Haiku-a-Day Challenge: Week 10

Holy crap I've been doing this for 10 weeks already? WHERE IS ALL MY POETRY MONEY?

Caturday 9/10/2011
First flag football game
Followed by beer and steak tips
Such an awesome night

Sunday 9/11/2011
Went to Paul's beach house
I nom'd too many cheese poofs
Orange voms in sand

Monday 9/12/2011
Nadkarni's birthday
Fajitas and 'Ritas: yum
Might be getting sick

Tuesday 9/13/2011
Box seats at Fenway
Greatest baseball game ever
Free food and beer helped

Wednesday 9/14/2011
Work, class, then homework
Thesis too; not a fun day
Fuck. Getting sick. Fuck.

Thursday 9/15/2011
A legit sick day
Working all night killed my health
Time to do thesis!

Friday 9/16/2011
Semi-healthy: yay
Molly et. al. reunion
Cheap oysters tonight!

Random day in LA for no reason

Nov. 20, 2009

Los Angeles

(Mostly pictures of the Hollywood Sign and Wooly Mammoths)

Due to the fact that my very LIFE was a vacation living out in California, I actually had a lot of vacation days built up, so I decided to take this Friday off to go dick around somewhere in Southern Cali. It was the Friday right before the week of Thanksgiving, and Papa and Mama Sevs were coming out to San Francisco for the week, so I was all "GUESS WHAT, I'm extending this vacation." So yeah, I got up real early on Friday and drove down to LA. That's something a normal person would do, right?
First thing I did was drive up to the Hollywood sign, because the last time I was there it was super dark and looked real shitty. This time it was significantly better conditions.

This is about as close as you can get by just randomly driving around a neighborhood

Not too crazy. I then went down into the city to see the La Brea tar pits. Smelled pretty terrible, but it was interesting to see.

"Saaaave meeee Jeebus!"

They even had a cool little museum about prehistoric animals caught in tar pits! I got in for free with my military ID (working on a naval base has its perks) and saw DINOSAUR BONES w000000t! You could even see the labs where research was being done.

These are the true miracle workers of Jurassic Park

It was about that time that I said to myself "Self, you should go check out the beaches. I hear they are pretty 'fly.'" (That's what the kids are calling it these days, right?) Venice Beach is pretty awesome. Quintessential California beach: people playing volleyball, teenagers skateboarding, ROLLERBLADES EVERYWHERE. I hung out there, then drove up the Pacific Coast Highway past a bunch of other really cool beaches. So stereotypical. But so beautiful.

Pacific Coast Highway: great road, or GREATEST road?

I decided to spend the night at Jimmy's place, who lives in San Jose, near San Francisco. That would get me closer to the city to meet my parents when they arrived at their hotel the next day. It was an awesome day, so I drove up the Pacific Coast Highway most of the way to San Jose. This is something every American should do in their lives. Preferably with a convertible. It's just so... I can't think of a descriptive enough word, so I'm going with my fallback here: AWESOME. Sure I spent about $40 in gas that day. TOTALLY WORTH IT. I got to Jimmy's place around the time the Sun set, so we just hung out at his place for the night.

Haiku-a-Day Challenge: Week 9

Haikus: greatest method of recapping ever? Yes.

Caturday 9/3/2011
Hong Kong hangover
Jordan arrives: Joe's pool day
North End for dinner

Sunday 9/4/2011
Smashing our brains out
Brunch, BBQ, pumpkin beer
Smash: I love that game

Monday 9/5/2011
Ball Square Cafe brunch
SO FUCKING GOOD. It's insane.
Goodbyes to D. Haus

Tuesday 9/6/2011
Replace pilfered bike
Can't buy bikes when it's raining
Burritos instead

Wednesday 9/7/2011
Advanced Fluids? UGH.
Last Tufts class started tonight
Sleep: I will miss you...

