Musings of a Madman

Stop-Listen-ACT

2011-10-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday and last night I experienced something to which I hope none of you can relate. I am writhing to you on the subject of receiving and acting on revelation and promptings of the Spirit.

Last night we had an elder in our zone go home. This elder had struggled while he was here in the MTC but we all thought he would make it.

Earlier in the day we had gym time-a chance for us to get some physical activity. When this elder walked into the gym, our eyes met and we said hi. In that moment I thought "I need to talk to him and see how he is doing." The next thought was "Nah, there will be time later. I need to go run."

Fast forward to the night. I finished up my nightly prayer and ran to the bathroom before going to bed. As I passed this elders room I saw the door open and a BYU cop in there talking to him. Again I felt the need to stop and talk to him, this time accompanied by the familiar warm sensation of the Spirit. And again it was followed by a discouragement-"the campus cop would just tell me to go away anyway, whats the point?"

I returned to my room and sat on my bed. The urge to go and offer my assistance returned and I decided to go and do, like Nephi said. Leaving the room, I hesitated and ducked back into the bathroom-same doubts. As I walked back to my room I almost turned in to speak with the elder but let my doubts win.

This time I knelt and prayed. As I poured my heart out to God I couldn't help but hear the voices outside my door. The word came over the radios and the campus cops escorted him out. I felt like President Monson running through the halls of the hospital only to find out he was too late. As one of the zone leaders was leaving I grabbed him and asked him to express our love to the elder. Too little, too late.

I do not know if this elder would have stayed because of my words, but I do know that I failed to do my duty as a disciple of Christ. The words of Elder Bednar rang in my head for hours. During an address given at the MTC he answered the question "How do I know if it is the Spirit or just my thoughts?" He quite passionately stated:

"Quit worrying about it! Quit stewin,' Quit fussin', Quit worryin' about it!"

Any thought or impression that leads you to do good is of God. When I had that thought in the gym, it was of God.

I encourage you, I urge you, I plead with you-when such thoughts come, act. Act right then. There is not time later, the time is now. Don't hesitate. Don't waste time worrying about if it is the Spirit or not. You cannot afford to lose that time. I know that this is the work of God. I know that if we act we can be the answer to the prayers of others. I also know the guilt that comes from failing to act. It is my sincere desire that others not have to feel it too. I share these things in the name of Jesus Christ , Amen

Leaving

2011-08-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

For those who don't know I will be leaving to serve a mission tomorrow morning. This means I did not get around to updating about everything. This also means I will not be around to blog for the next 2 years. During that time this blog may be used on occasion to have my mother post things I send her to keep people updated on my goings on. Just so you all know!

Mission Mail

2011-08-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

If you would like to get in touch with me during my mission the best way to do that is to write a letter. I would love to hear from anybody and everybody and hear how things are going for you. In my mission; however, we use pouch mail. It is a way to send mail to Chile (or other countries) for cheaper but has some different requirements. The following is copied from the information I received because it can explain it better than I can:

"Pouch mail instructions: The Church provides pouch mail service to your mission. Items sent by pouch mail use the United States Postal Service from your location to Church headquarters, where they are forwarded to the missionary by a private courier along with other Church mail...

...Only postcards or one-page correspondences (no envelopes) written on one side of the page may be sent through the pouch. Notebook of other light-weight paper will not process through the USPS machines. Photographs are not acceptable...

...Items restricted from the pouch [such as photographs, packages, letters more than a page long, etc.]

may be sent through the USPS or a private courier."

If you choose to use the pouch service (which is cheaper) fold the paper into thirds and tape the long edge of the paper closed. Put a stamp on it and address it to:

Elder Richard Bishop

Chile Santiago East Mission

POB 30150

Salt Lake City UT 84130-0150

If you choose a more conventional method (or have to use it since what you're sending won't go through pouch) then address it to:

Elder Richard Bishop

Chile Santiago East Mission

Pedro de Valdivia 1423,

Providencia

29 Santiago

Region Metropolitana CHILE

Phone: 56 2-340-5035

You will need the phone number for a private courier.

Wow, such a long explanation! I look forward to hearing from you all!! And if you're not inclined to write me don't worry, I fail at writing to missionaries too.

Stocks!!

2011-08-16T20:32:00.000-07:00

For years I have wanted to experiment with investing in the stock market. At the moment I find myself with a little free time and some mad money (money I can lose and not be hurt).

I initially invested $500, but the problem is that with a small amount of money it is hard to recover from the brokerage fees ($7 for each trade). Though all but one of the 5 stocks I chose have been up around 10% from where I initially bought them, I still cannot sell out of them without going in the whole because I don't have enough shares to cover the fees!! Good thing this is only to learn, right?

Right. But it still irks me to know that even though my investments have done fairly well, I will still be ending this endeavor with less money than I began (probably only by a couple of dollars, but its the principle of the thing!!). So, even though I have told myself and my parents that I will not become a day trader, I have picked out a stock that I feel I can make significant money on if I watch it and day-trade on it. I know, usually you pick a lot of them and different ones each day and all that good stuff, but I am confident on this and if it works out well perhaps I will talk more about it.

Basically it is a crappy company with consistent (almost every day for the past year) daily highs and lows. My plan, obviously, is to buy in on the daily low and sell on the daily high. The dangerous part is that a quick glance at the company's financials plus the fact that the stock has been stagnant for over a year means that this company could disappear any day. Bankrupt.

Risky? Yes. Good thing I can lose this money and not be too hurt! That being said, I am still fairly confident in this plan and I can watch the stock during the day and see exactly when other day traders do the same thing, so I'm not alone in utilizing this cash-cow. In a few days I should have more than paid for the "learning experience". I'll keep ya'll posted!!

Wow...

2011-08-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

...ok so I may have let my blog fall behind as of late. No, I did let my blog fall behind. Its been busy!! (but mostly I've just been lazy)

Last time I posted I was headed for West Virginia. That was a fun trip! I spent about 2 weeks visiting my brother and his family. My sister-in-law had to go up to girls' camp the second week to help run things so I watched the kids for her. It only amounted to one day really but that was enough. SOOO glad I don't have to be a mother. Seriously, I don't know how you women do it! Between crying children trying to climb in the shower with me and poopy diapers, I was ready for their dad to come home and save me.

At the end of my visit my sister-in-law and the kids flew back to Utah with me so that she could go to her family reunion and my other brother's wedding!! Congrats bro! The night before we flew out my brother gathered his family around him and gave each child and his wife a father's blessing. It was a wonderful example to me of a man utilizing his priesthood- much like my father always has been. He and his wife offered me the opportunity to bless their youngest child. It was such a sweet and tender moment for me- one that I will never forget. The priesthood power is truly amazing.

The wedding/reception was the Saturday after I got back so there was a lot of work getting the yard ready for the reception and the like. The day went well and, in spite of the stress and tension, was a good day with family.

The next family event will be taking me to the Missionary Training Center in Provo. Yes, I have a mission call. I have had it for a long time now, just haven't written about it. I will be serving for the next two years in the Chile, Santiago East Mission. I enter the MTC on August 31. My mission- geographically speaking- is the smallest proselyting mission in the world. It is about 20 miles long and 7 miles wide; however, in that small area are about 3.5 million people!! 10 stakes, 55 wards and 2 branches of the church fit within the boundaries of my mission along with a Temple, the headquarters of the church in Chile, an MTC and possibly- my fingers are crossed- the Chilean Military Academy. It will be a fun and exciting 2 years!! I'll post contact info for me while I am gone in a later post, along with what my life has been and will be made up of until I go.

Productivity!!

2011-07-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

I had such high hopes for making today a productive day, but then I combined, counted and stacked my coins:

21.75 in quarters- pretty simple

10.30 in dimes- still nothin' fancy

2.00 in nickels- blurry photo

and 0.62 in pennies- my crowning achievement for the day! Sad, I know.

On a more significant note, I am leaving for West Virginia in the morning to visit my brother and his family before I leave on my mission- ya know, the one I haven't blogged about yet. When I come back hopefully I'll get on and post some sort of update on my life. Maybe I'll get ambitious and write something tonight, but don't count on it- I've got to catch up on what I should have been doing this morning!

Long time coming

2011-05-21T18:04:00.000-07:00

Its been a long time since I wrote anything on here. Not much has happened, but what has happened is big enough it should probably be up.

My mission papers are finally done! There were problems with getting a doctor's appointment but after over a month of trying/waiting (we only have two doctors- we need probably 4) I finally got in and had my physical. Immediately afterword I had my interviews. Pres. Chappel is an amazing man to sit and talk with. Of course there was the standard worthiness interview but then we just sat and talked for a while. What a truly inspired and inspirational man! Still waiting for the call.

The next bit of news is regarding my esophagus. We got a copy of the notes from my endoscopy in Las Vegas and the doctor included a diagnosis of GERD- as was expected- and directions for treatment of it as such. I had an EGD (don't ask, I can neither say nor spell what that stands for) on Monday. Sunday night my dad and brother gave me a blessing in the which he promised me that everything would be clear. The next morning the doctor went into my throat with a balloon to expand my esophagus and couldn't, it was already as big as it should be. There were no signs whatsoever of GERD, heart-burn or any other of my symptoms. The medical history is there, but the signs are not. He biopsied a section of my esophagus to check and gave a tentative diagnosis (which I can also neither say nor spell). The results came back and I have whatever it was. Medical research still doesn't know what it is. They're not sure what causes it, but they think its some sort of an allergy. This sounds bad because if they don't know what it is, they can't treat it, right? Wrong! I checked the list of disqualifying medical conditions for the military and this is not one of them. I have the same symptoms and take the same drugs, but its called something different so- for now- it looks like I can serve.

The posts have been slower lately because for work we have been going back and forth between here at home and Needles Ca. We don't have internet in Needles so I haven't been posting. Headed back Monday for the final trip of the spring. Since this trip will be about a month long there will probably not be any posts until mid-June at the earliest.

That's pretty much all the news! I was hoping to have a new recipe to put up here today but between the dying lawn mower and the extra wet spring it took me several hours to mow the lawn this morning. So much for that...

On a sadder note

2011-04-09T22:54:00.000-07:00

I've decided to go ahead and make some information more public. Everyone who has read much on this blog knows that I went to West Point for two years and then left to serve and LDS Mission. If you read a few blog entries back you will see that I have recently had a somewhat severe problem caused by acid reflux. My acid reflux is most likely (though I have no official diagnosis) a symptom of GERD. The bad news is that GERD is a disqualifying condition for service in America's Armed Forces. Moreover, the fact that I have had food stuck in my esophagus hints that it may be somewhat advanced. I emailed one of the doctors on the Medical Examination Review Board (MERB) that medically approves cadet candidates and his response was "This doesn't bode well."

So, although there is still a chance of receiving a waiver and being allowed to resume my planned future at the Academy, it looks like I will most likely be a civilian for the rest of my life. Civilian life is not bad, don't get me wrong, but I had really hoped for a different outcome.

In the end I know it doesn't matter. If I do what I am supposed to do, I know that Heavenly Father will ensure that everything in my life works out. His plans are not always the same as our plans, which is frustrating, but His plans are always perfect and I have come to know more than ever that He truly does have a plan for me- even if I cannot see it. As Isaiah said: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isa. 55:8-9)

If He wants me to be at West Point, I will certainly return. And if I return, He certainly wants me to be at West Point- as it appears I would be the first person to be allowed admission under such circumstances.

If anybody knows someone from the Academies- any of them- who was granted a medical qualification after such an event, kindly leave me a comment below to let me know it is possible. All I have found is that many have been turned away for far more minor symptoms of the same disease.

Best Bites Pesto Pasta

2011-04-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

My mother and I shared a birthday the other day. One of the gifts was a joint gift to both of us- a cookbook. Not just any cookbook though, it was the cookbook from one of the most popular cooking blogs on the internet. Ok, so I have no numbers to back that up, but its pretty popular and they have great food and fun ideas.

Since today is Saturday, I spent my morning looking for recipes. Most of the time was spent looking at a Romano's Macaroni Grill online cookbook and the recipe section of Olive Garden's website (yes, both places publish their recipes!), but there wasn't anything there that sounded appetizing. Cookbooks haven't really been a big part of my experience so far, so I didn't even think to pull one out until my mom handed me the one we got for our birthday. Of the many recipes that I've decided to try, one stood out in particular. It was bow-tie pasta with pesto sauce and roasted tomatoes, mushrooms and pine-nuts on top. Though neither of my parents are big pesto fans, the meal was loved by all. Since I'm pretty sure its copyrighted I won't put the recipe up, but strongly suggest trying it.

Pine-nuts are used in two parts of the recipe. You can buy pre-shelled and pre-toasted pine-nuts but they are expensive and basically don't exist in Delta. Minus the time spent shelling pine-nuts the recipe would take about 20 minutes. Shelling all those nuts by hand? Several hours.

Also, pesto requires lots of fresh basil. There are two stores in town- Quality and Jubilee. I shop at Quality and bought out what was left of their supply of fresh basil-which amounted to about half as much as was needed. Grudgingly, I headed to Jubilee to buy enough basil to make up the difference. The basil down there was horrible! The leaves were all wilted and turning a brown/grey color. And the packages cost twice as much! There is more in each package, I guess that's the reasoning for the extra cost. But then you have to throw 3/4 of it away because its no good. Guess I'll keep doing business where I have been.

spring?

2011-04-08T06:55:00.000-07:00

It has been in the 80's lately and we've all been thinking spring- but then you wake up one morning and BAM! this is what ya got:

You can't tell in the picture but it is still snowing quite heavily...

Why can't it just be spring?!

Goings on

2011-03-19T20:35:00.000-07:00

I have not posted for a while. I have not cooked for a while. I do have some stories to share though.

The last time I posted was three weekends ago. The following weekend I went to Salt Lake to visit Temple Square. It was wonderful to wander around the temple grounds, in and out of the visitors centers. I spent some time sitting in front of the statue of Christ in the North Visitor's Center. It was a wonderful experience.

Then I met up with a friend and we went to lunch. I figured since I was on the road, I would taste some food made by the professionals rather than my own cooking for a weekend. Ironically, I this gave me food poisoning (we think) and Monday night was a very miserable night spent on the couch. How surprising! All these weeks of eating my own, amateur cooking and never a problem. Eat something made by a pro and that luck changes. It boosted my confidence.

The next weekend my mom and dad got the four-wheelers running. The plan was for them to go for a ride, but my dad had a headache so mom and I headed out for a relaxing trail ride. We didn't know that there were going to be motocross races that day. We got stuck in the middle of the races and were stuck trying to find a way around them for a long time. Eventually, we gave up and cut through the course. In all, we were gone for about 2 hours and I did not feel at all like cooking when I got home. So I didn't. Instead, I set about getting ready to go to Needles for work.

This weekend, well this weekend I'm actually home. Not in Needles. I inherited many things from my father. Unfortunately, I also inherited his esophagus. I have acid reflux disease. Over time the acid causes narrowing in my esophagus and makes the muscles spasm and misfire from time to time. These two combined make food sometimes get stuck. Until this past week I was always able to get the food unstuck on my own, but Wednesday night was different. Michael and I sat down to dinner at about 8:30 and the first bite didn't go down. I took a drink, which usually pushes the food down, but then the water stopped, hurt and then came back up. All over the place. After a while of fighting with the piece of chicken I gave up and told Michael we were going to need to get to a hospital.

We made some phone calls and discovered that the closest place that could do the necessary procedure was in Las Vegas- 2 hours away. We had a truck to unload that night and there was no way for Michael to drop me off at the hospital and then make it back in time to meet the truck. So, when the truck showed up at 1 AM we unloaded it and met my parents in Searchlight. We made it to the first hospital at about 6. They couldn't do the procedure. 6:30 we hit St. Rose Dominican Hospital Siena Campus in Henderson. At this point, the food has been stuck for 10 hours.

After some x-rays, IV drugs with a very small success rate and several hours of waiting I was taken to same-day surgery to have an endoscopy- scoping of the esophagus. 16 hours after the food got stuck, it was removed. I woke up a short time later and spent the rest of the day in and out of a coma-like state. Normally anesthesia makes people drowsy, but the anti-nausea drugs I was given mixed with the anesthesia to create an extremely potent cocktail.

Now I am home, writing this blog. That pretty much sums up my life for the past little bit.

Speculoo?

2011-02-26T20:29:00.000-08:00

Speculoos are a biscuit style cookie better known by the name Biscoff- the brand that is served on Delta Airlines flights all over the world. It is also probably my favorite cookie. That's saying something because I don't do favorites :)

The recipe I shared a link to in my last post turned out pretty decent. Something is just off, and I don't know quite what it is. Perhaps some other time I will try other recipes and play around more. The cookies are good, don't get me wrong. I would probably eat the whole pan if my parents weren't also enjoying them. Just goes to show how good they are, even when they're off they still rock! Plus they're probably the easiest cookies I've ever made, which is always a plus.

As far as the instructions to roll out the dough, it doesn't work. You have to chill the dough first because it is entirely the wrong consistency to roll out. Because of my wonderful patience, I chose to spread it around on a cookie sheet with a rubber spatula. It worked, but in the future it is worthwhile to chill the dough, roll it out and cut it before you bake it. That is the only way you will really get the cookies to bake evenly. Other than that maybe more brown sugar. Give it a try! They're great!

I'm a little behind so...

2011-02-26T12:53:00.000-08:00

...this blog will have 2 weekends' worth of cooking.

Last weekend my brother brought his fiance home to meet the family. As I was debating what to try cooking it was brought to my attention that I would not be cooking for myself as usual, but rather for the family. Because of this I decided to do something I knew would work out and leave the experimentation for the appetizer. We had Orange Chicken and Lettuce Wraps like those found at PF Chang's.

