31 May 2009
Leatherneck
First week of Leatherneck is done... 3 more to go... but I don't have time to write about it right now, but check back in a couple weeks to hear about my time at Camp Barrett, US Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Va.
19 May 2009
Ring Dance
This past weekend was the most amazing weekend of my life. The festivities began for my classmates and I on Thursday. I was CDO, company duty officer; basically I was on duty and was in charge of the entire company's day-to-day activities for the day. This includes running TAPS, or an accountability taken at night to make sure everyone is back in the hall that is supposed to be, which were all of my classmates, the sophomores, freshman, and a handful of seniors who hadn't checked out of their rooms yet. Well, 2350, 11:50 pm, rolls around and I am scrambling to get taps finished b/c some of my classmates aren't back yet, specifically Pete and Jeff. They finally come back and Pete is furious that he had to come back - leaving his date in the hot tub at the house that a bunch of guys had rented out for the weekend. I knew it was gonna be a great weekend from this point on b/c Pete, like me has had it pretty rough when it comes to ex-girlfriends. His date for ring dance he had never met, she was a friend of Kevin's fiance. I had no doubt that Pete would get along with his date b/c he's a genuine nice guy and a gentleman above all else, but by how well they hit off I just had a feeling it was gonna be good.
Pete is on the left, Kevin and his fiance are in the middle, Ian is on the right.
Friday morning rolls in and we all start to get our checklists together to get ready for our dates and for the big day on Saturday. I called my sponsors asking for a ride over to their house so I could pick up my car, a 2005 Jeep Liberty Renegade if you wanted to know. I get there and then James, my sponsors son, and I give it a wash. James had rigged up their pressure washer to be able to spray out soap as well as have a setting strong enough to wash the car but not damage it, it was pretty cool. Once I got it washed, I drove back to school, parked outside the gate. I've decided that this summer, while I'm home, I am going to perfect my parallel parking skills. In Florida it is not part of the driver's licenses test and because of that I pretty much just drive around until I find a spot that I can essentially pull up into. So I ended up having to walk really far lol.Once I had packed up all my stuff, I went to check into the hotel that I was staying in for the weekend. A bunch of my friends and I had gotten rooms at the Loew's Hotel, the only 4 star hotel in downtown Annapolis, it was really nice.
That night, the party was at the house that Pete was staying at. This ended up being probably the best house party I had ever been at. Firstly, this house was incredible. Waterfront property, hot tub, deck, 2 floors, tons of bedrooms, landscaping that I couldn't appreciate b/c it was at night, a bathroom that was a jungle (not even joking). What made the party awesome was that it was all of my friends and our dates. We were able to just let loose and have a good time. We made a couple runs to the liquor store - we had a good night.
We picked up a couple bags of boxed wine, not because we cheap but we felt like having some good college fun, slapping the bag! For those who don't know what this is, its definitely something that probably would only ever occur at a college house party. Basically someone holds the bag of wine above you, and opens the nozzle so that its pouring into your mouth. When you are done chugging/can't keep up you slap the bag and they close the nozzle. This was hilarious to watch.
Some of us slapped the bag more than others lol.
Saturday rolls around, my date arrives a little after noon. Back at the hotel our group begins to get ready, the fella's getting into their dinner dress whites, the girls into their formal gowns. Everyone looked fantastic. Group pictures were taken at Techumsah court - our main court yard on campus, and then more inside Smoke Hall.
After pictures were taken, and we took a ton, we made our ways over to the Severn Inn for dinner. This place was incredible. I was on the river with a view of the Academy that I had never seen. The menu was very nice - I had calamari appetizer, house salad, and then the fillet mignon main course. We made our way to the dance around 2245, 8:45 pm. Unfortunately their was a long line for photos both at the beginning and for dipping our rings. But for sake of length I am going to skip right to the tradition of dipping our rings.