Thursday 9/8/2011
Small camping potluck
First game of football tonight
Fall is upon us

Friday 9/9/2011
Med center session
My shoulder is killing me
But hey: free massage

I take back every negative thing I've ever said about San Diego

Weekend of Nov. 15, 2009

San Diego

(There are adorbs seals in this album. Just sayin')

Hogan and I flew back from our aircraft carrier adventure into LA and drove down to San Diego to stay with Ryan, another bro from work who was on assignment on at North Island, on Coronado. We got in pretty late and just crashed in Ryan's room, because he was living with some crazy woman with an insane apartment. We got up and IMMEDIATELY ate delicious street tacos - best tacos I've ever had.

It definitely competes with Hanford's "Taco Tuesdays." Less busty bartenders, more children selling tacos out of a parked truck. Regardless: SO DERICIOUS.

Then we were like "well? What should we do now? Oh I know, let's go surfing." November? Who cares. It's San fucking Diego. German for "a whale's vagina." It is consistently 75 degrees and perfect weather YEAR-ROUND. Hell yes we went surfing. I actually got up on the board a few times; I'm counting it. Twas fun.

Ryan, put that away

We had some food I'm sure at some point (probably more tacos), and then we went downtown to a bar where they do goldfish racing. You put your goldfish in these long tracks with water in them and blow bubbles behind them with a straw to make them go forward. Tournament style - best goldfish wins.

This is Fish Taco. He lost in the first round. Thanks bro.

The next morning was the day after Veteran's Day and we had to go to "work." This meant we went along with Eddie and Dan, who were on assignment at Miramar at the time, to go "work on" F18 legacy engines. It was a lot of what Hogan and I did at Lemoore, except with an older engine. It was cool being at the place where they filmed Top Gun, but there weren't nearly enough shirtless dudes playing volleyball. But anyways, after about 3 hours we didn't have anything to do and decided to take our leave. We got some more tacos (there is a theme here) at a restaurant called "Mexican Food." It was... exquisite and terrible all wrapped up into one diarrhea-inducing burrito.
With the rest of the day open, Hogan, Eddie and I went over to Sunset Cliffs and Cabrillo. Great tide-pooly beachy areas. Cabrillo has an especially awesome lookout over the city.

The North Island military base is close by, so helicopters are fairly abundant

Definitely not my worst work day ever

Then we came back, bummed around Ryan's place on Coronado (fun fact: the bridge from San Diego to Coronado is the bridge that Baxter was kicked off in Anchorman. You're welcome), and had food... somewhere. Then Hogan, Ryan, Eddie, and I went to a few bars in the Candle Light District (is that a thing? I think I remember it being called that, but I'm not positive). Played some pool, had some beer. Life was pretty great that night. Hangovers in tow, we then went into work with Ryan to the base on Coronado, North Island. This was mostly blackhawk and seahawk helicopters. We took a tour and then stood around while they were testing one of the engines on a blackhawk. The gusts it was whipping up were friggn strong. Then we got to climb around a bit on the helicopter to pretend to look like we knew what we were doing. False.
Similar to Miramar, we left "early" (i.e. before lunch). At this point, Ryan wanted to... I don't know... pay bills or something? Either way, he was being classic Weaksauce. So Hogan and I went to the San Diego Zoo. DEFINITELY the best zoo I've ever been to. Pandas and tigers and koalas and polar bears! COME ON.

If you are a fatass Panda, how do you just PASS OUT in a couple of branches? Good lord.

My favorite part of the visit was seeing turtles having sex, and then watching some parents trying to explain to their 5-year-old what was happening. In fact, you might want to watch here, because the sounds these things make is just... oh man it's just perfect.

What else did we see? Panda cubs, a snake eating a mouse, Tapirs trying to mate. All in all I'd say it was a pretty great time. OH YEAH. Also, the Eagles were in town playing the Chargers, so there were a ton of Eagles fans all over the place. It was awesome. Great trip.

That's what the babies look like. Almost dead-on.

Before it got dark, we wandered around Balboa Park for a little bit. They had a bunch of cool buildings, some flowers, statues. It was quite pleasant indeed.