Since I only mentioned the orange chicken and never really discussed it, the recipe can be found here. It is a lot of work, but very much worth it. I did not have the red pepper flakes and my mother (who was helping me because these are both rather involved recipes) suggested adding cayenne pepper to spice it up. I gave the go ahead and she put some into the sauce. It really made everything else pop, but there was no spice. I told her to put more in, and there was still not the spicy element I was going for. Unfortunately it did bring the flavors out even more and in the end the orange chicken was too strong. A minor mistake. It still tasted great, the orange was just a touch too strong. Moral of the story: adding a bit of cayenne can really bring out the flavors, but be careful not to add too much.

The lettuce wraps were a narrowly averted disaster. Knowing that making these two complicated recipes at the same time would be a stretch for me, I mixed the cooking sauce before starting the real cooking. I put it in the fridge and forgot about it. I got everything cooked up and thought "this is not working, the flavor is not there." Frantically, I had my mother stir as I scrambled and threw a little of this and a little of that into the pan. Just as we were about to serve the meal, my mom opened the fridge, pulled out the sauce and asked what it was. I just about died from the embarrassment. We put some in and let it simmer a little and served dinner. Afterword while thinking about what I had added to the pan, I realized that we had ultimately re-created the cooking sauce plus some chili paste. The appetizer was amazing, very much like PF Chang's. The chili paste gave it a little bit of flare- almost enough to make you breathe fire if you got a chunk of chili. It would have been better with some cashews added. Also, shiitake mushrooms are hard to come by in Delta, so I used portobello mushrooms instead.

So far this weekend I have made Orchiette Pasta with Wild Mushroom Cream Sauce. There are biscoff cookies in the near future (the ones served by Delta Airlines), but I'm still in debate on that. The pasta worked out okay. Rather than a pound of wild mushrooms, I used the rest of the portobella mushrooms from last week. Everything but the cream was eyeballed and I intentionally added extra cheese. Ultimately I think it was good, but missing something. After some discussion with my parents I decided a little bit of sweet Italian sausage would be perfect. For those (like me before making this) who do not know what orchiette pasta is, it is the little shells.

If I make the biscoff, or more properly speculoos, I will write about it later. The recipe I am looking at is here. These are probably my favorite cookies, so finding a recipe has made my day! I no longer have to wait until I have an excuse to fly in order to enjoy them! Assuming of course I can bake, we'll see about that...

Word of Wisdom

2011-02-13T18:57:00.001-08:00

There are a couple of things I would like to say before I write actually write this post.

1) Comments are welcome and very much appreciated. This includes those who do not have an account for blogger. I know there are several out there. If you have any questions, concerns or other comments about what I am about to write, please share- even if they are critical. I will do my best to respond to any questions that people may have through future posts. Just be aware, if you are rude, use inappropriate language or write your comment in a language other than English (because I won't understand it) I will remove your comment. Yes, those of you who read this from Russia, France, Korea, etc. I know you are reading it. Stats are amazing. Feel free to join in, but please stick to English so that I know what you're saying. Although, given the results of my last plea for feedback, I probably don't really need to worry about any of those issues.

2) This is MY blog. I am not writing this to force my religion on anyone or offend anyone. I am writing this because it is important to me. If you don't like it, don't read it- that simple.

3) A note on sources. Many people may try to argue that I only listened to my church's side of the story. In fact, I did not use any church resources or even any that were approved, endorsed and/or supported by the church. Many of the things contained in the sources I used to learn about this issue spoke very unkindly about my religion. That being said, you must go out and find your own resources about the topic in question. I have put off writing this for quite some time and cannot find my sources. I'm sure if I tried hard enough I could, but I see little point. No, there will be no plagiarism in this entry, I do not intend to refer to any of my sources specifically but rather stick to things that are, in my best judgment, common knowledge. Again, any concerns just leave a comment. If there is something you feel needs a source, comment about it and I'll go out and find you one- although you could just find it yourself a lot faster.

Okay, now for some background information. For those who don't know, I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or in terms more easily understood by most of the world, I'm a Mormon. The biggest belief that separates us from the rest of Christianity- and the world- is that we believe in modern revelation and that our church is led today by a prophet of God. We believe that our church is literally led by Jesus Christ through revelation given to His prophet.

One of the other beliefs that sets us apart from the rest of the world is the Word of Wisdom. This is a code of health given to the prophet Joseph Smith (who we do not worship, incidentally) cautioning the saints to avoid several things that were at that time generally accepted to be either healthy or of minimal concern, but have since been revealed to be the cause of many of the health problems in our world. Two of the more well known examples are smoking and drinking alcohol. It was originally given as strictly a word of wisdom, a caution, but has since come to be regarded as a commandment by our church.

Finally, the story. During a discussion with a friend of mine who is unsure of various points of church doctrine, this friend told me that "The Word of Wisdom was made a commandment by a vote! That is not revelation!" This shocked me as I had never before been told that. Honestly, it didn't make me question enough to be concerned about my faith, but I had to find out what happened for myself. I knew that at some point the change had been made and some of the possible reasons, but had never given any thought as to how. So I did some digging.

What I found blew me away. There was actually quite a controversy over this in some circles!! Mostly it seems the claim has been used by the authors of anti-LDS materials. The "vote" in question occurred in the 1851 general conference when Brigham Young, the second prophet of this dispensation, asked the saints to make a covenant with their Heavenly Father to adhere to the Word of Wisdom. I cannot remember an exact quote, but the phrasing was something to the effect of "by the show of hands, who would be willing to observe the Word of Wisdom if it were a commandment?" After this "vote" he encouraged the saints to observe it even though it was not a commandment and promised that there would be many blessings if they did. It is interesting to note that Brigham Young himself did not observe the Word of Wisdom for a number of years after this event. Clearly, they had not voted to make the Word of Wisdom a commandment.

After the General Conference, there are many anecdotes and events which seem to point in both directions. I will discuss two.

After the saints were driven from their homes in Nauvoo, Illinois and had settled in what is now Utah, they began building a temple. In order to work on the construction of the temple people had to be interviewed by their bishop and deemed worthy by way of upholding all of the commandments of the church- just like the interview to go into a temple today. During the construction of the temple, a letter was sent out to the bishops of the church telling them that they could no longer send men with the intention that the church would provide chewing tobacco for them when they arrived. It specified that if the men must chew tobacco, they must chew their own. This means that you could chew tobacco- which is against the Word of Wisdom- and still be counted worthy.

Some time after the saints had come to Utah, a man was ex-communicated from the church for drunkenness. Many people claim that this shows that the Word of Wisdom was enforced as a commandment, a claim which is further supported by Pres. Young's statement along the lines of "if we as a church do not begin to observe the Word of Wisdom, many more will follow this man's path." He was trying to use this as a cautionary tale. Yes, Christ drank wine, but He was never described as getting drunk from it. In fact, many times throughout the bible we are encouraged to avoid drunkenness. Drinking alcoholic beverages was often at that time a matter of medical necessity but getting drunk never had a good purpose. The man who was ex-communicated from the church was treated thus because he was an alcoholic who refused to accept help. He had been in trouble for public inebriation many times and had been told that his conduct was inconsistent with a member of the church. Pres. Young was warning the members of the church that the occasional drink can often lead to an addiction. The easiest way to avoid addiction to any substance is to avoid its use in the first place.

The Word of Wisdom came to be viewed as a commandment by the church more than 50 years later when Pres. Joseph F. Smith, then prophet of the church, issued a letter to bishops and stake presidents urging them to consider adherence to the Word of Wisdom when conducting an interview for worthiness to attend the temple. It had been an issue of debate amongst the Twelve Apostles and First Presidency of the church for a while before the letter was issued. Many of the 12 did not want to see the change in church policy because it would mean they would have to give up some of the things they loved- yet another witness that the "vote" changed nothing. Shortly before he died, Pres. Lorenzo Snow made it clear that he would not be making such a change. The succeeding prophet, Joseph F. Smith, issued the letter shortly after being ordained. I do not believe that it is coincidence that things worked out that way. God will not allow His prophet to lead His church astray through either action or inaction.

I am a firm believer that those who are called of God to lead His church are each called to a specific task. Please do not take my statements above to mean that I believe Lorenzo Snow was an evil man or trying to lead the church astray. Rather, I believe that the changing of the Word of Wisdom was a task given to Joseph F. Smith. However, it still serves as a witness to me that if at any time a prophet of the Lord will either take the church in a wrong direction or stop the church from progressing in a correct direction- regardless of how trivial the point may seem- Heavenly Father will remove him from his position and put another in his stead who is ready and willing to do the will of the Lord.

I testify that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the restored church of Christ on the earth today and that it is the only true and living church. Many other churches have a large measure of truth, but this is the only one that has it all. I am a witness that the reason we have the truth is because of living prophets of God who truly commune directly with Him on a daily basis to lead His church. I also gladly add my voice to those of many others who sustain the prophets and apostles of the church today for I know that they are truly called of God. I testify that Jesus Christ stands at the head of this church and guides those who have been placed in positions of authority in it. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ- our Lord and Savior who gave His life and so much more as an atonement that we may be able to return to live with our Father again. Amen.

Wanting Won Tons?

2011-02-13T18:57:00.000-08:00

This weekend's experiment was not a main dish as it has been in the past. I didn't have work Friday and spent the day trying to decide what to make but everything I could think of was desserts! Wontons have been something of a curiosity to me for the past little while so I decided to make those. Unfortunately, nothing else oriental sounded good to me, so there was no meal to go with them. Actually, for lunch/dinner I had my semi-famous "Uncle Rick's Mac and Cheese" which is almost more like a tomato macaroni soup heavy on the macaroni.

I wasn't sure if it would be possible to find won ton wrappers in the wonderful Delta grocery stores (though I have since been informed that I could have) but the idea of making my own sounded interesting anyways so I searched for a recipe. The one I used is quite simple, but not at the same time. Making the dough itself was easy, but rolling it so thin? Not so much. More on that later.

The recipe came from About.com. Before you bother going there, I'm actually going to put that one on this blog since its so short and simple.

1 egg
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
about 1/2 cup water
extra flour to flour your rolling surface (or if you're like me to fix the dough after adding too much water)

Put the flour in one bowl and everything else (only 1/4 cup of water for now) in another. Mix the bowl with the egg and add it to the other bowl, adding water as needed. Rather than making a dough and then kneading it, I chose to just mix the two bowls by kneading them together. Doing this, I only had to knead the dough for a very short time before it was "a smooth, workable dough" as suggested by the original recipe.

Now the hard part. Dough- at least mine- doesn't like to be rolled out that thin. Maybe I'm just no good with a rolling pin. Either way, the dough would not roll. I found that if you take just a very small piece of dough it will roll thinner, but then you have to roll out each won ton wrapper individually! This worked okay for me since I was only making a couple for my own personal food, but if you were trying to make them in any large quantity you're going to have a problem. That is one problem I definitely hope to solve. After rolling it out cut the dough into squares and you have wrappers.

The rest is pretty simple though. Put some oil on the stove at a low heat- barely enough to bubble when you add something to it. Mix whatever you want to put in your won tons. Experiment! Be creative! I've had a lot of fun trying different combinations to see how they would work. Simply put a spoonful of the filling (proportional to the size of the wrapper) in the middle of the dough square. Wet your finger and run it along the edges of the wrapper to make them sticky. Try different ways of folding them. Be creative. This is a fun snack to make- maybe even good date material ;) Dump the won ton in the oil and let it sit until golden brown- flipping occasionally to ensure even cooking. I prefer for things to cook fast, so I started with really hot oil. This works for some things, but won tons do not fit that category. Turn the heat down, take it slow. Let them cool and enjoy your creation!

Needles

2011-02-06T21:36:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I have spent much of the past two weeks in Needles California for work. Every year bees are moved, by truck, from all over the country to groves- apple groves, orange groves, etc. Our bees go to almond groves in Bakersfield Ca.

Over the last little while, all of the bees have been moved from the Utah area to Needles. Then we all loaded into the trucks and went down to them out. For about a week we hit all the yards- where we keep the bees- and checked every hive to ensure that they were healthy and had enough honey to survive. On Monday, two of us went to Bakersfield and Michael and I stayed in Needles. We had a lot of hive covers and boxes that needed to be painted- which took most of the days- and then we went out to load bees on a truck to ship to Bakersfield. Bees have to be moved at night because during the day they leave the hive. If you move the hive during the day, many of the bees will be lost.

Our trucker was a man from Spanish Fork. He was great to work with! Loading means a lot of time spent sitting and waiting, but the people you work with can make it a fun experience and my co-workers certainly did. Four nights (one load a night) and several more boxes and covers than I care to remember later, we were done. It was nice to get up Friday morning and head home. It is never fun to go to Needles and work like we do, but I returned, as always, with stories and a greater understanding of bees, beekeepers and the way things work.

Been gone, but I'm back in the kitchen!

2011-02-05T23:00:00.000-08:00

Today was another great Saturday in the kitchen. Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn't, but there was no entry about it last week. In fact, there has been nothing for a while. I have been in Needles California for work. Never heard of it? Not surprising. It is a small town in the middle of the Mohave Desert where California, Arizona and Nevada meet. There will most likely be a post about that at some later date.

Back to the kitchen! Today I made Chicken Carbonara. The recipe I used came from HERE; however, when I cook I rarely follow the recipe the whole way through. Rather than using pancetta- which is impossible to be found in Delta's woefully inadequate excuses for grocery stores- I used fresh side pork which I cooked up in advance and seasoned with salt and pepper. Then I began the recipe and used the pre-cooked side pork where it says to use the pancetta. I started the pasta, mixed the sauce ingredients together using dried herbs rather than fresh- it works but I have no idea how much I used, just eyeball it. About this time I also began browning diced chicken. Rather than adding shredded chicken to the pancetta and garlic, I added the sauce mixture and allowed it to cook into the sauce I wanted and then added it to the browned chicken. Once the pasta was cooked, I added it to everything else and it was done! Goes great with peas. All in all very small changes. My family had this for dinner and mom and dad loved it!

Note: Where the recipe says to avoid boiling the sauce as it may cause the egg yolks to turn into scrambled eggs, it will. Luckily, this doesn't mess with the flavor, but it gives your sauce a funny texture.

Before making the main course, I noticed that it calls for 8 egg yolks. That leaves you with the whites of 8 eggs! What can you do with that?! Dessert of course. The dessert was a baked meringue with roasted berries on top. It worked out amazing, in spite of some small errors. First, we didn't have any raspberries. This means I was a pint short on the berries. This means a shorter cooking time. I forgot that part. Roasting berries though...they still taste good if they're a little over-done. The pan on the other hand? That took some scrubbing. Then, as I was folding the last of the sugar into the meringue, I was a bit too rough on it and the meringue lost some of its stiffness. Neither of these mistakes seem to have changed the outcome of the recipe and it tastes great!

Today was a great success in the kitchen. If anybody is bored with eating the same old things or doesn't know what to make, give this a try. It takes some work, but I promise you'll enjoy the fruits of your labor!

Saturday's Kitchen: A New Twist on an Old Classic

2011-01-22T15:33:00.000-08:00

Its Saturday, so I headed back to the kitchen, but had no idea what to cook. What really sounded good was my world famous (well ok, maybe just famous within my family and a few close friends) macaroni and cheese with tomatoes- but that's old hat. I've done it too many times! There's nothing experimental about that anymore. Giving up on my search, I decided to just put things in a pot and see what it turned into. It ended up being macaroni with a cheesy tomato based sauce. I cannot give you amounts because the combining of ingredients was all done by how much looked right, but I can give you a list of ingredients so you can play with it too!

Tomatoes (I used 2 of my mom's small bottles of tomatoes) blended until smooth
Heavy Cream (edit: I went back and checked and it took about 1 cup of the cream)
Garlic (1 fairly large clove- chopped)
~2 Tbsp butter
Parmesan Cheese
Mozzarella Cheese
Macaroni
Salt

In a saucepan melt the butter. Add the garlic and cook on medium high until fragrant and slightly brown. Reduce the heat to medium. Add the blended tomatoes all at once to the butter and garlic. Stir cream into the sauce until it is a pinkish red color. Reduce sauce by half, stirring frequently (but not constant).

Fill a pot about 2/3 full of water. Add salt and bring to a boil. Dump the macaroni in and let boil- stirring occasionally- to al dente. Drain and rinse.

When the sauce has been reduced and while the pasta is cooking, add desired amounts of parmesan and mozzarella cheeses and let them melt. Reduce heat to low and continue stirring sauce occasionally to prevent burning. After the pasta has been rinsed, return it to the pot and add the sauce all at once. Stir together until pasta is fully and evenly coated and serve.

I know its a very vague recipe. Maybe next time I'll try measuring everything out to see how much of it is used. If anyone tries it though, let me know what you think!

P.S. A word of caution- if you are using the bottled, pre-ground type parmesan cheese like Kraft makes the cheese is much stronger than you give it credit for. I went overboard on the parm and it is really overpowering the other flavors. That being said, it still tastes pretty good to me, give it a try!

My musings

2011-01-15T23:15:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking lately that maybe I should create other blogs- one for cooking, one for politics, etc.- but then I realized something. My blog is titled "Musings of a Madman." I am that madman, so, whatever I am musing about is fair game, right?

So, the thoughts of the day. It is Saturday, which, as of late, has become my cooking day. It is my day to experiment in the kitchen. Yes, it is wonderfully frightening. But no, really, I have come to enjoy it. This day of food preparation before my day of rest began three weeks ago when I made penne ala vodka (which I mentioned briefly). The next Saturday was orange chicken (watch out Panda, I'm comin' after you). This weekend? Sesame chicken. I was surprised to find some of the ingredients in town- our grocery stores aren't great at filling my needs- but managed to come up with everything I needed. All in all I think it was my best dish yet! Sure, it took every pot in the house and made everything smell like garlic and ginger for a while, but it was worth it.

