Hello, my name is Glenn and I'm lazy.

One key to having a successful blog is your ability to post often. I planned to write much more frequently within these electronic pages than it seems I have. Given the nature of my personality, I find it amazing that I've managed to write as often as I do. So far I have 42 posts. I've written more words on these few pages than I probably wrote during my entire time in high school. Yea I was a terrible student when my education was free. Anyone who reads this blog can probably see it in my writing. I am, at my core, a lazy bastard.

My nemesis is the damn evil black box. That machine that sits on the stand in the living room. That thing that beckons to me whenever I pass it. Once I turn that damn TV on I am helpless to accomplish anything. I, like many Americans, will watch that damn thing no matter what's on. Someone mentioned a while ago that they were getting DVR so they can record their favorite shows and watch them at their leisure. I seriously considered shelling out the extra ten bucks to my cable company for the pleasure of DVR. Then it dawned on me...If I'm capable of watching the TV for hours on end when nothing is on, I would become a permanent fixture in my living room with DVR. I'm sure my TV habit is something like any addiction. Slowly I can feel myself breaking free of its grasp. Or it could be that there aren't any good sitcoms and "reality" TV just sucks.

Nine years and I still don't know.

This is something that has been weighing on my mind. When my wife and I first married I told her that I, under no circumstances wanted to have kids. This was not entirely true. I said this because my wife, as much as I love her, tends to get overly ambitious. She is very much a "have to have it now" type of person. Once she gets her mind set on something, she won't quit until she gets it. Early in our marriage, I told her that I didn't want children because I wanted to be sure that the marriage would work before we took on the responsibility. Because I am a realist, I know how most marriages end these days and it has nothing to do with "until death do us part." So for a couple years I fought her arguments in favor of having kids with ammunition like...we aren't the parental types, a child is the single biggest investment in your life, we're too selfish to have kids, it's not fair to bring a kid into the world when it's like this, after they get to a certain age they realize that you have no power over them, ect ect ect.

Now we are about to cross into our ninth year of marriage and it's getting to my self imposed deadline wherein, if I don't have a child soon, I never will. I guess, over the years, my initial stubbornness has sunk in to my overall psyche. By being the nay-sayer for all these years, I've changed her mind about kids, as well as my own. We've pretty much come to the conclusion that we don't want any. Yet here I am, 33 years old and wondering, as I always guess I have, if I'm missing something. I've paid close attention to those friends whom I've grown up with who have kids. I've talked to experienced parents about the whole procreation issue. The more I talk to these people, the more I feel like I'm not really meant to be a father. When I talk to people about their kids I hear the same answer all the time "I wasn't sure I wanted them, but now that I have a child, I wouldn't change it for the world." This seems to be the textbook answer. It seems that when I ask the tough questions of parents, they all seem to shy away from giving the truly tough answers. Another thing that bothers me is how some people always talk about how great kids are. They talk about what a fine experience it is. They talk about how great kids can be. They tell me how I would be a great father. But they never offer this information unless I ask them specifically why they had children.

I don't fully trust these peoples answers. Most of the answers I hear are just textbook type answers. They're just recycling the same politically correct answers I've heard since the day I was born. My reasoning for not trusting these answers is that I rarely hear these wonderful exclamation under normal circumstances. The people I know rarely ever offer up these child wonderments unless you specifically ask them why they chose to have kids in the first place. Usually when you hear ninety percent of the parents talking about their kids in everyday situations, you hear all the negative things about them. You hear about the rebellious teen or the baby who keeps them up all night or the sicknesses they bring home from school or the punishment they had to administer which puts more stress on the parents than the child or about how much money the child is costing them. About the only times I hear people talking up their kids is when they are trying to compare theirs with another kid.

I guess what my whole problem boils down to is fear. I'm scared of having my own child. It's not that I don' think I can handle it. I feel that I would be a great father. What scares me are the intangibles. Those outside influences that you, as a parent, have no control over. Drugs and peer pressure scare me more than anything. I feel this way because of my own experiences. I grew up in a family which included myself and three brothers. There were four of us growing up in your typical family unit. We were all good kids but, somewhere along the way, the younger two of the four of us took a turn for the worst. One managed to come back from the dark side and seems to be turning out to be a decent human being. The other is pretty much a lost cause. When I look at my cousins, I see the same trend or worse. One of my aunts has three kids and only one of them (ironically the black sheep of the bunch when growing up) has turned out to be worth a damn. The crazy thing is that we were all good kids when we were younger. Somewhere along the line, 50% of my siblings took a wrong turn. I can't, for the life of me, figure out why. I have my theories, but none can be proven. I suppose, based on my personal observations, that my fear is I only have a 50% shot that I will turn out a good kid. I don't think that a coin flip is something that I can live with. I watched my mother agonize over my little brother as he strayed down the wrong path which none of us could bring him back from. She was incapable of administering tough love. She loved the boy too much for his own good. I can see myself in her shoes doing the exact same thing. As parents we can be trapped by love. We care so much for the little human that we brought to the earth that we will do anything to protect them. If a child ever realizes this, it can spell doom for the parent. I watched, as my mom was dyeing, how my bother still managed to take advantage of her. She continued to let him do it even though she knew what he was doing. I just don't know if I can commit to a minimum of eighteen years of raising a child only to (potentially) watch them ruin their own lives and possibly mine as well. Is it worth it?