This is my gold ring, I've also got a lustrium everyday ring. The stone is an emerald with diamonds.
So the tradition of ring dance is centered on the christening of our rings in the water of the 7 seas. My class also had water of the severn (the river the academy is next too), water that was flown in space, water from the class of 1960's bowl (they are our 50 year class link) in addition to water from the 7 seas. The tradition is for your date to wear your ring around her neck on a ribbon after the ring has been dipped.
After we left the dance we headed out to the city dock to board our yacht that we had rented for the evening. This thing was huge. We easily had 35 couples on board and it didn't feel over crowded. The boat was such a good time. We had an open bar, chic-fil-a nuggets, music, plus just being with all our best friends. It really was a night to never forget.
One thing is for sure though. I plan to go to the class of 2060 ring dance with my wife, so that I can re-dip my ring with the girl of my dreams. Nothing against my date, we are friends, but I saw some of the class of 1960 doing that with their wives and I thought wow that's really cool.
Pete is on the left, Kevin and his fiance are in the middle, Ian is on the right.
Friday morning rolls in and we all start to get our checklists together to get ready for our dates and for the big day on Saturday. I called my sponsors asking for a ride over to their house so I could pick up my car, a 2005 Jeep Liberty Renegade if you wanted to know. I get there and then James, my sponsors son, and I give it a wash. James had rigged up their pressure washer to be able to spray out soap as well as have a setting strong enough to wash the car but not damage it, it was pretty cool. Once I got it washed, I drove back to school, parked outside the gate. I've decided that this summer, while I'm home, I am going to perfect my parallel parking skills. In Florida it is not part of the driver's licenses test and because of that I pretty much just drive around until I find a spot that I can essentially pull up into. So I ended up having to walk really far lol.Once I had packed up all my stuff, I went to check into the hotel that I was staying in for the weekend. A bunch of my friends and I had gotten rooms at the Loew's Hotel, the only 4 star hotel in downtown Annapolis, it was really nice.
That night, the party was at the house that Pete was staying at. This ended up being probably the best house party I had ever been at. Firstly, this house was incredible. Waterfront property, hot tub, deck, 2 floors, tons of bedrooms, landscaping that I couldn't appreciate b/c it was at night, a bathroom that was a jungle (not even joking). What made the party awesome was that it was all of my friends and our dates. We were able to just let loose and have a good time. We made a couple runs to the liquor store - we had a good night.
We picked up a couple bags of boxed wine, not because we cheap but we felt like having some good college fun, slapping the bag! For those who don't know what this is, its definitely something that probably would only ever occur at a college house party. Basically someone holds the bag of wine above you, and opens the nozzle so that its pouring into your mouth. When you are done chugging/can't keep up you slap the bag and they close the nozzle. This was hilarious to watch.
Some of us slapped the bag more than others lol.Saturday rolls around, my date arrives a little after noon. Back at the hotel our group begins to get ready, the fella's getting into their dinner dress whites, the girls into their formal gowns. Everyone looked fantastic. Group pictures were taken at Techumsah court - our main court yard on campus, and then more inside Smoke Hall.
After pictures were taken, and we took a ton, we made our ways over to the Severn Inn for dinner. This place was incredible. I was on the river with a view of the Academy that I had never seen. The menu was very nice - I had calamari appetizer, house salad, and then the fillet mignon main course. We made our way to the dance around 2245, 8:45 pm. Unfortunately their was a long line for photos both at the beginning and for dipping our rings. But for sake of length I am going to skip right to the tradition of dipping our rings.
This is my gold ring, I've also got a lustrium everyday ring. The stone is an emerald with diamonds.
So the tradition of ring dance is centered on the christening of our rings in the water of the 7 seas. My class also had water of the severn (the river the academy is next too), water that was flown in space, water from the class of 1960's bowl (they are our 50 year class link) in addition to water from the 7 seas. The tradition is for your date to wear your ring around her neck on a ribbon after the ring has been dipped.
