Well its definitely been a long time since I've last had a chance to get on here and actually blog about anything. Well after my boat got back to guam in august, we had a small inport and then went underway again on Halloween. This was suppose to be the big "Kirby finally gets left behind for a mission, and gets to spend quality time with the wife" time. But low and behold, the guy on the boat who has been dead to me since Halloween, has an undiagnosable disease, and can't go underway, only because they are afraid that something will come from his test results and that he won't be able to go. So the day before this 2 months of under the sea funnery, I'm told, "Sorry Kirby, looks like your getting screwed into underway." I hated every day of it, made only worse by the fact that I was extremely bitter. My one chance to actually see that piece of garbage set sail for the briney deep and I get screwed. Well so I put up with that, got home just in time for christmas, and started checking out. I thought that my underways were done for, but again I am wrangled into a 10 day "pleasure cruise" for the exact same reason, because in the prior 3 months they had made no progress, and he is still in the unknowns as far as whether his is good to go or not. So another bitter time underway, and here we are mid january. My birthday, on the 21, was a great one. I spent the entire day with the wife because I was able to skate out of work way early do to a change of command ceremony. Due to the fact that I actually don't get alot of time with the wife, days like that are special, that and getting to do things that married people do..... >_<. I finished my packout, so I'm left with a loaner couch and a loaner bed as furniture, my laptop with internet and a bunch of clothes and kitchen stuff which will be picked up during my express shipment to Kings Bay, GA where I will be going to another boat, but hopefully a better place for the wife. They say express shipment, but I've heard sometimes it is the complete opposite. And now that I'm drawing closer and closer to the end of my tour on the Great shit.... I mean ship, USS City Of Corpus Christi (COCC for short) SSN 705 I look back at all the stats I have on her: 323 days spent in guam, 429 days spent under the blue waters of the pacific doing things not even god would know about (I know the math doesn't support to make 3 years, but we did spend time in liberty ports and in pearl harbor) saw 5 liberty ports (Australia, Sasebo, Okinawa, Singapore, and Yokosuka), steamed 109,213 miles on nuclear power, completing 5 missions vital to national security (2 of which i spent as an FT even though I'm a nuclear eletrician), qualified submarines in 364 days (time limit is 365) and senior qual in 17 months and 3 weeks (time limit is 18 months), I've rabble roused for 5 counseling chits, used over 500 lightbulbs (using every single on in guam's naval stock system leaving our boat dark under the plan of "wraithful octopus"), got hit with 1 pie for bringing up the fact that M-Div wasn't qualified control point, and hit my Chief with a pie because he is a douche bag (and when I say hit him with a pie I mean if my arm were chuck norris' leg and the pie was his boot, I destroyed my chief's face with a body decapitating round house kick.) All in all it was what it was. There were good times, and plenty of crappy times, but I'll miss the guys I worked with who ultimately became my friends on this tropical island built up for japanese tourists.