Half the time I get feedback from other people it seems that I'm supposed to have kids just because it's what society expects of me. The other half of the time I think that I might be missing a big part of what life is all about. But why should I miss something that I don't have or necessarily want? My sister-in-law summed it up best when she told us during one of our kid discussions "You just have come to that point in your life where you want them more than anything. If you're not there, you probably should refrain."

Friends are constant.

My friend Steve is getting married today. It's a sad day for him. Too bad he won't know it until a couple years from now when he wakes up from his pussy blindness. His friends and I did all we could to help the guy from making this mistake. Myself and another friend used to pick up the pieces whenever he would call us during one of his many break-ups with PBFH. He asked our advise several times and never took it. Everyone he knew told him to run for his life.

It's funny. I had not received a call from the guy in a couple months. On Thursday, two days before his wedding, I get a call from him inviting me to his reception (I guess is what you would call it). None of us "friends" were invited to the wedding. I think it may have to do with the part where they ask if anyone has any objections. I imagine we would have had to take numbers to say our peace. At any rate, I let him know that I have to work like I do every week. If PBFH let Steve hang out with us, I'm sure he would remember that.

Steve. I honestly wish you and your bride the best of luck. Please prove all your friends wrong and show us that PBFH doesn't deserve her title. Please show us that you have both grown since the last time you were allowed to hang out. Even though I consider you a fair weather friend, (more like a bad weather friend since you never call me unless your broken up) you're always welcome to call me out of the blue. Romance comes and goes but friends will always be there.

Good luck dude. We all think you're gonna need it.

Like a kid in a candy store.

You must go to at least one two of two events every year if you're a plane geek like me. Either Sun-N-Fun in Lakeland, FL or AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI. In a couple weeks (April 6th and 7th) I will be in Lakeland again. For the past seven years, I haven't missed Sun-N-Fun. It's a plane lovers wet dream. Thousands of aircraft, engine manufacturers, instrument makers, parts distributors, junk dealers, food vendors, literature peddlers, and even celebs like Jimmy Buffet show up at Sun-N-Fun. There are workshops and airshows every day all day long. You can learn everything from how to work with composite material to shaping your own propeller from a block of wood. You can walk the flight line and get up close and personal with every aircraft imaginable from powered parachutes (think Holyfield fight where that guy flew in to the ring) to full blown private fighter jets owned by multizillionaires. Believe it or not, these two airports become the busiest in the country (even more than Chicago or Atlanta) during these shows. There are airplanes everywhere. You can walk right up to a Burt Rutan (designer of SpaceShipOne) airplane that might have been built buy your next door neighbor, a vintage warbird like Glacier Girl, or a VW powered Sonex I plan on building one day.

Believe it or not, kit aircraft are more on the cutting edge of design that the tried and true manufactures like Cessna and Piper. You can build yourself an airplane that is safer, will out perform, and be cheaper than your typical factory design. Most of the private aircraft in production today are based on 1940/50s designs and the factories have huge overhead and liability concerns. The cost for these companies to design, flight test, and certify new designs for your average Joe is so great that all they can do is refine the old models to keep costs down. Still, even using old designs, new small planes like the venerable Cessna 172 (probably the most popular small plane ever) will cost around $170,000 if you want new base model. When you compare that to the $25,000 dollar price of the Sonex it's easy to see why people that love to fly, but can't really afford it, congregate in Oshkosh and Lakeland. It brings the dream of flight within reach of us regular folk. Even if I never put the money together to buy my own plane, it feels good that it's potentially within my grasp.

Hurt me good baby!

