Below are the 16 most recent journal entries recorded in Bill's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, April 13th, 2004
6:28 am	Surprise, Surprise Which Family Guy character are you? (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 16th, 2004
9:40 pm	Sometimes, Monterey just rocks Standing outside with a cigarette and beer in hand, just breathing the warm spring air, I realized "It just doesn't get any better than this". All of a sudden, October 28th seems closer than it ever did before. Current Mood: relaxed Current Music: Dragon Ash - Shizukana Hibi no Kaidan Wo (Comment on this)
6:52 pm	What kind of alchoholic beverage are you? You're a Glass of Wine! What Type of Alcoholic Beverage Are You? brought to you by Quizilla Current Mood: amused Current Music: Bob Seager - Turn the Page (Comment on this)
Monday, March 15th, 2004
5:51 pm	VICTORY IS MINE!!! I PASSED!! Unless I really fuck up I'll graduate on time! I guess I do have a guardian angel. I didn't just pass, I got a B+. Hell I even beat my reading score. Oh man I need a beer! It'll have to wait till friday, but I'm gonna party like it's the end of the world! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Current Mood: ecstatic Current Music: Queen - We Are The Champions (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 14th, 2004
4:35 pm	Another Sunday Afternoon It's another sunday and another weekend come and gone. Had a really good weekend (minus the hangover). Friday night me and Bobby went out again. It's funny that I've been rejected so many times that I can just laugh it off. This really hot girl was all over me for about an hour. Dancing close everything, she tells Bobby she really likes me while getting a drink, etc. And then out of nowhere, she starts talking to another guy and then they're out on the floor. And all I could do was laugh so incredibly hard. "Bill ....THIS is your life!!" So later we ran into 3 girls from my class when I was already far beyond gone. I asked one of em what she rated me on a scale of 1-10. She gave me an honest answer, which was a 5. I thought I was slightly above average. Of course she could've been trying to be nice to me, so who knows, I could be a 3-4. I mean, no one's gonna call someone else ugly to their face. So Saturday, woke up with a KILLER hangover. Rented a car and met up with a friend in Los Gatos. She had to leave a little early, so afterwards I went up to Bay 101 Casino in San Jose. I'm glad that all my poker studies has paid off. I sat down at 3PM with $200 of my tax return. At 6PM I left with $500 after winning 4 hands in a row. I was having a great time, even when I was losing. I think that's part of the secret to my success is I don't care about the money, I enjoy the game. It takes some of the skills that I actually have to be a winner. Knowledge of Probabilites, Self-Discipline, and the ability to read people. I probably would've left with $650, but I had a nice dinner and was tipping the dealers really well. And today, I got a great night's sleep and took the car back. Just been chilling out all day. Shined my boots all nice for tomorrow, gonna iron my uniform in a bit, had an AWESOME porterhouse steak on the grill. Just another good day. After tomorrow, I'll either be ecstatic or crushed. We'll see. Current Mood: calm Current Music: Bob Dylan - The Man In Me (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 11th, 2004
4:59 pm	Under the gun That's a poker expression I always really liked. In Texas Hold 'Em, it refers to the person who bets first on a given hand. I don't know for sure how it came about, but I think it came about cause all the pressure is on him and everyone's looking at him. I feel like that a lot sometimes, mainly amongst my circle of friends back home. So here I am on the eve of another one of those defining moments in my life. "Under the gun" yet again. It's funny, since I've been in this situation so much in my life, I don't feel any stress about it at all. I feel like "I've done all I can, it's in God's hands now." Which brings me to another quote that I've been sitting on all day "Fortune is random....fate shoots from the hip." I've been grappling with this cause I've been in this situation so many times before and some miracle always comes out of nowhere to bail me out. Normally, I would wear that quote as a sign around my neck. Lately, I don't know though. Do I have a destiny? Is my good fortune the result of good karma I've built up? Or is it just a random sequence of events that somehow came down in my favor and could just as easily come down against me. I guess I'll have a pretty good idea on Monday (test result day). I've never been an optimist, but all I can do is bring my "victory dance" to class on Monday, and hope for the best now. I seem to perform at my best with my back against the wall. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Dream Theater - Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 8th, 2004
7:30 pm	Good Weather Amazing what a little good weather can do for the soul. I've been totally relaxed all day, just kicking back and enjoying. Heck I think the weather even helps my arabic. I understood about 50% of the listening today than I normally do, and my speaking was really good. Of course for my current event I was talking about Forumla 1, so I felt confident about that, but even speaking hour I did good. Let's hope this carries through till Friday. Current Mood: relaxed Current Music: Bon Jovi - Dead or Alive (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 7th, 2004
