State of the Union: Samuel and Psalms Speak To the State of the Heart

me&Margie, praying in Argentina, 2009

This isn't one of my favorite submissions - not becauase of the content but because of my writing (I wrote it in a little bit of hurry :-/ ).  However, I'd love it if you took a read and let me know what you think.   Hopefully, despite the writing imperfections, you still find a little inspiration in the article :)


http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8392599/old_testament_bible_verses_to_inspire.html?cat=34

Women At War...probably one of many entries like this to follow

Kate&I: Aug 2005, TQ Iraq

I came across this in my journal and got a good laugh out of it.  As an afterthought to my 26 September 2005 regular daily entry, I wrote:

P.S.  WOMEN AT WAR

   1.       Apparently women get “Dear John’ed” while away at war, too. 

       à All is equal in love and war…especially the painful stuff

   2.       My girlfriends are making history.

         a.       Kate – training Iraqis in Bagdhad

         b.      Theresa – leading convoys and working with 3^rd Recon Bn

                             c.       Me – the only female officer in my entire unit deployed

   3.       We are strong…we are strong

    I’d just been dumped (see #1) by my sometimes-on-sometimes-off boyfriend (with whom I was madly in love at the time) exactly one month into my first deployment to Iraq.  I was 24.  I was naïve.  That picture to the left is of me putting all of his letters, our emails, pictures, etc into the burn barrel at our barracks.  I laughed about it, making the most of a situation where you're crumbling on the inside but you have to smile and move on on the outside.  I was just starting to make sense of how things might be while I was in Iraq, looking to friends in other units (Kate and Theresa) for support and normalcy, and just taking it all in.   

This seemed like a funny little snapshot of where I was at that time.  Fellow female Vets, does this make you smile or laugh at all??? J  Can you relate?? :)

Semper Student

“When the student is ready, the teacher shall appear.” 

I know that wasn’t a mom original.  She always had a way of repackaging common sayings, applying them with a teacher’s tact and her own personal flair, though.  Maybe she said that one so often to me because I never saw her as my teacher when I was a kid.  I do now.

As I’ve previously written, both of my parents are natural teachers.  My mom assigned my brother and I book reports to do in the summers between the school years.  I’m not kidding.  And it wasn’t a form of punishment either; it was simply a part of our regular Plummer-kid enrichment series.  She would make us read books, write reports on them, grade them, and review those papers with us.  She was a high school English teacher.  It didn’t matter to her that we were in elementary or middle school – we read the high school books.  

My father was equally instructive.  On one morning car ride to school my fifth grade year, I looked out the window and said, “It’s so foggy.”  My father, having just returned from another TDY assignment to England, asked me, “Do you know why England is such a foggy place?”  Um, ya, I was nine, so, no, I didn’t.  He then launched into an unsolicited sermon on the properties of fog, explaining scientific principles I wouldn’t learn in school for another few years.

Between both my parents, every road trip (and there were many) became a mobile history lesson.  August of 1992, Mom, Dad, Becci, Matt, and I drove from NC to MN for Matt’s and my AAU Junior Olympics track meet.  It took us nearly a week to get there because we stopped in such places as Ashville NC (to see the Biltmore), Lexington Kentucky (to see the KY Horse Park (I’d read every Black Beauty, Black Stallion, and Thoroughbred Series book there ever was, for crying out loud), Pleasant Hill KY (to take an historical tour of a Shaker Village), Galena IL, and other landmarks I can’t recall.   As close as my sister, Becci, and I had already become, that particular summer I was in full-fledged monkey-see-monkey-do mode with her, loving her so much that I wanted to mimic everything she did (from pegging her jeans (totally awesome!! :-p) to writing with an old fashioned quill pen (and subsequently spilling the ink all over her desk one night! :-(  )...She was the history buff of us four kids, so I remember that being the first historical immersion tour I really appreciated.  That stands in stark contrast to the horror stories my family still tells about me screaming my head off in Washington DC the first time we lived in Northern VA and went to every museum imaginable….but, c’mon, what five year old, after spending countless hours in the Smithsonian in the middle of summer, wouldn’t throw a temper tantrum?