Three weeks ago I started a gym membership. It had been ten years since I had set foot in a gym. I worked out all my major muscle groups every other day during that first week. After workout day two, I woke up nearly locked up. It took me five minutes of stretching just to be able to move like a robot. I was a pathetic little geek for a couple days after my leg workout. I secretly laughed at myself when I saw my reflection in windows and mirrors as I walked around. I was walking like an eighty year old man and stairs scared the hell out of me for a whole day. After the first week of shock, my muscles awoke from their atrophy and now I feel that good pain after my workouts. That little pain that tells you the muscle is there and getting healthier.

I'm a lucky guy. The only time I've ever been in a hospital, I was either getting stitches or a cast. Now that I'm getting up there in years, my biggest concern is my heart. My dad had a heart attack. My grandfather died of a heart attack. And my dad suspects that my uncle, who supposedly fell asleep behind the wheel, died of one as well. One of my goals with my new membership is to get the old ticker pumping strong again. The best way I know to do this is to run. Sadly, after two years of running two miles a day and ten on Friday in the Army, my left knee is probably going to have to be replaced before I die. Now I don't run anymore unless it's after something or from something. Actual running for any more than a sprint kills me. I did, thanks to my not so cheap gym, find a great alternative. Let me say thank you to the dude/chick that invented the elliptical machine. I love that thing. It's the closest I can come to actually running with zero impact to my knee. The first time I got on the thing, I went for about ten minutes before I damn near fell off. Ten years of smoking and couch potato brought my stamina to near zero. What really scared me was my heart rate. There is a chart on the machine that says my heart rate should be around 130-140 while I'm rolling. On that first day, after thirteen whole minutes, my heart rate was 178!?! Lets just say that it worried me just a tiny little bit. I gave myself some time to work before I panicked and this last Thursday I ran on the the elliptical for fifty five minutes and my heart rate never went over 156.

I feel stronger, more alert, and more alive than I have in years. I don't think keeping up with my exercise is going to be a problem.

I Salute you.

I value the time I spent in the Army. It served me well even though I considered becoming a "friend of bud" (as my single reader puts it) to get out. I'm glad I saw it to the end. I made some fantastic friends and gained a lifetime of memories. My only regret is that I would have made more of an effort to maintain contact with those I grew to be close to.

I salute all of you in the 101st Airborne (and other units) for your service and I wish those of you deployed to the desert hell a safe return home.

All we have to fear is Blackhawks.

Most people have heard of Airborne troops. They are the guys you see jumping out of planes in the movies. I've never had the opportunity to jump out out of a perfectly good plane but it's on my list of things to do before I leave this planet. The place where I was stationed was an Air Assault post which is similar to Airborne but uses helicopters and ropes instead of planes and parachutes. The whole premise behind Air Assault is mobility. Use helicopters to move men and material quickly. There were few "heavy" units stationed where I was. It was pretty rare to see tanks and heavy armored vehicles because helicopters can't lift sixty ton tanks. Our job was to move faster and out maneuver the enemy. We did this by loading our equipment in, on, and under UH60 and CH47 whirly birds.

Sling loading equipment under helicopters requires a two man ground crew. One guy actually hooks up the load and the other has a static probe which is just a fancy name for grounding wire. The probe guy touches the hook on the helicopter to discharge any static electricity that has been built up by those spinning rotors. They tell you horror stories about men being blown off the equipment by static charges. I never really believed it until I was watching a low hovering Blackhawk one night. You could literally see the electric current at the tips of the blades.