11:51 am	Ahhhh It is a GORGEOUS Sunday here in Monterey. The weather is absolutely beautiful out. Been a long weekend, but I finally have a chance to relax. I was right last week when I said I loved Sundays. Friday, I lost a poker game I should've won. What sucked was I played till 1AM when I had to get up at 5AM for a briefing. Saturday, went to my briefing, took a long nap, and went out with Bobby at night. We had a great time at comedy, they were really good this week. Then we went to the Duck, when we always say we shouldn't. It was slow out this weekend cause there was some special event goin on over at Ft. Ord. Came back at 1, slept till 10. Finally got a good night's sleep. And for today, the weather's perfect, I got laundry in, and gonna be grilling later. The weather's so good I'm actually going to go for a run after lunch, and we all know how much I hate running. Current Mood: relaxed Current Music: Rush - Ghost Rider (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 4th, 2004
8:39 pm	Chalk up another failure Well I failed my PT test today. Missed the run by 30 seconds. Don't know what happened, hit the second mile and my legs stopped working. Sure I was winded, but I had more gas in the tank. Just my legs got heavier for some reason. What sucks the worst is disappointing Bobby and Pete. I hate letting other people down. Hell I'm used to my occasional failure, but I hate having other people believe in me and letting them down. That's why I always try to tell people I'm not this "great person" that they make me out to be. Such as people who think I'm this genius, when I can't even compete with people out of high school in arabic. "Oh you'll pass I have faith." People just say that cause they can't say "Yeah, you'll probably fail." I'm not pessimistic about things, I look at things objectively and say "yeah, there's probably a good chance I'm not gonna pass this test." At least then, I don't get my hopes up. So I have one week till I take my next arabic test. It's funny, but ever since I've been the bubble, I've actually been enjoying the language more. I watch al-jazeera for at least a half hour a night, and I read just about every arabic newspaper online I can get my hands on. Hell unless I'm in dire need of a news article for class, I generally don't read english news sites anymore. I caught myself doing that this afternoon when I sat down and the first thing I clicked on was the BBC's arabic website for the news. And the sad part is, I can read almost all of it. Yet, I throw on al-jazeera, and I'll only catch the gist of it, not much else. And in class, we've done almost ZERO work on the unit at hand. It's all been shit from the internet. So when we took a vocab quiz at the end of class today, I felt totally lost. And tomorrow, I'm getting up at 3AM to go to some training I probably don't need to go to. They published a list of soldiers who need to go, and just about everyone was on it except me. On the off-chance that it's a fluke, I'm gonna be a good soldier and go tomorrow. Let's hope I'm awake enough to win some hands at barracks poker tomorrow night. Current Mood: disappointed Current Music: Dream Theater - Voices (Comment on this)
6:49 am	Let's Go Alright, it's 6:45AM, I passed my weigh in and I have a PT test this afternoon. I've had breakfast already, showered, homework's done, so let's hope this day continues to go well. Current Music: Dream Theater - 6:00 (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004
6:48 am	The Age of Innocence "So we only get one chance, Can we take it? And we only get one life, Can't exchange it. Can we hold onto what we have, Don't replace it? The age of innocence is fading.....like an old dream" Current Mood: determined Current Music: Iron Maiden - The Age Of Innocence (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2004
8:47 pm	Drained Don't know what's been wrong with me the last couple days, but ever since duty I've been going to bed earlier and earlier and am still tired. It's only like 8:30 here and I'm already getting ready to go to bed. She IM'd me AGAIN today. Saying that since I hadn't responded that she's going to stop trying. Honestly, I don't know why she would try in the first place. What's she trying to do? If she's trying to be "just friends" again, she needs to get a clue. It's going to be a looooong time before we can ever begin to hope for that. It might not even happen ever. I just don't how she can be so two-faced about it. Going around banging that prick and then coming home and talking to me. I got a PT test on Thursday. I'm probably going to fail. Sure I've been running a lot more since my last one, but not a lot more. Plus I picked up smoking since then, am up to a little over half a pack a day. Plus I wanted to come home and run today, but I was so tired I didn't. Plus Will asked me if I wanted to join him and Tom @ Farmer's Market, so of course I had to go feed my fat ass. Also I've been worried about the test coming up on the 12th. I haven't been cranking on this one as hard as normal because I've been so tired. I was telling the guys that the curve is so steep on this one I might as well just pack it in now. There's a 20% jump between what was passing on the last test and what's passing on this one. In order to pass, I'd have to tie my highest percentage ever. Plus the materials just kicking my ass. I guess it's in God's hands now. I've been in more dire straights before and somehow pulled it out, let's hope I have a little magic left. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Queensrÿche - Warning (Comment on this)