Gettin artsy with the photos

Last thing we did in Balboa Park was to check out the Rose and Cactus Garden. Just kind of wandered around. Not having responsibilities is great.

I started getting REAL GOOD at the timer on my camera...

After our "jumping around a bunch of cacti" adventures, Hogan and I returned to Ryan's place and decided to do a spur of the moment power hour while watching Anchorman. Good decisions. We then took a ferry over downtown, which was hilarious because at this point we were all feeling a little wacky and we took about a billion pictures of ourselves being idiots.

Land ahoy

When we arrived, we started climbing some random bulldozers that we saw (clearly making some good choices) and then went to Little Italy for some pizza and energy drinks. Don't want to start falling asleep, do we?

Store in the front, restaurant in the back. This is... normal?

After some delicious pizza, we hit a few bars. I don't recall all that much except being moderately hungover while playing soccer the next morning. So I guess it was a good night.
We took a trip up to Mount Soledad, which had a great view of the surrounding coast. It was a cool place to see. Also saw some dude propose to his girlfriend up there. Not a bad spot to pop the question. Still though... spew.

Oh more perfect weather, San Diego? Surprise surprise.

We then drove to a cove at La Jolla, which was pretty quintessential Southern California coast. There were a few beaches where seals liked to laze about, and they were insanely adorbs, so we hung around just laughing at their methods of locomotion.

AWWWWWWWWWWWW

Wow, I forgot what a packed day this was. After the seals we went up to where para-gliders (what I did in France) jump off the cliff. It was... motherfucking gorgeous? Is that the phrase I'm looking for? Yes, yes it is. The Sun setting over the ocean was almost as cool as seeing the para-gliders floating around the cliff area.

Your argument is invalid

As if we didn't do enough that day, we then checked out Old Town. We didn't spend that much time there, but we found a pretty good Mexican place for dinner with bathtub-sized margaritas. I'm going to vote "yes" on Old Town.
Now that we were full of margarita and Mexican food, we went back to Ryan's place to try out a little something we learned from Always Sunny in Philadelphia: wine in a soda can.

Looks fine in public, and now I can make violent hand gestures and not spill any on myself!

The dangerous thing about wine in a soda can is that you really can't tell how much you've had. And in the case of Hogan and Ryan, it was an underestimated amount. They were out their respective boxes. We went to a few bars, and in the end they ended up throwing free popcorn into each others beers.

Bottoms up. Omnomnom.

We took a cab back to Coronado after there, where I think I was the only person capable of forming memories. And what great memories they were! Right as we got out of the cab, both Hogan and Ryan dropped a serious barf on the sidewalk at the same time. It was... beautiful. We then proceeded to find eclectic ways of falling asleep: me in the fetal position on the floor, Ryan sprawled fully clothed in his bed, and Hogan clutching the toilet. Great times. And thus ends our lovely San Diego experience. Hogan and I drove back up to Lemoore the next morning (stopping at In N' Out Burger of course).

Haiku-a-Day Challenge: Week 8

It's finally happened. I've started dreaming in Haiku. It's ok though, because I was also a dinosaur in this dream.

Caturday 8/27/2011
Hiked Moosilauke
Waterfalls n shit: so good
Nap before FAMAP*

Sunday 8/28/2011
FAMAP aftermath
Broken bed, vomsing, horserace
Punched a hurricane

Monday 8/29/2011
Computer broken
You Fucking Kidding Me Bro?
Fixed it on my own

Tuesday 8/30/2011
Best kickball game yet
Got three outs in one inning
China Deright: EARNED

Wednesday 8/31/2011
Brewed some pungent beer
Pump-kablooey Oatmeal Stout
More pumpkin: YES PLEASE
I just learned that I say "meal" as if it were two syllables, but it is actually one. MY ENTIRE MIND HAS JUST BEEN BLOWN.

