I wanted to take a few minutes to illustrate my recent life in the narmy hooah? First I have overcome my original snafu of misunderstanding the rules and regulations of army lingo hooah? Apparently it is required to replace the period ending every sentence with the word “hooah”, hooah? It should also be noted that despite the contents of the sentence it will be spoken as a question hooah? An example: “That dog over there is big hooah?”, would translate in normal English to, “that dog over there is large wouldn’t you agree chap?” An important side note is that the word “hooah” may be replaced by the word “tracking” to render the same effect and meaning hooah? Typically army types prefer to do this when giving specific or complicated instructions, or when giving mundane advice that a hyperactive black lab with Down Syndrome could follow hooah? An example of this would be, “When you get to EPA (extraction point alpha) and there has been a FFI (friendly fire incident) call in a medivac, fill out form 1187a, radio into your CBH (combat head-quarters), disrobe your IBA (individual body armor), and provide CLS (combat life saver) techniques tracking?” Another example on the other side of the spectrum would be, “If you see a rattlesnake crawling in front of you on the field, do not lean down and try to kiss it tracking?”
For those of you who are thinking about become a ground-pounder, but have not established the mental image of what one would do I offer this advice:
1)Put on the hottest long sleeve shirt over a dark, moisture soaking, cotton T-shirt.
2)Put on long thick pants over your choice of boxers.
3)Put on hot, thick, knee high socks and blousing straps to tuck in your pants.
4)Put on the most awkward belt you can find that will not stay tight.
5)Put on incredibly uncomfortable, shin high boots, and lace them up as tight as possible.
6)Strap on a ridiculously crappy gun holster and handgun to aforementioned, sagging belt.
7)Put on the largest knee and elbow pads you can find anywhere.
7)Take the largest backpack you can find and fill it with about 80 pounds of bricks and have it sit directly on shoulders.
8)Strap everything in your house sans the kitchen sink to the front of your backpack.
9)Attached a gallon of water to the back of your backpack.
10)Find a 5 pound helmet that give you headaches and strap it so tight to your chin that you talk like Mohammed Ali.
11)Grab an 8 pound rifle with about 5 pounds of ammunition dispersed through 7 magazines and strap them to the front of your backpack.
12)Wait for a 100+ degree day and run around out in the woods, duck-walking, squatting, climbing hills, and speed walking for 6 hours.
13)Follow that by running though every room of a 32 story building as fast as possible while pretending people are shooting at you.
That should give you the gist of it. Hopefully it is for you. I could see how most people would find it fun, and would volunteer for it. Me, I like the shooting, but I think I would be just as happy messing around with legacy software in a 65 degree, classified environment on a rolling ship. Maybe that’s just me hooah?
Also on the same day the ongoing war between chief and I regarding the merits of Georgia and Texas continued. I struck hard by handing him the matchbook shown to the left, unopened. He slowly opened it expecting something to fall out or something, and almost died laughing. So far Texas 3, Georgia 0. I also have several pictures of chief modeling his Texas T-shirt or should I say a picture of Sheehan and one of our friends holding him down after he jokingly put on his Texas shirt. I will post more pictures of that later. 
A lot has happened in the last few days. Unfortunately I do not have time to give all of the details, but I will try to give you a super concatenated run-down. During our M4 qual, I shot a round after shooting about 30, and all of the sudden, my left ear stopped working. It has been a few days now, and though I can hear noises, I still have a terrible ringing, and it rattles when I talk. I have an appointment with the audiologist tomorrow sometime.