Boring Life Update

This is a serious update on my life for those who care.

I'm in Pensacola, FL with my newly married wife (just celebrated our 1 month), Katie. We live on the east side of the city, which is about 25 minutes from NAS Pensacola and about 35 minutes from Milton, in a 2 story towhouse. The first half of my training, which involves BOLTC, IFS, and API, is at NAS Pensacola, whereas the second half of my training, called "Primary," is at Milton. So this location was great. We're about 15 minutes from Pensacola Beach, within walking distance of a beach (on one of the large water inlets), right near the nice mall, and about 3 miles from Katie's cosmetology school. Our townhouse is more like a 2 story apartment... I might get some pictures up later. It was really an answer to prayer and has been a wonderful blessing. The location is great, it's pretty big (bigger than a lot of apartments we looked at at least), and the price was perfect. Everything here is a lot more expensive than you'd think.

Katie is my housewife. I'm king of the house, by the way. That's what I call myself. Katie just calls me "the boss," but I let it slide. She does a fantastic job cooking and cleaning and everything a woman should do. She is absolutely the best at it too! It's so wonderful to come home to a clean house with food made and a beautiful woman greeting me at the door. She cleans up after we eat while I watch TV or hang up pictures or something. Our marriage is really politically incorrect, which I love. I recommend marriage. I feel like something I was missing has been filled. She starts up her school at the end of August, by the way. Unfortunately, she'll be leaving me for a week to be in a wedding in Indiana, then see our new nephew in Minnesota. Her oldest sister, Sara, just had a baby. He name is Austin William Berg. It's a good name.

Currently, I'm finishing up BOLTC, which stands for Basic Officer Leadership Training Continuum. Basically, it's a one week course on how to be an officer... cause apparently my 5 years of ROTC didn't teach me that somehow. Anyway, there's pretty much zero work, and it's not all bad, but is kind of pointless.

Last week I had to have a physical, do a physical readiness test (pushups, situps, and run), and do some swimming. Because it took them a week to do the blood work, I had to go back yesterday to finish up my physical. A lot of people are kicked out or held back as a result of the physical, but I passed! We were praying for that so ahumdelelah (Erik, you can correct my spelling).

My next phase is IFS, which I think is Introductory Flight Sylabus, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it consists of flying with a civilian instructor to the point where I can do a cross country. That will take 1-2 months, then I can start API, or Aviation Pre-Indoctrination. It's a 6 week ground school consisting of water survival training, some first hand physiology stuff (i.e., pressure chamber), and a bunch of class work.

I should hopefully be done with all of this by Thanksgiving - maybe earlier. Then I start really flying in Primary up in Milton. That's about 6 months (plus or minus a couple) and is where my performance REALLY matters. We select our airframe at the end of Primary. The selection depends mostly on availability and class rank. At that point we go to Advanced training. But since I don't know what I'll be flying, I don't know where I'll go for that. We might have to move at that point. We'll stay in Pensacola if I fly helos.

Other than that, life is good. We're involved in the Navigators ministry here. The couple that runs it has kind of become our surrogate parents. We have a weekly couples bible study as well. We've tried a few churches and there's one we kind of like, but I think we might try a couple more before we stick with one.

Feel free to stay in touch. Katie's new email address is katherinejhill@gmail.com. Our mailing address is:

3331 Summit Blvd #22
Pensacola, FL 32503

If you want to pray, pray that both Katie and I can each develop close relationships with at least one strong Christian woman and man (respectively) here.

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So if you didn't want this post to be so boring, and somehow read this far, here are some options to do while re-reading it:

1. If you wanted it to be funny, just add "in bed" after each sentence. This generally produces humor to otherwise normal comments.

2. If you wanted it to be political, just add "liberals suck and are pussies and gay and pretty much just really stupid with really stupid ideas and smelly hair and are homosexuals" to the end of each sentence. That will make it political.