Later on in the evening I was hungry again. I was looking online and came across some apple pie style egg rolls. It reminded me of the wonderful apple chimichangas I have had throughout my life. I figured they must be pretty easy to make so I went to foodnetwork.com and looked at several recipes for apple pie filling. Once I had a pretty good idea of what to do, I went into the kitchen and made just enough filling for 3 chimichangas- one for each person at home. They worked out pretty well. Today was a very good day for food. Maybe at some point I'll get ambitious and put recipes up, but not tonight.

Learning to Crochet

2011-01-03T13:17:00.000-08:00

Just as promised and warned, here is a very rough draft of the story:

When my Grandma Bishop was alive my father would go to the care center every day to check on her and feed her dinner. Often, my siblings and I would accompany him just to visit. She was getting on in years and didn’t always remember us or know what was going on, but it was still important for us to let her know she was loved.

At the time, my other grandparents- Grandma and Grandpa Jones- were serving as counselors for a girl’s camp run by our church. During the summer months they would spend all their time on the mountain making sure there was enough firewood, fresh water, and whatever else the girls needed. On occasion, my family would go up on the mountain to visit them. I have many wonderful memories of time on the mountain with my grandma and grandpa and their friends. One such visit sticks out in my mind more than any other; however, it is not a fond memory at all.

It was a Friday afternoon. My brother and I were getting ready to go on the mountain with my grandparents. My mom was also getting ready to go camping- she was taking a group of young women from our church to a different camp. My dad came home from work and invited us all to go with him to visit Grandma Bishop before we left. My brother and I both declined stating that “we can go see her when we come back”. We were far too excited for this trip to be bothered with things that didn’t pertain to it. In our young minds it didn’t make much of a difference either way, she wouldn’t remember we came anyways. Soon thereafter, we headed up the mountain. Justin and I excitedly pitched our tent and went about exploring. The days went by quickly and were filled with splitting wood, riding four-wheelers, and enjoying the company of those around us.

One morning, Grandpa Jones came to our tent and woke us up early- about six-o-clock. All he said was “Roll up your sleeping bags and take down your tent, breakfast will be ready soon.” My brother and I looked at each other with surprised looks. We weren’t supposed to be going home yet, we still had a few more days. And why are we getting up so early? None of this made sense. Something had to have gone wrong. Very wrong. We hurried and collected all our gear and headed to the camp trailer in which our grandparents slept. Grandma Jones was in there getting some food ready for us. When we sat down, she gave us each a slice of ham and a sliced, toasted croissant. She offered us eggs, but I didn’t take them. Something in her demeanor confirmed that during the night, something bad had happened. My brother and I exchanged several worried looks during that meal.

Just as we were finishing up, the door to the trailer swung open. Grandpa Jones, who had mysteriously disappeared after waking us up, stepped inside. He had tears streaming down his face as he told us what was going on.

“Grandma Bishop passed away last night. Get your stuff loaded up, we’re taking you home.”

I have always remembered the way he said it. Those first words to come out of his mouth- “Grandma Bishop passed away last night”- have haunted me for years. This was the first time I had ever seen him cry. He said it like it was his grandmother.

Solemnly, we packed the truck and started the journey back. It was a few hours from the camp to home, but this trip seemed like forever. As we were winding our way through the Utah canyons, my mind wandered. “Ultimately, this is a good thing,” I comforted myself, “she was old and it was to the point that life on the other side of the veil will surely be a vast improvement.” But I still couldn’t help that feeling of sorrow, of loss. I needed something to help me cope. My grandma was sitting in the front seat crocheting. I was mesmerized by the movements of the hook. My mind still raced, but at least this provided me with some distraction.

When we got to the house, the entire Bishop side of the family had already gathered, minus my aunt from the east coast. There was a lot of crying, a lot of sorrow. We cleaned ourselves up and joined the family. Grandma and Grandpa Jones left to allow our family its personal grieving time and the process began. Phone calls, viewings, the funeral, through it all I had one nagging thought in the back of my mind. It was as if Grandma were asking me: “Why didn’t you come to visit me? Did you not love me?”

After it was all over and the family had returned to their respective homes, life went on as normal. It is still odd sometimes, to drive down Main Street and not make the turn to the care center. It is even odder to drive down to where the care center used to be and find a home for troubled youth. As much as I tried to move on, those same thoughts kept creeping into my mind. The vivid memory of sitting on the stairs and telling my dad, “No, we’ll go see her when we come back.” That was the last chance I ever had to see her in this life and I refused to go.

One night my family was watching a movie, and the same thoughts were going through my head. I could almost see Grandma Jones crocheting; almost hear Grandpa Jones give us the news. I found a ball of yarn and a crocheting needle and began to replicate what I had seen. Before long, I had a row, and then another. My mom was shocked to see this happening and asked me where I learned how to do that. I explained about the trip home, that I had watched Grandma and figured out how to do it.

Every now and then for the next few years I would pull my little blanket out and crochet a few rows. Though it has never been finished, that little lap blanket means a lot to me. Every stitch is a reminder to always live life to the fullest and make time for what is important. You never know what life will bring your way. Had Justin and I known that we would never again have the opportunity to visit Grandma Bishop, I’m sure we would have gone. In fact, we probably wouldn’t have gone camping at all.

And that is how I learned to crochet.

Cycles/Warning

2011-01-02T11:27:00.000-08:00

I go through cycles in my life where I write all the time and then I never write. As of right now, I am in a writing cycle. I never share what I write because it is very personal and I am a very secretive individual; however, lately I have been thinking about the possibility of being more open and sharing more of what I write. This post is not meant as a “get to know me” session but rather a warning: I have a work of literature in the early processes of being written (ie. There is nothing on paper, just in my head) which will likely find its way onto this blog as my next post. When I post it, it will most likely be a rough, ROUGH draft. Since I never share what I write and I hate the revision process that may also be the final draft before it is added to the list of things written only to be deleted, but it will still be rough. Just a warning.

*Added later:
It has been written, but is a very different style than I have ever attempted. The main topic of the essay is not the important part of it at all and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm going to post it later, after people have had a chance to read this post, and would ask a favor of you, the reader. I'm not fishing for compliments- in fact I much prefer constructive criticism- but if you would please just leave a comment about the story I would appreciate it. How it made you feel, what areas need more work, something it reminds you of, anything is fine- I would just like to get a feel for what people think. For those of you who may not have a blogger account, feel free to leave an anonymous comment.

Its that time again

2011-01-01T15:01:00.000-08:00

Time to quit dragging my feet and write a new post.

Christmas was wonderful at the Bishop residence. My brother came home from college and my sister, her husband and their three children came down from Washington. Our little house was pretty full, but it was fun to have the little ones around! Christmas Eve we acted out the Christmas story, sang songs, and my dad shared some powerful experiences from Christmases past. The next morning, watching the kids open presents was a blast. Seeing their eyes light up when they get that one special gift they've been begging for is absolutely priceless. Dylan (the 5 year old) can speak a lot more Spanish than I expected, though trying to get him to say anything was quite difficult. He has been in an English/Spanish class for school and it seems to be working out alright. It was wonderful to have everyone around.

Next up is New Years. Sheena and Roy packed the kids up and headed home the morning of New Years Eve. That afternoon, Justin went back to Richfield for the celebrations over there. The house seemed eerily quiet. I headed over to the city party were a buddy of mine and I played chess for a few hours. I have never been much of a chess player and got soundly beaten every time, but it was still fun. After a while we went to play Family Feud (with a group of people, not really family). The first time I was the announcer (my buddy's mom was running it). After the first game though, there were no more teams. So, we got a group together and waited for another team to come play. We won and got $10 per person! Then I went home. Boring, I know. Even though the city had a fireworks display, we lit off some fireworks of our own, and then I went back over to help take down the equipment used for the night's festivities. That didn't last long before I was ready to come home and call it a night. One of the perks of not actually working for the people is that you can do stuff like that.

I haven't had much of an appetite lately. In fact, I haven't really wanted any food for a couple of days. I eat anyways, no worries, but today something finally sounded good. I got online, found a recipe and headed to the store to buy the necessary supplies. I made penne pasta with a vodka cream sauce. In some recipes, white grape juice works for a substitute for vodka- not so much in this one. Way too sweet. And by the time I was done cooking it I no longer wanted it, but ate it anyways (still eating it as I write this). It worked out ok. Next time I'll use something different, it'll be better.

Travels

2010-12-15T20:07:00.000-08:00

My parents and I went to Oceanside Ca a couple of weeks ago. We saw all sorts of amazing things!...

...and didn't take any real pictures of any of them...

...but back to the point- it was cool. The first day down there we went out to an old Catholic mission- San Luis Rey. On the 21 mission chain between San Diego and San Fransisco it was the largest and is still in use by Franciscan Friars so some of it was off limits. It was fascinating to see some a little bit of how they lived and imagine what it would have been like to settle the area.

The next day we took a trolley ride around the city that hits all the historic parts of town. We got off and went to the USS Midway- a decommissioned aircraft carrier- and wandered around. We spent the bulk of the day on the ship. You could probably spend the whole day. Though I (naturally) dislike the Navy, I was captivated by the mess facilities, the brig, the infirmary, etc. The most telling area though, in my opinion, was the bunks. It would be miserable to have to live in that tiny space. I tip my hat to the men and women who do it. After the ship we got back on the trolley and finished the tour. By the end of the tour it was time for dinner and back to the condo.

As cool as those were, the next day was just as fun. We started the day off at a maritime museum. There was a 45 minute cruise of the harbor to show us the ships and share a little bit of the history of the area. We got to see the Carnival Splendor- the ship that burned up a while back. Then we hit the museum exhibits. There were two submarines, one Russian and one American. The Russian sub was easily 4x the size of the American one, but comparatively the American sub had tons of room to move around in. That's American ingenuity- building something much smaller but getting much more space out of it.

We got to see the HMS Surprise which should be a familiar ship to those of you who love the movie Master and Commander. Yes, it was the original HMS Surprise, and yes it is also the one they filmed the movie on. The last ship was the Star of India. It is the oldest still sailing boat on earth. They take it out for a spin every year on its birthday.

Speaking of birthdays, there was a birthday party going on down on the bottom deck. How cool would that be to have a pirate themed birthday party on an old, old sailboat like the ones pirates used!! Complete with old pirate, treasure chest, and all the other things that go along with it.

Because it is an active (though not very) sailing ship everything has to be maintained in good working order; therefore, the work areas were all still active work spaces. Nobody happened to be there at the time, but it would be cool to watch them work and just see how things were done. There were also models of old war ships. The biggest and coolest one was Lord Nielson's last ship (also should be a familiar name if you like Master and Commander). It had 4 or 5 gun decks and in the neighborhood of 100 cannons.

After the maritime museum we went to the Mormon Battalion visitor's center. It was newly remodeled and was fully interactive. The story was told by some of the men, women, and the one child who made the trek by way of talking portraits. It sounds kind of cheesy- like something from Disneyland- and it was, but it was really cool. They even reacted to your responses (or lack thereof). Everyone knows the story of the Mormon Battalion, but I learned much more about it than I ever did before. It was shocking to learn some of the details that were shared. After the story, there was a room with some of the artifacts from the march and computers that you could use to search the rosters of the Mormon Battalion. Since my family has two ancestors that were a part of it-both on my mom's side- we looked them up!

That night when we got back to the condo, we went to the hot tub and sauna for a little while. We returned to the room to find that our keys no longer worked. The security guard passing by tried his master key, and still couldn't get it. After getting our keys re-magnetized without success we were sent to the top floor lounge to relax while they tried to get the door fixed. They were able to get it open, but it was going to take quite a while to fix it. This meant that one of us had to be in the room at all times to let the others back in. It also means that the next morning- Sunday- we couldn't go to church. We were moved into a new room and headed for home on Monday morning. Quite the adventure.

The next adventure came last night. My mother, neighbor and I went over to Richfield where we met up with my brother and we all went to the Forgotten Carols. I had never heard the story or really known that much about it but it blew me away. If anyone has the chance to go see it, do. If you don't have the chance to, get the DVD. It has a very powerful spiritual lesson and teaches about the true meaning of Christmas in a way I never could have imagined. Amazing!

Update

2010-12-15T20:06:00.000-08:00

So the last couple of times I wrote on here, I mentioned that there is nothing going on in my life worth writing about. Lately that hasn't been the case, I've just been too lazy to fill you all in on the goings on of life in Delta. We have done some traveling, but for the sake of not making this entry a mile long, that will be posted separately (and still be a mile long).

We are still working on expanding the warehouse at work (as mentioned a few blogs ago). The walls are up and the roof is almost completely finished. It has been somewhat fun, though often unpleasant, to get a small feel of construction. It is definitely not the right field of work for me, but it is useful to know how to do a few more things and is a fun change of pace for me.

This project has used a lot of very large steel pieces. The steel all has to be ground down (to remove rust) and painted over (to prevent rust). Somehow that job fell to me. One day as I was grinding on the gigantic I-beam the grinder popped out of my hand and tore a large section of flesh away from my wrist. Imagine a wire brush spinning at about 16000 RPM digging into you. Yeah, didn't feel great. I bandaged it really quickly and went back to work-without cleaning out the grinder head. The stench of burning flesh quickly filled my nostrils. Yuck. A few minutes later it was still burning a lot worse than I figured it should have been so I came home to clean it out and bandage it properly. Soon discovering the lack of medical supplies in my parent's home, I climbed back into the car and drove to the pharmacy to pick up the necessary materials. All this with one functioning hand mind you. As I am standing there bleeding and trying to buy the bandages and tape needed to fix such a problem, the lady behind the counter- a wonderful woman and friend of my mother- saw no real need to hurry. I mean, its not like that gash could possibly be painful or need to be cleaned out or anything. And the blood? No big deal, right? Anyways, I got it all cleaned up and went back to work. As I showered that night I spent about a half an hour just scrubbing it with soap to make sure I got all the rust, steel, etc. out of it. It has healed up nicely, though there's still a pretty sizable scar.

Beyond that there hasn't been much other than the traveling. I have been kinda sorta helping out with the swim team. Not sure how much help I've really been, but oh well, at least I'm trying right?

suit shopping

2010-10-30T20:53:00.000-07:00

So, like I said in my previous blog, I have been needing a new suit. Today I went to rectify that situation. Before going to Provo to look in person I did some shopping online and picked out a good suit. It was a three-piece suit from Men's Wearhouse, but figured that I should look everywhere else first- just to explore my options. I'm glad I did! Sear's was having a sale on ties so I picked up a couple nice ones. Then Mr. Mac had 2 suits that were both amazing. The one I finally went with is black with some subtle pin striping (here- but you have to click on black fine pin stripe). Since I drove up from Delta, they were willing to have the alterations done based on when I could pick it up. We (Mom, Dad and I) are going up on Tuesday to take Mom to the airport so that was the day we decided they should have the alterations done. I called tonight to make a small change to the way they were hemming the pants and the alterations were already done! Which is great, except that means they can't make the changes I was hoping for...

Shopping in Mr Mac was interesting though. They have two sections- the Board Room where all the really nice, expensive suits are and the other part for us normal folk. The sales associate that helped me happened to be from the board room because they were so busy everyone else was too busy. This means I picked out the suits I was interested in and took them to the rich person side of the store to try them on. People were amazed to see such a young man trying on suits worth so much money. It was fun to see the reactions, even though that was really not the case. I'm pretty excited to get the finished product

I've been told...

2010-10-22T22:23:00.000-07:00

...that it is time to update the blog again. I know its bad when Sheena isn't even the one telling me its been too long between posts. So, I'm going to try to give you something to read, but there's not much exciting going on in my life right now.

I have moved back home with my parents. After searching for a job for a while I called and old employer looking for a reference. Rather than a reference, he gave me a job. I am once again a bee keeper for Stephenson Honey Company. So far we have extracted a lot of honey, gone to Needles, extracted more honey (can I just say how much I hate extracting for days on end?), started melting down all the excess wax and started on a huge construction project. All of the empty comb after extracting has to be stored in an airtight room where we can burn sulfur to kill off wax moths and other things that will destroy our stuff. The business is switching the kinds of hives we use so there will now be a lot more comb to store and we don't have enough room to store it all. As a result, we are building a huge new storage room. It will be nice when it is finished, I'm pretty excited.

My suit is about shot- the pants in particular have about seen their last church meeting. It gave me at least 4 years of good solid use so I really can't complain but I was hoping it would hold out until it was time to buy mission suits. Next weekend I'm planning on going to Provo to buy a new one.

Yes, I am really talking about clothes. That is how little is really going on in my life. I might post about the trip after it happens, but other than that I can't imagine anything coming up to blog about. This means there will be quite a famine of posts for the next while. Sorry to those of you who check this blog often, there's just not anything to update you on! If anybody has ideas on what I should write about, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me a text/email/other form of contact.

Oh, and to answer a question I am frequently asked: yes, I do miss West Point- but at the same time it is nice to be away. My relationship with the Academy has always been a mixed one. I love the place, and I hate it. In much the same way I miss the Academy and yet I am glad to be rid of it. I will definitely be ready to go back in a few years though.

9/11

2010-09-11T09:25:00.000-07:00

Never forget. Take some time when you read this to thank those you may know who have served or are now serving to protect this great nation both at home and abroad.

If you want an example of the bravery of the men and women who responded that day look up Stephen Siller, the inspiration behind the Tunnel to Towers Run.