My parents are intellectually diverse, well-traveled, hilarious, emotional, complicated, lively people, but for all the knowledge they had to impart, their messages sometimes got lost, ignored, and otherwise discarded because they raised their voices – A LOT.  It’s a family trait I’ve inherited and which I struggle to purge  from my personality to this day.  By the time I was fourteen years old, all my siblings were in college or beyond. On nights I was particularly frustrated with my parents, I'd call Becci.  “Just wait till you’re out of the house," she said.  "You’ll see that everyone doesn’t talk to each other the way Mom and Dad do.  It will be better, I promise.”  So, I held tight, because what choice did I have?, and got to college and saw that yes, everyone doesn't raise their voice all the time about everything.

The John and Rose Ann of the 1980’s and 90’s, and the John and Rose Ann of now...well, they’re different and they’re the same because that’s how people are, right? Because sometimes the kids teach the parents stuff, too, and "old dogs" do learn "new tricks." Sometimes addicts get help, and sometimes they regress. Children grow up and become adults and have different relationships with their parents.  I get that part of it is my perception that’s changed as well as the times, but they, too, have evolved, devolved, crumbled down, and built themselves back up again and still crackle and pop a little each day. But they’re teachers at heart who instilled a student spirit in my soul, and for that, I’m semper thankful.   

There’s a crack in everyone.  That’s how the light gets in. - Mom/Leonard Cohen

I thought we all looked attentive, and therefore, studious in this pic ;)
Becci holding Micky, Emily, Renton, Bailey, me, and mom
celebrating my birthday at my apartment in Lorton, VA July 2009

Semper Sunday

I don’t go to church every week, but I wish I did. This Saturday, I went.

I don’t want to go to church more often because then I could feel good about checking off an item on my list of Things One Must Do To Be Good (the way I used to think of church before I was a Christian), then wipe the worry from my brow, and carry on with my day.  Rather, I wish I attended any church service regularly, whether it’s for Mass or at a non-denominational Christian church, because even when I don’t think the sermon is stellar, it changes my heart a little bit every time I go, or some “coincidence” happens where the lesson of the day touches on something already on my mind. I think of those as Godincidences, and I cherish them because they light my heart on fire and remind me that God is real and present and active in my life.

The message yesterday was about morality. The pastor emphasized that external acts (tithing, going to church, not cursing, etc) aren’t what being moral means unless those acts are genuine reflections of the inner workings of your heart. That seems like a “duh” factor to me now, but for most of my life, that point was lost on me. I only saw the acts. I only saw those “good works” on a list of things I had to do in order to be a good person in someone else’s eyes. Furthermore, since I was able to do a lot of those things whether I believed in God or Christ or not, why the heck did I need God or Christ or any church or religion?

For me, that attitude was a result of my Catholic upbringing where there was such an emphasis on things one had to do, or things one most certainly should not do, without any explanation of the real meaning behind any of it.  “Have you ever let a boy kiss you?” my mother asked me when I was 16.  I understood that if I admitted I had, I’d surely be burned at the stake. “You’ve never read the Bible?” asked my high school friends who were in church youth groups.  Wow, I must be stupid and bad if I didn’t even know what the Bible said.  “You haven’t been Confirmed?” my Catholic friends probed.  Clearly I’d go to Hell if I didn’t get that taken care of sooner rather than later.  Just because I didn’t go to confession x number of times a year, I was going to go to Hell? If I didn’t say x number of Hail Mary’s, and if I didn’t say them properly, my soul was tainted? What about any of those lusty thoughts I had about boys at school?  Evil evil evil.  Man, I was doomed!