Thursday 9/1/2011
Excellent potluck
D-Haus Reunion begins
The Bear has arrived

Friday 9/2/2011
Taking a half-day
Drinks outside with Joe and Kyle
Better than working

*FAMAP = Finish All My Alcohol Party

Presidential Traverse

Katie Rizzolo, Graham Rogers, Mike Brown, Paul Michael Richard, and I joined together to form a band of warrior poets and hiked the Presidential Traverse on July 30.

This picture was taken just as our knees were about to shatter. Just a few more miles and a few thousand feet of elevation change left!

And when I say "Presidential Traverse," I of course mean a 21-mile death-hike summiting 8 of the White Mountain peaks, including the 5 highest mountains in New Hampshire. It's the kind of thing that would make a normal person say "I'd rather not destroy every muscle, bone, and joint in my body. I'll just stay over here playing Jenga and wait for you to get back." I don't know why, but apparently this fictional person is playing Jenga. This person is an avid Jengist. But anyway, we beasted that hike in about 15 hours. And that included a decent amount of rest time at the top of Mt. Washington.
We drove up to the Tufts Loj Friday night and basically all we did was make infinity PB&J sammiches and go to bed. The stars were RIDICULOUS, but there wasn't much time to stargaze, because our plan was to get up at 3am to start this monster hike. So we took all the sleep we could get.
The next morning we awoke stoked as fuck, ready to destroy some mountains with our ENERGY LEGS. Katie Rizz was super pumped about a sandwich someone had left her. This is hilarious, because "Katie" was written on it, but there was definitely another Katie staying at the Loj, and I guarantee this other girl was going to wake up, find that some wretched asshole had stolen her delicious sandwich, start plotting vengeance on said sandwich thief. But whatever, it was time to start the adventure, we'll worry about our sandwich issues later. Graham, Mike, and PMR road in one car, and Katie and I road in the other, parking it at the end of the trail. We then packed into one car, drove to the trailhead by Mt. Madison, and rocked that mountain like a hurricane. And by that I mean we hiked with our headlamps on (we started hiking at 4:30am, and the Sun was being a little bitch, so we had about 45 minutes before sunrise) in an intensely humid forest.

We are dinosaurs. Sometimes.

We actually saw a moose near the Madison hut (well, most of us did). We turned a corner, and there it was: a Babe-the-Blue-Ox sized moose staring directly at me in a patch of small trees. No joke, it was probably less than 10 feet away from me. I only had time to utter the words "oh fuck," praying it wouldn't charge at me for interrupting it's breakfast by singing Disney songs, before it decided to leap OVER ENTIRE TREES and back into the forest. Third moose sighting of my life, first in New Hampshire. Win column. The first summit was a bit of a scramble, but not too difficult. At the top we realized that our day might not provide as many epic views as we initially assumed, because we were literally inside a cloud. The inside of a ping pong ball isn't really the view I signed up for, but what can you do. After some planking, we headed back down to go tackle the next mountain: Mt. Adams, second tallest of the White Mountains. It wasn't too long of a hike, but it was pretty damn steep. Quite a bit of scrambling. My arms were all "hey wait a second, I thought we were hiking. You know, the kind of thing you do with your LEGS. We never signed up for this shit." Too bad, arms. Deal with it. Same as before, not much of a view. The fog was thick, and as a result all our clothes/packs were somewhere between "moist" and "drenched." The rocks were also super slippery, which made the downhill trek slow-going and painful. My knees were not so pleased with their predicament. But hey: 2 peaks down, 6 to go.

Check out that incredible view!

Jefferson was the next. Similar to the first two in fogginess and slipperiness, so not much to tell. Oh, the wind was going nuts, which made urination a fun adventure! But we hit the summit and started on our way toward Mt. Washington. It was a bit strange, because we couldn't see all that far ahead of us, but we could hear the Cog Railroad somewhere in the mist. We crossed the tracks (more planking) and made it to the Mt. Washington summit around noon.

Chris Severino: he died the way he lived. Planking on railroad tracks?

