Climbing

The other day we went to Inner Peaks climbing center in Monroe. It was the first time I'd been climbing in three years or so. I had a blast, but my arms were almost too sore to ride my bike home afterwards. Here's a couple of pictures.

Home for Christmas

School is over for real now. Grad went well, but was pretty cold. An outside 2-hour graduation at the end of December. Great... After that was all over, Trevor, Travis, Tim, and I went to see the USS Yorktown. That was cool. I have never been over there before. It is definitely worth seeing. We drove back up that night, got home around 2200, and then I had to be up next morning to go pick Tabitha and Matthew up from the airport. They had been planning a surprise arrival here for a couple of months. Mom or Dad didnt' know they were coming for Christmas and everyone was surprised. So now it's Christmas Eve, and things are kind of settled. Derrick Nissley and Ruth Gossner are here for Christmas, too. Sort of a normal holiday time for my family. All the family is here plus a few other 'family' members who aren't actually related. I'm glad my family is so open with their home.

Here's a picture of us guys before we left to head back home on Thursday, and one of Bucky messing around in my 'Dixie Cup', or white hat.

I'm DONE!!!

School is over. Finally. We took Comp yesterday, and that was the last of it. Now it's just paper work, grad practice, stuff like that. We don't get Comp scores until this afternoon, but I think I did alright. It was a really, really tough exam. A lot harder than I was expecting. I think a lot of people failed. We'll see though. People that fail Comp have to stay here for an extra week (right through Christmas) to study and take a re-Comp. That would be miserable. Hopefully not as many people failed as it seems like right now.

I get to see my family in two days, too. I can't wait!

Pictures

Here they are:

My last view before leaving my room in the barracks.















My room:















Curt's room, aka the living room















My first attempt at making bread in quite a while

Weekend... finally

Well, it's the weekend. The last weekend here at NNPTC. All my stuff is moved out, my barracks room is clean and inspected, and all I have to do now is take Comp on Monday, and I'm done. Grad is on Thursday morning at 9:00. After that, Trevor, Travis, Tim and I are going to go tour the USS Yorktown here in Charleston, and then head up to Waxhaw on Friday morning for Christmas.

All moved in... sort of

I finally got all my stuff moved out of the barracks. The last stuff came over with me after school today. Tomorrow at lunch I'm going to vacuum, scrub and dust, and then hopefully get my checkout inspection tomorrow afternoon, and then I will be officially moved out. As for moving in, all my stuff is here now, but it'll take some sorting and unpacking and stuff before I can really say I'm 'moved in'.

I put in 14 hours at school today. 5:00AM to 7:00PM. What a day. Tomorrow is our last subject final exam, which is three hours and a lot of points. Then we have a weekend to study, and Monday is the four hour, 400 point big, big exam. It covers the last 12 months of school, 11 different subjects, and lots and lots of material. But then I'll be done!!! I can't wait. I'll post pictures of my apartment as soon as I unpack that little doohickey that lets me get the pictures from my camera to my computer.

New Church

I went to a different church this morning. Since I'm going to be moving to Mt. Pleasant, I figured I'd try to find a good church down there so I'm not driving 30 miles to church. The one I went to this morning is called Lighthouse, and it's a sister church to East Cooper Baptist. It'll be about 5 minutes from my apartment, when I finally get to move in. I got there a little bit late and missed some of the worship time, but I liked what I heard. Lots of 'Soul Purpose'-type singing. It's not a big church like Faith Assembly is. I think I like this better. It's about the size of Cumberland County Community. The preacher is good... he used to be a lawyer, and he delivered the entire message today without looking at his notes, including quoting all the Bible references he was referencing. He spoke about serving and using the talents and gifts God has given us. It was a good service, and a church I'll probably be going back to. Thank you God for directing me there!

As for other stuff... They are in the middle of painting our apartment, so we can't move in until Wednesday, but we'll probably just end up waiting to next weekend to move in. But they did approve us for it, and all we have to do is sign the lease. Jensik and Kropczynski are who I'll be living with. Both of them are nukes like me, but they're ET's (Electronics Technicians), not EM's. Not that it makes a difference to schedules or schools or anything.

Night pictures

I went out last night to try to get some pictures of the new Cooper River Bridge. It looks really cool at night with the lights and stuff. Out of the 15 or so pictures I took, only one of them turned out halfway decent. To make the lights show up, I had to set the shutter time longer, and then I had a hard time keeping the camera steady enough. Maybe a tripod would have helped, but I don't have one, nor do I feel like buying one just for one picture... :)


And one of my bike sitting under the streetlight, too.

Motorcycle Maintenance Day

That's what my Saturday was... about 5 hours of work on my bike. Nothing really major, just lots of little tune-ups, preventative maintenance, changing the gearing a little bit... I had fun doing it. The bike runs nicer now, and I feel better having done a lot of the routine maintenance stuff.


Here's a couple of pictures.