Turkeys, really?

Today, James had to unexpectedly stay over night pulling medical coverage at a small arms range with his infantry company.

Being the ever dutiful girlfriend, I brought him a blanket and Subway. Somewhere in the small print in the definition of Army Girlfriend it states, "Thou shall perform all matronly tasks regardless of wilderness or wild." Seriously, you should look that shit up.

So he says to me, "I'm at range 27."

I wasn't exactly sure where range 27 was, but I'm a pretty smart girl, and the ranges are labeled from the road in numerical order. So I took off in my little red car and was on the hunt for range 27 in the back woods of Fort Campbell. And I found out range 27 is freaking far away from main post!

While on my search, I turned the stereo up and flew through the back roads. Until, that is, I saw something funny in the road up ahead of me. I slowed down. I slowed way down. Then I stopped. I was face to face with turkeys. Wild turkeys that didn't have any intentions in their bird brains to let me pass.

I honked at them, and that got them running. I took a picture of them fleeing in terror. Take that turkeys! I had a hot sandwich to deliver!

4th Of July Fireworks

Fireworks! James and I went to downtown Clarksville and watched the fireworks show on the 3rd of July. It was a pretty cool show. We were ninjas and avoided the hoards of people by hiding out on a tall grassy hill overlooking the river. We could see the fireworks perfectly and had minimal exposure to crying, screaming children.

Caught Blue Handed

Picasso has a fetish for ink pens. He'll go to great lengths to locate a pen, commandeer the pen, and devour the pen like it's a covert black ops mission. He's truly a pen stealing ninja.

Unfortunately, he gets ink all over his feet, his mouth and (my personal favorite) the carpet. There is a streak of green ink on the brand new living room carpet. And now there is a pool of blue under my bed. Picasso ate a permanent blue map marker. A week ago. And his feet are still blue. And my carpet is still ruined.

It's a damn good thing he's cute.

Scarlett Blizzard

Apparently the Fort Campbell Education Center hires strippers to do thier IT work.

Oh, My Feet

You'd think that nearly 6 years in the Army and 2 Iraq deployments would have toughened up my feet somewhere along the line.

The worst part is, usually my feet look WORSE. In this picture I don't have any blisters. Or any patches of white/yellow deflated old blisters. There aren't any flaps of dead loose skin. Or pointy half dead but still attached slivers of skin. And in this picture I'm not bleeding anywhere.

All and all, this is a pretty nice picture of the bottom of my foot.

So sad.

Epic Rap Battles of History: Abe Lincoln VS Chuck Norris

Abe Lincoln totally kicked Chuck Norris' ass.

I love this video.

DoD Civilians

I'm in a HazMat class for the next two weeks. It would be gouge-your-eyes-out boring, but the civilian instructor is a pretty goofy guy. He keeps the class rolling along. The students aren't just Soldiers; there are Department of Defense civilians, too. The best part about it is I'm allowed to wear civilian clothes to class.

My partner for the next two weeks is an older gentleman who works at Redstone Arsenal in Arizona. He's completely lost in the sauce when it comes to understanding Soldiers and what we do on a daily basis. He was floored we do PT every morning and that the job description of a Sergent is really just a glorified babysitter.

Class starts at 0800. This guy generally rolls in around 0815. He is shocked everyday the class began on time. He says we are so discipline for being on time. I think he's just lazy because the other DoD civilians seem to get here on time. He's always asking me questions that the instructor literally just explained. He reads into questions way too far and tries to take me on his word problem rendezvous through limbo all day.

He's a chemist. That's basically a scientist in my book. So if my partner in a HazMat class deals with chemical makeup of hazardous materials every day of his working life, then why does he have such a learning disability in this Army class?

To top it off, he asked me today what a "round" was while we were learning about explosives and ammunition. HE WORKS AT AN ARSENAL.

The Mariner's Revenge With LEGOs

My favorite musical group, hands down, is The Decemberists. My mom asked me last time I was home what they sounded like and I really couldn't accurately explain it. So, here is a silly video to go along with one of their more jaunty maritime adventure songs.

Fiesta

Blah blah blah, it's been a long time since I blogged. Well, whatever. Hiatus aside, a few things have been going on here in good 'ol Tennessee.

For starters, I got a new car! I traded in my truck for a 2011 Ford Fiesta. It's like a Mexican party every time I get in it! The dealer was a real life Mexican, like, the broken English kind. His name was Ramon and he force fed me chicken enchiladas while we were waiting for the finance lady to crunch numbers. I half expected to get a free sombrero with purchase.

I've had a wonderful idea for a few years now to put those terrible white family member stick people window stickers on the back of my car. New car: new stickers. So I spent $30 on one lady sticker and 8 cat stickers. It appears I am a crazy cat lady. I love it.

My new little Fiesta is so wildly popular that the neighbor's cat climbed in through the open window last night and slept in the back window. I had 8 white cats in the window when I went to bed, and this morning I had 9.

Skittles, the cat, joined my collection.

Lightweight Traveler

When advertising portability is an acceptable way to sling liquor, you know you're in the South.