It was great timing, because the only thing I could think about was how much food, measured in metric tons, could I logistically consume. It turns out the answer was a bowl of chili, a PB&J, half a bag of trail mix, some pepperoni, peanuts, and three granola bars. Yum-tastic. We also took our picture by the Mt. Washington summit sign, which is a goddamn zoo, because there are children and old people and other randos who took the train up the mountain. GTFO, I'VE BEEN HIKING FOR SEVEN HOURS.

6288 ft. For all intents and purposes we still consider this "sea level" in the aviation industry. STILL COOL THOUGH.

Next up was Monroe. Nothing spectacular. More of that lovely fog view, and the muscles and knees were starting to get a little sore, but everyone was in good spirits about actually getting close to the end. When we got to Eisenhower, we started coming out of the cloud, and we actually got to see a lot of the surrounding mountains.

You can kind of see some stuff! THINGS ARE MARVELOUS.

It was incredible. The weather was getting nicer, we only had two more mountains, we were in good spirits. What could possibly go wrong?
Not much, really. Sorry to leave you hanging with that "uh oh, is something bad going to happen?" type cliffhanger, but no. Things were pretty great. Pierce was next, and, while there were quite a few trees blocking what could potentially be a really amazing view, we were fine with it. Just one peak to go, so we sat for a bit and nommed on our various trail mixes. It was good to give the legs a little break, because they were starting to get all up in my bidness. My right knee, the one I had ACL surgery for, felt like it was made out of pure jello. That's typically not the feeling you'd like your knee to feel.
We then went downhill for a bit, passed the last lodge, and came up to the last peak: Mt. Jackson. It was the shortest mountain of the 8, but I think we were all fairly tired from the rest of the hike that it felt a bit taller than it actually was.

Ugh I can't BELIEVE I was looking the wrong way in this picture! Stupid stupid stupid!

Great views, great weather: it was an awesome way to end the Traverse. Well, mostly the end. We still had that final downhill. Which is incidentally the most painful part of the entire hike. My knees were held together by nothing more than sinews and good intentions. Paul and I took some ibuprofen, which helped considerably. Instead of "oh my god I don't think I'm going to survive," it was more like "there's only a 90% chance my knees are going to shatter. I like my odds." But we made it down to the car just as the Sun was setting, which was great, because we got to look at the beautiful sunset colors during the entire ride back to pick up the other car.
As is wont, we grabbed some beers at the local brewery for a celebratory "hey guys, we did it! And we're still 40% alive!" I ate as much food as the Loj could provide and literally passed out in a chair with beer in hand as Mike played Metallica songs on acoustic guitar. I can't think of a better way to end the night.
The next day my legs were barely attached to my body and I couldn't really use them for locomoting, but we got an early start and headed back to Boston. Once there, Rizz and I joined up with some friends to bike to Walden Pond (yeah, adding a 30-mile round-trip bike ride was an interesting choice when my body was 80% pain...). I figured the biking and swimming in the pond would be good training for a Triathlon I signed up for in September. After that little endeavor, every step I took was a moment of sheer agony. But it was totally worth it. Who needs to go up and down stairs this week? I climbed MOUNTAINS. But seriously, I wish my apartment had an elevator.

I can haz naps time nao plz?

Haiku-a-Day Challenge: Week 7

I've received word from the authorities that my poetry has been so deep and insightful that 20 people have already died due to the fact that their minds have been blown.

Caturday 8/20/2011
Acadia day
Hiked Beehive, helped a lost chick
Celebrate with beer

Sunday 8/21/2011
Big Katahdin hike
One of my best hikes to date
Dangerous as fuck

Monday 8/22/2011
Need more pain killers
I am sore and exhausted
Work and Tufts: looooooooong day

Tuesday 8/23/2011
Work is less than fun
Walking around outside is
Wish I had sneakers...

Wednesday 8/24/2011
Getting my Tufts on
Crazy pizza afterwards
Thanks Mary! nom nom

Thursday 8/25/2011
Delicious potluck
Nom'd three ice cream sammiches
Soft french fries? UGH. FINE.

