Counting Down the Days

As I sit here on watch, I can only help but ask myself why. Why did I come to this place to be locked up usually 6 out of 7 days a week, with many mindless, menial tasks that have nearly no purpose? After all, it was just about one year ago when I was sitting at Buffalo Wild Wings with my friend Jake watching game 6 of the ALCS where the Red Sox came from behind to force game 7 against the Rays. I can still vividly remember sitting there, eating my boneless Honey BBQ wings along with my Parmesan Garlic bone-in wings, munching on celery in between wings, all while talking baseball, fantasy football, and whatever else came to mind. I really miss going to do things like that. Unfortunately, I cannot. I decided to attend a Federal Service Academy, and that's what I shall continue to do. On the bright side, however, in just 10 days I'll be back in Minnesota doing what I want to do, rather than what the upperclassmen tell me to do. It will be a very welcome nine day break; something necessary to keep me sane, I believe.

Saturday was an okay day. Our Class B inspection was cancelled, which kept us from cleaning very late into the night. Instead, our Company Commander took all of the available Plebes on a "team building exercise" which was actually a run with a "fun" activity at the end. Because I had been sick for the previous week, my endurance wasn't quite where it could've been, so I had a more difficult time than I should've. After we finished and showered, we marched over to Ackerman to watch a presentation about hazing and the responsibility of leaders in general. This was prompted by a little incident a few weeks back where a First Co. Plebe was persuaded to drink a shot of an extremely fiery hot sauce. It was a good, informational time that I hope people really took note of, as there was some excellent info about alcohol and college students.

The, albeit cold, afternoon was taken up by the football game against the University of Rochester. Our opening drive looked promising, though our hopes fell as our team fell apart and Rochester capitalized on our mistakes. We weren't overly thrilled with the final score of 52-21, but it did get us out of the cold. Once the game finished, the RTOA told us to muster in Ackerman Auditorium in 22 minutes, which we assumed was a liberty muster. We were correct, and we were released on liberty right around 1515. Because I had gone to D.C. the weekend before, I didn't really feel a pressing need to go out, so I stayed in my room, slept, and watched a movie before our accountability muster at 2230. Not surprisingly, there was somebody who found a way to mess it up and make us wait a lot longer than we should have. When we finally did get back, I finished my movie and did a few other things before drifting off around 1 am.

I woke up around 9am not feeling totally refreshed, but I think that was because I had gotten way more sleep than I was used to within the last 24 hours. I quickly got ready and headed over to the Chapel for our Sunday morning Bible Class. After the Bible Class and the Worship Service, Mom and Dad Guest were putting on a "Going Out to Sea" seminar, mainly for the Third Classmen who will be leaving after finals to board their assigned ships. The main draw for the few Plebes that did go was Mom Guest's chili that she brought from home, along with pies and ice cream for dessert. That was the highlight of the day, as I spent the rest of the afternoon keeping tabs on football games.

The PKT was one of the more memorable ones, as there were several people called up on stage and/or made fun of for presentations that they gave. The RTOA has such an excellent sense of humor. It's really a shame that we cannot appreciate it when we're near him.

Monday was a pretty relaxed day as those of us who participated in CC's Saturday morning fun received rack-in and media privileges. I slept during my two free periods during the morning as well as my two free periods after lunch. We had our 40 minute swim in swimming class, which is actually a lot easier than it sounds when doing the modified backstroke. It's just a long time to be in the pool. CFC was a little different Monday night as it was a Coffee House night where people could perform whatever talents they thought they had. There were some excellent performances as well as some that could have been a little better, but it was good overall, with the highlight coming from a First Class Midshipman who sang "If I Were A Rich Man" from Fiddler on the Roof. Even some of his closest friends did not know that he could do that and do it so well.

Today hasn't been all that exciting. As I said before, I'm on watch right now which meant that I had watch from 08-12 this morning. Nothing exciting really happened while on watch. I got my Calc and Physics tests back today. I'm pretty satisfied with both of them, so I'm sitting pretty well going into the finals for each of those classes. I would like to sleep in tomorrow, but that is not going to happen as I have Army PT at 0500. Oh well, I can sleep as much as I want in 10 days... Stand by for further posts.

D.C. and More!

