Dog Gone End to the Weekend

Wha Cha Gon Do?

It’s Sunday, our last day off before cramming in another 12 straight, so I decided I was going to totally take the day off.  No gym, no running, nothing!  Today marks my 1 month anniversary out here in Flagstaff, so it’s mine & Nick’s 1 month anniversary as well.  Congrats to Travis & Arkansas on their 1 month anniversary out here in Flag as well.  My overactive brain had the rest of me in a foul mood.  I caught up with Laura for a little bit, actually it was one of our longest conversations out here.  We talked a bit about our airport farewell and she suggested some things I could do to keep myself distracted out here and then I worked on my previous blog post...up until our early dinner time.

For about a week, Arkansas was planning a Cajun meal dinner party for a couple of us and her landlady.  Since we secured a location for our optional defensive tactics practice we had to up our anticipated dinner time to 3pm.  I stopped loafing around and grabbed my duty belt, Nick grabbed the cupcakes he made, and the Bad Boys were en route.  Not knowing much about Arkansas’ hood I suggested we locked our duty belts in Nick’s trunk…after I offered to drive.  I only offer that information because of what happened next. 

(I hope Nick doesn’t beat me up for this but) There’s a 4-way stop around the corner from our house that we drive through every day on our way to school.  Just about every time we drive on through we see the same female police officer…it’s like clockwork.  We get to the intersection and hardly paused up at the stop sign and I looked up the hill…there she was.  “There’s your friend”, I announced.  I saw her hands start turning the steering wheel and she pulled away from the curb. “…and she’s moving.  I hope you stopped long enough.” I added.  “Me Too”, Nick sheepishly responded.  I saw her turn in our direction, behind another car, and she hit her lights.  Nick knew his goose was cooked.  The other car was easily 200ft behind us and they pulled over, Nick didn’t wait.  The officer was nowhere near us but we were waiting for her.  All I could think about was what we’d say to Kathy…if we have any kind of interaction with a law enforcement officer we have to bring it our program director’s attention.  The officer was super “nice” and professional, noting the expression on Nick’s face that resembled that of a dude who just ate a grapefruit immediately after getting kicked in the nuts, I tried reassuring him that this was valuable experience but he was just concerned about the money.  I had to hand her my ID as well but I wasn’t sweating it; Nick slid in the “we’re in the Park Ranger Program” when asked if he was currently living in Illinois….smoooooth.  He only got a written warning…which I’ve never seen before but it provided a bit of entertainment.  One of the sections they fill out on the warning is “Driver Description”; the officer simply put “Sad”. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha Now all three of the Double Ds have had some sort of a run-in with the law…but only Arkansas got a ticket…I thought girls were supposed to get away with these things?

We got to Arkansas’ place and these two black dogs were barking at the gate next to the house.  They were barking their heads off but I didn’t care, my longing for dog contact drove me right to the fence and they started licking my hands.  Nick went in and I was locked out.  I rang the doorbell, “let me in”, I walked in, “now let the dogs in!” hahaha.  Their names are Benjamin & Katie and they look like a mama bear and her cub. These were the weirdest dogs I ever met; they never wanted to come inside.  I’d open the door and they’d run away from it so I’d go outside to hang with them.  Again they ran from the door but as soon as I got outside they acted like they’d known me for years.  Benjamin, the big one, would run to me and then lick my face nonstop…gross hahaha.  They were very jealous of each other and Katie loved biting Benjamin’s tail which led to lots of growling and wrestling.  I felt at home.

Meet Katie

They would only wrestle on this deck...I guess its their "ring".

Benjamin...he licks a lot.

Don't they look like wolves that got into the backyard!?!?

Arkansas had been busy cooking all day.  She had Shrimp Creole and some rice working hard and Travis showed up with a giant pot of his homemade pasta salad with eggs that just might be able to rival my sister Katie’s tuna-noodle casserole. Everything was delicious!  I hope I can learn to cook like these dudes someday.  Travis did say something I find humor in every time I hear it…which is a lot.  I was outside with the dogs and everybody else sat down to eat, when I came inside and made my plate I started singing “Rice Rice Baby too cold.”  Travis observed “You can turn anything in your life in a song can’t you?” hahahahahaha.  We BS’d after dinner until it was time to head to D-Tac.