Friday 8/26/2011
Outdoor Revere lunch
Building up energy for
INSANE C.T.F.*

*"Capture The Flag" for all the n00bs

Virginia Beach and Kitty Hawk

Week of Nov. 10, 2009

Virginia Beach and Kitty Hawk

(don't go to this website unless you're absolutely sure)

After getting back from the aircraft carrier, we had a couple days to kill at Virginia Beach before our flight back to LA, so we used them as best we knew how: partaking in the magical beverage known as Yuengling. The first day we literally spent the entirety of the afternoon at a sports bar watching football games whilst devouring buffalo wings and imbibing our delicious yeasty libations. It was a really cool bar right on the beach, and it was great to just hang out. Oh, and play some sort of basketball game?

Great form, Rich. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Hogan is winning this game.

We came home and looked through out HUNDREDS of pictures from the carrier while listening to "I'm on a Boat" on repeat. Good stuff. And Rich passed out with his eyes open, which was really really creepy. So we put shaving cream all over his face. Great decisions were made that evening.
The next day we decided to check out Kitty Hawk to see the Wright Brothers Memorial. I don't know if you knew this, but stuff with flight is something I dabble in. Just sometimes. There wasn't a lot there, but it was still cool seeing the place where flight first happened. We saw a replica of the original glider and then the field where the Wright Brothers first flew.

I got yelled at when I tried to get on and fly out of the building

The Wright Brothers made four attempts at flying before it was technically "controlled, sustained flight." So the fourth attempt was actually the "first flight." You're welcome for the free history lesson.

Double hang-10? Rich, that is WAY TOO MANY hung tens.

Phallic

I think we ate tacos that night.

Our flight to LA was the next afternoon, so we went into work with Rich, Amanda, and John to Oceana the next day. We got a tour, similar to our Norfolk tour before the carrier. We saw where they do engine acoustic testing, which was cool for those of us who are nerds.

"I <3 Jet Noise"

Then we hopped a flight back to LA and went about our merry way. By which I of course mean we drove down to San Diego for 5 days instead of going back to work.

Haiku-a-Day Challenge: Week 6

Publishers are currently competing for my year of haikus.

Caturday 8/13/2011
Matt's big wedding day
Pocket watches everywhere
Great time seeing peeps

Sunday 8/14/2011
Wretched hangover
Made it to breakfast this time
But ugh: flight delays

Monday 8/15/2011
Bottled all the beers
Smells so fucking pumpkiny
Named it Pumpxplosion

Tuesday 8/16/2011
Doing my thesis
But then watched Jurassic Park
My night turned out fine

Wednesday 8/17/2011
Changed my razor blade
First time in almost two years
Holy fucking shit!

Thursday 8/18/2011
Boatonian Cruise
GE social events rule
Quite a bit of alcs

Friday 8/19/2011
Adviser meeting
Then heading to Maine tonight
Hardcore star gazing

Haiku-a-Day Challenge: Week 5

I'm trying to think why I originally started this haiku-a-day challenge for myself? Where did that even come from?

Caturday 8/6/2011
Fantastic pub crawl
Played Connect Four at a bar
Got Iced by strangers

Sunday 8/7/2011
Mud sliding failure
And brewed a shitload of beer
Baby's first beer batch

Monday 8/8/2011
Huh? Symposium?
I have to present in one
What does that word mean?

Tuesday 8/9/2011
Dodgeball tournament
Caught some rockets, not enough
Happy birthday Meesh

Wednesday 8/10/2011
All-nighter last night
Symposium work: not cool
Work from home today

Thursday 8/11/2011
Mini triathlon?
Not if you forget your bike
Try again next time

Friday 8/12/2011
Flight to Virginia
Bachelor party car bombs
and midnight swimming

I lived on an Aircraft Carrier for a week

Week of Nov. 1, 2009

USS Harry Truman

(If you like seeing things that are awesome, this is the link for you)

Getting to stay aboard an aircraft carrier for a week was probably one of the coolest experiences of my life. I'm not going to go into super detail here, because the government might punch me in the stomach with "laws," but I'll talk a little bit about what it's like for a civilian roaming around an aircraft carrier, where my only responsibility was to learn how mechanics and pilots deal with jet engine issues. Not a bad deal.

