Countdown to Germany

My favorite country in Europe. Germany, home of great beer, weinerschnitzel, and DoDS Highschool basketball championships.

My wife is the coach for the Aviano girls team, currently undefeated and wrecking everything in sight. They've mercy ruled every team they've played. There isn't a player or parent from the other team who stepped inside the gym knowing they wouldn't get their butts kicked up and down the court. It was brutal watching those other teams get routed so quickly. It was awesome watching my wife do her coaching thing.

So here I sit with her parents as we wait to depart for the Rhineland. Normally I would be excited to go to Germany for any reason. Knowing that it's the last time I will see her coaching her girls makes me sad but the thought of her bringing home a championship has me amped up. Give em hell baby, I'll be cheering you from the stands.

Back with a vengeance

It seems that time fly's when you're off playing the conquering hero in foreign lands, or if you just happened to get distracted by something else cool and shiny. If you remember my prophetic words from an earlier blog, I am easily distracted by both movement and shiny things and in this case it was a big shiny plane moving in to take me away on another deployment.

Before I walked into Big Blue's recruiting office many moons ago, I had this preconceived notion that the Air Force wasn't big into the whole deployment gig. Turns out my preconceiving of notions sucks cuz I'm now on #5. 5 deployments in 6 years, and 1 of those years was a remote to Korea. So it's really more like 5 deployments in 5 years. In reality, if you total them all up back to back, it's around 2 years. So 2 of my 6 years in the operational Air Force, I've been washing sand out of my arse somewhere. And I gotta say, it's been alot of fun. Yes, I miss my wife. Yes, I miss my routines at home. I dig seeing new places though, being part of something larger than my own little world, and the pay is frickin awesome. Yah, I said it. I get bank whenever I go down range. You think that caramel latte from Starbucks is gonna pay for itself? You think wars are won without that caramel latte in hand? Did you know that the only time Napolean went to war without a caramel latte was against Russia? Yeah, how'd that work out? Like the proverbial turd in the punch bowl.

So now you're wondering why the heck a man such as I needs that victory ensuring latte. The answer is simple, I'm a comm guy. Comm guys need coffee. Can't function without it. I got an I.V. one time and the doc put 3 shots of espresso in the bag for me. That's why I need that caramel latte. I'm the guy making sure communications is flowing from way in the back. Need that e-mail? No problem. Want your phone's working? I'm the man. Need someone to charge that hill or take that bunker? Lemme call somebody for you.

And now I'm back from #5. Probably the easiest one to date. I'm actually embarrassed on this one. I ate lobster twice a month. Lobster. There was an actual Starbucks there. I got 3 beers a night. The gym was nicer than any Gold's Gym I've ever been in. It had an indoor pool and a massage parlor complete with Asian strumpets ready to get busy on me. Whoever coined the term "War is hell" has never been to Al Udeid.

So it's back to the mean streets of northern Italy. The Dolomites look primed for some skiing so I may have to head up there this next week to learn. Stay tuned.

edit: my wife has informed me that she only got a brief mention in this blog. to alleviate her sufferings caused by this I'll dedicate my next blog to how awesome she is.

Back from Vacation...

and I gotta tell you, I have no desire to go back to work anytime soon. Since my last post where you learned of my utter failure in getting promoted, we spent 4 days up in the heartland of Bavaria, in southern Germany. If you have never been to Germany, I pity you. It is an awesome place filled with castles, world class skiing, home to Oktoberfest, and of course schnitzel. Damn good schnitzel.

So anyway, we stayed at a place in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (a.k.a GAP). GAP is the home of Edelweiss Lodge and Resort, a very nice resort strictly for U.S. military personnel and there family. I know what you're thinking, a 4 star resort for American military people only? Hellz yes it is, we in the service call this one of the many "french" benefits.*

Since our stay was over the July 4 holiday, I wanted to do something epic to commemorate our Independence Day. Usually this is a day where I would showcase my epic grilling skills and make some poor grill bow to its sensei, but with nary a grill in site I was forced to seek greatness elsewhere. This search led me 3,000 feet up a local mountain....

Para-gliding. Readers, if you have never experienced the badassity that is running off of a mountain top with some little German dude and a parachute strapped to your backside, you have missed out on one of life's great experiences. Of course you can substitute the little German dude out for whatever nationality you prefer, but when in Germany....

Back on track, para-gliding is the simple art of parachuting with an already open chute. What Shari and did was take a ski-lift up the mountain with our tandem partners, get to our starting points and get strapped into the gear, find the direction of the nearest cliff face, and then haul ass. Seriously, no instruction needed. My instructions consisted of

German dude: "Yah, are you ready yah?"
Me: "Hell ya bro"
German dude: "Okay den, on de count of tree I vant you to run datway yah"
Me: "Hell ya bro"
German dude: "Okay den, von two tree go!"

Me and the little German dude....



And off we go. Getting the parachute that is laying on the ground full of air is simple. Run like hell until you lift off. Like this....

