. There's even a pocket in the travel case to store a pen and pencil to keep score. If you want to come over, I'll let you play with it.

Besides that, I finally gave in and started doing my taxes. I'm almost done now, and it looks like I might actually end up with a bit of a refund. We'll see when I finish though. I don't know...I guess it's not too boring. I ran a little over four miles before I gave up and stopped tonight. I also saw Brett, Roo, Meg, and Dawn for the first time in about half a year. And yesterday, I saw the Jimmy Buffett show with Dave and Gordon and the rest of the young Averys. I made about a dozen phone calls too, trying to see what's up with Ranger school....and that pretty much captures my last few days. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Updated 1:15 AM June 24, 2002 - So let's recap my day. I started off by actually exercising for the first time in about a week. I ran a few miles and did some pull-ups and stuff like that. I haven't lost too much ground, but I should probably start working out every day. After that, I hung out with my Thuy and Ben for most of the day. We watched Minority Report and played three very heavily contested scrabble games (two of which were won by yours truly). Besides that, I just ate too much. Of course, I'm trying to gain a little bit of weight before I go off to ranger school, so that's alright.

Anyway, scrabble...it's becoming a bit of an addiction now and my friends are only fueling the fire. Tomorrow, we'll probably have a little scrabble part at Thuy's. Hopefully, we can get about a dozen people there and play teams. That'd be amazing. I'll probably head over to Toys R Us and drop a few bucks to get the deluxe edition because I've been meaning to pick that up for a while. I'll probably get another travel edition too because my first one melted in my car and I seem to have misplaced a 'p' from my current pocket edition that I got off of eBay. My goal is to have a collection of every scrabble board ever produced. With the help of eBay, I think I might actually be able to pull it off. Of course, it'll end up costing a few thousand dollars, but it'll be worth it, right?

Oh well...it's off to bed because I'm going to be working all week and exercising and packing and preparing and socializing and everything. I'll be back to tell you more though. Until then...

Updated 4:55 AM June 22, 2002 - As you may have noticed from the time of this update, I'm having a little bit of a problem falling asleep. Unfortunately, it wasn't so much of a problem while I was driving home on I-70 earlier this evening. <nod> Uh huh, that's right...I-70. So yes, I just got back home from visiting Jennifer. It's actually kinda funny. My mom kept on asking me questions about the two of us. It started with whether or not we had gotten back together, and when I said no, she asked if I was trying to "earn" her back. That was a strange choice of words, but I let it go. She asked a bunch more, but in the end, I think I made it clear that Jennifer and I are just good friends. Who knows what my mom still has running through her head though.

To be honest, I'm not sure why it's so hard to believe that I just went to help a friend move into a new place. Over the last two years or so, I've helped a lot of friends and family move into new homes. I helped Jennifer's old roommate Lawrence move out, her other roommate David move in, my Aunt May in New Jersey, my friend Rick in Georgia while I was in IOBC, and my friend Brett...twice. I even helped my sister paint her new house when she moved in. I actually like helping people move. The reason why? Well, for the most part, moving sucks. Not really a good reason, is it? But here's the catch - because it sucks so much, people are usually very appreciative. That's the part that I like - they always say thank you. So I get a little bit of a workout and I get to be the nice guy...not a bad deal. So yeah, the offer is open to just about anyone. If you need help moving, feel free to ask. As long as I'm not on active duty orders, I'll probably say yes.

On a different note, I finally got some pictures developed, so I thought I would share them with you. First, I'll show you where I've been for the last four months. We'll start with my room, Room 102 and then we'll zoom out to my section of Building 75. Just outside Building 75 and across the parking lot is Taylor Field, where we held first formation at 0600 almost every day. And here are some pictures from that last week. The first is Melissa at Wal-Mart after the blue cord reception. Then there is Steve striking a pose before General Shinseki's speech. Brian and Eric(hiding) were equally excited for the hour and a half lecture. And the last picture is of all of my buddies waiting in line for CIF turn-in, the last thing we did as a platoon before graduation. Looks exciting, doesn't it?

Oh well...the sun will be up in about an hour, so I should probably go to sleep. I'll post some more stuff soon. Until then...

Updated 11:45 PM June 16, 2002 - After 16 long weeks, I'm finally at home in bed again. I graduated from IOBC last Friday, and I drove a little over 630 miles today to get back home from Atlanta. I had to stop maybe half a dozen times, sleeping for half an hour at a parking lot here and there. I did eat at a Jack in the Box for the first time today though, so that's something. Hmm...now that I think of it, that's probably the highlight of my day. Well, it's a toss-up between that and pacing back and forth in the Exxon in Fredericksburg that only had one toilet in the bathroom and two people in line in front of me. < sigh > Oh, happy day.