It's bigger in real life

Upon arriving at the airport in Virginia, Rich (another buddy we work with who was on assignment at Norfolk) picked us up in his new Dodge Challenger (he had been talking about buying it for literally over a year until eventually I said "shut up, just buy the fucking thing") and drove us to his, Amanda's, and John's rented house at Virginia Beach. They are all on assignment in the same program we are either at Norfolk or Oceana. On the ride back I was a bit nauseous from the flight and still fairly hungover from Halloween, but luckily I made it outside the new and pristine vehicle when I dropped a barf. Rich would have KILLED me if I had voms'd in his brand new dream-car.
We spent the next day preparing for our stay on the boat: this mostly means that I bought motion sickness medication. We boarded without a hitch, found our quarters, and were underway before we knew it. Hogan and I had the hookup: we were guests of the pilot training group in the flight squadron we were working with back in CA. This means we were treated as officers. We got to eat in the officers dining room (way nicer and about a 45-minute shorter line for food), got to walk around and talk to the training pilots (the squadron we were with was doing a training session for new-ish pilots - they were taking off and landing on the carrier at night for the first time. Believe me, I tried doing that in a flight simulator a few times back at the base: it is FUCKING HARD AS FUCK. I think the only time I came close to landing resulted in my flying into the back of the carrier and exploding.), and finally, it meant that we had our own room (bunk bed, closet space, a SINK! Awesome).

Taking a tour of the flight deck before we're underway. I'm sorry, is this not awesome enough for you? Well fighter jets will be landing on it soon enough, just you wait.

Rich et. al. weren't so lucky. They were guests of the mechanic group of their respective squadron, so they were treated more like enlisted guys: had to eat at the main cafeteria (the line zig-zags up 5 or 6 decks) and had to bunk in the main enlisted area (3-person bunk bed in a room with 50 people, all you had was a single small cubbie). Not so ideal.
We took a tour of the ship with some of the powerplant maintenance guys. It is FUCKING ENORMOUS and extremely easy to get lost. There are all kinds of random corridors and ladders everywhere and sometimes you have to go up or down a few decks to continue moving to the bow or stern of the ship. It took me pretty much the entire week before I was comfortable in locating the nearest bathroom.

Getting lost on our way to our quarters, which was located right beneath the catapult. So whenever a jet was launched at night, we heard "ziiiiiiip BANG." And our room is made of metal so everything is amplified. THERE HAVE BEEN EASIER THINGS TO SLEEP THROUGH.

We spent most of our time wandering around to different parts of the ship and watching F18's takeoff or land. It was... truly epic.

I got paid to watch this happen over and over. Sometimes the world is pretty great.

Whenever we were on the flight deck or in the Crow's Nest (higher deck to watch jets land from above) we had to wear "float coats." In case you were somehow knocked off the ship, these would automatically inflate, mark the spot where you landed, and provide a signal to the rescue helicopter sent out to find you. In reality, if you fell off and didn't break your neck/head from the 60 foot drop, it would take the helicopter a while to get up, locate you, and rescue you, and you would most likely die of hypothermia by the time you were out of the water. If you fell off at night there was very little chance of survival. So the float coats were kind of like "maaaaaybe this will help, but you'll probably die."

Pulling. It. Off.

Luckily seasickness wasn't really an issue since the ship was so effing big. For the first few days, it was an... odd adjustment. My center of gravity was all screwy. I didn't feel nauseous, but definitely a bit weird. But after a bit that went away.
One of my favorite places on the ship was at the back of the ship. You had a great view of the jets as they landed. We were LITERALLY directly under them.

We probably weren't supposed to be back there. Shhhh...

