Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Talk about life not being fair

Hey... yah live your life. You don't smoke, yah don't drink too much. You get married and are expecting a child. Then God decides to make an example out of you.

Man falls to his death when sinkhole opens in middle of his house

"It's unbelievable," Placer County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Dena Erwin said. "From the front of the house, it's absolutely normal. Then, in the middle of the house, is this enormous hole."

The victim, Jason Chellew, was on the ground floor at about 9:30 p.m. Friday when the concrete foundation near the kitchen gave way, Erwin said.

Chellew's wife, Pei-Hun Sun, who is pregnant with the couple's first child, was asleep in the bedroom at the time and escaped with no injuries. She called 911, Erwin said.

Rescuers had trouble reaching Chellew because the ground began to shift on Sunday, creating an unsafe situation for work crews.

That's right. The earth opened up and ate him. Out of the blue. Think about that the next time you are jogging or eating your rice cakes.

UPDATE!!!! No one gets out alive!!!! (Well, a couple of people do.)

Man, son, neighbor swallowed by cesspool

HUNTINGTON, N.Y. --A 71-year-old man who went outside in the rain to pick up the Sunday newspaper plunged into a cesspool in his front yard, and his son and neighbor were sucked in when they tried to help.

The victims escaped, two with the help of firefighters, covered in raw sewage but not badly hurt.

Andrew Palladino said the soggy ground, soaked by two days of rain, gave way outside his Long Island home: "I walked across the lawn, and all of a sudden I disappeared."

He yelled to his wife for help, and she threw a rope and called their son, Dan, who lives with them. The son said the scene "was like a horror picture."

A neighbor who heard the commotion ran over to help -- but the ground gave way again, swallowing him and the son. The neighbor crawled out and passers-by tried to hold onto the others until the Huntington Fire Department arrived.

Firefighters secured the ground, lassoed Palladino and his son and dragged them out.

I think Bush is to blame.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

"Thank You" just doesn't seem like enough

I cannot put it all into words. I am having trouble with normalcy. I try very hard to occupy myself. Heck I even got myself a few hobbies now. However, I feel out of place. I have flashbacks and can’t sleep at night. When I finally get to sleep I am immersed in a nightmare. The memory’s of the environment that nearly killed me more than once haunts me now that I am home and safe. The nights are the worst for me. I am alone and who can I really talk to when its 2am and I’m wide awake? I mean I could wake my wife up but it’s not fair to her if I did this every night. So I just waste away afraid to go to sleep.

What in the hell did I do to deserve this? I nearly died for my country and I’m left to endure this post traumatic stress disorder. I am stronger than this but I cannot defeat it, there is not operation order for this.

Some of the things that suck are as simple as leaving my house. Why? I feel like I might get blown apart from an incoming mortar round. All stemming from when I was in Iraq and the constant incoming we would receive. Going to take a shower was dangerous. And yes, people did get killed while taking showers from incoming.

Monday, April 17, 2006

I'm Ordinary

I'm still trying to get back into posting and actually writing things, so here goes.

I watched Ordinary People last night.

I read the book and watched the movie when I was 15 or 16. Seeing it again at 33 as a parent is whole different thing. When I watched it as a kid I identified with Timothy Hutton's character. (It's really weird to see Archie Goodwin as a 17 year old kid) Watching it as a parent is a wholly different experience than I remember.

This time it was Donald Sutherland that I empathized with. Mary Tyler Moore was overly stilted and I think overacted the part. If you've seen the movie as a kid, watch it again.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Kind of cool story from some hometown folks

I come from a really small town in WI, so hearing stuff like this about people with whom I'm acquainted strikes me as pretty cool.
“I was surprised to hear her voice,” said Capt. Jeremy Holmes, 40th Air Expeditionary Group B-52 aircraft commander. “To make absolutely sure it was her, without throwing out any names over the radio, I asked if there were any Packers fans on the jet tonight. Right away the boom operator said, ‘yeah, the co-pilot is a Packers fan.’ then I knew for sure it was her.”

After flying six hours, the captain positioned his B-52 to take on fuel from the KC-135, his sister, 1st Lt. Jordan Holmes, was co-piloting.