And please, please, please always remember. With our vast selection of channels on TV I could only find 2 channels that had anything about 9/11. The channels we normally watch for news and special event coverage were Saturday morning cartoons. I find it hard to believe that we are already more concerned about the entertainment of our children than taking a little time to remember the lives that were lost. Our house is the only one on the street with a flag flying- because I put it up. We do have to continue our lives, but never- NEVER- forget.

The Hyde Challenge

2010-08-28T15:38:00.000-07:00

The Hyde Challenge, as I mentioned in my last real blog entry, was the name of the culminating exercise for Cadet Basic Training this year. It began by air assaulting into Camp Buckner in a CH-47 Chinook helicopter (below). The flight path took us over the terrain we would be covering and then landed in LZ Owl just outside of Buckner. Upon landing we held security on the landing zone until the bird took off and then scrambled to a safer location. For most companies this marked the beginning of the actual military operation; however, for scheduling reasons we got flown out the day before we started so we just walked to the bays (rudimentary barracks- old bunk-house style).The next morning we started our operation in trucks leaving from LZ Owl. We had been given an operations order (OPORD) on what was supposed to be happening for the day but the entire Hyde Challenge was based on FRAGOs, fragmentation orders or last minute changes to the plan. This meant that as the squad leader, I knew virtually nothing about what was going to happen. I was given the FRAGO before we loaded the truck and had 3 minutes to brief my squad on the situation. The truck was completely covered over and the drivers were instructed to drive as they would on a normal operation so we got tossed around pretty good back there. We arrived at the first site- a rifle range with pop-up targets- and were immediately getting screamed at by site cadre. They were beating the sides of the truck and shouting while combat noises were being played over a loud-speaker. This caused a lot of confusion and stress for the new cadets who had to jump out of the truck, grab two magazines and sprint to the firing line and engage targets (all in full gear). The next range was similar but they also incorporated smoke grenades and target discrimination (there were civilians mixed in with the enemy).

After the second range I was briefed on what we were going to do next. I was told that intelligence reports gave us the location of weapons caches scattered throughout the mountains and that my squad was to go find them with the help of local nationals. I was given coordinates and told to find the location on the map and brief my driver on the route and location. My truck driver looked at me when I started to brief and said "I already know where we're going, but be ready to get dropped off in the wrong spot." Fun.

When we arrived at the wrong destination I was told to select an acting squad leader and go brief higher on the two engagements we had just encountered. I left my squad and hoped for the best. The task they had was basically land navigation and the planners were paranoid that the squad leaders would help their own squads too much so my "briefing higher" was acting as the local national accompanying- but not helping- another squad (which found none of the weapons caches and barely made it back on time).

From there, we walked to a reservoir and paddled a zodiac boat across it to reach the other side and receive coordinates to another location. The guy who told us where to go gave us bad coordinates so we spent half an hour pulling security about a click (km) to the south of where we were supposed to be while waiting for a convoy that never showed up. Turns out, we were supposed to stumble upon our convoy which had just been ambushed. There were two casualties and we had to secure the area, provide treatment and call in for a medevac (medical evacuation). The next FRAGO was that there were two more people, an Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD, if you don't know what I mean go watch the Hurt Locker) team, and nobody knew where they were.

When we found the team the EOD specialist was dead and the driver had minor injuries. There was a robot there and the driver had no idea how to use it but there was an IED that had to be taken care of. Neither my new cadets nor myself had ever seen this thing before so it was an interesting adventure figuring out how to make it work.

For the final section we had to go find another local national and get an intelligence update from him. He sent my squad up a hill (more of a cliff face) where we had a memorial service for 1LT Daniel Hyde who was killed in combat in Iraq in 2007. Though the climb was difficult and everyone was tired, it was the favorite event for every new cadet. It was a fitting way to end their training, reminding them of why they are where they are and the commitment they are making. It can be intimidating sometimes to think about the responsibilities and risks involved with what we choose to do, but it is vital that we never forget.

Darkness fell as we descended the cliff. Once we reached the bottom my squad moved to our patrol base where the night phase commenced. It consisted of a normal patrol base* with each squad conducting an hour long recon mission during the night. Somewhere in the woods, we were told, was an old building where a high-ranking enemy leader was staying. We were to go, find the house and report back what we found. My squad did not find the house but we encountered the enemy leader (and almost got caught by him) and found the HMMWV he was using for transportation- still a successful recon. Upon completion of the night phase (about 0600) we moved to a pick-up site and were trucked back to Buckner. Thus ended the Hyde Challenge.

*A patrol base is set up as a perimeter with the leadership in the center and people along the outside pulling security. Normally you will have no less than 50% security which means 50% of your people will be awake and watching/waiting for an enemy attack.

Pictures

2010-08-22T11:00:00.001-07:00

I forgot to post them with that blog:

New cadets exiting the gas chamber.

Giving IVs.

Some successful...

...some not

Thanks to my friends for the pictures.

Its been a long time coming...

2010-08-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

But here it finally is, the update.

The rest of my time at Ft. Jackson got progressively less and less stressful. I went to work at 0600 for PT (physical training- working out) and was usually done by early afternoon. Unfortunately, there isn't much to do around Ft Jackson during the day and because its a college town, there's little of interest to me at night, so there was a lot of time spent sleeping, watching tv, etc. All in all it was a pretty good experience. I saw some things to emulate in my leadership and some things to definitely avoid. Then I headed home for a few weeks of leave and wonderful relaxation.

Two weeks later it was back to work. Basic training at the academy is broken into two parts, or details. First detail consists of mostly garrison work and the administrative side of West Point- lots of issue points, placement testing, etc. Second detail, of which I was a part, consists of the field-type training of a soldier. Before the cadre of either detail can take over and be given new cadets to train the must first go through LTP which is a train-up to make sure they are qualified to teach everything.

I showed up to the Point for LTP thinking we would have little to do the first day, being Sunday. How wrong I was. We hit the ground running and ran non-stop for weeks straight. During LTP I averaged about 5 hours of sleep a night and worked long hard days. It was fun though. The field is a much better environment than garrison and we got to do things like rappelling, shooting, going through the gas chamber, more shooting, soldier first responder (SFR- first aid for combat) and did I mention shooting? We spent 5 days on the ranges with SSG Miller, a Special Forces Staff Sergeant. I learned more about rifles, how to shoot them and what to do when they won't shoot in those five days than all my previous experience combined.

Change of detail finally came. It was time for us to take over training the new cadets and none of us could wait. Exhausted, but excited, we moved our stuff from one barracks to the other while the new cadets were at sponsor homes eating ice cream and calling home. By the next morning the excitement had mostly worn off and we were all left more exhausted than before. The 5 hours of sleep a night turned into 3 hours and 45 minutes almost exact every night.

Luckily, the pace of training slowed. We began with shooting ranges- 5 days again but with us teaching this time. On day one, watching those who had never fired a weapon before made it nerve wracking to think ahead to the training after the shooting ranges, fire team live fire. This is an event where we give new cadets live ammo and have them running through the woods with their buddies, shooting at targets as they pop up. As the squad leader, it would be my job to be in the middle of the group controlling their movements. This meant two iterations of having two new cadets on either side of me with live ammo, running and shooting. Thankfully, by the end of the training before the event I had no hesitation handing every member of my squad (except one for medical reasons) a loaded magazine and having them run next to me. Needless to say there was a lot of progress made and it was quite fun to watch these novices turn into experts almost overnight.

Then for the next week we taught them to rappel, mountain climb, make rope bridges, handle a toxic environment (gas chamber), and various other skills vital to survival in combat. Then for a week we moved on to teaching them how to handle situations where things went wrong in combat (SFR). There are pictures of the gas chamber and learning how to do IV's below.

The last block of training was spent out at beautiful Camp Buckner for a culminating exercise. The Hyde Challenge truly challenged the new cadets on everything they had been taught during beast. For a little under 24 hours my squad conducted operations ranging from shooting (in highly stressful situations) to aiding those who had been ambushed to clearing IEDs. We walked somewhere around 6-8 miles, running much of it, and my squad handled the situations well. There was also a night phase during which we set up a patrol base and ran recon missions all night long. The pictures of the Hyde Challenge are amazing but I cannot show them here because they are owned by the West Point Public Affairs Office. There are some cool pictures of it and the rest of beast here. I will (hopefully) do a separate post about the Hyde Challenge soon.

After the Hyde Challenge the new cadets were given a much needed chance to recover for a couple of days. Sunday afternoon consisted of an awards ceremony (my company won 3 of the 4 awards, including best company) and a talent show. Then it was off to bed before an early (0430) wake-up and marching back to West Point.

March back is a large affair with old grads coming to walk with the new cadets, sharing their stories of the corps and congratulating these young men and women on completing beast. The planned route was 12.2 miles- we ended up going about 14. Moral of the story? Everyone needs to know the route, not just the person in front. Sometimes the person in front gets too far ahead and then nobody else knows where to go!

After march back I had 3 days of administrative work to get myself out-processed from the academy and here I sit at home, looking for a job. I figure between beast and LTP I walked/ran with a pack on my back for about 65 miles and averaged between 3 and 4 hours of sleep a night. Maybe this time without a job is a gift?

FT Jackson

2010-05-27T18:41:00.000-07:00

Its been a busy couple of days but they're going to give me the weekend off (from Friday to Tuesday, Memorial Day is big here) so there's no harm in staying up to write a little bit, right?

The semester is over and I survived grad-week. This year's schedule gave us one morning to sleep in until 0630, an exciting change. Unfortunately, for all the cadre of Beast II (that means me) there was a 6 mile ruck march that morning. We stepped off at 0520. Joy. But the week wasn't all bad. My grades came back and I got about a 3.5 GPA. Decent. About what I was shooting for too. We'll see how that changes my class rank (or not if they don't get it out before I leave).

Graduation itself was quite disappointing. POTUS (President of the United States) was the graduation speaker and gave virtually the same speech he gave when he came before. It was just as boring this time too. What's more, he couldn't be bothered to show up on time. When I say that I don't mean he showed up 5 minutes after the ceremony started but still made it before his introduction. No. His motorcade showed up 5 minutes after his introduction and he didn't come out for 20-25 minutes after that. You know how awkward it is when you're riding in someone's car and the conversation just dies? Imagine that except that its a stadium filled to capacity with people. World's most awkward silence waiting for him to get out of his car. The announcer tried to talk to break up the silence, the band played a couple of songs, combined they both filled about 3 minutes. Dear Mr. President, I know you're not a fan of the military and it really is quite an honor for you to come speak to us but we do have lives and would appreciate not spending all of our time waiting for you (as we did this time and for 4 HOURS last time). Sincerely, Me.

I was invited to one bar-pinning ceremony that afternoon but was unable to attend. I learned afterword that it was a very formal event. LT GEN (3-star general) Franklin "Buster" Hagenbeck conducted and there was a formal meal before the actual ceremony. It would have been nice to be able to be there to give my friend a final farewell as we part ways. He will almost certainly be deployed before my next opportunity to see him (he branched infantry). Through the past couple of years he has been a strong support for me and a close friend. He'll make a wonderful officer.

My first duty for the summer is CTLT (Cadet Troop Leader Training) where we basically job shadow a lieutenant and see what we're supposed to do after we graduate. Getting here was interesting- nothing went to plan. Pretty much all I have to say about that.

Now I'm in beautiful South Carolina. FT Jackson (aka: Relaxin' Jackson) is a beautiful, thickly forested post but so hot and humid that working during the day is miserable. I got here and figured the next day was going to be a fairly relaxing one, ha! Once again while my peers slept I woke up early (0330) for a 10k (roughly, we went a bit further) ruck march. Thankfully basic training soldiers aren't in great shape. Despite my body screaming for sleep from the long night coming down here I was still able to not only complete the march but was doing laps from the front to the back of formation and then to the front again. The load was light and the pace mind numbingly slow, but somehow we still managed to almost lose half a platoon of new soldiers.

We did the night infiltration course that night. That's the one where you crawl out of a trench and across the field while drill sergeants are shooting live tracer rounds over your head. I crawled as a drill sergeant and was responsible for ensuring that nobody froze up and refused to move. Trying to get some of those privates to move out while the guns were firing was definitely a difficult experience. Imagine that, all these tough guys that aren't afraid of anything suddenly change their tune when you start shooting 7.62 rounds at them. All in all I was disappointed, not nearly as exciting as I was hoping for.

Last night I spent the night in the field with the soldiers. They have tents. And sleeping bags. So much softy gear...it could hardly be called a night in the field, more like a camping trip with an armed fire guard rather than a campfire. Still, it was good to get to know them and the drill sergeants a little better. Because they have to ensure that the privates get a certain amount of sleep every night they bedded them down at 2000 (8 pm) I went to bed at 2030-way too early. At 0230 my body was done sleeping. Ya know how much there is to do at o230? Absolutely nothing. It was a long morning.
Being called 'sir' by E-6 and E-7 drill sergeants who have been in the army for almost as long as I've been alive is quite humbling. In a staff meeting today CPT Grover (the company commander) told the cadre to give me all the courtesy and respect they would give himself or LT Holden (my sponsor). I couldn't help but wonder: Why? I'm a cadet. Someday an officer, yes, but not for a long time. Frankly, some of the more squared away privates in the company probably know as much about the army as I do. What qualifies me to be called 'sir' and have them salute? The answer is nothing, but they do it anyways. Quite unnerving really, I don't think I like it.

Now I'm just rambling like I always do when I need to get some sleep. That being said, one last topic. Memorial day is coming up. This is a very sacred day for many people. It is a very humbling experience to be here working closely with men and women who have watched their battle buddies pay the ultimate price. What's more, we're working to train those who are volunteering to lay down their lives. I would ask that regardless of your beliefs, regardless of how you feel about the war and the military, and regardless of your traditions on this day you please respect the veterans who are paying tribute to their fallen and missing comrades and pray for our soldiers both past and present. Just as a final note I want to end this with one of my favorite quotes. There are many versions of it floating around and all are good but I think the original is the most powerful:

"It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag,
and whose coffin is draped by the flag
who allows the protester to burn the flag."
- Father Dennis Edward O'Brian, USMC

Please remember to show respect for the flag and those who do serve and have served under it.
(Thanks for the pictures Josie)

Finally Finals

2010-05-10T19:24:00.000-07:00

My sister's blog title about how long it had been since she wrote made me realize that I am way behind on updating ya'll about my life. Since its finals week I don't really have an excuse for not writing (see TEE week). My last update was about yearling winter weekend. Not a lot has happened since then but what has happened is noteworthy.

For Spring Break I went to Washington to visit my sister and her family. My parents and brother drove up from Utah and we all spent the week hiking, going to the park, beach and just enjoying the company of each other. I actually remembered my camera one of the days so there are a few pictures of our hike.

A break for the kids on the way up.

Everyone on the way back down.

Some scenery.

Such a beautiful place.

A few weeks ago we had Spring Fest. The tradition of a holiday to celebrate the season was born last year on a rainy, cold weekend and this particular weekend was just as cold and wet (so much for a nice spring celebration). Different companies and entertainers come in and set up booths to sell their wares to the corps of cadets. The most popular booths are the massages (partly cause its a free massage, partly cause they have a heater), the Oakley trailer (hauled by the truck below) and (new this year) the Benchmade booth. I could spend a fortune on cool knives. Other cool ones included the snake guy and a game that monitors brainwave activity and moves a ball accordingly. Whoever pushes the ball into their opponent's circle wins. There was also a human statue there. He was dressed as a plastic army man and was probably one of the best human statues I've ever seen.

PVC pipe bazooka

Oakley truck

The last thing to update everyone about is a visit from Elder Holland. This past Friday Elder and Sister Holland came to West Point. Elder Holland was the guest speaker for the West Point Chaplain's "National Day of Prayer Breakfast". He addressed all who chose to attend the breakfast at 6 am. These breakfasts are built around the Army Values and this year's topic was integrity. One interesting point he made is that integrity and integer are related words and both mean whole. It is important, he stated, to be a whole person, not fractured.

Later in the day he and his wife ate lunch with the LDS cadets here. I was fortunate enough to sit next to him at this meal and the conversation was amazingly normal. Deep down we all know the brethren are just normal people but it was fun to see that first hand. I was expecting religious topics but instead he wanted to know about us, what we are doing for the summer, what life at the academy is like, etc. It was comforting to see him like that.

The final activity for the day was a fireside for the branch. We started with a brief history of the church at West Point (Brigham Young's son was the first LDS cadet and was set apart as a missionary before coming). Next we had a firstie (senior) talk about his experiences here and how it has impacted his testimony. Then a cadet choir sang "Lead Kindly Light". I was going to be a part of this choir but my ear was messed up from a bad SCUBA dive (oh yeah, I got certified since I last wrote too) and I was afraid that my voice would be too distorted in my own ear to find the pitch. Then Elder Olsen, our area seventy, bore his testimony and Elder Holland spoke. He had not topic and just stood up and said what was on his mind, which happened to be about the power of an individual. He told us a story of a young elder's quorum president from a stake in Idaho:

The stake was being dissolved and a general authority was visiting to oversee the reassignment of wards to other stakes. They were going ward by ward asking for the presiding authority from that ward to stand and receive the assignment. They got to one of the wards and nobody stood up. After a long pause this elders quorum president stood up and said "I guess I'm the only one." At this statement the visiting general authority pumped, shoved the stake president out of the way and yelled into the microphone, pointing at the man: "What did you say?!"

The entire congregation froze in stunned silence. The elders quorum president didn't know what to say. Finally, after the general authority asked his question a few more times, the young man, probably in his late 20's or early 30's stammered "I think I said I'm the only one here." "That's exactly what you said!" shouted the general authority. The elders quorum president was slightly relieved at this affirmation but still nervous about being pointed and yelled at by an authority from God.