Aww man, that fighter jet totally ruined a perfectly good picture of the Sun

Another cool thing about the back of the boat is that this is where they do engine testing, which is RELEVANT TO MY CONCERNS. However, they can't do engine tests when they are running training exercises, because it could be dangerous/distract the pilot/whatever lame excuse. And they DEFINITELY can't run at night while pilots are training, because it would seriously destroy their chances of not smashing into the ocean. So they had to run the engine tests waaaaaaay late at night after training was over. Which means we had to get up at like 3am to go watch it. But it was totally worth it. I might be slightly more deaf as a result, but holy crap, so awesome.

This is probably on my "Top 5 Coolest Things I've Done at 3am" list

I like to think this made the ship a little bit faster...

We also periodically would go up to the Crow's Nest to watch landings.

Yeah... we started running out of normal poses...

Let's see what else... OH we talked to some of the experienced pilots, who then invited out to the Landing Signal Officer (LSO) deck for a training run. This is where all the experienced pilots "grade" the landings during training exercises. Basically, we got to stand right next to the F18's as they landed. Fucking sweet.

It is almost two years later. This picture is STILL blowing my mind.

Yeah, that's how close we were. I'm glad the picture is waist-up, because it's possible that I crapped my pants from sheer intensity.

One of the funny parts about standing on the LSO deck is that F18's are being moved around the entire time we're there to make more room, move up for takeoff, whatever. One of the maneuvers wasn't so graceful... and resulted in all of us getting blasted in the face with jet exhaust: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AocstJPHXzo
At this point were were all like "ok, we've seen a fair amount of landings," so the powerplants guys we were with were all like "WELL THEN LET'S GO SEE SOME TAKEOFFS!" "ok."
These jets get catapulted off the deck so fast that they really don't have an option: they WILL be airborne. Just hope to god your engines don't immediately shut down... oh wait that's my job. But we got an opportunity to give the final signal for launch, which was friggn awesome.

I'm the one on the right! I MADE THIS PLANE FLY.

Bye!

Stuff happened at night too!

We got to see some more practice landings on the LSO deck at night, which is really intense. All you can see is a set of lights getting progressively closer, and you just hope to god they don't smash into you. Most of the pilots did alright, but there were a few close calls where they were literally about to crash into us, forcing the LSO officers to be like "uh, you're going to have to try again, because I don't want to die in a fireball explosion... yet." And the pictures came out fairly shitty because we can't use flash photography at night. That will get you shot. They are EXTREMELY against that kind of thing, because honestly it will ruin a pilot's day.
Over the course of the week we saw some cool places, like the little window on the deck where the catapult controllers sit, the missile/bomb room, and the deck above the Crow's Nest. Here we were able to watch the FOD walkdown at the end of the day. This is when a bunch of guys walk down the entire flight deck looking for tiny scraps of debris that could potentially fuck up the engine with "foreign object damage."

Don't even TRY to tell me this isn't awesome. Because it is. That is not an opinion; it is fact.

There was some mix-up on when we were getting off the ship. We had a flight back to the west coast set, so we clearly had to be back at Virginia Beach by then, but the COD (the plane that transports people back to... land) trips were filling up and we weren't scheduled for one yet. Hogan and I were lucky enough to get scheduled for the last one of the day, but Rich et. al., who we were staying with, didn't get off until the next morning. But everything worked out; we got a hotel for the night, drank some Yuengling, and then met up with everybody the next morning.
The COD itself was a pretty interesting experience. We sat the opposite way as the plane was going, so launching off the carrier was almost like a roller coaster. It was loud an uncomfortable, but not a bad ride.

Oh I'm smiling? This picture must be BEFORE they turned the engines on. I think I regained my hearing sometime the next week.

So that was my aircraft carrier experience, pretty much the coolest thing ever. I definitely would NOT want to live on one for 8 months like some of the Navy guys do. That would be excruciating. A week was good. Oh what the hell, one more picture.

Lookin for pirates