Monday, March 1st, 2004
5:18 pm	Some days, 3,000 miles feels like 1 She IM'd me again today. I don't know why. She said she hated me. She asked about my profile lyrics (Nickelback - Someday). They are about her, but I don't know why. I guess I still think about her too much. She did a horrible thing to me that she blames on me. Yet, everytime I see her name, or know she's thinking about me, my heart breaks all over again. She thinks I'm a horrible person now, that I'm just another man-whore. What she doesn't know is how much I still think about her, and that I've been lashing out because I can't cope with all this. I know she's with another man, and I need to let it go. So maybe if I tell myself this enough times, I'll listen. But she was such a part of me for so long, that by letting going of her, I'm going to have to let go of a part of myself. Current Mood: melancholy Current Music: Type O Negative - Anesthesia (Comment on this)
7:06 am	Can't sleep, clowns will eat me So this weekend was no sleep. Between going out with Bobby and Pete Friday, 24 hour duty Saturday, and the stomach pains and early morning calls of "no formation" = no sleep. Although the last one was a good thing, cause then I got an extra hour and didn't have to go out and stand in the rain. It's funny, today's March 1st and for the first time in a while, I have nothing to count down to. No plans this weekend. No break from class until end of April (maybe). No girlfriend to call me. It's like being in purgatory. The only thing hanging over me is my March 12th test. That's gonna be huge. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Iron Maiden - Dream Of Mirrors (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 29th, 2004
5:49 pm	Sundays You figure that considering how often I go out on Friday or Saturday, that would be my favorite day of the week. No more. Over the past few weeks, Sunday has been my favorite day. Just goin to Safeway or Albertson's with Will, getting some steaks, sausages, garlic bread, beer and grilling it up. Nothing like a Sunday afternoon where you're cutting into a nice juicy steak and throwin back some brews. Days like this make me love the army. Current Mood: full Current Music: Liquid Tension Experiment - Kindred Spirits (Live) (Comment on this)
9:55 am	Show me beauty, but there is no peace.... So here I am, finally with another attempt at a journal. I made the mistake last time of giving out the address, I won't be so ignorant this time. It's 9:30AM and I've been up for over 24 hours after pulling duty. I've come to the conclusion that I need a vacation, by myself. I need to go where I have no communication with people I know for a month. To get my mind in order and to think about what I want, what I need. I feel like I haven't been able to escape and focus on me in years now. I've always been doing something, surrounded by people, problems. My ex-girlfriend still haunts me almost 2 months later. I've always lacked confidence, but her cheating on me was just the nail in the coffin. A long time ago I came to the conclusion that my life was worth so little, that I needed to work hard to make sure that other people could enjoy theirs. There's smarter people out there that we need, people with families who need them, people with so much potential that they could change the world. Sadly, I came to this conclusion at a young age. Thus, my whole life has been dedicated to serving and protecting others. Just about every major decision I've made has revolved around getting to the FBI. A dream that as it closes in, I feel is out of reach. I joined the army after 9-11, feeling guilty that I should be doing more, that I need to try to prevent stuff like that from happening. When Pete, Bobby, and I went to the bar this past friday, there was profound wisdom in Pete's drunken rambling. He said "It's not about what you're doing, it's not about the fucking army, it's all about the man next to you. You, Me, and Bobby. Nowhere else can you build the bonds you build here. Knowing that he'd give his life for you, and you'd give your life for him without batting an eyelash." And walking back from duty today, all I could think about was how I hope no one would feel the need to give their life for me. Bobby's a born leader, Pete's got a wife, and is a great soldier. And I think about all the people I've met my entire life and how something about them, is going to help people someday. When I got offered a job to leave the army and go to jordan to work in network engineering, I honestly was thinking about taking it. Getting away, seeing the world, making a lot of money. But then Pete said those things to me, and I realized I can't walk away. I can't abandon everyone, the people who count on me day-in and day-out. So I'm lost. Just walking in a line till something finds me, be it success, failure, love, death, anything. Just something to give me a purpose. Something that I lost 2 months ago. Current Mood: uncomfortable Current Music: Nickelback - Someday (Comment on this)