By now the stake president still hadn't gotten up and was quite comfortable hiding under the piano and the rest of the congregation was slowly sliding under the pews to escape the wrath. The general authority shouted at him asking what that meant. The elders quorum president was lost but eventually figured out what the authority was getting at. "I guess with God one is many," he stated timidly.

"Yes, thank you. Never again say you are the only one."

Elder Holland went on to expound on that saying that rather than shyly saying "I guess I'm the only one" when the Lord calls on us, we should salute and report confidently "I'm here. I don't know about anybody else but I'm here Lord." It was a very powerful talk and he had us all rolling on the floor laughing for most of it. Pictures of day's events can be found here.

Someday...

2010-03-28T11:21:00.000-07:00

Right now I've got a case of the "somedays." Everyone gets them from time to time, thinking about what they want to do. Common phrases around here are:
"Someday when we're done with this place..."
"Someday when I get out of this prison..."
etc.
Sometimes it almost makes it feel as though rather than coming here to live my life I've put my life on hold to come here. On days like this its often nice to read back over my blog and see the many things I've done since coming here (and think about the many things that simply haven't been written about).

On that note, someday I'll get around to updating this with real information. Spring Break, some rough weeks, etc. And yes, Sheena, I'll even get around to responding to your photo tag...

The School of Hard Knocks, Literally

2010-02-13T23:57:00.000-08:00

This is a story I put up on myspace forever ago, its from the beginning of plebe year. I thought it was on here but some of you don't know the story so here it is:

Ok, so for those of you who aren't cadets, this might be a good story, but I'm writing it more for cadets and those who want to become cadets. this is a lesson I learned the hard way in the past week, learn from my mistake.

When you go to the health clinic, and they put you on profile, especially against your will, obey the profile.

Plebe beating, I mean PE 116-Boxing, is a required course, there's no way out of it. If you get Dr. Barone, I'm sorry, just don't be late, screw around, or get put on profile and you should be fine.

I've been sick for about a month now. At one point, I was 'better' and thought that was the end, but Water Polo tryouts almost killed me, and my roommates finally convinced me to go to sick call and get medical help. I woke up at five, the clinic was closed. oh well, get my shower done so i won't have to do it later. . .

5:30, still closed. . .

0600 the clinic finally opens. I go in and wait in line forever, just to be told to go back to my room and make an appointment for later in the day. So I go back to my room, and have very little time before breakfast formation. Obviously I haven't had the time to learn the meals for the day, look at the days, or read the news. I'm at my first sergeant's table for breakfast table, oh crap, now what? maybe he won't ask. . .

after breakfast we were supposed to(we being all the plebes at the table and their team leaders) report to 1sgt's room at 0640 the next morning.

i look at my schedule for the day, the only time i can go to sick call that they have an opening is at 10:30, leaving me little time to get across cadet area to Arvin(the building) for boxing class. Dr. Barone is a jerk about bein late, so I fire off a quick e-mail telling him, basically, that I'm screwed and i'll try to make it to class on time.

I make it to boxing, barely in time to explain that the clinic just put me on profile. Short version of Dr. Barone's response: "MEAT HEAD, IF YOU MISS THIS CLASS TODAY AND FRIDAY, I'M GONNA DROP YOU FROM IT AND YOU GET TO TAKE STAP(summer school)!!!"

So being the wise guy that I am, I call the clinic and make them change my profile to let me box. . .big mistake.

Apperantly when you get hit in the nose with a sinus infection, it hurts about ten times worse, and bleeds really easily/bad.

To make things better, the closest person(in weight) to me in the class is about 20 pounds heavier, and has years of martial arts training(fast reflexes, knows how to take and give a punch?)

Add insult to injury, when I got back to my barracks from boxing, lunch formation was already formed up. Everyone noticed the bloody, half dead looking plebe walking by. Luckily there was an entrance close by, so I was able to dodge most people.

While washing the blood from my face, I noticed that it was all over my body and that I was gonna hafta shower to get it off. By the time I'm out of the shower and in uniform, lunch is over, but the mess hall is still open. So I take off running to try and get some lunch, and run into one of the sergeants from my table.

"Where were you!!!" she yelled at me.

Oh, joy, now I'm gonna get yelled at for not showing up to a mando(mandatory) meal. Luckily, upon hearing my pathetic story, she takes pitty on me and lets me go.

Oh yeah, while I was lucky enough to have a free period after lunch, that was supposed to be spent finishing my HI 103 homework for the period after that. Crap, now i'm gonna get in trouble for not finishing that too. . .

Hahaha, it was a long day, but i survived. There are many morals here: as bad as you think you(civilians) have it, it could be worse(ie: you could be in the USCC); if you stick it out, things get better(we had a football game that night, life was fun for a while); and, probably the most important, OBEY YOUR PROFILE!!!!

YWW

2010-02-05T15:20:00.000-08:00

Every year each class at the academy gets a weekend to celebrate. Last year was Plebe Parent Weekend, this year was Yearling Winter Weekend- a big dinner/dance weekend for everyone to bring dates to and socialize with people from the outside (since 4 years here tends to make one very socially awkward otherwise).

At first, just for someone to bring, I had invited my ex-girlfriend to be my date for the event since she is already out here and it would be much cheaper. After a couple of months of neither of us saying anything, I had decided that I really didn't want to bring her and that seemed okay because she hadn't said anything about it. In fact I was toying with the idea of spending the money to invite someone from home, a girl I had liked in high school and had recently gotten back in contact with. Then one day, out of the blue, the dance came up while I was talking to my ex. She ended up inviting some of her friends and I was stuck trying to find dates for them all. Didn't work. Trying to find dates for this kind of thing that late in the game was impossible. Finally I gave up and just asked her if I could take someone else. I spent the money and invited Emma Nielson, the other girl I had been thinking about taking.

There were many reasons not to invite Emma. One was the timing; I'm getting ready to go on a mission and after that I have two more years of academy life (most likely) so it wasn't the most ideal time to get into a new relationship. Plus there was the thing with inviting Andrea. While I feel bad about that, the timing could prove problematic, and it was expensive it was entirely worth it. We had a wonderful time! But we never really did anything.

Friday night we watched a movie, ate dinner, watched a movie and went to bed.

Saturday we drove. A lot. We got in the car (borrowed from a gracious firstie whom I still have yet to meet in person) and just drove and talked. After a while we stopped to eat and then drove to a dunkin' doughnuts for hot chocolate. We just talked, about everything. It was a very bizarre feeling to be sitting in a doughnut shop in New York talking to the girl that had caused so much angst in high school- and we even talked about that. After hot chocolate we had to go gas up. We had gone through an entire tank of gas! We decided to hit the mall (at this point, though it was great to just talk, I was feeling bad for not actually doing anything). When we got to the mall though, we ended up just walking around the mall, talking again. We didn't go see a movie like we planned, or any of the other events I had planned for us to potentially do that day but it was ok, we had more fun this way.

After the mall we went back to the point. She got ready for the dance and I sat and talked to her while she did her hair. When it was time, I went and got ready. We almost didn't plan enough time for her and we got into a time crunch looking for an iron for her dress. The solution? Bring her to the barracks and borrow an iron from my neighbors. In the mad dash to make it to the mess hall on time her stuff ended up scattered around my room. We went to the dinner and the dance and came back to my room to gather her stuff and go. Time passed as we were talking to my roommate and suddenly it was taps. After taps they always come around and check to make sure we are in our rooms. Unfortunately, they don't like finding a girl in your room gathering her stuff. Luckily, when the situation was explained I ended up with virtually no punishment.

I took her back to my sponsor's house (where she was staying) and we sat on the couch cuddling and talking until 6:30 in the morning when we saw the time. Getting up for church the next morning was fun!

After church we were a little slower getting on the road than planned and she would not have made her flight if we used the trains and subways so I ended up just driving her to JFK. I can now say I've driven in New York City. In someone else's car. Wouldn't suggest it, but it worked out fine. The drivers here aren't as bad people seem to expect.

It was a wonderful weekend. The money side of it worked easier than expected and we had an amazing time, in spite of not really doing anything. It was all worth it. Much more than worth it.

Jury Duty

2010-01-18T10:43:00.001-08:00

"A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal nor tolerate those who do."
-USMA Cadet Honor Code

The honor code is a very serious thing at the academy. A good illustration of this is the movie Codebreakers which is based on a true story in which the majority of the Army football team was caught violating said code and kicked out.

Last week, I was "randomly selected" to be on an honor board. The whole thing could have easily been cleared up if the teacher reporting the violation would have simply taken 2 minutes of her time to talk to her students and actually figure out what was going on. Instead 9 cadets on the board, the board president (also a cadet), the respondant (defendant in normal court), his cadet advisor, and a handful of cadet witnesses had to miss a day of school to go and try to sort out what happened. Not to mention the JAG attorney and court reporter who had to be present. That's a lot of wasted man hours and it doesn't even figure all the investigative time involved before the case even came to court! 0830-1630-8 hours each. In high school the opportunity to get out of class would have been welcomed but here? seriously? you want me to miss my classes? 2 minutes of her time, that's all it would have taken to clear this up. But I'm not bitter...ha!

Anyways, the teacher (a civilian who lost her contract to teach at the academy at the end of the semester...I wonder why?) assigned a project which was and administrative nightmare. The class was to design a week long workout with the purpose of moving toward an individual goal they had set earlier in the class. Upon completing the workout, the teacher collected them and passed them back randomly for someone else to actually do the workouts and assess how well designed the program was. In order to assure an unbiased assessment, the programs were submitted anonymously- no names! The teacher used absolutely no system to track which paper belonged to which student. Needless to say, more than a month later when the students were getting their papers back there was some confusion. The student in question claimed to have assessed a paper, and the teacher didn't believe him and reported him for an honor violation stating that the student was absent the day the papers were turned in (false) and that the handwriting on the paper didn't match that of the student (which it obviously did when we made him write the exact same comments in the court room- stylistically and misspellings). Both statements were entirely false. Upon questioning her, she stated that another student had actually done the work so we pulled him out of class and questioned him. When we showed him a photocopy of the paper his response was "This definitely isn't mine. The handwriting isn't mine, the workout isn't mine, I've never even seen this before." Hmm, I certainly trust this teacher after that.

The hardest part was figuring out exactly what the teacher was claiming. Deliberation took all of 10 minutes, more than half of which was spent talking about how inept the teacher was rather than whether the kid was guilty or not-he was obviously innocent).

Jury duty is a pain in the butt. Thankfully we finished in one day but that day was still shot. Thanks unnamed instructor for wasting my time- cadets just have so much of it in the middle of the week ya know?

Way behind

2010-01-13T19:55:00.000-08:00

I was talking to a friend about blogging and realized that I am way behind on the whole "keeping people updated on my life" thing. Christmas break, reorgy week (reorganization week), a lot has been happening and changing. Yet things are still fundamentally the same. Here I sit in my little gray cell late at night typing about the humdrum of everyday life while my roommates are sound asleep in the background. I'm still a "bitter yuc" eagerly awaiting the next opportunity to escape-at least in some degree-academy life (Yearling Winter Weekend, 16 days-not that I'm counting).

Winter Leave (more commonly known to other schools as winter/Christmas break) was amazing. I had to spend the night in the airport, but managed to get out of NYC only one day behind schedule-much better than most of the people who were waiting there with me. I spent two days sleeping. Literally. At the end of the second day looked down and realized that the only time I had been out of my pajamas was to shower. The next day was Christmas! It was a great day and I was given tons of cool stuff to help traveling/spending nights in airports much more tolerable. That weekend I started hanging out with friends and spent pretty much the rest of my time at home hanging out/catching up with old buddies from what seems forever ago.

Unfortunately, it came to an end and I returned to the point. We had three days of reorgy week to get moved in, buy books, find classes and generally re-acclimatize to life here. My roommates and I stayed together in the same room so moving was easy, I just pulled my stuff out of the closet but it was still a long three days.

I have a new plebe. This time, HE doesn't fit into any of the categories of my previous plebe. The emphasis for what I am supposed to teach this semester is Buckner-prep and other military type stuff- which my new plebe openly admits is his weak point making life easier for me when trying to come up with things to talk about. My leadership style is to take people on an individual basis as much as possible rather than a one size fits all attitude so I asked him what he wants from me and his answer was a hands-off leader. Great! I'll let him do his thing and unless he screws up I won't really have to work this semester! Should be relaxing, tons more time. Although, as much time as it takes, I think I am going to miss being there when my subordinate needed me. Its nice to be able to go to bed at night knowing that in some small way, simple though it may be, you made a difference in someone's life for the better.

Classes started on a Thursday (not Saturday like I had thought, although we did still have class) and we had a one-day weekend-not nearly enough. My course load isn't bad this semester (as in the classes are relatively easy even though there are a lot of them) but my instructors...there are some real winners. Others are legitimately good though. My philosophy teacher for example is exactly what I imagine taking a class from my cousin Kyle would be like-too bad he has to be teaching such a worthless class. My schedule is as follows:

DAY 1:
Intro to Computer Science
Spanish II
Philosophy
Economics

DAY 2:
Physics II
Probability and Statistics
Spanish II (both days)
SCUBA (only the second half of the semester)

LABS:
Computer Science
Economics
Physics

Total, including SCUBA for half a semester, 20.5 credits (our labs don't actually count for credit hours, they are just a part of the class).

On the church side of things, it was really good to come back and see all my friends again. Yes, I am aware that I just said it was good to come back, and I meant it. I always miss home and dread coming back, but these guys have become as much my family as those at home, in a way. Being a branch missionary is great. We finally got around to teaching the first new-member discussion to our recent convert and we have another baptism on Saturday. Sadly, I will no longer be in/teaching the gospel essentials class. Though I struggled with it, it was good for me and I will miss seeing the investigators in that setting every week. Given what I am moving to instead; however, its a change I'm glad to make- mission prep is going to be taught during that time! We are all beginning the process of leaving the academy to serve the Lord and I can't wait! Especially after teaching the discussion yesterday.

That's about it. Exiting boredom, the story of my life.

I grew up

2010-01-03T14:25:00.001-08:00

Lots of people are talking about the new decade and all that has happened in the old decade. After reading my sister's blog I started thinking "Certainly not that much has happened to me in the past decade. I mean, the past couple of years, yeah, but other than that?" So I decided to actually figure out what had happened.

The year 2000 started with the last half of fourth grade. Honestly, I really don't even remember that much. It was an election year though, the first election I ever followed (Bush vs. Gore). Other than that, there's not much I even remember. The next several years are like that. 9/11 was significant, but not specifically to me. The Olympics in SLC. Through these years I was a quiet, shy little boy. I remember Sheena bringing her friends to the house and thinking how huge they were and that there's no way I would ever be big like that. At some point though I did become big(ish, I still don't really feel like a "big person").

In 8th grade (2003-04) I started going to Provo once a week for Utah Valley Youth Symphony Orchestra (UVYSO). My first tour with them was the '04 Los Angeles tour. I climbed on the bus in Delta and only knew one person. She had a seat at the front of the bus, I got stuck in the back. Kinda hard for a shy kid, but someone reached out to me and really brought me out of my shell. For the next few years I would go talk to anyone, I didn't care. Life was good. Lauren (the one who included me) and I were good friends for years.

The next major event was August '05. Justine had a tragic accident which took her life. This is when I learned that real men do cry from time to time, over certain things. I had experienced death before, but it was always an elderly person who had lived a full life. This time it was a close personal friend, much different. About a month later, another friend, Danielle, also had a fatal accident. I wasn't as close with her, but about a week before she died Danielle came up to me and reminded me of a promise I had made her. I never got to fulfill that promise, and it has hurt me ever since. Two and a half months later, another friend from UVYSO missed practice. The next week when I asked her where she had been I learned that she had gone anorexic- hadn't eaten anything for a month- and tried to and almost succeeded in killing herself by overdosing on her sister's medication. This was a dark time in my life and it took me until just this past summer to be truly happy again. I receded back into my shell, didn't want to have anything to do with anyone and built up walls to keep people out. My logic was that if I never got close to anyone, I would never be hurt like that again. That is not true, and even if it was I have since learned that even if you aren't hurt, you will still not be happy unless you lead a happy life. Luckily, I had a friend who was willing to take the time to break through the walls I had built up. Better yet, rather than trying to force me to instantly be more social, she showed me the way to take the walls down for myself. It was a long process, and is sometimes still a struggle, but its worth. I owe much of who I am to that friend and will be forever grateful.

But it wasn't all bad. Somewhere along the way I got a postcard from USMA asking me to go to a "briefing" at the University of Utah. It sounded interesting so I made my parents drive me up and attend. My eyes were opened to a whole new opportunity that I had never before considered. In the spring of '07 I started my application. By February (I believe) of the following year the application was finished and it became a waiting game. I was offered a full tuition ROTC scholarship to BYU, as well as a full tuition academic scholarship which combined would have meant almost free school there as well. Then Sen. Hatch's office called me one day, catching me in between classes, and read me an email they had received stating that I was to be extended an appointment to the academy.

So much has changed in the past two years that I am not even going to attempt to talk about it all. Cadet Basic Training was miserable but looking back I actually miss those days. Plebe year, Buckner, AMT, so much growth. It is hard to believe that now I am a "big person". I have finished high school and a year and a half of college. My friends are all gone on missions and I will soon be starting my papers to join them. The past decade may not have had that many events that impacted me specifically but they were huge; their impact eternal. 10 years is a long time, and somewhere along the way it happened: I grew up.

