George Patton quotes
"Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory."
"Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men."
"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week. A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood. No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country."
"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."
Since it's been so cold here my Civic has had a hard time getting warm. So I decided to put cardboard in front of the radiator to help it stay warm. So in doing this I had to use my handy dandy mini mag lite, which had been sitting it the trunk of my car in the freezing cold. So while putting the card board in I had to undo a couple of bolts but in doing this I had to use both hands but I still needed to hold the flash light. So what would you do? I thought the same thing I put the freezing cold metal flashlight in my mouth. Once I did this I quickly realized it was a bad idea. It instantly stuck to my lips, so I tried to move my tongue back so it wouldn't get stuck which didn't work. Soon my tongue and lips were stuck. I was at a lost of words and didn't quite know what to do. While this was happening it reminded me of a certain movie, A Christmas Story so in case some of you don't think your tongue will stick, you my friend are completely wrong it will! I was able to get the flashlight out of my mouth once I warmed the light up with my breath. So next time I need to hold the flash light I will just set it down.
I figure with all the excitement that happened on Christmas break I should at least say something on here. It all started out fine, we we're going to drive to Texas on the 16th and stop half way in Omaha and be in Texas on the 17th around 8. We're we wrong! We started out and right away I noticed that the car's cruise control wouldn't stay at the speed I set it at. We had a luggage carrier on top so I figured that might be why, and plus we had a head wind. So we pulled over and took it of and the cruise seemed to work. About four hours into it I saw the check engine light start to flash, and I'm no mechanic but I thought that can't be good. But being the man who knows everything I convinced myself that it was just a O2 sensor or something silly. When we stopped to get gas the car was running very rough, but then again I convinced myself, and my wife that it was the air filter, maybe the car wasn't getting enough air. And in my defence when I checked the air filter it was packed full of snow, so of course this was the cause. Ha only if things in my life were that simple! When we got to Omaha, and thank goodness we did, I took the car to orileys and checked the computer. I hooked up the little computer thing and waited, then I saw a heart stopping sentence, cylinders 1 and 3 were misfiring. NOOOOOOOO I thought to myself why me? After buying new spark plugs and spark plug wires and a new distributor cap it still ran just the same, very rough. So the next morning we took it to a mechanic shop and they confirmed what I dreaded, the timing belt broke a tooth and needed to be replaced. But I thought well that sucks but we can work with that. It was going to take one day to fix so that would mean we would get to Texas on the 18th not too bad. Well the next day the mechanic calls me and tells me it's actually a lot worse, they put the new timing belt on and cylinder one still has no compression, which means the valves are brokeen and on top of that it would take about 4 days to fix and more money. So we rented a van and drove to Texas and picked the car up on our way back to Grand Forks. The only question was how are we going to get to Omaha? That was easily solved, we took my old Civic back up so now we have the CRV and the Civic. School started yesterday and wasn't really that bad. I'm taking five classes all in a row. I have them from 9 to 1 Monday Wednesday Friday. So I have some time after and on Tuesday and Thursday to study. I will admit it is quite draining having that many classes in a row, when I got home I was really beat. All in all I think it will be a good semester.
http://www.drawminos.com/index.html?id=27887
Don't ask how long it took me to do this.
I suppose I should update my blog, it's that time of the month. No not that one. The semester is coming to a close and thank goodness!!! I only have one final left and that is on Monday the 15th of December. It's for meteorology, so I need to study extremely hard this whole week. That's something I've learned this semester is that to study for a test you should take at least a week, if time permits. You can't procrastinate the studying of a test. We are going to head back to Texas on the 16th and get there the evening of the 17th, we're stopping in Nebraska for the night to make it a two step process. It's a lot easier to do it in two days instead of one shot. School went pretty good this semester. I've learned a lot about school and a lot about what I'm studying. My flying is going good to0. I had a cross country flight on Thursday that was 3 hours long. That's along time flying a little plane like that. Try going 3 hours on a bumpy dirt road in an escort. That's about what it was like, the weather was pretty crappy and there was a lot of turbulence. All in all it was an awesome learning experience. Things are going really well here. It snowed yesterday so we finally got something that goes with the freezing cold. It's pretty interesting driving in it. Well I will update it again in about a month, or maybe sooner hopefully.
Just thought I would let yall know what is going on in the mind of myself. The past couple of weeks have been chaotic! It seems like I have a test every stinking week. I think it seems like that because I usually do. I never ever dreamed that going to school full time would be so stressful. My old job was pretty stressful when we were busy and I thought that stress was bad. It was but I could leave that stress at work, this stress I have to take home and study. It's well worth it though. I am really looking forward to going home for Christmas. It will be good to see every one and to have Christmas. I like it here in Grand Forks but it's no TEXAS. Any way got to go study for that meterology test tomorrow and for the ground school test on Friday.
As most of you know I had my first solo last Thursday. To say the least it was way cool. I did three take offs and three landings. I wasn't scared because the flight had been postponed so many times due to weather, so I was ready to get it done. That was until I took off, then I thought to myself crap I have to land this thing by myself now. The first landing was a wee bit skidish, I came in a little crooked and when I hit the pane kind of skidded diagonally. I recovered and took off again and the last two were pretty good. When I was taxing off the runway the Tower told me to exit A3 but I was going to fast, and I tried to make the turn and almost wound up in the grass but since I have cat like reflexes I aborted that and keep going straight and just exited later on at A4. other than that it was really cool and exciting. I have a stage check on Saturday which is where I have an oral exam and a flight with a teacher and they grade me based on knowledge and flying ability. I have three of those on lesson 14, 26 and 30. Lesson thirty is the one where I get my private license. Saturday is my lesson 14 stage check. School is going pretty good, it could be better if I would study more which I am. I made a study schedule of when I will study what. ROTC is getting better it's not so painful anymore. It's getting pretty interesting learning new things and learning how the Army does things it's pretty cool. That's about it for now.
I know most of you check my blog everyday to see what exciting is happening in my life. And I have let you down long enough. I have been so busy lately with school and flying it's not even funny. The flying is going pretty good, I was suppose to have my first solo flight on Wednesday but it was rescheduled for Friday which was rescheduled for Saturday which will most likely be rescheduled for Monday because we're suppose to get thunderstorms on Saturday. So that has been pretty disappointing. Life goes on, most of my classes are going pretty good there are those classes that are eating my lunch still. I went to the advisor to figure out how much school I have left, it was a very humbling and disappointing meeting. Pretty much all the classes I took in Texas are going to do anything for me here. I have four years of school left, which translates I will never finish! When I first got all the info in Texas I wasn't counting the ROTC classes which is 4 to 5 credits a semester which adds one year to my school. If I didn't have those I could do it in three years. There is still hope tomorrow I will take that info to the ROTC lady and talk to her and see what can be done. That's pretty much all the news from my part of the arm pit of America, which we call Grand Forks North Dakota. Yall take care and work hard!
