The year is open!

Another Saturday dawns and it seems to be a good day. Air Force Beer Call last was definitely awesome, but it made me realize how really bad I am at Norwegian dialects. I don't intend to improve in any way. But at least the entertainment portion did not disappoint too much.

On another note, I have employment secured for another year, and am really looking forward to getting my hands into it. The challenges, the rewards, the let downs. All hands on deck.

Boyd - Tiger of the air

After a nice and a more than justifiably extensive vacation time, I am back in Trondheim ready improve and enhance on every level. As stated in previous posts, the summer's escapades have been rewarding and new. Definitely got a taste for the mountain hiking, and a repeat of that must be considered in the near future.
Anyhew. The summer has not come and gone wanting of academic sustenance. 3 books were read. A 4th was started about a week ago and lo and behold done reading. Always a good sign when I can finish a book quickly. It generally means it was more than a little interesting. Boyd - The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram is an excellent book I recommend to anybody who likes good bio's and is also interested in the air force and air-to-air combat. Boyd, who I previously only knew by name and reputation had quite a fascinating life, mostly due to what he accomplished and his being a bit of a maverick in the officer cadre of the USAF. Coram's style is that of a zealot but signals, where appropriate, how some of the stories told from 2nd and 3rd hand sources should be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, Boyd is depicted as iconic, unappreciated, but truly the high priest of the church of air-to-air combat tactics.

Blefjell Mountain visited

After a sizeable investment in mountain gear, I eventually trekked up to Blefjell Mountain. A 3-day hike in good company was ultimately successful. Colorblindness notwithstanding I managed to glas the red T's that marked the trail. Though the first day was bogged down with an incident of me seeing how well my shoes could float down a brook, 24 hours and a pair of dry boots later, the trek went on to the top. Although the summit was never reached due to thick fog, it still went a long way to illustrate the importance of navigation. An importance which was doubly emphasized by the neccessity for map redundancy halfway through the trek. That being said, the next trek will need to trumph this in terms of, well, everything, except maybe foolhardiness, that can stay behind.

A few ice cubes never hurt anyone

I could not help myself commenting on the recent weather down here in Moss. In the decade and a half I have lived in Moss I have never seen a summer storm like this. Rain and wind, and hail like it's nobody's business. These things were so big (marble size) that several of the neighbourhood's cars alarms went off.

Thank god the Ipod isn't green or red,

So, I am on day 3 of yard work at the family's place in Moss. I am sporting my camelback, jamming to the ipod in the 30 degree heat. Life is essentially good. We have a fence, or rather a wall, running along the backyard seperating the property from the E6 highway. It's mostly to shield our ears from the noise. Now the other side of the fence is basically steep hill ending in a gorge-like area filled with underbrush. Your basic trees, bushes, poison ivy, insects of all kinds and the occasional wild cat. To put it succinctly, we simply do not go back over there, ever! But this little hellish gorge does serve one very useful purpose, as a dumping area for the excess plant growth in the garden. In the process of lugging tree branches up the ladder, one smaller branch caught hold of my Ipod. Now I didn't actually see it go flying with the branch over the wall, but I did see the headphones cord dangling with, to my surprise, no ipod attached. FML.

In this instance, I was thinking, "that did not just happen, ipod must still be in my pocket". It was not. Usually the wall has basically had a one way function. Whatever goes over it does not come back. As Stephen King-ish as that sounds, and this line of thought did not do much to help me, there was no way I would not leap over (carefully climb down) the 4 meter high wall. After 15 minutes in this off the grid area, Ipod was found and yard work could safely continue. I shudder to think how bad it would have been had the Ipod been green or red, as I can't tell those apart. Maybe Tine is right in her assessment that everything is usually better in pink.

On a brighter note, finished reading a book today, One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick. A must read for anybody interested in an accessible biography of a Marine Corps officer's education and experiences during the invasion of Iraq.