Blargalarg.

Had a killer migraine today. The proper metaphor describing it is "A pair of railroad spikes being driven through my eyebrows, connected to an eggbeater linked directly to my stomach."

Needless to say it didn't end well. THAT was beneficial to studying.

Other than that, had a good Thanksgiving. Dinner was great, and though I wasn't the most... sociable person throughout those two days, I relaxed more than I have in months. It was really nice, and the girls antic's were silly as always.

Two weeks till school get outs, and another week for exams. Wow.

Wow.

Thanksgiving...

Oh how awesome it is. After my Calc Exam yesterday, I have been more relaxed than I have been in weeks. Especially when I found out today I got a full letter grade better on this one than my previous one. Oh, and the class average was a 40. I got a 52. Go figure.

Anyway, arrived in Ohio about an hour or so ago... was a nice trip, until my laptop died. My poor Civilization game... Oh well, I caught up on my reading quite a bit. Was nice.

Anyway I'll be chilling here with family for the next couple of days, relaxing... and, oh wait, studying for my Chem exam a few days after break ends. Yay me.

But enough of that. Turkey Day Tomorrow! Football and Food!

Quick Note:

Wanted to make my email simpler, so I downloaded Mozilla Thunderbird today. It's like Microsoft Outlook in that it allows you to access your e-mail from your desktop. Since I'm using two e-mail addresses, I thought it would be nice to get them together in one place.

However, since yahoo wants to make me pay for the forwarding feature I've switched to gmail. So, if you have any personal emails telling me how awesome I am, in the future switch to this email account for any messages.

pkleinau@gmail.com

Thanks!

It's been a long, long time...

Hey everybody! It's been, what, two weeks since my last post? Yeah, sorry about that. I've been alternating between overstressed, tired, and procastination and I've been a bit distracted... so, the last two weeks.

I finished CC (Commander's Cup) football for the Air Force, with a grand total of... 0 wins! Hooray! We lost to the Army 18-13 and the Navy 38-10. What was weird, though was in each game we got dominated the first half, then in the second half the opposing team didn't score a point. For example, in the Navy game it was 38-4 at halftime. The first half had 4 safeties (2 on each side) and about 10 interceptions (all on us.) Not even joking about the number. We were THAT bad at passing.

I myself somehow ended up as an alternate Wide Receiver and a starting Defensive end. That was fun. I need to go thank Coach Bisel for the springing off the ball and the staying low and quick practice. I really do. I did surprisingly well for not ever having played a line position, ever.

Other than that, it's been pretty boring. Lots of studying and homework, alternated by bouts of doing absolutely nothing. Can't seem to keep up a steady pace in the motivation department, homework-wise. The only thing that I'm constantly motivated to excel in is ROTC, and I 'praise tha Lawd!' every day for that. It keeps me sane, it really does.

Math has been a serious pain, as it went from extremely easy to... a sever lack of understanding. There is no longer any real set of steps to take to solve problems, now it's all interpreting data and making my own formulas... THEN solving them, and it's all word problems and.. yeah. It's difficult. But, I'm studying, and I'm confident that I can get it by exam time next week.

That and I seem to have lost control of Chemistry have left me feeling pretty down about that class. However, I have a few weeks to catch up on it and I'll be doing some hardcore studying and office hour visiting to catch back up to reality here.

So all in all, it's been tough but I think I can handle it. I've learned some important lessons for next semester, and I'm going to have a lot more organized notes/homework/time management next time around.

Speaking of next semester, I've backpacked my classes. That basically means I've chosen when I want them, though I haven't registered yet.

So, the plan is to take Calc 2, Enginerring 101 (Programming), Physics, Air Force History (I think... Air Force something.), and a Philosophy Seminar called "Science Fiction and Philosphy." I'm looking forward to that a lot, as it combines to of my favorite hobbies. Reading, and thinking about stuff. It's gonna be sweet.

So anyway, this weekend I've had several plan changes... TOmorrow (Friday) I might be doing Color Guard at a Basketball game, or I might be going to a comedy/music things with my friends from Aquinas who will be arriving tomorrow night. Saturday I'll be going to the football game, doing program sales, or the unreliable people who are assigned on Color Guard might not show and I could potentially do that. I'm hoping someone is unreliable, to be honest. The Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy will be there. That's THE enlistedman of the Navy. The guy with like 50+ years in service. The guy who probably is smarter than half the officers in the Navy, or at least experienced enough to be able to tell even a Captain what to do. I'll be kinda depressed if I don't at least get to see him.