That was it.  There was no explanation behind any of the do’s and don’t’s.  No one ever explained to me the concept of having a relationship with God – how it changed your heart, how it changed your very soulscape – and that something like confession, for instance, was really about the church wanting you to commune with God, not a “you better tell Him what you did or else” type mandate. It wasn’t until I took a Landings class at a Catholic Church in Arlington (http://www.stcharleschurch.org/map.php) in 2010 that I heard the sacraments, in their best form, described as gifts (not obligations) from the Church to us. A priest came to one of our classes. I asked him, “You’re telling me that if I don’t go to Confession that I won’t go to Heaven?” He replied, “Am I going to sit here and limit God and tell you if you don’t go to Confession then you’re going to Hell? No. It’s not my place to say that. Of course you can still get to Heaven, but that’s not the point.” He explained that Confession can serve as a therapeutic way to present your mistakes and then receive the components of forgiveness: mercy, compassion, understanding, and guidance. Forgiveness is hard enough for us to grasp, to feel, to believe in its reality….and simply reading about it in the Bible often isn’t enough for a person to absorb its healing qualities.  So, in the eyes of the church, Confession offers you a tangible setting in which to really feel that forgiveness. Not because a priest is literally the one forgiving you, but because he acts as a specially appointed liaison between you and God, that he is providing a perceptible pat on the back in a way, and literally saying the words, “You are forgiven.” Now that made sense to me.

I’ve heard the horror stories about Confession, though. I get it that it isn’t always implemented the way it should be. I experienced it myself where priests (or Catholic family members, for that matter) leave you feeling condemned and evil, not renewed and cleansed. As with most misperceptions about things religious, though, the act of people messing it up doesn’t negate the real purpose for it. People are flawed, God is not, people will screw up the message at times whether they mean to or not, but it shouldn’t distract us from what is true and good and meant to help us.  Unfortunately, the flawed person who represents the church can be detrimental to people seeking faith because they look around and think, “These people claim to be Christians, but are out doing x, y, or z “bad” things, or claiming to be Christian but then treating people poorly. I don’t want to be associated with that. I’m nice to people whether I’m a Christian or not.” All they see are hypocrites.  I’ve been there, I’ve thought that, and I urge you to rethink some of these old assumptions you may still be holding onto. Once I really processed that just because the people who talked about God were flawed didn’t mean that God Himself was flawed, that concept helped me hurdle over some of my major religious hang ups. In college, when I began investigating things myself, reading voraciously, asking people questions, I found that a lot of what it meant to be Christian was spot on.  Don’t be scared to investigate issues that you think you already know all about. Dive a little deeper, then decide what you think about it.

Nearly ten years later, that persistent need to investigate lead me to Landings. I went to the class because as an ethnically-Catholic/practicing-Christian, I’d been saying “no” to Catholicism based on assumptions I’d held for years, and decided it was time to make that an educated “no” if that was to be my official stance. I couldn’t keep saying I wasn’t really a Catholic unless I understood what that meant.  I expected my negative predispositions to be confirmed, but they weren’t. I’m not ready to be a full-time card carrying member of the Catholic Church again just yet, but I understand A LOT more about the sincere meanings of its practices than I ever did before. Now I see Catholicism in a much softer light thanks to Landings. Plus, perhaps more importantly, going through that process brought me even closer to God, regardless of whether I called myself a Catholic, a Christian, or nothing at all.

Anyway, I got a little off track of what I originally planned to write about… Although, I think barriers to faith and barriers to morality are intertwined, so perhaps this all goes together after all. J Ok, so, as I was saying, I’ve heard the message on morality preached many different ways, about the inner workings of your heart and how you have to be changed there first to live a genuinely moral life out of love for God/Christ and not out of a sense of obligation. Interestingly, I’d recently pulled this excerpt from one of my old prayer journals, having felt like I needed to write more about it.