Appeasement

2009-12-06T20:42:00.000-08:00

Sheena was pestering me for pictures of myself in uniform. I still dodge the camera most of the time so there aren't many out there, but here are the ones I do have:

This is my beast squad in front of a Blackhawk. I'm the one in the bottom left that looks like they have a red square on their chest.

Beast squad again, lined up on the wall waiting to go down to breakfast formation. You should be able to pick me out of this photo.

My buckner squad. By now you should be noticing a trend- I'm only in group photos...

The guy in greens was the ROTC guy in our squad. He was pretty cool, but made me realize how much better West Point is than ROTC as far as hands on training goes.

Buckner- My beast roommate Edwin Cruz and I found each other outside the big dance the last night there.

Christmas dinner this year, Skomp and I in the mess hall.

Christmas dinner night out on the stoops. Everyone smokes cigars. I could only handle being out there just long enough to get this pic. B Webb is on the left and Skomp is in the middle (my roommates).

No saber, I don't get that until firstie (senior) year. Even then, there probably won't be any pictures of me with it, sorry sis.

sleeping cadets

2009-12-04T13:19:00.000-08:00

Many of you, I am sure, have heard about/seen the sleeping cadets (here too) from President Obama's Afghan-plan speech, and it makes me mad (I know, big surprise). Was it unprofessional for them to be sleeping? Yes, just about as unprofessional as the news media searching the crowd for those cadets but still nowhere near as unprofessional as the treatment we received during the process of hosting the event.

Lets talk about sleep for a little bit. Cadets are more tired than the average American, and the average college student. You may think I'm biased (and I probably am) but science is on my side. The sleep patterns of cadets has been a topic of sleep research for years and it has been shown time and again that cadets fall way short of normal, let alone healthy sleep. One interesting fact regarding this is the average time it takes people to reach REM sleep, the stage of sleep where dreaming occurs. The average American takes 45 minutes to an hour to reach this point. The average college student? 20-30 minutes. The average West Point cadet? 6-15 minutes. The high end of our average is a third of the low end of the rest of America's! So yes, we tend to sleep, and sometimes we sleep when we're not supposed to.

That being said, I would still argue that given any population the size of the one in Ike Hall for the president's speech, under the same circumstances would have had the same results. The most obvious evidence for this is the fact that Hillary Clinton was also struggling to stay awake when the camera panned to her. Aside from that fact though, there is still the treatment of cadets the day of the speech.

We had a full day, normal with the exception of the speech. Unfortunately, that means that rather than going back to our rooms after being in class from 7:30 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon, we were in Ike Hall immediately following classes. This would not be a big deal if we were like navy (see funny picture below) but we are not. They brought a few thousand cadets into a warm, comfortable theater, wearing our dress gray uniform (easy to sleep in because the collar prevents the head-bob that helps so many people stay awake), told them they can't move, can't sleep and, oh yeah, you can't have much with you so there is very little to do! If you slept, you were woken up in a not-so-nice, very military manner. Then we all sat there for 4 HOURS before the president even showed up. When he got here and started his speech, the lights went off, and we listened to our boss talk in a very subdued, monotone voice for an extended period of time. How many of you could stay awake through a meeting like that? Let alone how long we had been sitting there and that it was at the end of a normal work day for the most tired population in the United States.
This is classic example of the fishbowl principle (cadet life is like living in a fishbowl- lots of people like to tap on the glass and all you can do is smile and put up with them; similar to the magnifying glass principle), people (especially the media) judging those in the public spotlight without bothering to learn the facts about a situation and the media's hatred for USMA. As if this wasn't enough, they took and posted pictures with captions designed to make us all seem like blood-thirsty savages who want nothing more than to kill For the record, Kill Bin Laden is historical account of Delta Force operatives in the beginning of the Afghan war and On Killing is about the psychological and mental cost of having to kill another human being--both are highly applicable to our lives and the president's speech and neither are a sign that we are blood-thirsty.

Christmas for the Corps

2009-12-03T06:52:00.000-08:00

Tonight was Christmas dinner for the Corps (had to be this early because next week is Army/Navy). This means a glorious meal of surf and turf, cookies, cheesecake, eggnog, sparkling grape juice (non-alcoholic wine), etc. After dinner, the entire corps goes out to smoke cigars so while they're out there, I'll blog! Unfortunately, there is so much smoke in the air that even indoors you cannot escape the smell.

The plebes all have to festively decorate their tables and this causes competitions every year. This year, the plebes at my table managed to produce an amazing table considering that as of lunch time they had nothing bought or planned. They used wrapping paper for a table runner, had festive napkins, and all those minor things, but the big thing- a huge fondue pot with melted chocolate, strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, pretzels, and more! Nice touch plebers.

We eat our meal and then the fun begins. The first captain gets up on the poop deck and leads the corps in 12 Days of Christmas. Everyone stands on their chairs, tables, chairs stacked on tables, or on each other and we sing so loud and rowdy Navy can probably hear us down there in their sorry excuse for an academy. Inevitably, the song ends in a food fight (in our full dress uniform) and everybody storms out of the mess hall to smoke their cigars. The noise outside my window right now is ridiculous and the whole atmosphere is a crazy 4000 man party.

Admittedly, I do feel somewhat left out sitting up here in my room, though after going down to take pictures I know there's no way my virgin lungs would hold up to more than a few minutes out there- too much disgusting smoke in the air. But its ok, there's a lot of work to be done between now and tomorrow morning anyways. 16 more days and I'll be on my way home to celebrate the real Christmas in my own way, the party can wait.

A much needed break

2009-11-24T15:44:00.001-08:00

The week and a half before Thanksgiving is always the worst week of the semester here. Last week-over a 5 day period-I had 6 major tests, 2 quizzes and a major math project/presentation. This week I only had a 10 page paper, cake compared to last week.

So far I have only gotten 2 of my tests back and the results haven't been good. American Politics I usually do fine just BS-ing my way through- its politics, no sweat- so I put off studying that for Physics (on the same day). Maybe a little more time on AP would have been good. I ended up with around a B, still not bad. Physics on the other hand...

The physics dept. has a terrible reputation here. This comes from the fact that at least 1/3 of the students fail every time we have a test. Last week, I was a part of that statistic. Luckily, my grade in the class absorbed the blow quite well and TEEs should be enough for me to recover. Even if I don't, I'm still at a B- so I'll can live with it.

On the bright side, to compensate for all of this we get class drops (except physics) or days without that class. Because of people having to take the oral part of the Spanish test and people presenting their math projects, I don't have either of those classes all week. Today, because our AP paper was due at 1600, I didn't have that class so Physics was my only class (we had 2 quizzes-one announced and one pop-quiz-both of which I rocked).

And the best part? Thanksgiving break finally starts tomorrow afternoon! I can't wait to see my brother and his family again, and the youngest for the first time. Freedom is so close...

Sorry if this post was rambling and/or incomprehensible, I haven't slept much in the past week and a half. Hopefully the rest of the semester will just glide by like a dream.

Army VS Airforce

2009-11-06T09:39:00.001-08:00

In honor of the Army-Air Force game:

Army/Air Force Mentality

An Army infantry soldier stands in the rain with a large rucksack on his back, weapon in hand, after having marched 12 miles, and says, "This sucks."

An Army Airborne Ranger, standing waist deep in the rain with a 80 pound pack on his back, weapon in hand, after having jumped from an airplane and marched 18 miles, says with a smile, "I like the way this sucks!"

A Special Forces soldier lies in the mud, 120 pound pack on his back, weapon in hand, after swimming 6 miles to shore, crawling through a swamp and marching 24-miles at night past the enemy positions, says with a grin, while biting the head off a snake "This really sucks, I wish it could suck more....."

An Air Force Pilot flying over the battlefield, the rain is pouring down, looks down at the soldiers below and says: "Sure sucks down there!"

An Air Force Officer sits in an easy chair in his air conditioned, carpeted room and says to his friend, "Man.. Cable's out! This sucks!"

Boston

2009-11-02T19:18:00.000-08:00

We (USMA LDSSA) took a trip to Boston this past weekend to attend a conference and had a blast. M. Russell Ballard spoke to us, as along with Clayton M. Christensen and David Neeleman.

Elder Ballard spoke to us first and gave an amazing unscripted talk. He had one written, but decided not to use it and just went by the spirit instead.

Brother Neeleman went next and spoke about the internet as a tool for helping others find the gospel. Websites are much easier for most people to use until they are ready to get baptized because they can remain anonymous if they don't want people to know they are investigating and they are able to work at their own pace. Unfortunately, until recently Google searching "Mormon" yielded almost entirely anti-mormon websites. One day, Bro. Neeleman was searching and found FairLDS.org and decided to send a donation ($1,000- "a small donation") and was shocked to receive a letter from the lady who runs it explaining that she has MS and was struggling to keep the website running until his check came. After that, Bro. Neeleman decided to start helping the church change the image it had on the internet and started the More Good Foundation (Mormon means More Good) which is aimed at ensuring that each anti website or comment online is countered by 10 pro-Mormon sites/comments. They achieve this goal through websites such as LDS.net(where everyone should get an account) and MormonWiki. I wish I had the statistics on how big of a difference they have made, but I don't. What I can share is some good youtube channels:

http://www.youtube.com/user/mormonmessages?blend=3&ob=4
http://www.youtube.com/user/MormonNewEraMessages
http://www.youtube.com/user/mormonanswerman
http://www.youtube.com/user/mormons101
Or a Much Larger List, though this still will not show everything.

Elder Christensen spoke on member missionary work and dispelled many of the common misconceptions on how to go about the work. He placed a lot of emphasis on being genuine with people, never building up your relationship prior to inviting them to learn about the gospel, never judging whether a person would or would not accept the gospel until AFTER you have tried and inviting those who have sufficient for their own needs to share in our opportunities to serve others.

After Elder Christensen's talk we broke up into 60 different groups, ate lunch and developed plans for new ways to share the gospel and improve people's knowledge of what we believe. Ideas ranged from using twitter to redoing the old pass-along cards. We all voted on our favorites and the top ten got to present their ideas to Elder Ballard in front of the entire conference and he then spoke to us again and is taking the ideas to the brotheren to decide on implementation. My personal favorite was virtual temple tours- when there is a temple open house somewhere in the world a 3-D virtual tour would be put online to help dispel myths about the temple.

After the conference we had a few hours to wander the city/eat dinner. A dance started at 8-ish but was pretty lame (masquerade balls aren't a very good place to meet people, neither are dance floors too small to see anyone through the crowd) so I spent probably more time wandering the streets than at the dance.

The next day was stake conference where we got to hear from Elder Ballard again and met him briefly afterword.
It was a fun weekend, but now the week is in full swing and life has resumed its normal function. On to life's next adventure!

One more thing. For those who are interested, the talks are supposedly going to be posted on ldseducationconference.org sometime soon. They really were amazing and if you are interested in this stuff you should check it out!

Life in general

2009-10-24T19:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, so my last blog entry made it sound like I hate life. This is not really the case, it was just a long day/night before and I needed to vent. Really, life is pretty good right now.

School is going much much better than last year. I just switched teachers in math and can't understand a single thing the new guy is talking about so that grade may take a dive here before too long but other than that I have decent grades without too much stressing over them.

My plebe is good- though fairly high maintenance. Rare are the days that I don't spend at least an hour in her room for this, that or the other. She seems to perpetually be in trouble but if I tell her to do something she does it. On the bright side, the more she gets in trouble the more opportunity I have to help her and impress the chain of command (CoC). Unfortunately, basketball practices have officially started (the coaches couldn't be there before) so trying to schedule our time together is more difficult because she has no time.

While the APFT was a smoker, I did still pass it and will not have to be up running at 0530 every morning. However, it did serve as a wake-up call that I will not be able to sit on my butt much longer. I may still be young, but my body isn't as young as it once was and if I am going to keep up with the demands of this life something has to be done so hopefully exercise will be a bigger part of my life from now on.

I have a new calling at church (*cough-SHEENA-cough*)- branch missionary. There's a lot of exciting things going on in that area for such a strange situation. The missionaries aren't allowed in the barracks, nobody is unless they live/work in them, so there is really no way for them to find investigators which puts the burden on us as members to help the investigators find the missionaries. Last weekend we had a baptism for a new plebe who found the church by going to "Mormon" chapel time during beast. The service was beautiful, and she brought a friend who then came to church the next day. We'll see if she shows up tomorrow. The other branch missionary is a return missionary so I am really looking forward to learning from him and using this to help prepare for my mission.

That pretty much covers all aspects of my life right now. As you can see, I don't really have any room to complain. I have a roof over my head, even if the water is kinda cold sometimes, and I don't have to pay a penny for it. Food is never an issue, the mess hall is free for me. I'm getting a great education and getting paid to do all of this! So yeah, I'd say life right now is pretty great, despite the long days once in a while.

TGIF

2009-10-22T18:26:00.000-07:00

Today was a looooong day, thank heaven its almost the weekend. It all started last night when I went to the library to work with my lab group on a physics lab write-up that was due today. We got there and realized that USMA's internal mainframe was down. Since everything here revolves around the internal websites, including many classes, we couldn't do it! Sweet, its due tomorrow, we haven't started it yet and now we can't even get to what we need to do it...at least I can get some face time with my plebe and try to figure out some of this math stuff I don't get.

Went down to do FCDT(fourth class development time) with my plebe. My squad leader has mandated that we do at least 2 FCDTs a week, one my choice one her choice. Last week she had asked me if I knew how to make a particular style of bracelet out of 550 cord (parachute cord). Me?! Know how to make a bracelet?! Are you serious? But it was pretty simple so I figured it out and decided that we could do that for FCDT. Since her roommate's team leader hadn't done anything with her yet this week she joined us and in about 15-20 minutes we were almost done with the project, everything was going as planned- shoulda known, that can't happen here. My plebe's roommate's team leader showed up and started talking, no big right? WRONG! 2 1/2 hours into this project TAPS plays and I am forced to scrap the whole thing and retreat to my room.

Feeling relieved to be out of there and somewhat tired I shower quickly and try to rack out. Unfortunately, shortly after I fell asleep my roommates decided that 12:30 at night is a good time to watch a movie. Already I could tell that today was going to be a long day.

I had the first two class hours off this morning, an opportunity that usually means catching up on the sleep I didn't get the night before but this time it means going to the library and working frantically on a lab write-up. Since both of my partners are in class, I basically ended up writing the whole thing on my own, though one of them did get the chance to help a little. After writing the first 3 of the 4 sections I had to quit for class, physics no less. Upon walking into the room I notice the desks are in an odd arrangement and there is a test on each one. CRAP! I completely spaced the test! 30 stressful minutes later the testing time ends and we all get up to go see the answers next door. . .pretty sure I got somewhere between 67% and 70%- no bueno.

Spanish and lunch, then back to the library to finish this stupid lab. An hour-ish later it was finished and I headed back to the room to study for my last class of the day. After skimming the texts I took a 20 minute nap and headed to class. Luckily, the class was fun and relieved some stress.

Not so luckily, my company had an APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test) this afternoon. For those who don't know, I'm still just as lazy as I was before coming here. In fact, there are a few names for people like me, names like "slug" and "4-mile-a-year guy" ('cause i only run 4 miles a year, 2 two mile APFTs). Needless to say, these tests cause a little bit of anxiety for me since I've never been a good runner. I was one push-up shy of maxing that part, a few sit-ups short on that part- so far my score looks good. Then the dreaded 2-mile run. . .

2 miles isn't bad for people who run once in a while. In fact, a decent time for this distance is about 13 minutes, 12 is good and I know a few people who do it in about 9. 15 minutes of pain later I cross the finish line, ignore the person trying to hand me my time and run over to the railroad tracts where I proceed to lose everything I had in my stomach in front of everyone (that long after eating it wasn't much).

Well, at least I am now done with all the bad stuff for the day. One more mandatory meal and I the day is officially over! I waited patiently for a shower to open up and, courtesy of the wonderful West Point plumbing and lazy civilians who won't fix anything, took the coldest shower of my life. By a couple minutes in my entire body was numb, but just didn't care at this point so I stayed and waited until the plebes started calling minutes before getting out and getting ready for dinner. Unfortunately, the plebe that was supposed to be calling minutes was all jacked up and didn't show up until the final minute so I had 2 minutes to get out of the shower, dry off, get dressed and make it to formation.

Now the day is officially over and I am about to crash. Now if I could just get my roommates to quit harassing me about making bracelets...

Math Project

2009-10-15T18:11:00.000-07:00

This semester the math and physics departments decided to work together to develop a project. Though the project wasn't too terribly hard (probably took less than 20 man-hours) and wasn't designed to be a pain, it almost killed me and one of my partners (the other one not so much).

We were given several weeks to do this stupid thing but, being the typical "I'm too busy" cadets we didn't start on it until a couple days before the due date. Not that big of a deal right? Divide the project into its separate parts and everyone can pitch in to finish it quickly. At least that was the plan. One person's computer had died so he automatically got stuck with the write-up, the only part he could do on his temporary computer. The easier part of the math went to the other partner and I got what was left. After many hours of running the equations, realizing an error and re-running the equations with the problem fixed my part of the math was finally complete and I was done by about 10 the night before it was due.

At 12 I got a call from the person who was doing the write-up telling me that the third member of our group, the one who got the easy math, had done it completely wrong. "Could you try to figure it out really fast?" Yeah, I could have, 2 hours ago when I was still awake! "No problem, I'll send you everything when I'm done with it." Thankfully it really was much easier and only took until about 2 to finally get it all done and sent to where it needed to go. That third guy effectively got away with not contributing ANYTHING to the project- worthless punk.

