back to the grind...

As you all know, I got about 8 days back home to enjoy before I left to the sandbox. I decided the best way to spend the majority of those days was to erect a fence around the house. Yeah, not exactly relaxing, but mostly everyone was working during the day anyway, and home depot was giving military discounts for memorial day, so I figured why not. So I knocked that out with the help of some good friends. I'm still not sure if they helped because they felt bad or I because I offered to provide beer and pizza, but either way, it was very much appreciated. Couldn't have done it without them. It turned out great.

Then the Saturday before I departed, family and friends made the trek to good ol' Bear, DE to celebrate a few birthdays and to send me off. It was great seeing everyone, and hopefully fun was had by all. For those of you who didn't make it, I'm taking you out of my will. No, just kidding, seriously, we missed not seeing you, and don't feel bad at all. I know a few people called and apologized for not coming up, but it was one of those weekends were everyone has like 3 parties to go to, and the Woodlands had to be difficult and move an hour away from everyone else, so don't worry. We'll (my parents will do all the work and I'll show up) have another one when I come back.

So on Tuesday, around 4:15am, My parents and Christina took me to the airport, which is always the quietest car ride you can imagine. we said our goodbyes at the airport and I flew to Seattle. I ended up bumping into a couple of guys that are going with me, and they informed me that even though we were arriving in Seattle at 10:00am, we didn't have to report to the Army until the next morning, so we decided to rent a car and check out Seattle. Its a pretty nice city, kind of smaller than I expected, but very clean. More hippies than I expected too. But we went to Pike Market where they throw the fish around, a few Irish Pubs and then ended up at a mariners orioles game which was a good time too. I'll post some pics at the end here.

So tonight we fly out of Seattle and head to Kuwait. It's going to be about 26 hours of travel time so I'm sure I'll have a few good stories about that journey, so stay tuned.

PS: Not sure if everyone heard, but my Dad got Manager/Operator of the year for Pathmark, so Congrats to him.

Pics from Seattle

Safeco field. Home of the Mariners.

Our Seats. $13. As you can see the stadium is very empty.

So we upgraded ourselves to these seats.



And again upgraded ourselves to about 10 rows behind homeplate.

And yes, this was the night Ibanez had 5 RBI's and 2 HR so I made

sure to remind the Seattle fans what was going on.

The Crab Pot

They just dump all this seafood on the table and hand you a hammer

and bib. If you're a fan of the TV show Man vs. Food, he ate 2 of these.

2 of us ate one of these.

Seattle skyline. I bet you're wondering where the space needle is.

It's not exactly in the city per say, in this picture it would be to the far left.