From 4 January 2005: “If you feel stuck, bring your whole self to Christ, not just the problem, but you. Ask God to change your heart. Commit yourself to pray to that end. It’s God’s heart to give good gifts to His children.” –Shelia Walsh (emphasis mine)

Wow. This quote really hits home right now. 1. I’m applying it to redesignating. 2. Applying it to living my life the best I can. Lord, I know I need to make a complete change from the inside to live my life for You better. Please help me to have the moral courage to not put myself in “dangerous” positions in the first place. Help my heart to want to do the right thing, and my mind to be able to act on it. Help me to not be naïve in situations where it will cause me harm. Guide me. I want to be Yours completely and feel peace and love and understanding and healing and healthy. I need you in order to be whole. I feel like my trust is getting deeper, but help me go further. Help, help, help. J

I was 23 and facing yet another major transition in my life: redesignating (leaving flight school to start a then-unknown new career path in the Marine Corps). Yet even as a new Christian, I wanted to bring my whole self to God in order to make the best life decisions possible.  I saw courage as a moral reflection because I think I already understood, beyond the black and white oft-discussed "moral" issues of how many guys you date or how often you drink, that something deeper was at stake in my decision-making process – my heart. And, really, isn’t that what’s at stake for all of us?

A Start To My Story

Dad, me, Teddy, Mom
Pensacola FL
February 2005

My parents are teachers – one by trade, one by practical application.   My mom was an English and Creative Writing teacher, my dad was an Air Force Navigator, yet both instructed all of us (me and my three siblings) on everything from weather patterns (dad) to proper grammar (mom) to world history (both). But that’s not all. Even though two of my three siblings were sisters, we all learned how to play sports, cook, clean, and oh by the way, how to change the oil.  I knew how to read a map and plan a cross country road trip by the time I was five – we were an always-on-the-road kind of family after all – we moved, traveled, and tripped through my childhood.  I began setting my own alarm clock to get up for school in the First Grade and a few years later when my mom stopped making my school lunches, I started making hers.  I often did my own laundry, I always cleaned my own room, and I budgeted my own babysitting, dog-walking, and soccer training money – not for new clothes or make up, although I did occasionally go to the mall, but primarily for soccer team dues and leisure books second.  When I got to college, I knew things my friends didn’t: how much you should spend on groceries a month, what the average cost of auto insurance was, where Algeria was, when to say “who” and “whom,” the difference between the sound a C-130 or a KC-10 made, what a rose wine was, what tapas were, how to find a good realtor.   Dad was the military man, but Mom could be a militant woman and we got discipline and tempers equally, albeit in different flavors. 

Both of them grew up with (one or two) mentally ill parents; there’s no way to neatly tie that kind of past up with a red ribbon.  They both made better lives for themselves, though.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough, because an alcoholic father who slaps you is just as bad in a child’s mind as an alcoholic father who throws you through walls.  My brother and I were reminded of that more than once by my dad (as he spanked us until the backs of our legs, butts, and our hands that tried to block the blows were glowing swollen hot) that we were lucky he wasn’t doing exactly that - slamming us against the wall.  But I was just a kid then, and that kind of stuff didn’t happen all the time.  I didn’t go to school with black eyes. I didn’t have to wear long sleeved shirts in the summer to hide bruises.  I wasn’t an after school special.

As my siblings left the house and I grew into a teen, the physical stuff mostly went away, but the verbal abuse took on a whole new life as my parents’ (life) unraveled.   The things I think my parents mostly tried to keep hidden from us as children came out in one big sucker punch the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school.  So, when my friends complained about “hating” their parents, I assured them, “no, you really don’t hate your parents.” I, on the other hand, really did hate my parents ….that’ll happen after you’ve had to call the cops on them for the third time because you can hear them slapping, punching, doing God knows what to each other, things crashing against the bedroom walls, and it’s the night before a big soccer tournament where you know recruiters are coming to watch and all you want to do is get  good night’s sleep…or after the twentieth time your mom has lured you into the study under the guise of chatting only to slam the door and scream at you in thirty minute intervals about every addiction your father has, how many women he’s slept with,  and how every nice thing you ever thought he did for you was somehow a lie.

I hated them both during those years even though I’d grown up a Daddy’s girl…but probably not in the way you think.  My dad and I weren't close just because my mom and I weren't.  Even though my dad traveled frequently for work, when he was around, we hung out: we played catch in the front yard, he gave me running work outs to execute, he watched my basketball and soccer games and did post-game analysis, and I talked to him about everything.  He didn’t spoil me.  He trained me.  That was my childhood.  Later, though, when  I was a sixteen year old (doing everything right as far as I was concerned) – playing Varsity sports, getting straight A’s, a member of Math Club, Spanish Club, Honor Society, not doing drugs or having sex – I got yelled at every single day for one thing or another.  Whether I was getting yelled at by mom because I talked back to her, or yelled at my dad for talking back to my mom, or yelled at by my mom about my dad, there was always yelling.  I hated her for making me hate him, and I hated him for what he’d done to her. 

