Even though I like going to church, it really is hard to get up when you have been sleeping soundly and the alarm goes off on some oldies station. I hate oldies, so it made me want to turn the radio off real quick, but then I just kinda sat on the edge of the bed and stared into nothing for a little while. I know that was not the most productive use of my time, but it sure was satisfying to not have to do anything for a little while. I polished my shoes yesterday, and let me say, that is not a small task by any stretch of the imagination. It takes a long time to spread all the polish over the shoe with Q-tips and paper towels and then polish it with the inside of a sock that mysteriously ended up in my load of laundry. I figure that I will not find the owner of it anytime soon, so why not put it to good use until that time when I am able to locate the original owner of the sock. The good thing is, we are only required to polish the toe and heel of the shoes. For some people with really small feet, that is not too much, but for the small canoes I have attached to the end of my legs, that is a whole lot of real estate that has to look perfect. In fact, I bet I polish the equivalent of an entire one of some of the girls shoes. They can have their shoes on and be able to put my shoe on and lace it up. They have tiny little areas that are required to be shiny, I have approximately half a cow that has to be polished, buffed, and perfect to meet the standards that are put in place to keep us looking good.
nrfirth | 
26 September 2004 1404 | 
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All day I was at the drill meet today. I have quite the little tan line; or rather burn line, across my forehead and in a nice v on my chest. I got to see my mom today! She was close by and just couldn’t resist coming up to see little old’ Noah. We got Chinese food, which she promptly threw all over the floor in the van. And by threw, I don’t mean just a little that spilled over onto the floor, I mean the whole meal was lying on the mat in the car. We saw a wedding going on in the park, which was quite nice. As we were preparing to leave, the bride and groom went behind us on a bicycle built for two. It was perhaps a budget wedding. The big hints that led us to this conclusion is that: 1) It was in a public park with metal folding chairs, 2) They rode away not in a limo, but on a bicycle, and 3) They stopped at the end of the remote parking area and put the bicycle into the back of the pickup truck. It looked pleasant though, and whatever you can do to save a little money here and there goes a long way in the long run. The color guard this morning went off without a hitch. I performed perfectly as did the other three people in the color guard. I would like to say that the rifles got comments saying how well we were together. I just nodded and smiled as I thought to myself, “Well, what else did you expect?!?!”
I signed up for recruiting today. No, I am not signing up to be recruited, I signed up to work the recruiting booth at the drill meet tomorrow. Nothing like signing a piece of paper that basically means you will be at the drill meet all day when you already have to be there at 6.45 in the morning to do a color guard. I like doing the color guards though because I usually get to be a National Guard because I am freakishly tall. Maybe you don’t know what the National Guard does, and no it is not that thing that you can be in that only takes one weekend a month. It means you are the rifle on the side of the American flag. The American flag is always the commander of the color guard so he/she is in the middle. In a five person guard, this mean that the capital x is the American flag, and the m is me! The lower case m’s are just some other people that are in the color guard. MXxx. That is if you are looking at the color guard as they would be standing if they were facing you. It really is quite easy, and we have practiced quite a number of times in order to get this right. The only thing is that we are going to be at a JROTC drill meet where all the kids are trying to one up us and critique us on what we did wrong. We will be perfect though. After all, I am in the color guard, so what could possibly go wrong?
nrfirth | 24 September 2004 2206 | Comments Off
A warm up with a two mile run and then an upper body workout; what a way to start a Thursday. I went on the E115, and once again was subjected to a painfully long and mind-numbingly boring class period. My TA means well, but he is just a little too excited about Linux for his own good. Then… the break. On Tuesdays and Thursdays that I have classes, I have a five hour break between my first and second class. I am not sure if this is a good thing or not, but it sure does mean I rack up a lot of time in the CTR and the library. While the teacher was not talking in E115 (which is about half to three quarters of the time we are in the room) I learned pine. Any non-Linux/non-*nix buff out there may not know what it is, so here is a rough definition. Think email MSDOS style and you are starting to get close to what pine is. It is really awkward to type email in, but it is the better alternative to using webmail on the NCSU servers, which tend to go down for maintenance about three times a week. This happens with absolutely no warning whatsoever and causes me much consternation. There are a few things that are hard for me to deal with, and not being able to send or receive email (which has become a way of life for most if not all college students) is one of those things. I send and receive in excess of 75 emails a day, sometimes a little less, sometimes a lot more, so when that is not available, I get very antsy.
nrfirth | 23 September 2004 1358 | Comments Off
