Army Post Road

We were in Minnesota Sunday and most of Monday.  That was pretty good, got to see Jen for the first time since New Year's.  She's really enjoying her new job and so is Dana.  From what I understand, he's working as a programmer at a medical equipment company that makes a pharmaceutical vending machine of sorts.  Minneapolis was nice, it reminded me of Cedar Rapids. 

I'm ready to not live with my parents anymore.  I don't like that my only sphere of privacy is a bedroom that's roughly the size of a jail cell.  Just about every aspect of my life is like I'm back in high school.  All of my socializing with friends has to be done outside of the house or else my mother and/or sister would get involved.  I can't be drunk, I can't even drink.  I can't even have girls over, let alone have them stay the night.  Does anybody else see how ironic it is that my liberty will IMPROVE if and when I get sent to Ft Riley?  I just want to be able to live like an adult again.  I'm far too old and too responsible for my parents to determine anything for me.  Yes, it's nice that I'm living here for free but I'd rather pay a stranger for an apartment just so my parents don't think they have any leverage to control me. 

I think when I get back to Iowa City I'm not going to jump feet-first back into Political Science.  I'm going to do some but I'm also going to add some Econ and computer science of some stripe.  I'm not going to give up on Poli Sci but I want to see how well I could do at the other two. 

Ok, I'm going to try and find something to cheer me up during the day. 

FUCK! We were supposed to have our store meeting and one-on-one meetings at work today and I slept through the store meeting. I can't wait to get there for my one-on-one with Gary. I can't believe I did that again. I think it's getting to be time that I try and get on active-duty now one way or another, atleast until we find out about the deployment. I have to start gettin' ready to go meet Gary now.  I'll whine more tomorrow.

I had a long, detailed post written out last Saturday (yes I know it's now the following Thursday, fuck off) and my network did somethin' screwy and it was lost in posting. I'm tired and annoyed that it's St Patrick's Day and I'm sitting here watching TV and drinking MILK! (and a little bit of pop)! Eh, I suppose if I'm here I'm not out wasting money on rented beer. I'm going to just briefly go over what happened this weekend at drill. We had the inpsection on Saturday and I got a commander's coin from COL Courts. So that means I got the brigade commander's coin two years in a row at CIP. Everyone, including LTC Hildebrand were really pleased with me so there's another gold star for me. Yeah, I don't feel like going on any more, I'll babble more if the mood moves me.

Alrighty folks, I have't updated since Wednesday so nobody knows how my pre-trial conference went down.  And essentially, I got off.  I'm on one year's unsupervised probation, I have to go to the naughty driver's weekend at the Heartland Inn in Coralville at some point and I got a deferred judgement. Which all means that if I go to this weekend class and go for a year without getting arrested, I'll be scot-free and have a clear record.  How hard can that be?  I went 20 1/2 years without getting arrested before, why can't I go atleast another year?  So that was good.  According to my attorney, the combination of a fight over the evidence and the fact that she was leaving at the end of the month led the prosecutor to basically give us a fire sale which is fine with me.  I got a satisfactory resolution and I didn't have to sleep with any men or do any jailtime (or both as the case could've been) to get it. 

On to the next subject.  I did an extra day of drill on Thursday and that went quite well (other than it prevented me from getting my normal amount of sleep before work).  MSG Heckart and MAJ Scherer were both very happy with what I got accomplished.  That's always good.  MSG Heckart seems to be fairly convinced I'm going to get mobilized this time around, and I think I am too.  And while it isn't the most satisfactory situation, it's not bad.  I'll spare the list of positives so I don't seem like I'm convincing myself for the 1000th time. 

The one bad part of doing an AD day yesterday was I got sooooooo freaking tired between about 5 and 6 this morning at work.  And it lasted close to that whole hour, as opposed to every once and a while I”ll have to fight it for only 10-15 minutes. 

For some reason I thought I had more to say, probably just because I'd gone so long without posting but I can't think of anything now. 

I'll come back with more later if I think of it.

Yay for unzealous, pessimistic public defenders!  I FINALLY spoke to my attorney for a few moments and he essentially said the evidence Steve discovered is worthless.  Despite Steve's experience in prior cases that he's provided evidence and testimony in where the defendant has benefited greatly, my attorney doesn't think it'll do anything.  But hey, hopefully it doesn't come to this, I could have a case for ineffective assistance and attorney neglect on appeal so there is that to remember if this goes sour tomorrow.  He also said, “and who knows, we could file for a continuance and then discovery just to get more time.”  That made me want to scream.  I want this over with, I don't want to have to think about possible MULTIPLE trips back from Kansas to finish adjudicating this ordeal.  So that instills a lot of confidence going into my pre-trial conference tomorrow.  It's so frustrating getting all this conflicting input about what's going to happen.  If Steve has had all this experience with reviewing all these other cases with such success, why is a preponderance of evidence suggesting incompetence on the part of the police in my case not going to make a difference?

I'm going to go work on my boots and uniform for a while.

