Has he not been through enough already?!

So, the poor man makes through Navy SEAL training, gets deployed to Afghanistan, loses his entire team (men who were as dear to him as family) , is physically put through more than seems humanly possible, and still manages to survive to tell the story. As he is recovering physically, mentally, and emotionally, he is given a yellow labrodor retriever puppy that he named Dasy (an acronym from the nicknames of the four men that made up SEAL team 10). He LOVED this dog... well, a couple of weeks ago, 4 stupid boys stopped by his house in the middle of the night and shot and killed poor, little Dasy!
Here is the video clip of Glenn Beck interviewing Marcus Luttrell after the senseless killing of his dog, Dasy: Marcus Luttrell’s Dog Murdered by Punks in Texas (VIDEO)

The oft' blurred lines 'twixt living and dreaming

I'm not usually much of a dreamer, but maybe that is because I am not much of a sleeper. Lately, however, being as sick as I've been, I have become both. My dreams are very interesting though because they are just a better version of reality. My real life pretty much consists of running, working out in the gym, trying to get a better score on my PFT, and studying for the ASTB to get into flight school. In my dreams I take muliple PFTs per night and am able to complete the 70 second flexed arm hang with energy to spare; I am a super-star on the O-course; and last night, I was even a very talented fighter-pilot. The only problem with these dreams is that they are exhausting! When I wake up, I am tense and sore... definitely NOT ready to start a new day. At the same time, these dreams encourage me. I keep thinking that if I just keep up what I am doing in my current reality, maybe those things will become reality too. I know these are not the dreams of most girls, but I never was "most girls." And it's my dream.

Tippy-toes and tipping scales

It's a fear that keeps me wide awake
In the middle of the night
When the expectations are too great
And the bar gets raised too high
So I do the best with what I've got
And hope that no one knows
That I strain to see how high I can
Try to stand on these toes
Until I'm measured, but You know better

~ Nicole Nordeman

These lyrics have been running through my head for weeks now as I train for a new career and the fear of failure is ever-present, literally waking me in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. The lyrics have taken on new meaning since I found out that I shrunk a half inch. That may not seem like a big deal (and wouldn't have under normal circumstances), but the USMC weight charts are based on height, which means I now have to lose weight to be comfortably within weight standards. Oh the joys of trying to join the few and proud...  =) 

On ropes, logs, and self-doubt

So I went to the USMC obstacle course (or the O-course as the Marines like to call it) this morning. I have never felt so old and out of shape as I did this morning! It was SO discouraging, I cannot even tell you!  I kept playing it over in mind as I drove home... each obstacle - what it looked like, what the technique was for it and what it felt like as I tried to get through it.  It always came back to the same thing: will I really be able to make it through OCS? I had no doubt until today.  Depressed, I got home and baked a loaf of banana bread - now there is something I am good at. Put me in a kitchen and I can create just about anything you could want to eat!  Actually, I have a lot of things I am good at, so, why am torturing myself with all this USMC stuff? I asked myself that question as I mashed bananas and folded in flour.  Well, in fact, there are a lot of reasons, but the seeming impossibility of the course, which initiated the questions is the very thing  that drew me to the Marine Corps in the first place. There is nothing quite like completing the impossible!  I love the challenge.  That is what my current job has lacked for so long.  So, it is time to get my head back in the game and learn to love logs, bars, and ropes.  =)  One day soon I will look back on this with a feeling of foolishness for ever having doubted my ability. I can't wait for that day!

A sad day for America

I knew that our new president had some wildly left-wing ideas, but his stance on stem-cell research is beyond what I expected for his first term. One writer for the Washington Post put it this way:

I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn... While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, President Obama replaced it with no line at all.

This is my favorite quote in the article:

Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men.

And the grand finale...

Obama's pretense that he will "restore science to its rightful place" and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand -- this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically "scientific."

Seriously, though, this is really sad...and scary!

It just doesn't make sense

Yesterday, I told my supervisor that what his boss wants to do is a stupid idea. I laid out the reasons why and explained that it had been done before and was a disaster back then - to repeat it would be a mistake. So, during the staff meeting this morning, we were all informed that I would be in charge of that particular project. Can I just walk out now and say I am done? I have seriously had enough of these childish games! I mean really... the level of stupidity around here has reached an all-time high. I don't know how much more I can take.