I'll admit it. I've been a slacker lately when it's come to blogging. I'm going to make it a priority to get posts up more often than every week and a half or so. Anyway, the past 10 days have been fairly interesting and fairly bland at times. Then again, every day is so routine, everything feels pretty bland.

As for my reactions to the Yankees-Twins series, I don't have many good ones. It's always disheartening to see one's favorite team have that one bad inning happen every game which leads to a loss. Game One started off well with two early runs off C.C. Sabathia, but then Duensing couldn't hold it together. Game 2 was phenomenal for the Twins until Joe Nathan came in. Game 3 was pretty tense until Pavano painfully gave up some runs in the 7th. Oh well, that's come to be pretty routine for the Twins in the past 8 years to make it to the ALDS and not advance. The worst part of it for me was getting razzed by so many people here because the Yankees are king. I was in hostile territory from the beginning. Now if only the Angels can take the ALCS against the Yankees. Then I'll be pretty happy.

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty routine. Friday, however, was not. Since we were given a long weekend for the Columbus Day holiday, we could leave as soon as our last class ended. Because of that, the food provider completely misplanned numberwise for lunch. They assumed that fewer people would be there to eat. In actuality, most of the Regiment showed up. Surprise! This resulted in many, many people getting very little to no lunch, which in turn spurred an angry response from a lot of Midshipmen.

Eventually, I got through class for the day and headed out with three of my friends to Penn Station where we would catch our bus to D.C. Our bus picking us up ended up being about an hour late because of traffic coming into New York. If we had known that, we would've gotten something to eat, but we figured that we didn't have enough time to find something had it been on time. That resulted in four very hungry Plebes by the time the bus rolled into downtown D.C. Eventually we made it to Georgetown University where we were staying with a friend of Aaron Kunz, one of the Plebes I was with. We had a chance to drop our stuff off before heading out to Subway at 2am. When we got back to the dorm where we were staying around 3, we passed out for quite a while.

Saturday, after a pretty late start of 1430, we headed into the area of the National Mall to check out the National Air and Space Museum before meeting one of the Plebe's aunt and uncle at a sports bar to watch the St. Louis Cardinals game. I'd been to the Air and Space Museum, but was more than happy to go back. They have quite a collection of various air and space craft dating from way back all the way to unmanned UAVs like the Predator drone. Though the Cards ended up losing, we had a great time visiting with Aaron's aunt and uncle and eating some good food. After walking around the Capitol and the Washington Monument at night, we headed back to Georgetown to find some parties to go to, but to no avail. Sunday started out a little earlier for us, though we really gained no time as we walked over 3 miles from Georgetown to a wood fire pizza place not too far away from the Verizon Center, where the Wizards and Capitols play. On our way there we encountered many people walking to raise money to cure breast cancer, as well as what seemed like tens of thousands of LGBT people for the National Equality March. I was a little unhappy that we were so conspicuous in our Summer Whites, but we didn't really have any problems. Actually, at the National Archives, they saved us a bunch of time because one of the security guards allowed us to cut the entire line and go see the Big 3 documents right away. That was pretty cool. Once we completed our quick tour of the National Archives, we took a short stroll over to the National Museum of American History. There were some pretty cool exhibits on Abraham Lincoln, as well as the U.S. Military from the early 1700s all the way until now. They had actual uniforms from Gen. Colin Powell and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf.

After we were kindly shooed out at closing time, our next stop was the Washington Monument again, followed by the Lincoln Memorial and the Korean War Memorial. We would've added the Vietnam War Memorial, but it wasn't where I thought it was and it was getting dark, so we decided to find an ice cream shop. After checking our phones for places, we figured it best to just start walking in case we came across one. When we did, we stopped and ate before continuing. Though we did not plan it this way, we happened to walk all the way back to Georgetown University. Another 3 mile walk back. Because I "was pretty tired", I opted to not hit up some parties with the other three guys and instead headed back to my room to relax for a while before finally falling asleep.

We planned to get up early Monday to meet Aaron's aunt and uncle for breakfast, but those plans were nixed when Aaron found out they were unavailable. A taxi took us to the bus station before we took a little walk to find some breakfast. The bus ride was pretty uneventful as we drove through Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey to make it back to the Big Apple. Coming back on campus was somewhat of a downer, realizing that we were back to the daily grind.

