a little look see here at how big the 50cal bullets are...

other than some good ol' training, i've been busy getting paper work started for leaving my ship. i'm almost outta here. well, out of the navy..

i'm at home right now. i had a very busy underway. we had to train the marines how to shoot a handgun, as well as the navy kids.
had a bunch of marines who didn't know what the 25mm, or 50cal, let alone the m14 rifle. those type of marines don't deserve to call themselves jarheads.

i won't be home again for another month, and it's going to suck, especially the underway's.

my 30th b-day went off with a stressful bang. i had duty. sucked.

the heat right now feels like i'm here...

busy passed couple of days. still busy, i've got 20 minutes to finish packing for this 3 week underway. and then maybe i'll be back at the end of this month after my 30th birthday...

well here's some more vegas pictures

(going to vegas = 123°f,  leaving vegas = 113°f)

hope everyone has a happy 4th of july tomorrow. miss you grandma..

went to vegas this weekend to have an early celebration of my birthday, and for a girls night out weekend. vegas was great, lisa and sonya knew all the hit places.

things are still busy over here in san diego. i've been cracking on my division to find out if i'm one of the few exceptions that can get away with not having to go on this deployment this fall. you see i get out in jan 2007, and i have about 60 days of paid vacation leave left, and my division would be willing to let me use 45 of those days towards the last few months that i'm getting out of active duty. so if i do that, then it would be cost effecient for the ship to not take me with them of their deployment.

so for now i'm using san diego's sun and heat as an opportunity to go swimming at their finest beaches. i definitely needed to go to the beach today after this week i'm having... my division has a bunch of gun shoot training, where we have to qualify a bunch of sailors with the 9 mm hand gun. happy happy joy joy.

well if i don't get the chance, happy 4th of july. and i miss you grandma.

i'm using my friends laptop right now. i don't know how poeple can stand this thing. i've been making so many grammatical errors and i know it's because the keys are so close together.
i had a really easy day at work today. there was about an hour and a half of progessive work, and then the people i work with and myself slept for a couple hours after lunch to pass time before getting off work.
right now strong is changing his oil filter right at the parking lot of the barracks, and it's kinda funny hearing his remarks everytime he messes up something or other. especially the remarks that he made about oil fule and cuts on hand do not mix.

yesterday the fam and i went to the angel game for mum. the angels lost unfortunatly, but that doesn't mean that we didn't have fun. it was a good weekend, and it helped me be cheerfull for this week, or maybe for just today...

so many Easter eggs not enough hands (cousin matthew)

oohh a camera (cousin Ian). where's the eggs? (cousin damien & me)

i've had pretty busy week as you can tell. i had berthing cleaning duties in the morning all this week, and then after i was finished with that i had to help the guys with the gun swap. see instead of mantaining our guns, we swap them after a few years for newer guns. this swap was the 25mm, which can be a pretty big hassle in getting those guns up on the catwalks of the ship. and now we've got to do some quick needle gun work and try to get most of the rust off the gun mount's platforms.
i've got duty tomorrow, and then next weekend i have duty on saturday (i really don't like weekend duties)...

quick overhauls

the air department has finally decided to do an overhaul repair on the flight deck, so the ship is really loud and filled with contract workers. and as a part of the gunner's mates' repairs, we've had to remove the stantion polls that are on the plattforms of the gun mounts (stantions to keep dumb people from falling overboard). we've had other repairs too, but they've been really tidious work.

so other than that i've been doing my back workouts and hanging out with my family and friends. i've also working on getting moved out of the barracks by July 31st because of the deployment. the other reason i'm moving out of those little but nice barracks is because i'm getting out in january '07. i can hardly wait till i get out. my department still hasn't found out if i'm going to the deployment or not. i'll probably find out in june if i'm going.

(UPDATE) this week i'll be going to school for the ammo magazines' sprinkler schools. i get to learn how the operate the sprinklers for fires, etc. it'll be nothing but studying and quizzes. happy happy joy joy. can't wait.

i had a very long week. trained alot of people how to shoot the handgun.

i also have duty on saturday, so that means that i'll only have 2 days to be able to go home, and half of friday wasted in san diego. at least i'll be getting president's day off, but some of the other gunners have to come to the ship monday to conduct the 21 gun salute in honor of that holiday.

i finally got to see a physical therapist yesterday, who was a lutenient (O-3). he said that it seems that my back is miss-aligned, so next tuesday i have to go back to see a chiropractor. at least i'm finally getting some sort of help for my back now.

but right now i am probably going to go to bed early, cause i'm not feeling good (still getting over this head cold). i would like to stay up and watch the olympics but i'm tired.