And that's all there is too it folks. Oh, it's tough to describe how completely awesome the ride was. 15 minutes of just gliding through clouds and over the valley.

For those of you wondering if my wife did this as well, the answer is an emphatic hellz yah! I was so proud of her, normally I would say she isn't as adventurous as I am but she showed no fear.

More on what else we did while on vacation, just wanted to get this one into the ethers before signing out.


* - I know it's not "French Benefits". However, the numerous jokes regarding the German and French made this sort of a reverse pun. French benefits in Germany.....get it?

bummer of a day

One of the great days in the military is finding out you're being promoted. In the Air Force, we'll all find out on the same day...today. Unfortunately, I am not one of the lucky few. I didn't think I'd be promoted this time, my initial thoughts after I took my promotion tests were not high, however you're never sure how the rest of those eligible did either so you always have some small amount of hope in the back of your mind that you did enough to beat out the 20+ thousand who may or may not have prepared harder than you.

Well let thy hope be dashed upon some large and metaphorically painful object. Not only did I not make it, I didn't even come close. I console myself only with the realization that I definitely didn't study as hard as I could have, and am solely to blame. Okay, thats a lie. I'm also consoling myself with a nice glass of scotch. It wasn't all bad news of course. My friend made it finally, and I gotta say I'm proud of him for sticking to it after several attempts.

For anyone reading this, and I doubt that number exceeds single digits, heed this advice.

Do not suck when an opportunity to advance comes along. Self pity only lasts a few days and good scotch is expensive. It's always better to tell your co-workers better luck next year than be on the reciprocating end.

Band of the Week...

Kings of Leon

I got word of this band from a buddy at work after mentioning how stale alot of today's music is. Not alot of originality, mostly just music made for the billboard top 40 and TRL crowd. It's not that I'm some kind of music snob that watches "High Fidelity" everyweek, the music is just not that good to me.

So my buddy plays me some of KOL's music and I am immediately blown away. It was a mixture of southern rock, blues, punk, and something else I can't even label. The lead singer's voice isn't the American Idol crooner's typical voice. It's got an edge to it and he manipulates it to mesh with the music instead of overpowering it.

So if you're looking for something not necessarily new, but definitely not what you'll hear on your local top 40 hits radio station, give it a listen.

Start with:

Slow Night, So Long and Four Kicks off the "Aha Shake Heartbreak" album

or

Knocked Up and Fans off the "Because of the Times" album

happy listening...

Recipe of the week

After much contemplation on ways to spread my vast wealth of knowledge on food, I have decided to post a recipe every weekend in order to enlighten the multitudes of readers that may be lacking in the kitchen.

Trust me when I say that these simple recipes will impress even the most discerning palates and leave you looking like whoa.

So here tis...

Grilled Jalapeno with a cream cheese and sausage stuffing

Ingredients:
- 10-20 jalapeno's. get the bigger ones from the market, you'll want to stuff them as much as possible.
- 8oz philadelphia cream cheese
- 16oz sausage roll. I use Jimmy Dean, you can use whichever you prefer.
- salt, pepper, paprika
- 1 bag of shredded cheese. again, use the type of cheese you prefer.

Directions:
- remove sausage from its wrapper and place in a mixing bowl. mash it up, sprinkling the salt, pepper, and paprika in as you go.
- place bowl in microwave and nuke in 2 minute intervals. After each nuking session, remove bowl and mix the sausage around some more to evenly cook it. once cooked thoroughly, set aside.
- take your jalapeno's and cut the tops off. gut the insides out and throw them away. make sure to get all of the seeds out. set aside
- take your cream cheese and mix it into your bowl of sausage. mix it as much as possible.
- using a small spoon, begin to stuff your jalapeno's with the mix. get as much as you can in there.

Grilling:

- I use a wire mesh basket when I grill these. It allows me to prop them up vertically keeping all the stuffing inside. While they are cooking, I sprinkle the shredded cheese all over them. You literally want to coat them.
- Grill until you think they are ready. The sausage should already be cooked from the microwave so you're fine there. Just make sure the shredded cheese is melted.

bon appetite folks

Happy Father's Day

Once again we've arrived at the day where we pay homage to our fathers. All around the nation, ez-boys are oiled up, fridge's are stocked with beers and steaks, and grills are prepped for men to practice what is genetically embedded in their very XY chromosomes.

We, the children, will wake our father's up with cards and phone calls, well wishes and maybe even a "thanks for being the most kick-ass dad in the world". I can admit I didn't say this last bit in my younger years, however time, maturity, and experiencing the real world has only proven the lessons my father tried to teach me were accurate.

So here's to my father. A father of 3 young men, faithful and loving husband, United States Marine, and the single most important influence in my life. I didn't always listen to your words of wisdom and sometimes tough love was necessary. You were always there for me after I'd fallen though, and helped me become the man I am today. No doubt I could have done more to be a better son, but you did all you could and more to be the greatest father a man could ask for. One day I will have kids of my own and I hope that I can say that I've raised them as well as you raised me.

Happy Fathers Day dad, thanks for being the most kick-ass dad in the world.