Anyway, since getting home, I've showered, eaten dinner, and sorted through my mail. That's pretty much it. I've moved a lot of my stuff around, but I'll be leaving in two weeks anyway, so there isn't really any reason to spend too much time with that. And yeah...I've picked out what I am going to wear to school tomorrow. I'm going with the casual Sonny instead of the shirt and tie. It's been a long time since I've been back to school, and I'm still officially on leave, so it's not too big of a deal. Anyway, my alarm is set for 5:00, so I think I'm about to shove off. Until next time...

Updated 2:00 AM June 8, 2002 - It's been a long week, but it feels good now that it's all over. This week was culmination, and we spent three long, hard days in the field going through one mission after the other. By Thursday morning, as we were wrapping everything up, I was ready to collapse. The good news...except for a lot of equipment maintenance and paperwork, I'm pretty much done with this course.

It started off on Monday, when I actually had a little bit of responsibility as a squad leader for our MOUT exercise. We were defending a little town, and my squad was tasked with defending a building as well as providing two observation posts about a half a kilometer out in our perimeter. What that amounted to was a lot of walking and approximately 15 minutes of sleep throughout the night. Overall, it was a pretty successful operation - I "killed" three or four of the enemy when they finally kicked off their attack around 0800 (we'd been waiting for almost 10 hours), while my squad probably killed close to 20 of the enemy, if not more.

Day two was spent cleaning up the first mission and then starting a second one as a lightning storm moved through our area of operations. We actually paused for an hour or two for safety concerns as the lightning moved in close. However, by late afternoon, we were ready to shove off again. Unfortunately, our mission seemed to sinc up really well with the rain, and we were soaked halfway through our initial movement. Luckily for me though, we ended up scratching that night's mission because of the weather, lack of ammunition, or whatever other reason. That gave me almost six hours of sleep after all was said and done. And on top of that, the rain actually stopped and the sun dried us all up the next day.

Our last mission was the most rewarding though. It started off with an air assault into enemy territory, and it was the first time I'd ever gone up in a helicopter. It was pretty amazing and stirred up all of my old aviation aspirations. Unfortunately, that only lasted for about 5 minutes. By the time we hit the ground, I had to stop pretending and go back to being an infantryman. We spent the next three or four hours walking around in the woods in the hot sun, trying to find an easy way to cross a creek. Then after we did cross, it was another hour or two cross-country before we set up our patrol base. Taking a few minutes break, I ended up on a link-up team that had to go all the way back to the link-up point to guide the rest of the company to our position. Basically, that meant I'd be walking all night. The only sleep I ended up getting was a minute or two here and there, when I should have been pulling security. But yeah, anyway, morning came and we attacked. I was in a support position, far away from most of the action - which was good because I wasn't in any condition to assault. But anyway, I finished the mission alive and we accomplished our mission, and that's all that really matters.

Which brings us to today (technically yesterday), which is our recovery day. They gave us the morning off - meaning first formation wasn't until 0745 - but stupid me decides to wake up at 0630 to go for a three-mile run and do a little ab and upper body workout before a long day of cleaning weapons. The whole rest of the day was pretty much a constant suckfest. We cleaned weapons until we were finally released around 12:30 AM. And again, I'm here online, writing about all of this stuff instead of getting my much-needed rest. I'll be up in about three and a half hours to go for my 5-mile run. I'm sure I'll be back here before long. Until next time...

Updated 7:30 AM June 1, 2002 - ...Sonny...tired. We ended up getting out of the field a little early this week, so that pushed our service project to Friday afternoon. Afterwards, our platoon just kinda chilled by the grill, chatting, eating, and playing some schoolyard football. We wrapped that up as it started to get dark and then someone had the great idea of going to Auburn one more time. Well, we showered, changed, and headed out there around 11:00, knowing fully well that I was going to come back for formation at 0600 for a 5-mile run.

Brian, Brian, Mahmoud, and I piled into my time machine as we crossed over the border into Alabama and the central time zone. We picked up Mahmoud just a little after 11:00 and showed up in Auburn just before 11:00...which is definitely cool. We didn't do too much there except for drinking and listening to some very good local cover bands. One of them even covered Weezer and Wheatus. Anyway, we finished up a little after 3:00; but I was hungry, so I made everyone stop at the Waffle House with me. It satisfied my appetite, but it probably wasn't the best decision. After we got back on the road, each of my fellow companions passed out, one after the other. It probably took a whole 10 minutes before that happened...which sucked because I was pretty sleep too. Luckily, I didn't crash the car, and we made it back to Building 75 around 0445. After brushing and shaving, I was able to grab about 40 minutes of sleep before my alarm went off. I lay in bed for a minute or so when Kelly called me to tell me we were leaving for the run.