After we left the dance we headed out to the city dock to board our yacht that we had rented for the evening. This thing was huge. We easily had 35 couples on board and it didn't feel over crowded. The boat was such a good time. We had an open bar, chic-fil-a nuggets, music, plus just being with all our best friends. It really was a night to never forget.
One thing is for sure though. I plan to go to the class of 2060 ring dance with my wife, so that I can re-dip my ring with the girl of my dreams. Nothing against my date, we are friends, but I saw some of the class of 1960 doing that with their wives and I thought wow that's really cool.
13 May 2009
As promised... plus extra!
Okay, so I know I promised a blog a few days back, but i've been busy. Here's a quick and dirty of what's been going on in my life lately...
-finals
-moving out
-sea trials
-ring dance this weekend!
only four things and one hasn't even happened yet, but believe me, the first 3 were bad enough. I'm pretty sure i've discussed finals back in December when i last had them. This time around they went well. I was really happy with my results on the Thermodynamics and Advanced Controls Systems exams. I got B's on both exams which kept my A's in those courses. Now that I type that, I realize how incredibly nerdy my classes sound. But its okay because my major's "name" is way cooler than yours, Weapons and Systems Engineering, let's be honest now lol. Overall I ended with a 3.2 gpa, a lil disappointing because I ended with a C in Electrical Engineering which took a chunk out of the gpa since it was a 4 credit course. Anyways...
Moving out... wow. So basically, mids spend the entire year moving into their rooms, getting new cool things, but every May we have to completely move out of our rooms for 3 months during the summer. This is a huge inconvenience because 1) only seniors can drive on campus 2) the storage space they provide for underclass is the size of a gym locker. Good thing I'm not an underclassman anymore haha, the storage for rising seniors was big enough for me to box all my stuff and then stack into my locker. The only thing was trying to find a cart to carry it all from my room to the lockers in 8th wing. So now my room is empty, we only have our computers and a few odds and ends on our desks and our closets have the bare minimum number of uniforms and cloths.
Sea Trials took place yesterday. Holy cow, it was a long day. For me it started at 0030 (12:30 am). It ended at 1830 (6:30 pm) when I get dinner and then went back to my room, stayed awake long enough to watch the magic go into half time with a lead, only to wake up this morning to find out they blew it again. So yes, 18 hours, on about 3 hours rest, not sleep just rest. I was the Safety Coordinator for Naval Station West. Which basically meant when someone got hurt I had to run to the scene, find out the severity and then get the corpsman if it needed one. Then I had to call the Safety Officer to let them know. Now, this doesn't seem bad, except that Naval Station West has the E-Course. The E-Course is a 2.5 - 3 mile long course through the woods. There are several steep hills, some require a rope to get help get up, a handful of obstacles (most of which I could avoid, only the rope bridge I actually had to go across every time). I was running back and forth through this course making sure the course and obstacles were safe (ie no trees falling in the way) and to make sure that there were no injuries at both starting/ending points (they broke the course up into 2 sections, which made it a lil convenient for me). By lunch I was exhausted, lol. I was surprised in how few injuries there were though, which was nice.
You might be wondering what the hell is Sea Trials? Good question, lol. Its a physical test for the freshman class to complete in order to officially finish their "plebe" year. This year we started at 0230 after a speaker gave a motivation/leadership speech in the cemetery at 0100. From 0230 to 0430 they went through the "Dark Phase" which had 4 different zones they rotated through doing various PT. The "Light Phase" was the rest of the day (0430 - 1800). During this phase there was 6 zones: Naval Station East/West, Transition Run, Hospital Point, Farragut, MacD Hall. Essentially every zone was another PT event filled place of pain lol. The MacD phase was a pool phase (run by the swim and water polo teams this year, that had to be the worst one lol). Hospital Point and Farragut had more traditional PT excersises whereas the Naval Station had the O-course, e-course, ruck run, riveriene (no idea how to spell that) squad hike, paintball, pugil sticks. The Transition run was a 4 mile run across the river from Hospital Point to the Naval Station, nothing exciting lol.