As expected, we failed that night's PKT because people chose to not study while on Liberty. I, on the other hand, used some of my bus ride to look over the study guide.

Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday were all pretty normal. Nothing stands out to me right now as I write this. Only the cold temperature during the soccer game Wednesday night, where I was a ball boy, and Cookie Cafe on Thursday have any sort of lasting memories.

Because we didn't have any classes on Monday, Friday was a Monday schedule for classes. I had no objections with that, because I only have two classes on Mondays: swimming and English 1. Once lunch finished up, I relaxed until Bible Study at 1900. After Bible Study, CTO mandated that we complete our cleaning stations from 2100-2200. Afterward we had a mandatory CTO time, where the Company Commander (CC) and CTO lectured us on working on building team unity, and not letting "stupid high school crap" get in our way. This was necessary as we've had some issues between Plebes as of late. Now, it's off to bed for me. Stand by for future posts.

A Contrasting Two Weeks

I'll put this pretty bluntly, last week was awful. I'll detail it more in a little bit, but I am so happy it is over.

Saturday the 26th was our Apple Picking TM. Ironically, it was my last really good day before this past Sunday. After our Red Cross training, we left on a school bus and drove to an apple orchard northwest of the Bronx on the mainland of New York. There was an unusual amount of traffic for a Saturday afternoon which ate up a bunch of our time at the orchard, but I still had a blast picking apples with my friends. Once we had all filled our bags with McIntoshes and Cortlands, we loaded up the bus again and headed to Mom and Dad Guest's house. Upon arrival we were met with a table filled with oatmeal raisin cookies, brownies, and cold milk for us to munch on while we divided up and made homemade waffle cones and ice cream, melted chocolate and caramel for dipping sauces, carved pumpkins, sliced up our apples for the dipping sauces, and of course, readied apple pies for baking. Our night there was filled with great food, awesome fellowship, and a wonderful time of singing and playing games. My day had another high point: seeing Old Yankee Stadium and New Yankee Stadium for the first time. No baseball fan is complete until he has visited or at least seen one of those in person.

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were all a blur for me as I spent a good chunk of time working on my English paper. Sunday stood out because we were granted day liberty. My friend Ryan and I decided to take the bus out to Great Neck to grab some lunch and catch some football. Midway into my pizza and the Giants-Bucs game, I got a call from Chaplain Sias asking if Ryan was with me, because his parents wanted to speak with him. I later found out that they came to the campus without explicitly telling him, so they came down to Great Neck and took us back to the Academy. The rest of the afternoon was spent watching football and studying my PKT knowledge along with the Air Force Hymn.

I don't really remember much of Monday because most of it was spent working on my paper. Tuesday, however, I remember a little bit more. It was my birthday, even though it didn't really feel like it. I think it was probably my worst birthday ever. Even worse than my 16th birthday where I was in the middle of a two week grounding. I didn't get any mail, nothing special really happened, my friends didn't ask me to go to dinner with them, and we got IT'ed for CTO time to top it all off.

Wednesday was nondescript as well, though I just seem to remember unpleasantness at some point during the day. Though I just remembered that we had a sort of inter-squad game for baseball practice. In my first inning of pitching I did really well, got three quick outs. My second inning felt a lot worse even though I didn't allow any runs. This day of pitching will figure in with why Sunday was such a good day. Thursday was marginally better because of Cookie Cafe in the afternoon.

Friday was a lot of fun at night because it was Homecoming weekend here at the Academy and I signed up to drive alumni around in golf carts. Because not all of them wanted rides or were walking around after 7 pm, a few of us had a lot of fun screwing around with the golf carts driving all over the campus. Little did we know of the fury that would be unleashed the following morning.