I struggled to get up and change and I could barely keep my eyes open as we drove down to the airfield where the 5-mile run was to take place. When we got there, I squeezed out another 3 or 4 minutes of sleep before the commander showed up. The run went alright. Most of the guys passed, but Kelly missed the cut-off by 13 seconds...which sucks because that means he'll have to do it again next Saturday. < frown >

< sigh > Oh well...in other news, I'm going to go to sleep in a few minutes because the guys are planning on another trip to Atlanta this weekend, and what would a trip to Atlanta be without your friendly neighborhood designated driver? So yeah, until next time...

Updated 3:40 AM May 29, 2002 - Okay, so I have to wake up in less than two hours. With that being the case, you're probably asking yourself why I would choose to update my page right now. My answer: I don't know. I'm just happy that I'm finally done with my work for the time being. I still have an on-post project and cook-out to organize for this weekend, a book to read, two different two-page papers, and a final exam to write for my class...all that needs to be done in the next two weeks...in addition to about 20 hour/day operations in the field for the remainder of this week and most of next week. < laugh > Believe it or not, I haven't been slacking. I've actually been on top of everything; it's just that I'm being thrown everything now that the course is running to an end. I'll be okay though...I'm getting pretty used to the sleep-deprivation. I wouldn't know what to do if I actually had 8 hours of sleep...I wouldn't compain though. But okay, I'm going to finish up my packing for the field and then I'll be off to bed. I'll be back on Friday...now only two days away.

Updated 9:00 PM May 28, 2002 - Well, after a 0400 wake-up and a 0445 formation after a three and a half day weekend devoid of physical exertion, the results are in. I didn't max any of the parts of the APFT, but I didn't do too bad. In the end, I wound up with 74 push-ups, 73 sit-ups, 13 pull-ups, and a 13:32 two-mile run. I was a little disappointed, but I'll take it. I'm just counting down to graduation from here...now less than three weeks away. I'm a little upset that I'm not even close to the running for honor graduate, but I'm sure that my pride will recover.

Okay...enough crying. I head back out into the field tomorrow for MOUT training (Military Operations in Urbanized Terrain), where I'll remain until Friday. After that, we have a service project on Saturday, and then I'll probably head up to Atlanta with a few of my buddies. They really seem to like that place, and it's starting to grow on me too...though probably for different reasons.

Anyway, I would love to stay and chat, but I've actually got a pretty big assignment I need to finish by tomorrow, along with a final exam I need to write for my class. So I'll go ahead and get started on that. I'll be back on Friday to tell you all about my week. Until then, I remain...

Updated 8:50 PM May 27, 2002 - First off, congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Josh and Colleen Kanownik. I was able to sneak off to Akron, Ohio, this weekend to attend their wedding, and I had a blast. Besides Josh, I had a chance to see a bunch of guys from high school that I hadn't seen in years. I shared a hotel room with five other guys - which meant that I ended up sleeping on the floor. But compared to where I'd been sleeping the whole week before, the floor was a slight improvement.

Anyway, I had a great time this weekend, which was filled with loitering around Akron, fighting with lightsabers, paying way too much money for transportation to and from the airport, and paying way too much money to log onto the internet at Kinko's. The wedding itself wasn't bad either. I think I looked pretty good in my dress blues - < laugh > I even ended up dancing a little bit here and there. After the wedding though, despite Richard's drunken yet moderately persuasive arguments, I opted out of the little adventure through Cleveland's strip clubs. Instead, I ended up getting three hours of much-needed sleep.

Sunday night, I wound up back in Atlanta, so I gave my new friend Melissa a visit and spent the night loitering around Wal-Mart and watching a really bad movie. I slept in pretty late this morning, but I still got a little bit done before picking Kelly up at the airport in Atlanta and coming back to Columbus. I got my oil changed, my tires rotated, and even got rid of that little rattling noise my car was making. On top of that, I found my way to a cemetary while I was waiting for Kelly's flight to get in, and I ended up parking and walking around for about an hour or so, just looking at names and reading the inscriptions on the gravestones. I don't know...it was Memorial Day and all and I didn't really have much else to do. It was quiet and relaxing, and it kinda made me think about things a little.

But yeah, that's pretty much my weekend, minus a lot of disturbing incidents in the hotel room that I'd rather not recount. Until next time...