Shrimp Creole & Rice Rice Baby

Travis' Homemade Pasta Salad w/ Egg

Nick, Travis, & Arkansas bout to chow down.

The cool thing about the place we did our practice D-Tac was that I got to walk by the court where the Lumberjacks play their BBall games and some of the players were there shooting around. We met up with some of our classmates in the hallway and it looked like only 6 or 7 of us would be attending. We were waiting in the hallway until 6 so everybody would know where to go, considering our classroom was down a super dark hallway.  Six o’clock came and we headed in…our group more than doubled in size as more of our classmates were waiting inside.  For a second I had an hallucination that the group was my circle of friends that attended my surprise going away party before I left.  Get a grip J~DuB.  By the time we got going we had a solid group of 17 and many of us had a solid grasp on our handcuffing techniques and it was clutch ping-ponging the concepts we haven’t covered in a week.  This method of reviewing as a class was cool, more and more of my classmates started coming out of their shells.  At the end of the session everybody wanted to do a little team huddle for me to belt out the “1-2-3 UNSTOPPABLE!” cheer which also made my day. When exiting the room and heading down the dark hallway I pointed out to two of my classmates that this walk would be good practice for our building searches that we’ll be doing near the end of the semester.  I’ve told you guys before…I’m good at this stuff.  Lauren said, “You’re right there could be somebody right there” (behind a cement pillar). With my imaginary gun & flashlight I checked the corner and there was Arkansas & Nick, patiently waiting with vengeance on their minds…waiting to scare me.  I scared the tar out of them about a week ago and I wished I caught it on video. 

Stan practicing a search on Josh, taking off the sock HA.

There was talk about everybody going out for pizza afterwards but those plans flopped so Nick invited Arkansas over for cupcakes.  We hung out with Jane & Jim and pretty much parted ways for the night…but I did manage to get one more scare of my Double D running mates hahaha.  I was up watching Family Guy on Hulu, took a shower, got nice text from Brother DuB and then I dozed off.

Hasta La Vista, Weekend

What better way to come back from our first weekend off then to look out my bedroom window and see all of this white stuff...snow I think it’s called…falling from the sky and building up on the ground.  Luckily I was already in a good mood from the dream I had right before I woke up.  For some reason one of the casinos back home mailed me $52,136 cash!  The money was sent some sort of plastic disc that was normally designed to play some sort of table pool game so I had to call my sister Katie to ask her what it meant…she said “It means you’re rich!” Working through the dream was pretty funny; I was like conscious or something.  I couldn’t figure out who to tell, or if it was even real.  I sat on my new found fortune for a while and could hear my internal conflict about who to tell.  I called Laura and told her and we immediately felt relieved as things were about to get a lot easier for us.  Some dream huh?

I was dreading going to PT today because I figured we were going to get our asses kicked in the form of running since we were off all week.  Chuck checked in on me via text and that sort of made the morning more bearable. We got an early jump on our trip thanks to the snow that was teetering down, causing the roads to be fairly slick.  Right before warm-ups I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.  It was weird; maybe too much Cajun shrimp.  I made it through warm-ups and my breathing was alright then Mike threw us a curveball…we went right into lifting instead of running.  Stan and I did shoulders and biceps and I was able to do one more dip than last time…MOUNT UP!!!  After lifting we finally had a useful lecture.  Mike covered machines v. free weights and he finally offered some of the nutritional advice he’s been promising us. 

Here’s a little nutritional advice: Best thing to drink after an intense workout: chocolate milk.  

Eat a lot of green vegetables if you’re trying to lose weight.  They have better stuff than whole wheat products and keep you fuller longer so you eat less.   You’re welcome.

After our lecture we had some sprint training, 50 –yd sprints.  It was pretty much human drag racing. Considering we went from warming up, to lifting, to sitting down for a lecture we probably weren’t in the best state to run.  I took off against Curtis and about 20yds into the run I pulled up lame like Darrelle Revis did when Randy Moss burned him for that touchdown around the time the whole “slouch” comment came out. 

You can kind of see Revis limp at the end of this play. If my memory serves me correctly, he left the game after this and I think he missed a few games after this.  Wimp...I toughed it out and ran.