Saturday started okay, with a bunch of us raising the #1 Ensign on the main flagpole (the largest US flag we have if you do not know). Upon the flag being raised, all of the Plebes (at that moment) headed over to Ackerman Auditorium to listen to VADM Albert Herberger, USN, the first USMMA grad to attain the rank of VADM in the United States Navy. After he finished, the RTOA, RTO, and RX all had their fun yelling at us for being worthless Plebes. So worthless in fact, that they decided to revoke our overnight liberty for the weekend AND demote us to Plebe Candidates again, which meant that we could no longer talk in Delano. Once we were released from that, our morale were way below the basement. I had to work the soccer game as a ballboy again to help pay for the baseball team's trip to Florida in the spring. After the game finished I got into khakis to watch the football game. It was a pretty good game until it started pouring torrential amounts of rain from the sky which flooded our FieldTurf field which delayed the game for over an hour. Thankfully, we were dismissed from the game which allowed us to stay in our rooms and work on other stuff like homework, or in my case, listen to the Twins squeak one out against the Royals. Because we had nothing better to do, we watched The Last Castle in Ackerman, which turned out to be a really good movie. I was quite happy, however, when we were released from 2300 accountability muster because then I could finally hit the rack.

Sunday was by far one of the best days I've had in a long while here at the Academy. It started off with Bible Class accented by Mom Guest's homemade cinnamon rolls. My mouth has not tasted anything so delightful for breakfast in a very, very, very, very long time. I ate too many of them, but that's definitely a forgivable offense. Because I had baseball in the afternoon, I didn't go to the Worship Service because my stained uniform needed to be replaced by a clean one before the evening's PKT. After readying a uniform, I headed off to the last baseball practice of the fall expecting to inter-squad again, though the time ended up being spent preparing the field for winter and eating lunch that was brought by the dad of one of the seniors.

After we had been eating for a while, the coaches began calling the Plebes into a makeshift office one by one. I don't know if they wanted me to be last, but it worked out that way. I want to say that I sat on the edge of my seat watching the dejected faces of those who did not make it, but I had my mind dead set on what I was going to face talking with the coaches. As I entered the coaches' makeshift office, I was offered a seat and asked how I thought the fall went. I bluntly told them that I felt that I was very inconsistent and did not play as well as I could have. The head coach contemplated what I said for a split second and replied, telling me that he had good and bad news. He gave me the choice of which he should deliver first, so I picked bad news. He told me that I would not be playing on the team as an infielder, however, for the good news, they felt that my curveball could help them out this year. I was in total shock. Even during Indoc while we had a "meet the coaches" session, I had nearly resigned myself to the fact that I had nearly no chance of making the team. Somehow, what I had to offer impressed them enough to keep me. I'm still in shock that they picked me. I was the only non-recruit to make the team. After cleaning up the locker room and field, I quickly returned to my room so I could watch the Twins-Royals game. When the Twins won to force game number 163 my day got even better. Not even the night's PKT could dampen my spirit until I headed to bed.

Yesterday was pretty nondescript also. We were finally issued our running suits which we will eventually be allowed to wear to Delano for meals. CFC was good, as we listened to a 1964 graduate who now works with Operation: Mobilization.

Today has been another great day. Even though I only got 3.5 hours of sleep and started the day off with a physics test, it has been wonderful. Class was pretty fun as our favorite asker of stupid questions, Muller, added to his collection in two classes today. His best of the day was: (paraphrased) "So did they use coal in the boilers of the Titanic to make steam?" Honestly, I'm still in disbelief after that one... After classes finished up for the day at 1500, I used the rack-in that our CTO gave us to take a short nap before doing a couple of other things.

At 1707, the Twins-Tigers game began. I had another MN guy over to watch the first couple of innings before heading to dinner. When I left for dinner in the 4th inning, I was a little down because the Twins were down 3-1, though I knew we had the ability to come back. When I returned from dinner, Orlando Cabrera launched one into the seats to put the Twins ahead 4-3. Right after that I headed to CTO time for the next 45 minutes. Once I returned, I noticed that the score was tied at 4-4 in the 9th inning. From then on I was riveted until the thrilling finish in the bottom of the 12th. I even skipped Bible study to finish the game. I'm thankful I did because that was the best game I've ever witnessed. The phenomenal ending to clinch the AL Central Division title made my week exponentially better. Everybody kept writing the Twins off, but they came back, and now they're a force to be reckoned with as they head to the Bronx to take on the Yankees. I can't wait to flaunt my Twins spirit in the presence of all the FLID Yankee fans. What a treat. Stand by for more posts and my reactions to the Twins-Yankees series.