The Weekend

Hello it has been a little while since my last post. This is my first real oppurtunity to write about my new work since I usually get off pretty late and want to go to bed because I wake up pretty early. Construction hasn't been nearly as bad as I anticipated it to be hopefully it stays that way. My job usually consists of walking behind or riding on the paver with a shovel to fix any parts of the asphalt that was messed up by the paver or by people etc...Since the paver usually doesn't mess up too much then I usually dont have too much to do. Plus there are lots of breaks because we usually wait on trucks to come in for a little bit. But it is nice when everything keeps going because then we get done before we know it. And time flies by pretty fast I think this is because I'm not in a building where there are clocks everywhere and I just sit there and look at them. All in all it hasn't been too bad and I'm sure I will appreciate my first check because I am already working overtime hours until payday. Plus I have today through Tuesday off because of the 24th of July I guess. So that is great I have a lot of blisters on my hand and one on my foot that kinda need to heal and I would like to rest a little bit more than I have been. Well that is about all. Goodbye for today.

My Last Day

Well today was my last day at the Wasatch Golf Course Cafe and hopefully my last day as a cook. Ever. Its been a long and crazy journey and I hope to never take it again. As you can tell I'm pretty much sick of flipping burgers and chopping things. It's pretty easy...but it sucks. Construction on the other hand is probably pretty hard and the work probably sucks...Hmmm...I dunno? I wish I could just take the next few years off and travel and not have to make any life decisions out of necessity you know just let things happen and stop worrying about this or that. Some would call that just being lazy. But if I could take out my retirement right now I probably would. But back to the real world I have a day off tomorrow which I will use to buy some work boots and some gloves and whatever else Tyler tells me to bring and then on Tuesday I will be doing real man's work. Paving roads. How romantic I know. The bad thing about this job is that while the money will be great it will only last until about October and then after that what am I to do? I really dont know. I think this is a recurring theme in my life. About once every half year I find myself at a certain point where I just am not sure what the heck I'm going to do next. But I'm not complaining because thats just kinda the way I live I guess. I sure as hell hope I dont have to cook again thats all.

More Discouraging News

Well hello. I have just returned from my visit with a different hearing specialist for my second opinion on my hearing. The problem is that this second opinion does not conflict with the first opinion which means I am basically a bit deaf in my right ear when it comes to higher pitched sounds. He suggested I see a ENT doctor or Ear Nose Throut doctor which will probably do a CAT scan on me to see if there is any type of "mass" pushing against my ear causing it to not work so well. This all sounded really scary to me and he said that would be the worst case scenario but I think I better go and see this ENT just so that I know I can rule out this worst case scenario at least. And then hopefully everything will be okay. He mentioned that I might want to get a hearing aid which kindof appales me since I think of 90 year olds when I hear the word hearing aid. But since I have never ever noticed any difference in my hearing as of yet I dont think that I will get one of those. Anywho I will have to go and see this guy and I hope he has good news for me thats all. Goodnight.

Hello

Yesterday I had the day off and I finally went and got my haircut. It was pretty long and shaggy. I had Kayla do it for me since she is training to be a hairstylist I figured I trusted her enough. She cut a lot off but thats okay she said my hair was "heavy" so she thinned it out with these cool looking scissors that was cutting my hair but it wasn't you know? I dont know it was weird. Anyways my hair looks good I think. Tyler thought it was my military haircut but no not quite...I am taking my second hearing test tomorrow morning. This time it will be from a civilian doctor and if he disagrees with the military test then that will be good news. So we will just have to wait and see how that goes. After my haircut I decided since I was in Provo I would go clothes shopping but I only ended up getting one pair of shorts. I also got a cell phone battery and a car charger because my phone was only lasting for about a day. When I got back to Heber I took my dog for the longest walk of his life I think. He was definitely pretty tired but he was quite happy to be out of the backyard. After that I went to bed until 8 when Dylon called me, he needed a ride home from work and we decided to go over to Tylers and play basketball. Then I went over to John and Seans house and watched a movie with them. I finally went to bed around 12:30. But thats okay because today I have the day off as well. I am planning on going down to Orem and doing something with Kayla but thats not until around 6 so I dont know what I will do until then. Today I recieved my poetry book in the mail. I was quite thrilled to open it up and learn that the first poem in the book was mine and on the opposite page was my profile. It was really great to see something that you worked on show up in a publication that can be viewed by a lot of people. My grandma was very excited for me in her usual grandma way. Anyways it is about lunch time and I am hungry so goodbye.

