We had an out of class activity lined up yesterday. Or, as the students like to say - "Field Trip!" Nothing really special lined up, we just planned on taking a bus up to the San Jose area and spending the day in Korea town. But it was an oppurtunity to have a relaxing day (as opposed to the third semester curriculum) out of class and practice some Korean in real life settings. We finished up the trip with lunch at a Korean all you can cook and eat meat restaurant. The one vegetarian in...

If it weren't for short notice, we'd have no notice at all, right? At the beginning of practice yesterday, we had only one full honors funeral and one two person detail lined up for the next few days. By the end of practice, we had a full honors lined up for today, a full honors for Friday, and two full honors details for Saturday. Busy schedule, especially with only one full team for full honors. So, we got our team together this morning extra early (for those that read my posts last...

Last Friday afternoon the Army unit that is responsible for students here held a Health and Welfare. The unit asked our company to provide NCOs to help so it would be done all the faster. It still took over two hours to inspect the barracks of the company I was helping out. I won't go into the specific dirty laundry that caused the entire unit to do this for all the barracks Soldiers, but I will say that the Army uses Health and Welfares for a number of reasons - an inspection of general l...

Why Don't Cows Smell Like Leather? Just a random, odd thought I had as I passed a Wilson's Leather Shop yesterday. My Ecosystem Details

Yesterday was my 6 years wedding anniversary. We spent most of the day out at Gilroy and then had dinner in Monterey at a Japanese steak house we like down near Fisherman's Wharf. I love you, Yong Mi. My Ecosystem Details

Been surfing Korean websites today. Found a really interesting article that I'll either translate it or, more likely, find an English link later about SK revealing that the reason for the 1998 North Korean missile launch really included the launching a satellite. The comments on that one are GOLD! One guy demanded that the SK president of the time period be immediately brought before a Korean court and be sentenced to death. Really. But, while clicking through links, I found this. Ju...

I've been wondering about this for a while and even asked about it in the comments on another post and maybe someone else has already asked and gotten an answer, but I missed it. What happened to having 10 articles per page. I liked it that way better. I tried to check my user settings but couldn't find an option to change back to having 10. My guess is it might have something to do with Draginols post " Frustrated with JoeUser's speed ", but that is just a guess. Maybe to speed things...

I wrote a thing about how much I hate crappy music . In it, I talked about how lame the radio is in the area and even named some specific groups I don't care for. What I didn't offer was what I do like, so as to not provide target fodder for YOU, the reader. Well, I decided to share the contents of my most recenlty burned audio cd. It's mostly stuff I've bought off iTunes recently, but there is also some stuff that's been out there for a while that I still like a lot. There are a to...

After Operation Goldenflow this morning, I still had some time to spare before I needed to be in the office. So, I went out to one of the local grocery stores to pick up some coffee and something to have later for lunch. On the way back, traffic got real congested around the base. Cars were lined up for a good distance with teachers that were trying to get in to work at the last minute. I happened to know the teachers in front of me and behind me in line. When I got to the light at...

Phone rang at 0455 this morning. When you've been in the Army for a while, you know there are only two things a Soldier will get called for that early - an alert or urinalysis. And since I'm in a training unit, I knew it wasn't an alert. I picked up the phone already knowing what I was going to be told. Be at the company at 0630 either ready to pee in a cup or ready to drink water. The problem, though, was that I got up for PT 15 minutes earlier and had already gone to the bathroom. S...

I was originally going to title this article "Gay! Is Leon" since that's what inspired this post. But, I didn't want anyone to read the title and think I was using any bloggers name in the title (I don't even know if there is a Leon blogging here at JU, but better safe than sorry, haha). I was out running this evening with a buddy here on Ord Military Community and CSUMB (formerly known as Fort Ord). There is a large amount of graffiti and painting on the old buildings that are just aw...

Been a fast week so far. And the funny thing is, I've done almost nothing all week. On Monday, I completely threw my back out. Worse than I've done in a few years. I had some serious trouble just moving from standing to sitting and back all day Monday. Even today, I'm still standing with a noticeable slant/curve in my spine. Just can't seem to straighten up all the way. I'm lucky that I work in a place where they trust me to self-care and not abuse the system. I've been able to cover ...

I just received an email with the most recent duty rosters. I came up again for funeral detail, this time for March and April. I detailed my feelings about military funerals before - Something I never want to do again... , so I won't go into too much detail about it here. While I'd never try to get out of doing this detail, I still don't look forward to it. I also find it a little annoying to see that this will be my second time on this detail and there are people who have been in my c...

I try not to do this too often, but I got an email today that I thought was funny enough to share here. I have no knowledge of how true this is or if the name is real or fake, but it is possible that it is true. Edit - My friend sent me the link to this story and apparently the author has quite a few military stories like this posted on his page. So, I've edited the story out of this post and I'll just provide a link. Posting a single email joke or quotes from an article is one thing, b...