Saturday, October 17, 2009

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.

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