I spent years detesting their very existence – not all the time every day, but at one point or another – for one very good reason or another, or maybe also because I was a teenager and they were my parents and I obviously knew better than them about everything already.    So, another thing I knew in college that others didn’t (I think, anyway) is that you can’t tell your story to everyone and use it as a crutch.  You can’t blame your parents for your bad behavior or explain away bits of your personality you don’t like because of your upbringing. I knew everyone had baggage.  I knew everyone had a story… and it was up to me to make my own.

*even though I made a "disclaimer" yesterday, I feel the need to underscore this fact: I love my parents dearly.  They worked through more crap than the average person ever deals with and stayed together and stayed my parents.  They are not perfect, but sometimes they work damn hard at making themselves "better," and I respect them immensely for doing so...along with all of their other life accomplishments (which are many).  

Dad&Mom
out to dinner in Twentynine Palms, CA
two days before my first deployment to Iraq
August 2005

Getting Into Some Serious Stuff

“To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea.”

William Zinsser

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

Ok, folks – hey, is anyone out there? ;) –  it’s time to delve into some of the hard stuff.  One of the major barriers I’ve hit the last few months has been in respect to writing about deeply personal things about my family or the traumatic events I’ve experienced.  I get writer’s block every time I sit down to write about what’s really happened because it’s one thing to talk to friends about stuff, and a whole other feat to make those events into static pictures, just leaving them hanging out there for anyone to look at (to read about) at any time.  More importantly, I want to write honestly, but I know I’ll have to write about some things that will not shed the best light on some people.  Will I hurt my family members’ feelings?  Will they be mad at me for what I write?  Will I be judged? Will people believe all of the stories?  Will my friends see me differently? Will it look like I’m just complaining? Will it sound stupid once I put it all on paper?  

It’s fairly easy for me to write pieces that allude to or to brush over painful events and skip straight to the silver lining part…but at some point I’m going to need to put things plainly.  At some point I’ll have to mention the abuse, the rape, the divorce, the injuries, the depression, the deployments, the harassment, the PTSD, because they’re part of the story.  I don’t plan to pen every last detail of these events because “memoir isn’t the summary of a life; it’s a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition” (Zinsser). Besides, you, the reader, don’t really want every single detail anyway.

Before I launch some of these more personal pieces, I need to express a few things so I don’t spend a paragraph or two every entry qualifying what I’m about to write.  To anyone who’s reading and really cares about me, my family, the lessons I’ve learned, or the concepts I’m striving to capture, know a few things that underlie anything I write from here forward:

-          I am not perfect.  I have made major mistakes.  Just because I have genuinely made my peace with everything I’ve done or everything that’s happened to me (yes, even the rape), doesn’t mean I think I did everything perfectly in the past.  Also, I’m sure I will forget some events, oversimplify others, and otherwise (according to others) misrepresent them at times.  But this is my memoir. 

-          I love my family.  I would do anything for them. I love spending time with my parents, my sister and her kids, and my brother.  I have another sister that I don’t speak to anymore but I don’t hate her or wish anything bad upon her at all; our non-relationship just finally reached a point where it wasn’t something I could have in my life anymore because of her incessant lying.  I don’t need that negativity in my life, so I’ve chosen to step away from it for now.

-          For all the “mistakes” (it’s in quotes because isn’t even the idea of seeing something as a mistake subjective?) my parents have made, they are wonderful parents.  They are people I look up to; they are people other people look up to.  Nothing I say should discount their tenacity for life, their good souls, their intellect, their humor, their love.  I think I turned out alright – both because of them and in spite of them.

