down with hurricanes

[colby...]

It’s getting harder to watch the news. Every damn time I get home it’s on. Every damn time I see bodies wrapped in sheets and flooded streets, the wreckage of homes in New Orleans.

And Mississippi.

Biloxi Mississippi is devestated.

Colby, one of my best friends- truly my best net-friend alive, and whom I care about a lot, has not signed on since Saturday. There have been no blog-posts. Nothing. I keep telling myself that she’s lost power.

I keep trying to focus, statistically, on the fact that she cannot be dead or injured or without help in some slum. That statistically, the one person I know there cannot be one of the casualties.

But there is always the thought…

What if she is?

Colby, please. If you’re reading this, comment or something. I’m e-mailing you now.

I just called you.

GOD I HATE THAT SOUND. Doo-do do! We’re sorry, all circuits are busy now. Please try again later.

They don’t fucking sound sorry. They don’t. Maybe I’m being stupid, but I want to find them and beat their faces in because they aren’t sorry.

There we are. That one didn’t say sorry. There are different ones.

Doo doo doo! “We’re sorry, all circuits are busy now. Please try again later.”
Doo doo doo! “All circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later.
The one with no cruel voice- “Doo doo doo” and when I look at my screen it says network busy.

That one hurt. It went through with two full rings, sounded like it was about too… then that damned tripletone.

Those that read this blog, please pray for my friend Kathryn-Colby, her sister, her brother, her mother and her father.

[whimper]

Damn the Paine.

Life-is-oh-so-flecking-great. Paine is oh-so-flecking-witchy.

Rules in Drill Squad:

1. No saying gun.
2. No pointing your rifle at others.
3. No dropping the real rifles.
4. No saying gun.
5. Keep your mouth shut.
6. Keep your hands to yourself.
7. No disagreeing with the commander. If 2+2=5, so be it. The Major is the Major and should be treated with respect. But if he says something about marching, ask Sergeant to verify. Major is Puerto Rican, that’s all we got to say.
8. No saying gun!
9. When you push, you push, and a rifle better lay straight on your back.
10. Various other rules when one of the ranking officers decides to instate. So anyway.

Notice the ‘gun’ part?

Our weapon is not a gun. It is a rifle. A M1903 A3. Or, in my case, an A1. Springfield. It is a rifle and should be treated with respect and if you say gun… well, just don’t say gun, got it?

Except Paine doesn’t get that. Paine said gun. Paine should have been in pain with at least twenty pushups and ten TVs, which I’ll explain later.

But Command Sergeant Major Albin was in the room. He’s a good guy. Very good (looking), pretty nice. Our Sunshine. But he’s also a hard-ass when it comes to particulars. So, our punishment was… yes, I said ours. Not Paine’s. Ours.

We were to drop to push up ready position. On the pavement, not to mention an ugly incline. He let us protect our palms with our rifles, though, considering it was scalding hot on the ground. So we held in ready position. For five or so minutes. Then did pushups and recovered.

Paine held her rifle over her head.

Big whoop.

Which was incidentally her attitude towards us. ‘Ten pushups, big deal. I did thirty yesterday.’ The difference being, of course, that she had deserved those pushups and the ones we did today. The difference being that she hadn’t done hers in the sun, on the pavement on an incline. The main thing was that she didn’t care. Someone offered if anyone had a razor that he would hold her down while we shaved her eyebrows or hair or something. Didn’t, of course, Zero-tolerance policy for such things at school.

CSM remarked that he’d march us down one of the darkened halls and let us discipline her. -Eye twitch-

My arms are killing me.

[advanced-ness]

Strange how life goes on…

Any rate. BCIS is a slacker course. Too darn easy and we’re not going fast enough because my classmates suck arse. So I complete the two page assignment in about ten minutes, go to tell the teacher I’m done and ask for permission to sign on to the net and work on my site. She’s shocked that I’m done so fast… So I leap to phase two which I was going to delay until after our test tomorrow.

I asked her if I could attempt completing a years worth of courses in a semester, BCIS 1, and take BCIS 2 second semester. Independently. She was thoughtful, warned me that she wouldn’t be able to walk me through…

And then said yes, on permission of the counselor. So now all I have to do is speak to Mr. Arthurs who is very nice, and ask permission to take the year-end test at the end of the semester.

[bleh]

Signing off now. Again. Colby. Speak to me. Pray for Colby and all those affected by Katrina. Which in essence is the whole country…