Not a whole lot has been going on the past two days: work, sleep, work, church, sleep, sleep, now.  Work Friday night was nuts.  Soooooooo many drunks (more than usual for a Friday night) and teenagers causing drama, almost bringing me to call the police.  But Saturday night was a breeze.  I felt like it was almost as slow as a night at the Ankeny store, but I guess it was only a little slower than a usual week night.  Saturday night was remarkable in the fact that there were attractive girls that came in, and a good number of them at that too.  Another thing to mark on the calendar in red-letters was that I finally drove to work Saturday night. Speaking of my car, the repairs cost me $1000!  Yeah, that is definitely the very, very last time I pay to fix it.  I paid my sister $500 for it and since then I've spent in excess of $2000 total to fix it ($200-some on the tensioner assembly, $200 for new tires, $60 for a new battery, $50 for stuff related to the fuel pump, $400 for the motor-mount and CV joint and now the $1000-some for the suspension and exhaust).  Hopefully it'll be in good enough condition that after I get rid of that intoxalock I can trade it in and get a fair amount for it.  I'm not really counting on that though.  But, like I always say, we'll see.

Just got an e-mail from MSG Heckart, looks like I get an extra day of active-duty to do some Command Inspection prep before drill this weekend.  It'll be good, being there during the week with the AC (active-component) folks is always a good time and it never hurts to impress the people who you're probably going to be working for full-time soon anyway.  Haha, I know I don't have to work hard to impress MSG Heckart or a lot of the other AC people there, but if the brigade staff hear, “yep, SPC Larkin was in here during the week getting ready again this year” hopefully that'll stick in their ear.  It would be pretty cool if I got coined at CIP (getting coined= being given a commander's coin or a sergeant-major's coin, i'll elaborate more below; CIP Command Inspection Program, the yearly program where your immediate higher headquarters inspects your unit) a second year in a row.  I wonder how many times a junior enlisted soldier has gotten coined at CIP in our brigade, let alone if it happens a second time in two years.  But it's all speculating and dreaming.  They may have a policy not to coin the same person two years in a row (but I doubt that) and my work might not impress them a second year in a row (what can I say, I've set the expecations of me high).  But we'll see. 

I think that's about all I have to talk about right now.  But it's Monday, things seem to always come up on Mondays.  I imagine I'll be back.

Haha, one thing I forgot to talk about for TWO days now.  On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning while I was working this cop came in. And DAYUM, when they call them Des Moines' Finest, that definitely applies for this lady in blue.  Haha I realize I'm being quite effusive about this, but I don't believe I've ever seen a female police officer that was as attractive as this one. 

Another thing I've neglected to talk about is my conversations with Steve. He got all the police paperwork and video tape of my arrest from my lawyer. When he was looking at the paperwork, without even seeing the video, he said he saw about 4-5 mistakes that alone would probably be enough to get the arrest thrown out. After he saw the videotape, he said he couldn't count high enough to mark the number of mistakes the cop made in my arrest. He said the field sobriety tests (the watch my finger test, the step heel-toe, heel-toe test, and the stand on one leg test) were done nearly 100% wrong and he didn't wait long enough to administer the breathalyzer test. Hopefully, when he takes all that to my lawyer and my lawyer shows it to the assistant county attorney, they'll be more agreeable to lowering the charge to public intox. If they weren't feeling real generous, I'd even cop to PI and a PAULA (Possession of Alcohol Under the Legal Age) if that's what it took.

But yeah, that's the update.

When I do get back to school, the biggest adjustment I forsee is getting used to not having the same income I do now.  The difference between now working at QuikTrip and being on active-duty will be a wash essentially financially.  I may even make more once I get promoted again (let's hope May's all the longer I have to wait).  I suppose I could calculate it all out if I wanted to take the time.  Maybe we will later.

So last night when I was tapping out that truncated little post, my mom saw my icon picture and was like “OMG, what's the picture of??” and I said “Um… I was sleeping.” And she went, “Wooo, it looked like you or whoever was dead.” HAHA I had just gotten my ass kicked in drunk wrestling is what that picture really is.  But how 'bout YOU admit that to my mom, ok?

One thing I don't think I've really covered about when I get to Ft Riley is I'll have my OWN accomidations.  I'll have a room to myself in a hotel, unless they've changed the standards for junior enlisted personnel but there are so few of us I don't think anyone would take the time to.  Plus, my days as a junior enlisted soldier are numbered. 

That's one thing I haven't thought a lot about myself, let alone talked to everyone on here about: becoming an NCO (non-commissioned officer, in the Army a person in the rank of Sergeant or higher).  I don't really anticipate things changing for me, atleast with my battalion (other than people won't have to correct themselves when they call me SGT Larkin as opposed to SPC Larkin (SPC=specialist)).  I wonder if I wouldn't get just about half the S3 additional-duty assignments.  Could be, but even that wouldn't be a big deal.

Something I realized yesterday was that now that I have my work permit, I could either transfer to Cedar Rapids or get a new job in Iowa City and stay with Steve for a while if I don't go to Ft Riley.  But then again, I don't know if he'd be down with that for very long since he wants me to go to Iraq.  And he's right.  I really ought to get serious about finding a deployment over there.

Ok, I think it's time to sleep some more.

HA! I'll give a cookie to whomever recognizes that song in my subject

So I haven't posted for a day or two.  Which is odd because I was on the computer for a while yesterday.  I don't know who all I told, but on Monday I bought a tv card for my desktop so I can watch and record tv on that computer now.  Combine that with the DVD burner on this computer and I can copy and start selling bootleg DVDs of TV shows. Mwahahahahahahahahaha.  Actually, no.  That'd be more effort than I would want to put into an illegal operation. 

I think I've basically accepted that I'm going to Ft Riley in April.  I haven't given up the hope that I won't and I'll be able to move back to Iowa City.  But I don't really see that happening. 

Ok, I can't focus on writing anymore. I'll post more later.