One At A Time…

Well, for the last few weeks I’ve been staying with my Mom and Dad in the Baltimore area.  The goal is to help them get ready to make the big move to San Antonio… but there have been some hangups.

I love my family dearly, but we can be such huge procrastinators that it’s not even funny.  Just getting out the door to run errands can, at times, be an exercise in futility because someone or other is always holding things up.  And by the time that person is ready, someone else realizes they’ve forgotten something.  Then someone else realizes that there’s something they need to take care of and they want to come along, so we need to wait for that person to get ready.

My biggest concern, though, is the storage unit.  The fee for it is throwing my family’s budget out of whack and it was supposed to be the top priority.  However, to make this happen we were supposed to make room in the basement by sorting through everything we have down there and figuring out what to do with it all.  (Yes, we’re pack rats.)  Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened yet.

Now there is only five more days until the planned First Trip to San Antonio… that storage unit isn’t getting any emptier, and we need the money to finance our move.

God help me.

There have been some positives that have come from this.  I now own a truck.  Nothing fancy, just a nice little Mazda B2500 pickup.  It’s a compact truck with a solid and reliable engine, frame, clutch… pretty much the only things to worry about are the bumpers and whether they’ll rust or not.  we’ve also picked up an old camper shell for the truck and it looks surprisingly good.  Up next, we’re going to get a light-weight trailer so we can bring some things of ours down to San Antonio with us on the First Trip.

So much…

Well…  I’m a civilian now.

People wanted me out of the Navy, well… I’m out now.  Sick and tired of that rat race anyhow.  Don’t get me wrong, though.  I loved the experience and if there was any way I could, I’d do it all over again.  Probably better too.

But most of all, I think I will miss the sea.

there is simply nothing else like it, to be out there without another sign of human life as far as the eye can see.  only the rolling wave, the blue sky, the sun and clouds to keep you company.  I could spend hours just listening to the wake tumbling aside from my ship’s prow, watching as it roiled and foamed.

And in the night, you may have the moon to light your way, or the stars to dazzle you, or even the pitch-black of an overcast night to make you feel how small and isolated you really are.  It is peaceful, yet humbling.

No more, though.  At least, not unless I find some ship to call my own so I may go sailing once more.  For now though, there are other matters I must attend to.

My plan now is to establish my residency in Texas so I can take better advantage of my educational benefits.  I intend to use the money from my Montgomery GI Bill to fund my education at the University of Texas at Austin and I plan on going for Aeronautical Engineering and Japanese Studies.  With that I intend to get a job, hopefully doing something like liaising between JAXA and NASA.  I’m not sure yet, but I am certain that with aeronautical engineering and Japanese studies I can snag a job that will let me alternate my time between the US and Japan.

Honestly, the focus of my goal here is to be with the woman I had to leave behind.  She promised me that she would wait until I have good job, and I intend to hold her to it.