Not many people can say a helicopter landed on them. During my last JRTC rotation I was apart of a ground crew that was hooking up a bunch of Hummers under a fleet of Blackhawks. Everything was going smooth in the late afternoon. When it got dark, it started getting hairy as it usually does. All the pilots wear night vision goggles (NVGs) when it gets dark. NVGs are super cool and work fantastic. They make the cherry from a cigarette look like a homing beacon. They have two drawbacks. First, even small light sources can be blinding. Second, you have little depth perception. It's a little like walking around in a two dimensional, fuzzy, black and green TV show. I can imagine flying a helicopter with NVGs could be a real challenge just from the experience I had driving with the things. We were in a rush to get these trucks off the ground. My probe man and I were on a roll till this one particular load. It was a soft top truck that had all the bows collapsed over the rear bed to keep it from blowing apart in the rotor wash. The vinyl top was used as a sort of toneau cover to keep all the gear in the back from blowing away. I was standing on the cab of the truck (a big no-no) because the rear chords were too short. When the rear chords are short it becomes impossible to get enough vertical slack to get the damn trucks hooked up from the hood. So there I am, standing on the cab of this truck with my probe man at my side as this Blackhawk approaches. It slowly moves into position from the rear. I can see the crew chiefs' head poking upside down through the hatch next to the birds hook as he guides his pilot to my position. My probe man touches the hook and jumps from the truck as the the helio comes closer. Everything looks good. The hook is just above eye level and I reach with my loop to slam it in the hook. There's a problem! Not enough slack in the chords to get the loop into the fucking hook. The hook if getting lower which is good. It's also moving forward as it comes down and I'm unable to get any more slack which is bad. The next thing I know I'm on my knees as the hook passes my head and continues down. I'm expecting the crew chief in the bird to tell the pilot to break it off at this point. I find myself sitting on the truck as the bird continues down and forward. I'm now officially terrified. It's amazing how your brain wonders when you think your about to die. My thoughts went from being crushed under the weight of this Blackhawk to being chopped to bits by the tail rotor. I imagined my mother getting the little pieces of me and a flag as my CO tried to explain what a dumbass I was. I was on my back now laying with my feet on the vinyl in the bed of the truck. I could feel the weight of the helicopter as it pressed my feet down. In shear terror now I frantically beat on the belly of the fucking thing with the metal loop I still had in my grip. My feet mercifully sank as whatever was under the vinyl was soft. The bird continued on its slow downward track. It happened agonizingly slow. It was like torture. I screamed at the top of my lungs and hit the bottom of the fuselage so hard that I could see dents in the skin of the aircraft. I could feel the weight of it up to my knees. It was only a matter of time before the UH60 crushed my torso, like a roach under a shoe, on the hard top cab of the truck. Strangely I became calm. My fate was sealed. I just had come to terms with death when the weight lifted. The aircraft reversed course. I slammed the hoop into the hook as it came back over my head. Once clear, I jumped from the Hummer and gave the crew chief the bird as I ran away. My middle finger stayed up until the Blackhawk disappeared into the darkness.

Ummm...Did I miss something?

Every soldier knows, when they join, exactly what it is you are there to do. There are no dissolutions. There are no arguments. There are no questions. You are there to defend the freedoms of your family, friends, and those you don't even know. As a soldier you give up some of your liberties so that those who enjoy them can continue to do so knowing that you are there to protect them. Some people don't even think there is a need for a strong military in this country. Those are the people who need protecting most. It comforts me, in spite of the bullshit you see on the news, that guys like me are out there representing our nation. They are the core of this nation and represent all walks of our society. The Army, and all of our other forces for that matter, represent the quintessential melting pot that is our nation. The only hierarchy is that of rank.

Nothing is more discouraging for your average (sane) soldier than being told you are going to go to war. I remember when it happened to us, during the Clinton years if you can believe it. They lined us all up in the courtyard in one big formation and basically said that we needed to start packing because we were going to ship out. It was crazy. After the formation broke up, the morale was low but determined among the enlisted. We knew we had a job to do, and even though it sucked, we were going to do what was asked of us. My question was one that popped into my head several times during my time in green. "How can a guy who has never served in the armed forces send us off to fight?" It should be an absolute REQUIREMENT that you have been in some service branch in order to be the absolute commander of them all. It's like asking Bill Gates to run a fashion boutique. He might be a great manager, but he doesn't know the first thing about style. You can never know how it truly feels to be in that formation if you never stood there yourself.

What really blew my mind was the reactions of the officers. They were excited, almost giddy, with the prospect of going to war. I could not fathom a guy who had that big of a hard-on to go get killed. Most of the officers seemed to have this reaction. It was scary. Suddenly I had very little confidence in my leadership. The worst one was, then colonel, Mark Kimmitt. If you watched the TV at all during the invasion of Iraq you saw this assholes face plastered all over the news. Several of us lower enlisted used to take bets to see who would die first from a "friendly fire" incident. Kimmitt was near the top of every list. None of us was really serious about shooting our leader but that didn't stop us from wishing he would lose a leg in a freak car accident though. I would've felt more sorry for his beautiful convertible beetle than him. Behind his gay little lisp, I'm convinced, Mark was a snake. I didn't trust him. I saw him cheat during a JRTC rotation. He switched injury cards, from KIA to walking wounded, with his driver after their truck was blown up. Evidently, he didn't think the unit was capable of running itself. The point of JRTC was to test the readiness of his troops. I guess he just didn't trust his officers and soldiers to do their jobs. Evidently we were incapable of being trusted. The only officers that seemed to have a grip on reality were those that were prior enlisted. These were the few guys with common sense and brains as opposed to the West Point college types who were book smart but, sadly, lacked in the common sense department.

