Friday stuff.

First of all, I read this morning that Prince Harry has been in Afghanistan, tryin' his damnest to be a regular soldier and cast off some of the crap associated with bein' a "Royal". The Drudge Report outed him after he was there for a while, and now he's being flown home and told not to visit his normal pubs and clubs for fear of some Muslim wacko with a bomb who might want to get him for serving in the war. Shades of Mountbatten being blown up by the Provos back in the '80s.



I tell ya, I have a HUGE amount of respect for his desire to shake off the privilege and go through what every other soldier has had to go through, and it sucks that he's not being allowed to finish it. I mean, I know why they want to protect him, but still, here's a royal with a pair. Why not let him scratch 'em?

While I was looking at that story I found something else in the British news. If you like Stephen Fry, check this out and enjoy.

Anyway, you guys remember that student I told you about a few weeks ago. I’d just started a new semester and an older soldier came to me after class when everyone else had left the room and told me he’d been in special ed classes all his life and was gonna try to do as well as he could in his first college class. Well, he made a 104 on his first exam (out of a possible 110). I tell ya, I love this job. That guy’s gonna be fine. I can see the confidence growin’ in him now. He’s gonna go far.

I’ve got another interesting dude in one of my evening government classes. This guys is another older soldier. He says he’s been a cop (MP) for 25 years and “he’s tired of being on Jerry Springer all the time”, having to deal with bizarre domestic situations, and he wants to get a college degree so he can get a better job. I see this all the time too.

Lots of older soldiers start to take college classes just before they get out, wanting to get better jobs in the civilian world. Most of the time they are like both of these guys… they haven’t been in school since high school and they may have some worries about how well they’re gonna do.

Anyway, we were talking about the Bill of Rights last night. When we got to the criminal procedure amendments (4^th to 8^th) this guy started to contribute some fascinating and hilarious stuff from his real life experience as a cop. He gave us some real life details about things like the Exclusionary Rule and the Miranda Rule. We found out during the discussion of all that that he’s a member of the motorcycle guard (I think they’re called the Patriot Guard) that goes to funerals to protect grieving families from protesters who show up at funerals to celebrate the deaths of soldiers who have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

He deals with that issue both as an MP, dealing with protesters who try to get permits to demonstrate on the base, and as a guard at the funerals. He insinuated that the only thing keeping these protesters alive is the police showing up to stand between the protesters and the bikers. One student didn’t understand what he meant by that, which opened an opportunity for me to bust out with something I saw on a t-shirt once… Some people are alive only because it’s illegal to kill them. We only made it through the 5^th amendment last night, so we’ll have more fun Tuesday night with the rest. Again, I love this job.

I went by the Hospitality office yesterday after getting out of my lunchtime classes and ended up getting drafted to go bowling today. They had a CTC charity bowl at a local place, Bowlarama, and the Ft. Hood campus team was needing one player. One of their guys had to drop out needing to get some sort of school business done. So I cut out of my 11:30 class early, tellin' the kids I had to go bowlin' (you know that brought about a laugh - I assured them it was an official CTC function), jetted over to the lanes, donned those special shoes and tried to keep it between the gutters.

I broke 100 in each of the three games, scoring about a 375 in all. Thing is, there was free beer being distributed, paid for by my boss, and he kept toppin' off my glass. There's no tellin' how much I drank (Coors Light), but I was really feelin' it by the end of the third game. Denise came by and watch after work and was givin' me looks, but I drove home OK. She tried to get her office to set up a team for the tournament but no one wanted to play.

I was supposed to head over to Temple to get Dad tonight, but apparently he's had a bad day. My sister called during the bowling tourney to tell me that he'd gotten lost out at the VA and wandered around for hours today before someone found him and got him back to my mom. He goes there to work out in a supervised program a few times a week. I guess he's gotten so loopy that he shouldn't be left to wander by himself. As a result of all that both Mom and Dad are too tired to do anything today, so maybe we'll get together tomorrow.

If everything is OK tomorrow, I'll head over there and we’ll hit a bucket of balls and then belly up to the buffet one more time. Mom forgot to make the appointment with the psychic for today, so she now says she’d gonna call today and schedule one for next week. When all the hocus pocus goes down, I’ll be sure and keep you fully informed. Maybe the lady will come across with some hot stock tips. Fingers crossed. Denise and I will probably head over to BJs again, and then maybe take in another movie. We both want to see The Other Boleyn Girl. Just checked though and No Country For Old Men is finally in our theater, since winning the awards. I read the book and have been dyin' to see it, so maybe we will.

This weekend could prove to be interesting. The annual Wilson family reunion is Sunday. I’ll be going over to get dad as usual, but this time Denise is gonna go with us. I told her I wanted her to come. Most of those people probably think I’m queer, having never seen me with a girlfriend before, so it’ll be fun to see the look on their faces. Should be fun.

Anyway, see ya later. Have a great weekend. Cheers.