mychai's Diaryland Diary

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Thanksgiving, and talking about the elephant in the room.

Hey, gang.

I'm writing from the comfort of my mother's bedroom. She has just recently joined the masses of the 21st Century and got a DSL connection to the internet. I've never used DSL. I had the cable connection back in Missouri, and I thought nothing could be better. But I think DSL may be a little quicker.

Or it could be the fact that I haven't had a fast connection to the Net since March, and this fast connection makes me as giddy as a carload of nuns driving a stickshift.

Vroom, vroom!

I had a fantastic Thanksgiving. I drove out to Florida on Wednesday evening. I wasn't technically supposed to leave until Thursday morning. You know... rules and such. But I broke through the barrier of what I was supposed to do and ended up sailing into the risky waters of what I wanted to do.

I got into my Granny's house at midnight, stayed up and had a snack and some late-night chit-chatting, then dozed off on the couch, only to be woken up 4 hours later by old people who don't believe in sleeping in.

Thanksgiving Day was pretty typical. This is my Florida family (all of my family are from Florida...), so we had fresh (read: raw) oysters pretty much all day, interrupted only by a brief interlude with a turkey. I'm thinking the turkey wished we would have stayed with the oysters.

I had a whole new cousin-like thing come over for dinner. Let me 'splain. No, there's not enough time. Let me sum up. (I've been watching "Princess Bride". Can you tell?)

I have a distant cousin. A guy cousin whom I have never met. He is always in some kind of trouble with the law. He is married to a woman from Trinidad, but she looks like she came straight from India. Since he is on the run, he couldn't really stop in for some oysters and Turkey, so the displaced wife and her three year-old girl came with Billy the Kid's mom over to my Granny's house for some free grub. If you can figure this all out, please contact me.

Anyway, the cousin-like thing was interesting to talk to, and I fell in love with her young squirt. She is three and could say the whole alphabet, knew eleven states, could recite nursery rhymes like a pro, and really dug my corny jokes.

We were best friends from the beginning, and she brightened up my day quite a bit. I was also pretty glad when they left because I had only gotten 4 hours of sleep for the previous 36 hours of being awake, and it was well past naptime when they left.

On the way home, I followed my dad for most of the way. He is getting ready to make a 10-gallon batch of wine, and he told me that we were going to make a stop by a place where we can get some spring water for the wine.

Ok. Maybe they sell Mountain Dew there.

We drove, and we drove, and we got very close to the center of Nowhere. My dad started slowing down, and I saw a dirt road up ahead. Weird to have a water bottling plant down a dirt road, I thought.

What my dad didn't tell me was that we were getting our spring water not from a bottling plant, not from a faucet that pumps out spring water, but from a hole in the ground that pumps out the clearest water you've ever seen.

It was a 30-foot circle of water, 15-20 feet deep, that was constantly being churned out by a hole in the middle. You could see the water bubbling up to the surface, and the hole emptied into a nearby stream.

It was truly one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I could have stayed there all day. I wanted to swim.

But it was 55 degrees out. And I didn't have anything to swim in.

And I sure wasn't going to skinny-dip with my step-grandma watching.

On to something a bit serious...

I had a visit from a certain someone from what I have been referring to my "previous life" to people at school.

It's as if I completely ended one life and started a new one when I joined the Air Force. I'll talk about how I used to work in television "in my previous life" and how I lived all alone in a dream world, bla bla bla.

Well, Nicole, from my previous life, came down to visit. We had a lot of loose issues that needed to be talked about. Sorry... no details here.

After she left, I really felt like I had a lot on my mind, but I couldn't place what it was I was thinking. So, I got in my real journal and started writing. That seems to really help pinpoint what is on my mind. And this is what I came up with:

Imagine you are on a boat: a sailboat or a small yacht. You are cruising around the world all by yourself. You have the basic supplies, like food, water, inflatable life boat, etc. But you also have a few expensive things you have picked up along the way, like marble vases, gold this-and-thats, a bowling ball.

Now, 100 miles off of the coast of Ireland, you hit, let's say, an iceburg, or a large rock. Or a great white whale causes your boat to sink. You gather what you can onto your small boat and watch your ship sink. Thankfully you got your expensive souvinirs off the boat before it sank. Until you realized that the marble, gold, and bowling ball is causing your little lifeboat to sink. And if you keep holding on to them, you will never make it to shore.

Thankful that you got to enjoy the fun things, you realize they are ultimately not good for you and are actually best left behind. You don't think twice about watching all of the excess sink to the bottom of the ocean, and you really don't miss them when they are gone.

What the blankity-blank am I talking about?

Well, once again I can't talk in too many specifics here. I try to not do this to you, but enough people in my previous life read this to know what I am talking about, and it is to them that this little monologue is directed.

I'm sorry. I realized last weekend that I was a true rat bastard in my previous life, selfish in every way. I was doing hedonistic things that was destructive to relationships that meant a lot to me. I went to sleep last Sunday night feeling extremely guilty and bastardly.

But it made me realize, as much as I hate to admit it, how much the Air Force has changed me. It's no major change. I'm not screaming at little kids or doing 100 push-ups every morning. It's the subtle things that have changed for the better. I've had to drop old habits and old ways of doing things for the simple reason of survival. My priorities have done a complete 180� turn, especially when it comes to relationships.

I don't ask for forgiveness from those I hurt in the past. But I do want you all to know that the ultimate revenge was given back to me: I know what I have done, and I feel sick for doing it.

Ok. Sorry for that. If it doesn't apply to you, then forget about it.

I need to get ready so I can go back to base. I am getting rid of the car I got just a year ago, and I need to get all of that paperwork sorted out.

Why? Because I am leaving for Germany in about three months, and I don't need the added hassle of getting a car shipped overseas. Besides, everyone over there says I can get a good deal on German-made cars that cost a small fortune over here.

My eye is on one of those Mini Coopers. Can you see me driving one of these?

I sure can!

I have three more weeks of school, then I have two weeks off for Christmas break. Woot! I certainly can't wait for that.

Stay tuned. I know my updates have been sparse and undependable, but that's just the nature of the beast of updating through someone else's computer.

Have a good week.

12:23 p.m. - Sunday, Nov. 30, 2003

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