Special Olympics, 4th of July, new glasses, MySpace.

Sorry that It’s been so long since I wrote anything on here. I’m either busy or I just don’t feel like writing anything. I need to keep up with things as they happen or I end up forgetting anything that might be halfway interesting to read. Last Friday I had to get on the bus and go to Des Moines since I somehow got talked into volunteering for the Cessna Special Olympics Airlift. If you don’t know what that is , it’s when people and companies who own Cessna Citation jets volunteer their planes to airlift the “athletes” from all 50 states to wherever the olympics are being held, this year being Ames. It might be there every year for all I know, I never payed attention. I was also told that it is the largest non military airlift in the world, which might also be true but you would think that the real olympics would draw more of a crowd. In the end I think there were like 285 or so planes that came in.
Anyway Friday morning we all loaded on the bus for the three hour bus ride to Des Moines, Iowa. I was suprised by the hotel room that Duncan got for us. I was almost expecting a tiny room that had a funny smell and had one double bed, but the damn place was bigger and nicer than my apartment. After checking in we loaded back onto the bus and went out to Des Moines International for the run through. That whole thing took way longer than it needed to. It was a lot of waiting around mostly. After we were told what we were going to be doing they gave us a pretty good meal. I would say we were done eating and ready to go at about 5:45. At that time all the other people were starting to leave. The problem was that our bus wasn’t coming back to get us until 8 and no one managed to get the cell phone number for the driver to tell him to come back early. By 6:45 all the workers were leaving and they kicked us outside the gate. There we were looking pathetic waiting for what seemed like forever until the bus came right at eight on the dot. That sucked.

Finally back to the hotel after wasting over two hours of what could have been time spent having fun. I ran into the hotel washed my face, took a piss, and threw on some deodorant and was out the door. We went into the closest place that had booze which was Chili’s. I would have preferred a real bar but it’ll do in a pinch. Double morgan & coke and an order of hot wings. Can’t go to the bar without having wings. Within 45 minutes I was on my 4th double morgan and the wings were gone. Most everyone else was having beers and Chuck had a few morgans with me before he left early to go to bed (sticking me with his tab I might add, it’s ok, I would have done the same to him). Before the trip he was the one saying “we’re going to the strip clubs, we’re going to the casino, we’re going to be up all night!”, and I was the one saying “no no no I’ll have a beer or two and get some sleep because it’s going to be a really long day”. Of course he pussed out just like everyone knew he would, and I got completely wasted just like I knew I would and was hitting on the 17 year old door girl (she wanted nothing to do with me by the way). Chili’s closes at 11:30 and I had finished off almost the whole brand new bottle of morgan. I was completely obliterated. There’s a link to the video that Chuck took when I got back to the room at the bottom of this post. The first time I went down the stairs I really did fall. The second time I fell down them was on purpose because the first time was fun and I ended up hurting myself pretty good. I remember the pain through the haze of alcohol quite clearly. Lucky I didn’t break my leg. After puking a couple times I passed out.

5am came waaaay too soon, oh man was I hung over. More hung over that I can remember being in a long time. I don’t really have much to say about the next day other than it was a looong day and it was hot and I was completely cramped up and dehydrated. I didn’t do anything until 9:00 just in case I still had any booze in the system and it was a while after that before I was driving the tug instead of just hooking up the towbar. Even with all the screwing around I ended up doing more than my share of the planes. The work they had us doing was prety easy. It wasn’t even close to something like a home game Saturday in Lincoln. Chuck was all over the place busting his ass though. He really did a good job. Chuck just to give you a heads up I went in and told Kris that today too. I think management busts your balls too much and they don’t seem to hear about the times when you’re kicking ass out there. Anyway about 18 hours after the day started we were back in Lincoln. It’s an experience I will never forget (which is code for I will never do it again).

On Sunday at about noon or so my cousin Josh called me to see if I wanted to go out to my uncle Sam’s cabin. Any of the previous years I would have been going out there anyway since we have always had a big family get together on the 4th but that tradition ended last year when someone stole my aunt’s engagement ring. After that my uncle said the hell with you all and that he wasn’t having the family out anymore. I would have done the same thing if I put in all that time, money, and effort just to be disrespected like that. They ended up getting the ring back 7 months later or so when he saw it in the pawn shop and found out who took it. I hope the fifty bucks she got for it was worth single handedly destroying any chance of the whole family together other than at a funeral since no one else has the space for everyone to get together. To put it bluntly FUCK YOU JANE.

Anyway I still got to come out this year since he likes me. I’ve always helped him out when he needed a hand or something. Even spent the better part of a week at his cabin putting on the new roof and windows when he expanded the place. I got out there at about 5:30 and Sam made up some real good steak fajitas on the grill. Very tasty. I’m going to have to try that when I move and can use my grill again. Swam a little bit and had a few beers. When it got dark I went out and helped light the fireworks like I’ve done every year for about 15 or 16 years (except for a couple years when I was gone in the military). It was a good show this year. You can tell by all the burn marks on my shirt. There’s even some pictures and a video that look like a firestorm in nam or something. I will post those when I get ahold of them. They look pretty badass.

I got some new glasses. A pair of oakley prescription glasses. I can’t wear contacts and I really want to get lasix surgery but cant afford it so that means I’m stuck being a four eyes. I might as well have a pair of glasses that are somewhat stylish so I got these even though they were pretty pricy. I like them for the most part except that they irritate the bridge of my nose a little. I’m just not used to the bigger pads these have on them because my old ones had small pads. Oh well maybe I can switch them to the small pads or just get used to them.

I finally signed up for a stupid MySpace page. You have no idea how much I hate that site but everyone seems to ask of I have a page and a lot of people I would like to keep in touch with are using it. Oh well, bite the bullet I guess. All I really did was put a little something up and put a link to this page on it. The fact that I signed up for it pretty much guarantees that within the next 3 months or so everyone will start saying “this site sucks, you need to join this new site that I saw”. I am always on the tail end of all fads. I’m the guy saying “look how cheap these Walkmans are, now’s the time to get one!” when everyone wants an iPod and haven’t used a tape in years. Yep I’m getting old.
Man this is an incredibly long post. Most likely the longest one I have ever written. I better end it here and get some sleep. The pictures from the Special Olympics trip is in the pictures section along with some new ones in the random pictures album.

Link of the Day: Video of me after I went down the stairs and hurt myself.

Bonus Link of the Day: Video of the only non Cessna plane at the event taking off (its a Falcon 50 or 900 can’t tell really).

Thanks Chuck for sending me the pictures since I took like… ummm 4? I always forget to actually take any pictures when I have my camera with me.