It’s almost comical that these cramps or knots or whatever these leg injuries are keep happening to me.  At the same exact time, the outside of my left hamstring and my right quadriceps seemed to explode.  I somehow finished 2 more sets but I was in pretty intense pain, that’s the only reason Nick beat me in my second run and I’m sticking to it. Class ended and we were able to sneak in another team huddle for our 1-2-3 UNSTOPPABLE cheer but it wasn’t so well received. I noticed that those against it were absent for our practice session yesterday…take it how you want it.

When we headed to the car after class you couldn’t even tell that it snowed in the morning.  People have said that the snow melts as fast as it falls here and now I got to see it firsthand.  It almost felt like spring…by campus.  When we got back home it was still snowing.  I guess living at the base of a mountain will do that.  Despite our nutritional speech, I had some leftover wheat egg noodles and turkey burger meat for lunch, showered, and was actually ready to go before Nick was for a change.  Class was a bit boring, in our instructors words, and afterwards Nick joined up with his gym crew so I drove home by myself. I brought in the mail, which had the last two tax forms I was waiting for enclosed (sort of, the envelope was ripped to all hell) in it and then I began defrosting some chicken for dinner and jumped in the bathroom before getting changed out of my uniform.  I was in the bathroom when I heard Jane getting a little frantic.  I came out the kitchen and she excitedly exclaimed, “Everybody’s coming over for dinner…like soon.”  I didn’t know who everybody was until I found out it was an entire family dinner to celebrate a birthday.  What a good time to learn a thing or two about cooking!  Maybe not. Jane was a little pressed for time but I did learn a cool method for chopping up onions!

Before we knew it the family walked in and took over the kitchen, I finished my onions and then what appeared to be a team of professionals took over everything else.  Considering I really only know how to make mac & cheese or any strange concoction of tilapia or chicken with green beans and wheat pasta, I was more than impressed to see that Jane’s daughter’s, Mandi, boyfriend, Josh, began making Caesar dressing from scratch!  I wanted to give them all some family time so I headed to my room and banged out my taxes online.  For some reason it seemed to take a really long time this year and my absence at the dinner table was no longer unnoticed.  To file online I had to call an IRS number to get a pin # and while I was following all the automated directions I was summoned to dinner a few times; I was called twice when my pin was being recited to me so I couldn’t respond back to them and I had to try to bury my head so I could hear the computer lady over them hahaha.

When I came out to dinner Jane finally got some revenge on me, she told me that they were all waiting for me to eat and I immediately felt horrible even though I had my doubts that they would ever wait that long to eat. We had vegetable lasagna, salad, and garlic bread and I had some vanilla ice cream and passed on the cherry (soup) pie.  It was cool seeing the family all hanging out and cutting on each other, reminded me of my family on Christmas Eve I told Jane.  The kids’ father was a real nice guy, HE WENT TO RUTGERS, and it was the first time I got to meet Jane’s son, James.  She says he’s a dweeb because he never comes to visit ha!

After everybody left I helped Mama Jane clean up and talked to her a little bit about the mysteries of women…because you broads are something else.  I thought I had you all figured out in the past but the older I get the more I realize that I don’t know sh!t!!!  Jane sympathized with me and every other guy out there hahahaha. 

1 day down, 11 more to go til a day off.

1pm start tomorrow

Good Night

Flagstaff Observation

1.       What’s with the windshields?  Nick and I live the furthest from campus of everybody in our class and we pass I think 4 auto glass places on the way.  A week or 2 ago I asked him why he thought there were so many and he thinks it’s because of the falling rocks from the mountains.  Interesting.

2.       Snow melts as fast as it falls. I pointed this out before but it’s pretty crazy how true it is.  I’m sure we’ll get buried sooner or later but if you looked outside right now you’d have no idea that we had a bit of a winter wonderland at 9am this morning.

3.       I miss Wawa & 7-Eleven.  The convenience stores here aren’t very convenient. They’re called K or something…I’m not sure what that stands for but it should be an S for sucks.  Hey, at least they sell alcohol.

Inspire Me, Inspire You

1.       Two of my classmates noted my weight loss…it’s niiiice.

2.       Brian’s text message late Sunday Night started out by letting me know that he’s proud of me.  Through my blog he’s recognized all of the hard work I’ve been putting in out here and that he looked forward to me “showing him the ropes” when I get back.

3.       Following suit, when I got out of PT this morning I had a text from my younger sister, Maureen, saying she headed back to the gym for the first time since her pre-wedding days thanks in part to this blog. Go get it M~DuB!

MOUNT UP!!!