Disappointment at MEPS

Well my two days at MEPS started out good enough. I went on Thursday afternoon down to Salt Lake where the MEPS building is and took a 2 hour long test. This is the ASVAB test that every military applicant gets to take and based on his or her score is what type of jobs they are qualified to train for. Well my practice test was a 54 which was pretty good and it qualified me for basically the jobs that I wanted to have but my actually test score was 82 which was much much better and it actually qualified me for special intelligence jobs. You know the type that are like top secret no one knows what the heck they do. My recruiter couldn't belive that I got an 82 he was pretty happy for me. So I was feeling pretty good about things. After the test I took a taxi cab to the Radisson where I was staying the night for free. I checked into the Radisson and there was some old Navy vet on the third floor that I had to talk with to get my room key and my meal vouchers and such..My room was 313 and my roommate was a big tall chunky and quite awkward looking 17 year old boy who definitely reminded me of Nathan Baum. He was thouroughly excited to be entering the Army as a cook. I almost died laughing at him. I was like hey I've been a cook for 4 years and it sucks. But in the Army its really going to suck. But it floated his boat so I was like ok that works for you. Well we kinda hung out in the room for a little bit and watched tv and talked and I played around with my bed cuz it had a remote to it that changed how soft or hard it was. Then we went to go eat our free dinner which wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. They had a menu of the hotel restruant in the room that I was checking out and I was getting excited to get a free meal because some of the things on there sounded really really good but when we got to the restraunt there was just this little tiny MEPS menu that we all had to choose off of. Oh well it was still good and free. Then me and Nathan Baum lookalike went out and walked to the Gateway and walked through it and then we went back to the hotel and went to bed because we had to get up at 4:45. It was a long night and hard to sleep I didnt get much sleep and soon we were awake again and on the bus back to MEPS for our health tests and lots of paperwork.

When we got to MEPS we were all put into a little room where our blood pressure was taken and then we got to fill out a whole lot of health questions and paperwork. It was tiresome and boring. After the paperwork we all divided up into different rooms for different things. I did hearing first and this is where all my troubles began. When we lined up to get our hearing results the guy said my right ear was horrible. I guess my right ear can't really hear a certain high pitched noise and so I basically failed my hearing test. Next I went to go pee in a cup because I had to pee. That was really fun. After that I did vision and passed vision as long as I kept my glasses on. After that I went to give blood and did a breathalizer test. I passed. The next thing to do was a phsyical. It was definitely the longest weirdest physical every. After the physical I conversed with the head doctor and he told he to go retake my hearing test. So I did. And I failed again. He then said I was actually disqualified from the Air Force unless I could get a waiver for my hearing. So I had to go talk to my Air Force Liason officer and he said that he would apply for a waiver which I will likely get because of my high test score and my good scores on all my other physical tests but it would reduce the types of jobs I could train in and all the jobs that I was interested are no longer available to me. So I was sent home until the results of the waiver come back. I was very very disappointed as I figured I was going to pass everything just fine. I am getting a second opinion on my hearing on Thursday and we will see what the results of that are. If they conflict with the military results then it is likely that I can have the whole situtation turned around. My recruiter told me not to stress out too much and things like this happen on occasion and they can actually get reversed. So we will see. If not I guess thats just fate and its not what I'm supposed to be doing.

Getting In Trouble at the Parade

So this morning I got up at like 6 and went down to Provo to be in the 4th of July parade with the Air Force. I had never been in a parade before and I figured it would take really long and get really boring and be really hot but it turned out great. My Air Force recruiters definitely went all out they went down to the base and picked up a big expesive escalade it had a big screen tv as well as a 7500 dollar soundsytem installed in the back of it. In the trailer that it pulled was another big screen tv inside (for like no reason at all) there was also a motorized scaled down version of a F-15 that one person can sit in and drive and there also was a big pimped out golf cart that had big tires and a lift on it. The last thing they had was a giant blow up of an Air Force guy named Ricky. It was basically like a balloon except someone could get in it and walk around and move its arms and stuff. Rudy, one of the recruiters was the person that got in it and he was running and skipping and dancing the whole time it looked really funny. (this is what America's hard earned tax money goes to I guess) There was also all sorts of things to give out to the crowd. So I was excited. We got really lucky and were assigned to go out as the second group right behind the fire department. So we actually got done with the parade in less than an hour. If we had been stuck in the middle or the end it takes much much longer. As we started out me and another person were walking in front of the golf cart handing out lanyards and balls and stuff and this angry parade official girl person drove by and scolded me saying I wasn't supposed to hand things out so I was like ok umm don't they always hand things out at parades? We have like huge bags full of stuff to give away and the little kids come to the parade to get stuff handed out right? Then I watched her drive away and decided to hand more stuff out. Well if you give one thing to one kid and there are like 50 other kids sitting next to him they basically surrounded you and start yelling at you and actually follow you for like 100 feet so she came back and told me to get out of the parade haha so I was like umm k...So I went and got inside the car with a recruiter and just sat there and waved the rest of the time. And then the parade was over. And we went to get something to eat. The End.

Now I have to go to Salt Lake at 12 tomorrow and take tests and phsyicals and interviews and questioning and stuff. Then stay in a hotel overnight and do some more stuff in the morning then I get to leave around 2....Yay. Wish me luck.