Two things I'm NOT doing this weekend because of various other stuff are going out Paintballing and having a Flight Orientation. Too many things to do... so little time. *sigh*

Anyways, that's my life! Happy Journaling to you! Bye for now.

Busy Weekend Ahead!

Y'arr, raise the sails! Get to the oars! Put on the dramatic music! Thar be a storm ahead!

Actually, I just have a bunch of stuff planned for this weekend. Tomorrow, I managed to get on the color guard again so will be on the field again for the game against Purdue (this time I'm one of the linesmen!), after that, on Sunday I have Drill practice for marching, Drill practice for spinning rifles, football practice and a game against the Army ROTC...

And, a potential flight orientation. Though the chances of that are looking much slimmer for this weekend.

Oh, and let's not forget studying for my Chem Lab exam.

God, I love college.

And for my random moment of the day... in my Chemistry lecture we recently started talking about orbitals. Basically they explain how electrons around the nucles of an atom work, such as where they are, how they rotate... that kind of thing. One of the rules we learned was the Pauli Exclusion principle. That says that if an electron has a whole bunch of energy levels to fill up with electrons, you fill them all up halfway first before finishing them off.

The very next day, this comic came out online:

Yes. The writer of XKCD made a chemistry joke just as we learned about it in class. I swear he plans this stuff...

For those of you who don't get that joke, here's one of my favorite comics from XKCD:

Comics are awesome.

College. It's the other white meat.

Whew... it's been a while since I updated. A lot of stuff has happened since I last wrote out my heart and feelings into you, dear diary... ever so long...

I'll stop that right now. Anyway, I guess the first cool thing to happen since my last post was my position on Color Guard... over two weeks ago. It's been a while. Color Guard was a fantastic experience. I got to spend some time with people from the other services, got to see firsthand how cool the Marines uniforms are, and overall had a great time. The fans were awesome, I can't tell you how many times are group was thanked and cheered during the whole process. Other than the cold, and the extreme failure of Michigan as a football team, it went off without a hitch. Being on the sidelines was awesome. I was within 5 yards of the Penn State QB (Who had the biggest arms EVER.) I was also standing less than 10 yards away from Tate Forcier when they snapped the ball into the back of the endzone. That was fun. Anyway, here are my favorite pictures of the day:

Before the Tailgate

Denard Robinson, Backup QB, and Guy I randomly see walking to Class. I got to see him and the entire football team heading into the stadium off the buses.

Air Force Guys, Just Hanging Around Before the Game

Muscles... HUGE!

Absolutely FANTASTIC picture of Joe Paterno and the Penn State Band

Tate Forcier. Freshman Quarterback. Jedi Wizard.

After that, I had the joy of discovering my camera got crunched without me noticing during the game. Luckily it's on warranty, and I'll be getting it fixed soon. I have NO idea how the screen broke, at all.

Besides Color Guard, the only other activity of note was the PFA, or Physical Fitness Assessment. Basically the whole detachment went out for an Air Force wide, twice a year test of physical fitness. It consisted of 1 minute of pushups, 1 minute of situps, and a 1.5 mile run. To hit the max-out limit, I needed 62 pushups in a minute, 55 situps in a minute, and a 9:36 run time. I got 70 pushups, 60 situps, and ran the 1.5 miles in 9:30.

Yep, I maxed out. It felt REAL good to finally do really well at something this year. I was only one of 12 or so to max out, which was pretty awesome.

Last weekend, over Halloween, I went up to Grand Rapids to visit some High School friends and go to a so called "Zombie Walk." Basically, thousands of people dressed up as zombies and walked around town. I thought it was going to be a lot of fun, but it was cold, and rather than the activity being a horde of people doing an actual walk, it consisted of Repetitive Techno music and the option to walk around the block if you wanted. We left within half an hour, and went and saw the movie "Zombieland" instead. That ended up being very good, as it was a nice action/comedy movie that was perfect for Halloween.

And now, I'm back at the grind. I have another exam in a week and a half, or so which I'll start studying for tomorrow, and I have an otherwise busy week ahead of me.

I'll keep you all updated! And hopefully starting posting more often! Potentially even with stuff that's not just a recap of "A day in the life of Paul..."

Have a great week, and an excellent National Novel Writing Month! You can expect me to at least put out an attempt, what with my obsession with these darned science fiction novels.