-          For all the ups and downs my sister, Becci, and I have struggled through, I love her wholeheartedly.  I hope we continue to grow as people and as sisters for years to come. On top of how much I love her, I love her children more than I could’ve ever imagined loving someone else’s kids.  They are awesome kiddos!

-          My friends are my treasures.  As with family, we’ve gone through some of the same events together, but I will have undoubtedly seen them differently than you; know that I do not discount any of your feelings about these things because of how I express mine.  As the wise Lainie Allen told me during one of the darker times in my family history, where I felt like I was on an island, "It's not a coincidence that you have as many friends as you do.  God didn't leave you stranded.  He provided you with amazing people in your life who love you dearly and support you.  Sarah, your friends are the family God gave you."  [paraphrased] I agree :)

“It’s your story – you’re the one who has done all the work.  If your sister has a problem with your memoir she can write her own memoir, and it will be just as valid as yours; nobody has a monopoly on the shared past.  Some of your relatives will wish you hadn’t said some of the things you said, especially if you reveal various family traits that are less than lovable.  But I believe that at some deep level most families want to have a record left of their effort to be a family, however flawed that effort was, and they will give you their blessing and will thank you for taking on the job.  If you do it honestly and not for the wrong reasons.”   Zinsser

family vacation
West Palm Beach, FL
Mom, Matt, Becci, Rachel, me, Dad
August 2006

Semper San Francisco

Wow, I really keep lucking out with all these "s" words don't I?? ;)   [I'll take "swords" for 500, Alex.]

Ok, so, I've been doing less of the updatey blogs and more of the deep thoughts type posts lately, but today I feel like I gotta do a little quickie update.  I've been away from the blog for a bit because I've been on the road again.  As much as it may seem like it'd be easy to write anywhere, it's harder than you'd think.  I've found that having a specifc space in which to write, where I'm mentally committed to composing a piece, is crucial to my writing success.  Thus, having spent nearly two weeks in San Francisco at the beginning of this month, I've been a bit distracted.  Even while there, I bounced around constantly.  And today, I'm about to get on the road again - this time, to drive to NC to visit my parents for the weekend.

So, to backtrack...

I arrived in San Francisco on Friday the 2nd after catching a 5am flight out of Columbus....then spent SIX HOURS waiting in Charlotte for my connecting flight after multiple delays due to maintenance issues with the plane.  (Yes, I'd rather wait and fly in a safe plane than fly earlier in a broken one).  I got to SF, grabbed one of the shuttles to the hotel, dropped my bags in my room, then went for a jog along the water from the Embarcadero area toward pier 39.  It was windy, but sunny, and I was thrilled to be in this awesome city for the first time.  Since I was there to compete with the Washington DC Gaels in the North American GAA Finals (aka: Nationals for Gaelic Football), the rest of the girls were all at the fields that afternoon watching other games or competing in camogie when I arrived, so I had a little bit of time to myself before our team dinner that night.  (see photo above of Niahm, me, and Holly enjoying a pregame (large) glass of whole milk)

Saturday morning we had an early start since our game was at 9:30am on Treasure Island.  Upon arriving at the fog-covered fields, we stood around awhile for check in, then walked to our pitch, warmed up, and were ready for game 1.  We had the odds stacked against us by competing against San Francisco's Junior A team who were mostly all Irish and apparently had like 10 Irish sanctioned players (not sure if I'm getting the terminology right).  We did lose, but it was a competitive game.  Afterwards some of their players even told one of our captains that they couldn't believe we were an all American team because we played so well.  Other than getting punched in the teeth and elbowed in the temple, I really enjoyed playing again.  My Gaelic skills were definitely a bit rusty though, and I was ashamed of some of my kicks/shots, but considering I hadn't played all year, I decided not to beat myself up about it.  Oh, I scored a goal on a penalty kick! I almost forgot about that.  Haha.  PK's are rare in Gaelic, so that was cool, too.  All in all, I had a blast getting out on the field with the DC girls again.  Anyway, the rest of the day was spent loitering, watching games, drinking, socializing, etc.....typcial Irish activities, ya know ;)