The whole thing turned out to be a false alarm. I think it was part of Clinton's "Wag the Dog" routine. I was relieved because I was only three months from being set free from my obligation to Uncle Sam. Don't get me wrong, if I went wherever they sent me I was more than ready to kill for my country. It was my obligation to those of you who paid my salary and sent me to college.

A year and a half without.

I met her while me and a buddy, Jim, were on our way back from a local bar near post. I was in the passenger seat of the truck and they pulled up next to us on my side. Jim saw the driver and instantly called the driver for himself. This is a childish thing all guys do when they are on the prowl together. Usually we trade back and forth for the more attractive woman. So this makes me the wingman on a woman in the passenger seat that I can't even see. I agree to this proposition because, lately, Jim and I have been hanging out a lot and he is the only one of us who has a vehicle. Given the loss of the choice women or hanging out in my room, I'll go be a wingman all day long. The driver flags us down and signals that she is going to pull over just ahead. This is a new concept to a guy like me who just recently learned that you have to be overly aggressive to meet women when you are stationed at an Army base with 25,000 other men. In my mind this can't be a good situation. Either these girls are too young for us to be talking with, or the driver is trying to hook up her skank friends with some horny army guys. Thankfully, I was wrong on both counts. We pull over behind them and Jim and I are out of the truck in a milli-second. The doors to the car open and they both get out in unison. (insert slow motion camera aka slow walk scene here) As soon as I saw Shannon get out of the passenger seat I muttered to Jim "Dude remember that you called dibbs on the driver. I'm not switching now." She was about five' six" with wavy blonde hair and stellar green eyes. She was beautiful. We hit it off right away. She was a nursing student at the local college and dreamed of becoming a doctor one day. Shannon had the same dry sense of humor as I. She was a realist like me. We liked the same music. The music thing was something I found refreshing because, given our proximity to Nashville, most of the locals lived for country which was something I just tolerated. We hung out in the parking lot for a while talking and getting to know each other. Soon the driver (I can't even remember her name) was calling time to go. I was stoked when Shannon actually exchanged numbers with me (me giving her the number to the barracks pay phone in the hall) and she agreed that we should go out next week. Jim and the driver didn't make a love connection.

A week later, on Saturday night, I was bribing friends for the use of their cars. I think the offer that I finally landed was sixty bucks and a full tank of gas when I returned Chris' car. Trying to borrow a car on Saturday night in the army is like trying to find an ice cube in the desert. I hadn't even left the barracks and the date already cost me sixty bucks. It was worth every penny. We had a great time. It was the typical dinner and a movie thing. I remember we saw a movie that I had never heard of "Forest Gump." It was killer. I drove her back to the dorm and we made out but that was as far as it went. I was satisfied, after all, I had plenty of "encounters" while enlisted but no relationships to speak of. I was willing to put the effort into this one. The damn car thing was going to be a problem though.

Shannon and I continued dating for a month or so. She had a car so she would, more often than not, come pick me up. We had good times and eventually she snuck me into her dorm through the first floor window to watch a movie in her room. I remember it was "Dances With Wolves" which I had never seen and still hadn't seen after I left her room in the wee hours of the morning. I was on cloud nine until a week or so later when I got the call. All I remember about the conversation was something like this. "I really like you Glenn and I still want to date you but I'm not coming to pick you up at the post anymore. It's too hard to get past the M.P.s who pull me over and check my car every time I come and make me get a new base pass." I agreed that she shouldn't have to come get me every time and I vowed to be the driver on our dates from that point on.

The next day, after a year and a half without, I walked down to the "lemon lot" (where all the army guys park their cars they want to sell) and bought a Toyota Corrola for $1800 cash. It was a sweet little car, steel grey with a moon roof , nice aluminum wheels, good tires, and little pop up headlights like a corvette. There were only two things wrong with it. No radio and the muffler was shot. Ironically I already bought a stereo when they were on sale at the Post Exchange. (That stereo was the best I ever had. I installed it in that Toyota and my next three cars. My roommate thought it was hilarious that I had a CD changer and a deck but no car to put in.) So all the car needed was muffler which saved me four hundred dollars off the asking price and cost me forty dollars to replace. When I bought the car, it had 90000 miles ont it. I quickly made up for lost times during the six months I owned it. When I traded it for $2000 it had close to 140,000 miles on it. Shannon and I dated for about a month longer. She broke it off when she started her internship in Atlanta. I did see her for one more fantastic weekend when she called me at 10 PM on a Friday and asked if I would join her. Four hours later I was in Atlanta. Man I loved her and that little car.