Kelly Smith Weblog Aficionado: Just a guy vs. Life

....38 Today is my 38th Birthday. Feels good to be alive doing the things I love to do. When I was five years old I made up my mind in regard to what I wanted to do. I wanted to be just like my father. Life is up, life is down...sometimes things are easy, sometimes things are hard. But right now, I love my life.

Kanye West is imploding.... I don 't think that Kanye realizes that there is a certain level of saturation that the public is willing to accept in regard to "Rock Star" behavior. I mean dude ought to know if Bobby Knight can be fired from IU, he could see a big cut into his record sales. Regardless of whether or not you agree with his sentiment, that was horrible. He took what Taylor had already described as "unbelievable" since she is a country music singer and ruined it. That was her first one and this is what she will always remember. He ought to have to apologize to her.

Were the Iranian elections rigged? http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1904645_1904644,00.html?cnn=yes

Happy 234st Birthday to the United States Army! Happy Birthday to the greatest military fighting force that the world has ever known. The same force my dad gave 30 years to in active service, as well as 18 years more as a civilian worker. I am enjoying myself on this beautiful Sunday, and I don't have to work on Monday which makes it even better.

Gotta get (back) in shape..... Damn..........what the hell happened? I left Iraq at 175 pounds of lean, mean, fighting machine. Now I am 205 pounds of chubby, tame, couch potato....I gotta get cracking. Check out the tracker that I am using from http://medhelp.org. Wish me luck!

The "N" Moments of the Lost Boys..... Unfortunately there is a population of young males in the United States who boast a significant few who seem to have no care about themselves, their race, their future, or even what discredit and hardship their misdeeds bring upon others. Years ago I used to scoff at the notion that rap music, video games, or racy movies had anything to do at all with influencing the behavior of individual people. To a large extent I still feel that way, however, I do acknowledge that people of weak mind, spirit, and moral makeup attempt to "emulate" what they see, because somehow many of these negative behaviors are perceived. The medial seems to reinforce the notion that somehow because you are a black mail, you have had a rough life and grew up in "hell". That may be true for some, but I think there is a large majority that step into that position as an actor steps into a role. There are few occassions when a person is so poor that ...

Al Furat, Muhalla 893, Baghdad Province, March 13th, 2007....Sniper....[PART 1] On March 13th, 2007 the day seemed like every other day in Iraq.....hot and dreary. The winter was over, the rains had stopped, and the temperature was climbing back toward the unforgiving and miserable level that it had been when we first arrived. I was the 1st Platoon Leader of Alpha Company 1-149th IN. My platoon was in charge of patrolling Al Furat, Al Maksasib, a tiny sliver of Al Jihad, the operating space of AO Mutt, and a daily route clearance on stretches of Route Yankee and MSR Tampa. (This intersection of both places was once called the most dangerous intersection in the world because of all of the IED emplacement.) In addition to this, a small contingent of my platoon was tasked with operating ECP 7 which was the entry point for military convoys onto Victory Base Complex. What was unusual about this day was the fact that I was on the FOB in a Company meeting and my platoon Sergeant was out on pa...

Japan Trip I am nearing the end of a training rotation in Sapporo Japan. Over the course of this two weeks in the field, the weather has gone from single digit to fifty degrees. From clear skies to hard rain, from blowing snow, to sleet. I am glad that I came on this mission, however, I am glad to be going back home. I am only going to have a couple of days before I have to report back to work, and I am probably going to try and sleep the entire time. I have been eating MRE's a few times a day, and I am SO ready for a nice ribeye steak, baked potato, and a glass of bourbon. In the picture above, we were trying to reinforce tent stakes because the blowing wind and heavy snow was making the tents collapse. This is a picture of me with two Japanes scouts before we did a recon of one of the objectives. The Japanese Infantry is pretty hardcore. The snow in a lot of places is so deep that the patrols have to move with skis or snowshoes. As you can see in this photo, knowing how to ski is...

Reinvention...... I am unhappy. re-in-vent–verb (used with object) to invent again or anew, esp. without knowing that the invention already exists. I have thinking lately that I need to reinvent myself. I have lost a lot of the drive and motivation that I used to have to do a lot of things. I feel a lot of facets of my life that are oh-so-important, almost feel as if they are becoming stagnant. The infrequent number of times that I have upated this blog in the last two years is a testament to that. Perhaps I don't need to reinvent myself, I suppose that perhaps I ought to re discover myself. I haven't been ME for quite some time I fear. It didn't start on my last deployment, it started somewhere else, I think it was the fact that I felt I needed to be somewhere at a certain time due to my age/experience/status/rank. I think that the key to my unhappiness has been the persistent quest to BE HAPPY. I have all of the things that I need to be happy, and perhaps that is enough....

Happy New Year! This is the first day of 2009, I am hoping that this will be a better year for me than 2008. 2008 was no failure by any stretch of the imagination, but 2008 was fraught with issues that slowed me down. I haven't blogged much lately because of it, but that is one of my New Year promises to myself. Resolutions usually end up coming and going, but I am going to promise myself that I will do the following.... Start writing again. Get back into the physical condition I was in on deployment. Save more money.