Sunday morning was another fairly early one, but not too bad since our game was at noon.  We went earlier than neccesary for our football game, though, since about half of our team also plays camogie and they had a morning game.  Unfortunately, our camogie girls had a heartbreaking loss in overtime to Denver, then had to go straight to our football game.  This time we played against Chicago (also, a predominately Irish squad).  WE WON! :)  Hooray!  It was a consilation game, but we won The Shield nonetheless and the Irish take every match seriously :)  I got thrown in the "sin bin" for 10 minutes in the second half for a lame foul, but thankfully the girls held strong and we won by a mere few points.  A win is a win, and we celebrated accordingly at the club (see above photo with me holding the Shield). The men's football team won their Shield, as well.  Later that night, off the Island, the Gaels continued the party in their typical fashion by storming the San Francisco bars and clubs till the wee hours of the night.  Go on the Gaels! ;)

Come Monday, I was straight wrecked from all the football, socializing, and dancing....as I think everyone else in our hotel was, too!  haha.  But that sure didn't stop a small contingent of us Gaels guys and girls from checking out a few local pubs before all going our separate ways later that day.  I had such a blast hanging out with the whole crew again, and after the end of that whirlwind weekend, said my goodbyes that evening and cabbed to the airport to meet up with another friend, Kelly, who lives 2 hours south in Monterey (but who flew into SFO that evening as she returned from her Labor Day weekend out of town).

From Monday night till Saturday morning I stayed with All Armed Forces Women's Soccer friends, Kelly Bowen and Chrissy Acojedo, in their lovely home in Pacific Grove.  I went for a long run all along Sunset Blvd and Asilomar Park one day, drove Rte 1 south to Big Sur National Park and hiked there another day, went to the Farmer's Market, hiked Soberanes trail in Garrapata Park, went to Carmel by the Sea, ate awesome food, tasted wine, and more.  It was an awesome week and Chrissy and Kelly were great hostesses!  Thanks, ladies! :) And on Friday of that week, I drove up to San Jose to check out Palmer Chiropractic's West Coast Campus.  I am so pumped to (eventually) start chiro school!!

Saturday morning Chrissy and I drove up to San Francisco to link up with Pete and his friends, Kathy and Mike.  Wow, we had another incredible few days!!  Saturday we stopped at Golden Gate Park on our way out to Sonoma and Napa for a day chock full of wine, food, and fun.  Sunday we drove to Stinson Beach for a moutwatering brunch before yet another great hike, this time through Muir Woods.  After that full day, Kelly was sweet enough to drive all the way up from Monterey herself just to hang out one more time before I went back.  The whole group of us enjoyed some drinks around town near Kathy's place before Chrissy and kelly had to getback on the road to go home - they had work the next morning after all! ;)  Then, Monday, Pete and I took the ferry out to Alcatrez, spent several hours touring that, and walked around the city.  We linked up with Kathy and Mike for dinner and drinks before catching a red eye back to Ohio that night.  By the time I got back home Tuesday morning I was wiped out!

In summary: I LOVED San Francisco, I want to move there, I had a blast with all the Gaels, I had a blast with Chrissy and Kelly & Kathy and Mike who were all great tour guides and hosts, I'm pretty sure I want to go to Palmer West for Chiro school, and four days later I'm only now getting rid of my hang over! jk ;)  Bye bye, Cali and friends - see you again soon!! :) :)

Tumbling Towers Build America's Next Greatest Generation: A September 11th Tribute Article

I submitted the linked article below to Yahoo!Contributor.  The entry had to be under 500 words, so this is a VERY brief recount of that day.  For every eligible submission the Yahoo! Contributor Network received through this assignment, Yahoo! donated $10, up to $10,000, to the 9/11 Memorial Fund.
http://news.yahoo.com/tumbling-towers-built-americas-next-greatest-generation-213200819.html

some of "my Marines" :) Daniels, Cornejo, &Koopmann

Always Somethin' About Bailey ;)

A Bailey haiku :)
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8354543/rescue_dog.html?image=1791663&cat=47