Well, that about sums up the last few weeks lol, another blog about ring dance - and pics - after this weekend
-finals
-moving out
-sea trials
-ring dance this weekend!
only four things and one hasn't even happened yet, but believe me, the first 3 were bad enough. I'm pretty sure i've discussed finals back in December when i last had them. This time around they went well. I was really happy with my results on the Thermodynamics and Advanced Controls Systems exams. I got B's on both exams which kept my A's in those courses. Now that I type that, I realize how incredibly nerdy my classes sound. But its okay because my major's "name" is way cooler than yours, Weapons and Systems Engineering, let's be honest now lol. Overall I ended with a 3.2 gpa, a lil disappointing because I ended with a C in Electrical Engineering which took a chunk out of the gpa since it was a 4 credit course. Anyways...
Moving out... wow. So basically, mids spend the entire year moving into their rooms, getting new cool things, but every May we have to completely move out of our rooms for 3 months during the summer. This is a huge inconvenience because 1) only seniors can drive on campus 2) the storage space they provide for underclass is the size of a gym locker. Good thing I'm not an underclassman anymore haha, the storage for rising seniors was big enough for me to box all my stuff and then stack into my locker. The only thing was trying to find a cart to carry it all from my room to the lockers in 8th wing. So now my room is empty, we only have our computers and a few odds and ends on our desks and our closets have the bare minimum number of uniforms and cloths.
Sea Trials took place yesterday. Holy cow, it was a long day. For me it started at 0030 (12:30 am). It ended at 1830 (6:30 pm) when I get dinner and then went back to my room, stayed awake long enough to watch the magic go into half time with a lead, only to wake up this morning to find out they blew it again. So yes, 18 hours, on about 3 hours rest, not sleep just rest. I was the Safety Coordinator for Naval Station West. Which basically meant when someone got hurt I had to run to the scene, find out the severity and then get the corpsman if it needed one. Then I had to call the Safety Officer to let them know. Now, this doesn't seem bad, except that Naval Station West has the E-Course. The E-Course is a 2.5 - 3 mile long course through the woods. There are several steep hills, some require a rope to get help get up, a handful of obstacles (most of which I could avoid, only the rope bridge I actually had to go across every time). I was running back and forth through this course making sure the course and obstacles were safe (ie no trees falling in the way) and to make sure that there were no injuries at both starting/ending points (they broke the course up into 2 sections, which made it a lil convenient for me). By lunch I was exhausted, lol. I was surprised in how few injuries there were though, which was nice.
You might be wondering what the hell is Sea Trials? Good question, lol. Its a physical test for the freshman class to complete in order to officially finish their "plebe" year. This year we started at 0230 after a speaker gave a motivation/leadership speech in the cemetery at 0100. From 0230 to 0430 they went through the "Dark Phase" which had 4 different zones they rotated through doing various PT. The "Light Phase" was the rest of the day (0430 - 1800). During this phase there was 6 zones: Naval Station East/West, Transition Run, Hospital Point, Farragut, MacD Hall. Essentially every zone was another PT event filled place of pain lol. The MacD phase was a pool phase (run by the swim and water polo teams this year, that had to be the worst one lol). Hospital Point and Farragut had more traditional PT excersises whereas the Naval Station had the O-course, e-course, ruck run, riveriene (no idea how to spell that) squad hike, paintball, pugil sticks. The Transition run was a 4 mile run across the river from Hospital Point to the Naval Station, nothing exciting lol.
Well, that about sums up the last few weeks lol, another blog about ring dance - and pics - after this weekend
02 May 2009
new blog post in the works...
stand by for a new blog post... MOVING OUT ... one of the more exciting times on the yard....
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