Completely unrelated to this that third individual had some disciplinary actions brought against him (breaking the honor code) and he gets to repeat yuk year and spend an extra year in this place! I think he should be getting kicked out, but still, life has a funny way of providing justice sometimes.

Disney World

2009-09-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

Four of my company-mates and I went to Disney World for Labor Day (three company-mates who were part of the plan and another who attached himself at the last minute). During AMT my roommate convinced me to set the trip up. Travel expenses were very low- we used mom and dad's timeshare for a place to stay and Disney is letting those with a military ID into the parks for free this year so the $200 airfare was the only major expense. I was quite reluctant to go through with the plan but in the end it was worth it.

Friday we flew to Orlando and got in late. $50 taxi ride from the airport to the timeshare where, rather than going to bed like sensible people, we ordered pizza (thank heaven for Papa John and his insomnia) and took our time getting settled in. Everyone was shocked when we walked into the place and they saw how huge it was- and they quickly grabbed cameras and took pictures of everything (I think we ended up with more pictures of the room than the parks). Got to bed about 1 or 2, can't really remember.

Saturday we got up and hit the parks- Magic Kingdom in the morning and Epcot in the afternoon. Mission Space and Big Thunder Mountain were the favorites of the group for the day and not much was seen of the different countries.

Sunday we hit up Typhoon Lagoon in the morning and headed to Downtown Disney in the afternoon. Pleasure Island has a movie theater and the weather was terrible so we decided to watch a movie. The first choice (through voting and time constraints) was Gamer but the theater messed up and was playing Aliens in the Attic in the auditorium that was supposed to be Gamer so we ended up going to Inglorious Bastards (name of the movie, don't comment on the language). I would not suggest that movie for anyone- too bloody. If you can find a version with less blood then watch and enjoy, but otherwise don't.

Monday we traveled back to West Point and resumed life as normal. Although it is never easy returning to this place, it is much less difficult now that we aren't plebes and have a little more freedom. Life returned to normal, classes the next day, and the next; didn't take long before everyone was back to living weekend to weekend and paycheck to paycheck. But hey, at least we're getting paid!

Not long ago Vo, the mastermind of it all, came into my room urging me to find another 3-day weekend and another fun vacation destination we can travel to for cheap. We'll see, I may have another story in a few months.

Blogger refuses to load the pictures so I will post them later.

New Commandant of Cadets

2009-09-24T16:50:00.000-07:00

The Comm is leaving tomorrow morning and will be missed greatly. BG Linnington has become one of my biggest role models in the short time I have been here, it is a sad thing to see him go. The Corps will be without a commandant until November (not certain how that works. . .) at which time BG William (Bill) Rapp will assume the post. He seems like a competent enough fellow but there is always apprehension and following in BG Linnington's shoes would be a daunting task for anyone.

BG Linnington will be deploying to Afghanistan Monday morning where he will be on staff for a joint operations unit.

School year so far. . .

2009-09-21T15:40:00.000-07:00

The school year, aside from the first week-ish, is boring and there is rarely anything to write about. It is much nicer to not be a plebe and the amount of extra time I have from not doing duties, memorizing meals, days, etc. is shocking. This year is supposed to be the most intense academically but I seem to have settled into the same groove as in high school-get up, go to class, do absolutely nothing, stay up late still doing nothing, repeat and somehow manage to still get good grades. We'll see how long this pattern holds up, hopefully the whole semester. Having a plebe to take care of is great. I love taking care of people, helping friends with anything that is bothering them, etc. so having an individual who's problems are basically my problems is like a dream come true. I can't wait to graduate and have 40 of them! Though by that point, most of their problems will be taken care of before they get to me but it should still be great.

Speaking of my plebe- I wanted to die when I first got the name and looked it up on Facebook (don't laugh, that's the first thing you'd do with the name too). To understand why, you need to understand a few things about getting a plebe- the four things you do not want your plebe to be are:

1) Female- no offense to the ladies, you just tend to have more problems and are more difficult to deal with in general, especially after living surrounded by guys and losing your social skills.

2) Prior Service- if your plebe knows more about life/the Army than you do what are you supposed to teach them?

3) Prepster- someone from the prep. school. Often scum-bags (sorry to any prepsters who read this- you know its true though) though that is not the problem, it can be handy for your plebe to know how to get out of EVERYTHING. The problem is usually that they have already had a year of USMA type life and again, there's not much for you to teach them.

4) Corps Squad Athlete- Another stereo-type: corps squaders are shammers, think they are better than everyone else, etc. Basically its the whole jock thing from high-school. On top of all that, they have no time for you to be with them/teach them how to do things/make sure they have done things.

The first thing you do when you are given your plebe's name is look them up on Facebook to find out if they fit any of these categories. Also, if their profile is blocked it tells you they were smart enough to block it, if not then you can learn all sorts of things about them. Sounds creepy but the upper-classmen are doing it too so you might as well be able to prepare them for what they are going to get hazed about. . .

So I got my name, logged in to facebook and saw a tall-looking girl in ACU's. That can't be right. They wouldn't give me a girl would they?! Plus she's in ACU's, she must be a prepster! Possibly prior-service but thankfully she looks too young. I check the sheet again. AH! She's on the women's basketball team too!!! Sweet, this is going to be interesting. . .

The first day we spent a good amount of time getting to know each other while cleaning rifles. Turns out my female/prepster/corps squad plebe isn't too bad after all. Her whole goal for the semester is to make my life as easy as possible. So far she's done a pretty good job of it too!

Classes are going good. My schedule is 19.5 credit hours light. I picked my major- Computer Science. Looks like this is going to be my lightest semester by far between now and graduation. Great choice (sarcasm).

Lastly, a lead-in to what will probably be my next blog post. One thing I don't think I mentioned in my AMT post is that my roommate convinced me to get a room with my parents' time share and go to Disney World for Labor Day. More to come on that. . .

For the impatient ones

2009-09-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

I have been rather slow about updating and telling y'all about my fun and exciting life but hey, if I'm constantly on here writing I don't have time for my life to be fun and exciting right? Anyway, I promised updates would be coming and the blog is slowly catching up to real life; as for the rest of what has been going on, patience and it will be on here eventually, I promise. Hopefully soon but no promise on that part.

AMT

2009-08-30T12:27:00.000-07:00

Well, its been a long time but I'm finally going to explain my other summer training:

Those of us who had Advanced Medical Training (AMT) during the third block of the summer had to report on the same day as the Buckner run-back. No break. Joy. On the bright side, Meg and Gute from my squad were going to be there with me.

I roomed with a guy from my company and turns out we were right next door to Meg and a few doors down from Gute, always nice to be close to the people you know. The days were 11 hours with one hour off for lunch. If we were lucky the day was split into two parts, half in-class learning (death by power-point) and half practical exercises, if not we had 10 hours of power point slides. At the end of these insane days it was expected that you would go back to your room and study for a good 2-3 hours on top of all that. Yeah right. We went back to the barracks and had fun (head out to the mall, watch movies, etc.). This lead to many nights next door "studying" with friends until 1 or 2 am.

This was also my first real introduction to the political climate of the military when an individual desperately wants to expand his/her power. The barracks we were staying in were controlled by SGR (the Summer Garrison Regiment), but we were not a part of SGR because we were on a MIAD (Military Individual Advanced Development). Unfortunately, the SGR TAC decided that he wanted us to be under his jurisdiction.

The first problem we had with them was when we had to be awake at 0400 to do a 12-hr EMT shift and they decided that it would be important to wake all of our girls up at 0300-0330 to make sure they were in their rooms. As the SGR TAC was a Major and the officer in charge of our training was a LT Col. we soon had the power to check off our own people.

Next came room-standards. The standard for AMT was simply that the room needed to look nice. SGR came around and yelled and screamed that our beds weren't made to standard, our closets weren't set up per SOP, etc. This fight continued through the entire course until one day LT COL Chamberlain checked our rooms and said they looked fine and a certain captain came by later and threw our stuff around because our rooms weren't up to standard. This battle ended with us submitting to SGR standards and waking up earlier for breakfast formation. We never got stuck with their guard shifts or anything but the extra sleep lost and trying to find the time to get our rooms to military standard was not fun at all. C'est la vie.

In the end we all (mostly) passed the exams and got on the national registry. New York State tests came later and I still haven't heard back though it should be coming soon. There are some cool opportunities opening up for the EMS club here such as a high-volume EMT station trying to get their Friday night and Saturday shifts completely covered by cadets, they're trying to give us access to higher levels of training (EMT CC, CPR Instructor, etc.). Should be good!

Camp Buckner

2009-08-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

My first training event of the summer was Cadet Field Training at Camp Buckner (AKA Buckner, Bucknam, Buckghanistan). Buckner consists of seven main training events: Intro to Patrolling (ITP), Land Navigation (Land Nav), Water Confidence Obstacle Course (Wet COC), Confidence Obstacle Course (Dry COC), Mounted Maneuver Training (MMT) and the Combat Engineer and Field Artillery (FA) training sites.

ITP is three days of learning basic Infantry skills. Ruck-march out, set up a patrol base and pretty much just pull guard shifts waiting to get ambushed most of the day/night. During the day we did leave the patrol base to learn such tactical skills as setting up and ambush, react to contact, etc. In the end it was useful training but life is no fun when you have spent 3 days standing, laying, sleeping and eating in puddles (it rained most of the time). Marching out the final day consisted of a Mogadishu Mile type scenario except with casualties that had to be carried out. No fun but it felt good in the end to look back and see how much more I am capable of than I thought possible, especially with trench foot that made my feet bleed without running.

Land Nav was another three day excursion into the woods around Camp Buckner to learn how to read a map. Boy Scouts prepared me well and I spent three days getting to know my squad-mates better, pick blueberries and just basically relax. The testing day came and I got my points. Night land nav testing that night was interesting. Meg-Ann, my partner (easy to spot in the squad photo cause she's the only girl), is an amazingly loud person so I never had to worry about us getting split-up and lost, just stop and listen and you'll hear her from miles away (seriously, she admits it too).

The Wet COC is two obstacles designed to make us more comfortable with heights and water at the same time. The first obstacle is two balance beams high above the water. The first beam is stationary but the second is designed to wiggle as people walk across it and has stairs in the middle. As long as you keep your eyes looking forward and keep walking it really isn't that challenging but many people froze and fell off into the water. The second obstacle is the slide for life, a zip-line off a 75 ft. tower into the lake. Such a good day, too bad it wasn't warmer.

Slide for Life, picture taken from www.army.mil

The Dry COC is an obstacle course on dry land rather than over the lake, surprising huh? It isn't emphasized as much as the Wet COC because there are a lot of obstacle courses in the Army, its really not that unique.

MMT was a week spent in FT Knox KY. riding/shooting/commanding tanks and tank units. We spent time in simulators, on the firing line, etc. but the funnest day was a force-on-force exercise using MILES gear which is basically just advanced laser-tag. The first iteration I was a dismount in a cav-scout (cavalry) HMMWV that promptly got destroyed when the fighting started. For the second iteration I was a Tank Platoon leader. Though my company lost the fight, I am proud to say that I was in the last tank standing and that we destroyed 5 of the enemy's 16 tanks and my platoon destroyed 8, I think, which is an entire company. Unfortunately, the other platoon got destroyed and my platoon was soon isolated fighting enemy from front and back, not a good situation. Knox was nice though because we had the afternoons off, ate in a DFAC rather than the camp mess hall and had air conditioning in our rooms.

Combat Engineers and FA were both one day training sites. With the combat engineers we learned about IED's, route clearance and breaching operations (blowing up doors). FA was an opportunity to set-up and fire howitzers as well as call for fire and launch mortars (even though that is mostly an infantry thing). At the end of the day all the excess powder from the 105 mm rounds has to be burned off. Videos don't do it justice but here is one anyway.

There is a dance at the end of Buckner and, even though I'm not a dancer and didn't spend much time there I am proud to announce that my class destroyed the dance hall (the support system collapsed and it fell into the lake, 2012 knows how to party) and the Comm and Dean, both 1 star generals, crowd surfed off the stage.

The final day started at about 4 AM and the entire class, our cadre and some of the staff of West Point ran the 6-ish miles back.

Catching Up

2009-08-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

Its been a long time since I posted on here and a lot has happened. Leave came to an end all too soon and I returned to the point for another year starting with Camp Buckner, AMT and then the academic year.

Buckner was great. Shooting big guns (howitzers, tanks, etc.), little guns (.50 cals, M4s, etc.), blowing doors off hinges, its all good. It was even better because of our amazing squad and platoon.

Buckner Squad

Things are quite different this year. Rather than being a plebe I have one to lead. Academics are a bear as always, but the stress is so much lower that my 19.5 credit hours seem like nothing compared to last year (hopefully my gpa will reflect that). AMT has opened many doors and caused some troubles but mostly it has been good. More details on all of these experiences will hopefully be coming soon, if i ever get around to it. . .

Grad Week and Summer Leave

2009-06-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

I have 3 weeks off for summer leave (down to 2) and figured it would be a good time to blog about my life after TEEs.

Grad week is one of the most miserable weeks of the year at West Point. Every morning starts early (as early as 4:20) and after breakfast you drill until noon. Drill consists of holding an M14 and (basically) marching in circles. There's a lot of standing maneuvering all to prepare us for the 3 parades we had that week. Oh, one more thing drill is big on, people passing out from standing still too long in the heat of the day. Fun :)

The afternoons aren't bad, you just have to deal with stupid policies such as ensuring that everyone is 100% moved out of their rooms by Thursday night when nobody is allowed to leave until Saturday. Mostly the afternoons were spent watching movies and sleeping-nobody really started moving out until Wednesday night/Thursday morning.

On the topic of moving out- our company is somehow missing a storage room. This means that there is not adequate room to store all the junk we have to have, let alone all the stuff people just want to have. I was one of the unfortunate few who had absolutely no storage space. The Firsties graduating and moving out meant an entire room completely emptied out so I eagerly moved in and stowed my stuff in a locker, just in time to be told that we are not allowed to move in there until after the Firsties are completely moved out. What?! The locker is empty, why can't I use it? Especially since my stuff has to be out of my room by tonight! Great! Not a big deal, I can wait a little longer, right? No dice.

The entire company goes down and cleans the lockers out (completely ignoring the lockers of my fellow plebes who were too lazy to move out) and I promptly moved back in. Later that night our 1SG for next semester goes down to inspect the room and sees that there are a bunch of plebes that had moved in and demanded that we vacate the room so that next year's plebes can use it. NEXT YEAR's plebes, the ones who won't even need the room until NEXT YEAR. Surely we can at least use it until they need it? Nope! This kind of stuff continued until I finally managed to get a locker 5 moves later (there's a lot of stuff to move, it gets old after a while).

It was a long week but it ended well. Friday morning, before the final parade of the week, the plebes got recognized (became non-plebes and therefore one step closer to human) and the next morning everyone got promoted over a breakfast of Belgian waffles and vanilla ice cream. Yum!
Graduation was amazing. I wish I could have seen it live but took a guard shift for a buddy who had family that was going to be there so had to watch it on the internet but it was still impressive. Got to go to a "Bar-pinning ceremony" and see some of my friends from church get commisioned and have their 2LT rank pinned to their shoulders. What an amazing afternoon! Then a group of upper-classmen took me to dinner at Prima Pizza in Cornwall, famous for delivering pizza anywhere in the US by way of overnight shipping. The one that invited me paid my share of the meal cost to celebrate my promotion and freedom from plebedom. Stuck around for church on Sunday and headed home (about 12 hours going through Salt Lake or 14 through Vegas).

Since I've been home I have scraped, painted, repaired, helped people move, cleaned out a barn, visited people, camped, etc. Its a wonderful feeling to be home but the time is going too fast just like it always does.

TEE Week

2009-05-14T07:02:00.000-07:00

Just like everything else here, West Point had to break the conventional style of naming things and give finals a more militaristic name, Term End Exams (TEEs). Breaking with the norms of other schools isn't always bad though. For example, though I have never experienced finals week at a "normal" college, my understanding is that the week is very stressful. Here, TEE week is one of the least stressful of the semester. Why is this? We can finally put the military side of our existance aside for a few days. The time this gives us is amazing! A complete breakdown in military discipline probably isn't good, but it sure is relaxing.

Now that my tests are done it is time to reflect on the past year. Plebe year was at the same time the most horrible time in my life and far less problematic than I was expecting. Frankly, it isn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be. On the other hand, I will certainly not miss the hours spent on the wall with SGT Wasson chewing us out for this and that, taking out the upper-classmen's garbage at night, calling minutes (see "Minutes Explained") or being at the beck and call of any upper-classmen who has the slightest need. Servitude in general just isn't a pleasant situation to be in. One more week of virtual slavery and the plebe class will finally be recognized (this means that we are no longer treated as poorly, though we still don't have many priveledges) and recieve a promotion. I can handle one more week though, the end is near and coming fast.

The Things of Home

2009-04-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

Well, another late night. I'm working on a math project but there's really nothing I can do with it right now so my thoughts wander. . .(I'm really not slacking off, my computer is figuring out a complex problem and has been for about half an hour now and takes over half my system resources to solve it, maybe its time to give up?)

The weather has been amazing and as I stick my head out the window for some fresh air the feel of the night is reminiscent of warm evenings back at home, walking the dog or playing games out back with my family. I still stand by what I have said, the "homesick" phase is long gone (that was part of beast) but still thoughts often return to the "good ol' days". Am I too young to feel nostalgic? Probably, but what can ya do? To put it in perspective, here is something I jotted down during one of the sessions of general conference:

"The things of home are never quite gone, they will always return to us--be it a scent, a flavor, a sight, a sound; the things of home will always find a way to return to us, and then, if we are wise, we will find a way to return to them."

