Boxing Week

Alright, I'm home and I've fallen behind on this. I know I have tens of... well tens of tens of readers haha that are hanging on to my every word and have been left in the dark. For that I'm sorry. The good thing is that since days have passed I will speed up with the details haha.

First off I've adjusted to Ontario time with ease considering it's a twelve hour time difference. I'm back to the swing of western life with no cash haha. Wake up, pop tarts and a raisin bagel with strawberry cream cheese, get ready to start my day. I was allowed to use Mitchell's Playstation 3 to catch up on two months of missing Fallout: New Vegas haha. At first I spent all my free time playing but realized I have other things I need to do!

Christmas was good and as I didn't ask for a lot I got what I wanted haha. Honestly I was just happy to be home, but as my family doesn't know what exactly to get me I make a Christmas list with as many things I can think of that I could use. It takes the guess work and some fun out of the gift exchange but it guarantees no disappointment. The bad thing is that I'm somewhat disappointed when someone reads my list and decides not to get anything I mentioned. Call me a jerk but if you know me you know what I like and you don't need the list, but if you don't know me that well, or you're not sure what I'd like, the list is a backup.

Luckily I got everything I wanted. I got Restrepo on DVD which is the story of Sebastien Junger, a reporter embedded for months with 2d Platoon, Bravo Company, 2d Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. I re-enact the exact same unit, but 1st Platoon, which is forty different people than 2d Platoon. The story focuses on the death of Juan Restrepo who was their Platoon medic, the building of a base which was the tip of the spear and named after him. Building the base changed the dynamics of the valley and I'm sure saved lives of the US troops. It follows a few missions until the end of the 173rd's tour. Junger wrote a book called "War" and his notes went in the book, but the combat footage he recorded is in the DVD, so it's a great companion to the book. What I can't get over is the fire fights. Imagine a tiny base that holds fifteen troops and almost half of of them have light and medium belt fed machine guns, so that's a hell of a lot of rounds. When in contact they literally fire tens of thousands of rounds for every enemy round fired in their direction. So many rounds have been fired that the troops walk kicking brass everywhere and the fighting so fast and intense troops fly out of tents wearing boxers and crocs to respond to enemy action. As you can tell I like this movie :)

I got a chapter's gift card which will pay for 173rd Airborne books so I can absorb more knowledge and become more powerful then you will ever know! Alright I made that last part up, but it's so I can learn more and thus reflect and educate more. I also got $100 and candy which is always great, same with the money haha.

Dinner was standard but good with turkey, stuffing, cranberries and all the other normal stuff. My aunt dropped by and that was the closest time our family dinner was ruined. It wasn't ruined but uncomfortable. My aunt has been through a lot, from the death of my grandpa, to accidentally burning their house down, a battle with osteoporosis, depression and bi-polar. My uncle was transferred from London to St. Thomas and so my aunt went with him leaving everything she knew behind. On top of it her kids who are now grown up have disowned her as she has a lot of issues and the latest upset was my uncle left my aunt and is getting a divorce leaving her disabled, unable to work at sixty and hundreds of dollars worth of medication to pay for. All this just before Christmas.

She called at 4pm and my mom doesn't want to turn her sister away so gave her the green light to come over. I honestly dislike my aunt, hate would be too much, but we were close as a family, moved in to town near her and for seven years didn't hear a word from her so sadly overtime the things that brought us together have faded. I hid from her as much as I could as she's a handful to handle one on one. I come up and she hounds me for information. I'm carrying stuff out for dinner and shes following me everywhere I walk. She talks a mile in a minute and during dinner talked at least forty-five minutes and my family couldn't get a word in, just give the occasional "yea", "wow" or "okay". She talked how horrible my uncle is, how she's working for rich people, she has a book being published and honestly I took it all as a grain of salt as it was mostly psycho-babble. After dinner my mom gave her some money and my aunt quickly left to go back to St. Thomas, not to spend anymore time with us. The rest of the night was spent trying to sort things out from dinner but overall the day was good.

Boxing Day I hid from the malls, 27th I picked up some Vietnam books on sale, 28th was my Dad's birthday and we ordered Chinese for dinner, the 29th I finally went to the gym! It was good to get back but I lost muscle mass and replaced it with fat haha, which is the exact opposite of what my goal is haha. It'll take a few weeks to get back in shape and I pulled the muscle in my knee so now that I'm home I'll see a doctor as now I'm afraid it might not heal properly and won't cost me $80 to be seen, thank you Canadian Government!

Today I hung out with Brit and as she's new to London I showed her around town, how our bus system works and just chilled on the couch which was nice.

As of tomorrow all I'm doing is booking a doctor's appointment and taking things easy.

Now that I'm home I think I'll change the tone and topic of my blog to stuff I have to get off my chest and off my mind or anything actually news worthy in my life, which now that I'm home isn't all that much compared to touring a far off land 14,000km away!