This doesn't mean that we will run home to mommy and daddy when things get hard, but that those who are wise will find a way to keep home with them wherever they go. Homesickness? No, more like nostalgic, but it is nice to know that there are only a few days between now and my escape to home.

Well, its 1:20 in the morning and Mathematica (the math program on our computers) still hasn't solved this equation. I'm going to bed. Hopefully there will be an answer waiting for me in the morning. . .

Tom Ricks is a Biased Fool

2009-04-22T10:37:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post seems to love posting bad articles about us. First they broke the news about the "West Point suicides" and now Tom Ricks is calling for the closure of the service academies? While his claims are mostly accurate, they are twisted to show only what he wants the reader to know: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/16/AR2009041603483.html?sub=AR

First he discusses the cost difference between West Point and ROTC. What he fails to include in his figures is that ROTC pays for more than just what is shown in the $130,000 he claims. When looking at figures for just the academics (which he did with ROTC) West Point, from what I have heard, is estimated at $180,000. What's more, ROTC programs vary from college to college. It is possible for ROTC to produce officers for less, but they also probably spend more on a good share of them.

Next he talks about West Pointers getting "community-college educations". USMA is ranked 6th in the nation overall and, I have heard, 1st for public colleges. But the education we receive is inferior? I beg to differ. He is right that most of our teachers do not have doctorates, but that says little about the quality of instruction. I would like to point out that the men and women who are teaching all have masters degrees, the department heads have doctorates and, oh yeah, our professors actually teach us. I have never been taught by an upper-classman about to graduate because the instructor is too busy doing research to be bothered with actually teaching. On the contrary, teachers are always available and more than willing to sit down one on one and help a struggling student. That doesn't mean there is a lack of research here, just that they are focussed on educating. There is constantly research going on in many fields and many of the research projects conducted by cadets are worthy of a doctorate degree in and of themselves. USMA provides a top-notch education.

Mr. Ricks' claim that three of the last six chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have indeed been officers produced by ROTC; however, 50% is pretty good when you consider that the service academies only produce 20% of the military's officers. Seems like we are pretty well represented to me. Oh, and by the way, if USMA graduates don't go very far in the Army then how come EVERY 5-Star General was from West Point? Something just isn't adding up here.

As far as being educated next to future doctors, lawyers, etc., nothing would change. Countless "old grads" have become lawyers and we send some graduates directly to medical school. Since most of our teaching staff is made up of graduates, there is really no point in claiming that we don't produce teachers. Congressmen? There are always graduates involved in politics. Many congressmen are produced by this fine institution as well as Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Having never been to the war college (you go there as a LT. Colonel before being promoted to Colonel) I can't really speak as to the quality of education that occurs there, but I can vouch for the quality of our senior officers. Meeting and greeting with foreign diplomats and officials is nothing new to them, they do not need to go to school to learn how to do it. Why don't you ask Gen. Petraeus about that Mr. Ricks? While you're at it, why don't you ask him about his under-graduate years at USMA before going to Princeton?

Tom Ricks may have reported on the military for ten years, but I would like to see him come to the Academy sometime and see what really goes on, he may be quite surprised.

Brainwashing

2009-04-20T21:46:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back. Once again it is not because of a time surplus, but just that I can't sleep. There's no burning blog topics for me to address so I'm going to talk about beast a little, answer a question I have gotten from a couple of un-named people:
No, I have not been brainwashed. I am the same guy I was before coming here. The only thing that has changed that you will ever witness (unless you try to attack me or my brothers) is that I have more confidence. I walk different, act different, but I still think and speak the same.

Lots of people talk about the "brainwashing" that the military does to you. It doesn't exist. There is a certain amount of indoctrination involved to going through military training, but there has to be. The things soldiers have to see, hear and do are unspeakable. While some say there is no adequate way of preparing for it, the Army gives it their best effort.

Yes, I do know things that would make most people more than a little worried if I started screaming them on the subway, but wouldn't you be worried if someone started screaming regardless of what they said? It does feel weird now, looking back at my previous limits and comparing them to now, and certainly the Spirit of the Bayonette, The Law, and many other such mantras are far from what I would have said in high school. But have I been brainwashed? No! Don't be ridiculous!

I have learned, I have grown, I have become a little harder (physically and mentally) but I have not lost my values and beliefs to what the Army supposedly wants me to think. One of the key elements that makes our Army so great is the ability of our soldiers to think for themselves. Couple this with the disipline to obey orders even if you disagree with them and you will have an unstoppable force. That is what we strive for, not a puppet collection.

Now, I realize that the people who would ask me about being brainwashed are not going to read this blog, but perhaps someone will find this post on Google and it may change their mind. Who knows? Frankly, I'm not concerned one way or the other, these posts are just to clear my mind so I can sleep. If you don't like it, don't read it!

Minutes Explained

2009-04-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

Lunch break: I can tell nothing productive is going to happen so I'll blog and answer the "minutes" question. . .

Minutes are just one of the chores that "plebes" here at the academy have to do. Its not too bad, nothing painful, just one of those things that is annoying to waste time on. 7 minutes before every formation we start yelling out how many minutes there are before said formation (5, 4, 3, 2 + a 2 minute buffer). It has to be yelled by all the plebes who are calling at the same time and goes like this:

Attention all cadets, there are (5, 4, or 3) minutes until assembly for (formation, i.e. breakfast) formation. The uniform is (uniform). (5, 4 or 3) minutes remaining.

For the last minute:

Attention all cadets, there are 2 minutes until assembly for (formation). The uniform is (uniform). This is the last minute to be called for this formation. Do not forget your lights. 2 minutes remaining.

No pain (unless you mess up), not too much stress (unless you are in charge and people are too lazy to do it). Just one more thing to put up with. . .38 days left.

long days

2009-03-26T20:06:00.001-07:00

At the end of another long West Point day, I find myself reflecting back on the events of the day. This is not because I have tons of time to spend on such things (I really shouldn't be spending time on this either) but rather because I am too tired to think straight and my mind is racing too much to go to bed.

The day started out like any other, woke up at 0610, learned my plebe knowledge for the day (the day's meals and 2 news articles), shaved, etc. and got things set up for calling minutes (a process I'll have to describe later) which I am in charge of this week. Head out to formation and a SGT that lives next door asks if I am aware that no minutes have been called in our section of the building at all this week.

"No, Sergeant, I will take care of that, thank you for telling me."

So far so good. . .now just a test and my day should be mostly over. . .

I had the first 2 periods off today, and being the tired cadet that I am I slept 2 hours before going to my first class (one of the few good things of the day). Classes are dull, Fundamentals of Personal Fitness and History of Eastern Asia. Come back from class and lunch minutes are supposed to be getting called. Instead of minutes I hear my First Sergeant (1SG) yelling about how crappy the (lack of) minutes are and all of the upper-classmen confused as to what the uniform is.

"Crap, this could get ugly" I think as I head up to my room to ditch my stuff. Minutes are being called in my section of the barracks, so it must not be that bad, right? Announcements for lunch say something different. 1SG (in a rather ticked off tone):
"I need to see Bishop and his entire chain-of-command in the back immediately after formation"

I turn to my squad leader standing right behind me (who was, until today, impressed with me and giving me an 'A' for my military grade today, who knows what it is now) and he is looking at me like "WHAT DID YOU DO!" I knew what it was, and it was completely out of my control, not fair.

We all go to the back of formation, and my TAC (the officer in charge of our company) is standing there. Great, now I'm not only gonna get chewed out, but its going to happen in front of the TAC, this just keeps getting better. . .

Never before, and hopefully never again, have my face and 1SG's face been so close, or his voice so loud.

"What's the deal with minutes. . ." and he proceeds to rip on me for there not being minutes in his section of the building. Then he moves on to the lack of minutes in my own section for breakfasts. All I want to do is scream "I DIDN'T KNOW, I HAVEN'T HAD A CHANCE TO FIX IT, GET OFF MY BACK" but rather, I said "Yes 1SG" when he demanded that I turn over the names of those who had been messing up minutes.

After lunch I go take the huge test i spoke of earlier. Math. I discovered early on that EVERYTHING I studied the night before was left out of this test. Admittedly I still feel I did well-ish, but only time will tell. Come back from the test and take a nap? No, I was up so late the previously studying for the test (which helped none at all) that neglected to write a poem for english and shower. I did both of those and headed to class where I learned of 2 huge assignments for that class in the next week. Crap.

After school nap? Nope! Swim meet! We won 54 to 19, and I beat my coach in the butterfly and managed to finish the IM, so those were good, but I desperately needed sleep (and to throw up).

Go back to the barracks and sleep? Still no! Go back and meet with 1SG, shower, and sleep, that's the plan. After my shower, I checked Facebook really quick. Hey! a message! Mom is the only one that sends me messages on Facebook very often, so I figured I should read it then. Turns out that an old friend and neighbor died at 2 AM. Wow, can this day get better? Yes, it can, and does (thank you Murphy, the Army hates you). I got no sleep (still) and had to go call minutes for dinner.

After dinner (minutes went smoothly, Murphy can't mess with everything) I return to my room and try to work on stuff. No dice. Too tired. Can't keep my eyes open. A 20 minute nap!! Yay!! 20 minutes later I wake up to my Team Leader cracking the door open and TADA! time for us to chat. It was a good chat though. I finally finished (I hope) taking care of the minutes stuff. My homework that absolutely has to be done for tomorrow is done, and I'm hoping that after this my mind will have cleared enough to go to bed, we'll see.

Things get better, SAMI (Saturday morning inspection) and In-Ranks Inspection (uniform and rifle inspection) means NO SLEEP THIS WEEKEND!!! YAY!!! JUST WHAT I NEED!!!! What's more, while everyone is sleeping off the effects of being up until 3 or 4 in the morning scrubbing floors, I will have to be in the library trying to work on one of my millions of papers and projects coming up. But hey, spring is here, the grey period is gone, I get to see the sun almost every day now, so it could be worse!

Boston

2009-02-22T19:58:00.001-08:00

I finally got out of here this weekend for the All-New England Winter Extravaganza (a huge young single adult activity with all the stakes in the New England region- hence the name). It wasn't really in Boston, but only about 20 minutes out so still not bad, and I did get to go into the city on Saturday for a couple of hours.

We stayed in members' houses. The only reason I bother to mention that is because of what happened at the member's house. The house I stayed at had 5 bedrooms upstairs and the living areas downstairs. 1 1/2 bath, which meant you had to shower upstairs. So Friday night, everyone is tired and goes to bed. I'm slower to get ready because I was on the phone all night, so everyone else is in bed and the lights are off. Unfortunately, the bathroom is directly at the top of the stairs. . .not a good combination. I came out of the bathroom and couldn't see a thing and went right down the stairs. Luckily I caught myself on the railing, unluckily my knee went through one of the stick supporting it, crashing loudly and putting a huge dent in my shin (I somewhat suspect a stress fracture too, but since all the doctor can do for me is tell me to take it easy and limit what I can do I refuse to go see her).

The next day was infinitely better. We woke up and got ready, drove to the church worried about missing breakfast because we were late. Oh wait, we forgot to figure in Mormon Standard Time. . .we were there before most other people. After breakfast there was a keynote speaker, Jane Clayson Johnson, who was an anchor on The Early Show, Good Morning America, and several others before she became a stay at home mom. Her talk was wonderful, but us poor cadets had a hard time not chuckling at times because the main story she used was about one of her reporting tasks which required that she attend a mini-boot camp at the amazing West Point, NY. She didn't know there were cadets in the audience.

After that we broke off into workshops. There was only time for three and they all looked great, so I just kinda wandered from class to class. The first two, I was planning on going somewhere else and felt like I should go to them instead and they were wonderful. The last one I went to the one I had planned rather than the one I felt like I should go to, not as good. Still a good workshop, don't get me wrong, but not what I was looking for. Moral of the story, go with the spirit, he knows what'll work out best.

That afternoon most of us cadets went to Boston for a couple of hours to just chill. We finally found a place to park (who knew a fifteen seater van could could be parallel parked with less than 2-3 inches of room in front and back?) and walked aimlessly down a street, soon getting lost. The good thing about a city is that there are maps all over for the subway systems, so you just look for one of those and BOOM! you're not lost anymore. Nobody could have guess that we were tourists with 8 clean-shaven, short haired, straight young men in downtown Boston all huddled around a subway map, but who cares? we're cadets, we don't need to fit in. Ben Westman, one of the guys, just got off his mission to Hong Kong and desperately wanted to go to Chinatown, so we went. Chinatown is always fun, but with him it was a blast. I tried a new kind of bread that was amazing, some tea (he assured me it was Word of Wisdom approved and that he drank it all the time on his mission) that he convinced me to buy because it was "the best drink ever" (tasted like liquid cardboard), and some Japanese gum (yes, in Chinatown, who'da thunk?). Then we found a little shop where Ben went insane with the Chinese suits (see pictures), but they were insanely expensive. He bargained the best he could, but when the lady said $35 and he said $5, didn't go so well (all happened in Chinese, he had to explain it later).

We headed back to the Church where we had dinner and a dance. Meals were interesting there. West Point cadets don't get out much and as a result, we are the most socially awkward people you'll ever meet. Luckily, we don't care if people like us anymore, we're pretty secure. That meant that everyone could pick out the West Point cadets at a glance, we were the only large group of guys with no girls mixed in. The whole weekend we said we were going to branch out, not sit by each other, never really worked out though. . .

Since I am happily taken, I played wingman at the dance. The problem is all the guys I was helping were 18. While that is ok at a YSA dance in Utah, these people push the 30 year-old age limit so there was pretty slim pickins for us. I was gettin my buddy to dance with all the best looking girls there, but one was a junior in college, the other already had a degree. He pretty much gave up after that. . .

The next morning we got up and went to church. The night before, the CIC (Cadet In Charge) for the trip told us to be there 10 minutes early. We got there almost 10 minutes late, but the other van wasn't there yet so we were still good :) Turns out they pulled in about the same time on the other side of the building. We walked in 10 minutes late from both sides of the chapel. Perfect timing. 13 cadets, walking into the meeting from opposite sides of the back of the room and meeting half way across a pew in the front of the congregation. We made quite an impact, so much so that they stopped the meeting to welcome us. It was perfect.

The plan was to leave after sacrament and make it back to West Point before a storm hit. Turns out that there was an old grad in the congregation though. . .one that knew our OIC (Officer In Charge) nonetheless. He asked for a few cadets to come bear their testimonies in his Sunday School class, so we waited for them to finish, then waited for him to talk to Bro./MAJ Cook. We climbed in the vans and headed to gas up. Before we pulled out, Bro. Cook talked with all of us. We had to make it as far as we could before the storm hit, so our orders were at or above the speed limit (beautiful thing about driving vehicles with government plates, tickets are much less common) until weather made us slow down. Everyone but the drivers fell asleep, when we woke up nobody knew where we were. MAJ Cook had dissappeared long ago, the driver of the lead van had decided to follow a different route. Ended up working out well though, we made it to Highland Falls where we stopped to get some food (its always better to get food outside West Point than inside the gates). Orders were to get it to go and get back to the barraks, until one of the drivers locked the keys in the car. The department we got the vans from was closed, the MP's didn't have a lockpicking kit. . .fine, call the local police. He couldn't crack it, had to hand his gear over to a cadet to break in.

Several hours of math project later, I'm sitting in my little gray cell, putting off the rest of my homework by writing a long blog entry. . .

Some pics from the trip:

I'm not a picture taker so there aren't very many, but in the future there will hopefully be more.

The Land of Opportunity

2009-02-15T10:53:00.000-08:00

West Point is an odd sort of place. Everyone who comes here hates it, but we all chose to come and we all choose to stay. Why does this happen? Well its different for everybody, but one thing that helps is the abundant opportunities made available to cadets through summer/spring break/random other time trainings. This place really allows you to do what you want, without giving you any freedom. . .

This year, as a plebe, there have been and are many opportunities presented to me. Of these, I am only going to tell you about three that have been causing great debate in my mind lately. The first is USMAPT, United States Military Academy Parachute Team (we love acronyms). Not only would the army pay for me to get my skydiving certification, but they would give me chances to dive six days a week (weather permitting) and go all over the world to do it! What a cool opportunity! It comes at a price though. You have to commit to the team for all four years, which includes giving up your Christmas break, some of you summer, and inordinate amounts of your time throughout the week. I opted out of that one and am probably going to forever wonder if it was the right decision to make. . .

SCUBA diving courses are available every semester here. I wanted to sign up for the SCUBA team but missed the try-outs and also missed signing up for the class this semseter. At some point I will take the time to do that though.

And finally, rock climbing. I don't have much upper-body strength and have never been incredibly sucessful with climbing rock walls, so this wasn't really something open to me. That is, until we went rock-climbing for my PE class ("Military Movement", called that because it sounds too panzy to say we do gymnastics). It didn't take long before I realized that I wasn't too bad at what we were doing, so maybe I'll go down to the rock wall this Wednesday and see if the team is desperate enough to ask me to climb with them. We'll see. . .

The point is, as much as cadets like to whine and complain about how hard life is and how bad it sucks here (as you will probably see me do from time to time on here), there really are great opportunities waiting for those willing (and blessed to have time) to pursue them.

I give up

2009-02-12T19:00:00.000-08:00

The growing pressure to join the blogging community has finally crushed my will to not do it so here I am. Don't expect frequent updates (my life is rather boring).

Suppose a good place to start would be a little about me just in case there are some people just blog surfing who come across this. My name is Richard Bishop and I am a plebe at the United States Military Academy (aka West Point). I am from Utah (yes, I am "Mormon", but we prefer LDS) and don't really know what else to say. . .