Wow...I was looking over my sister's blog: www.wanderinglili.blogspot.com and I saw the link to my own blog on her side bar, which informed me that I had not written on my blog for over 2 months. I do apologize to the people who might happen to read this and will try harder in the next 7 weeks to establish myself in the blogging community through advertising my blog on my facebook and myspace accounts and by telling my close friends to read, as well.

Now you might be wondering, "Why 7 weeks, Suze? That's an odd number." And yes, it's true, it might be an odd number for a countdown for you, but to me, it's probably one of the biggest decisions of my life.

It is exactly 7 weeks from today that I will be shipping off to Basic Training with the Army as part of the Army Officer Candidacy Program.





I am an applicant for the Medical Services Officer Corp, and am commited to this endeavor...quite literally...100%. My contract is signed and technically, you could call me Specialist Endsley, as that will be my rank when I enter into Basic Training as an E-4.

So, I am pledging today, that I am going to write this blog as an everyday(and some flashbacks of what this summer has been all about for me) chronicle of the events that are taking place leading up until the day I leave for training. Somedays might be more interesting than others, but I am excited about sharing this opportunity with everyone out there. I know that my sister will be ecstatic as well! But this will also be a chance for me to record what I'm doing to keep in shape and what all I find as I'm literally cleaning out my closets to get rid of everything. It ought to be interesting what all I find that I've forgotten about in boxes and on high up shelving!

I will also ask my sister again how to put up one of those countdown things on my blog for my shipping date!

Love to all!

Til Next Time,

Suze

This is important. I talked with my brother yesterday, who is serving with the USMC in Iraq right now, and he told me about an issue they are facing over there. He said that we need to be calling or writing our congressmen to let them know about a shortage in 9mm ammunition in Iraq. He said that it is very important that they have this ammo over there and because of politics, they are not getting what they need. He said that he was not being affected by this shortage, but many of his brothers are. Please call your politicians and voice concern over this matter. Thanks!

Til Next Time,
Suze

This is taken from my experience at the Tampa Zoo...oh and I have a great new blog in the works. *Spoiler* It's about the wonderfulness of technology as it pertains to dvds...




Til Next Time,
Suze

Oh My Goodness Gracious!!! I had such a great time in Tampa this past weekend. My friend/roommate/coworker wanted to travel to Tampa to meet up with one of her best buddies, so she asked if I wanted to come along for a fun road trip. I asked, "What kind of fun things would we be doing?" She said..."Let's go to the zoo and act like we're 7 years old again." This sounded like a great idea to me, so I agreed. This are the pics of me agreeing...
This is the pic of her calling her best buddy to tell him that we're coming!!!We picked up a straggler from work who decided at the last minute she wanted to join in the festivities, so the three of us set out at 7AM on Saturday to make the 4 hour drive to Tampa. Below is the pic of us with the straggler...

Now here's where the crazy part comes in. I work at the blood center from 10PM-2AM on a good day, sometimes later if need be. But on the occasion that my friend/roommate/coworker and I decide that we want to make crazy road trips for the weekend, I will stay with her until she gets off work at a mere 6AM...just cause it's a lot easier sometimes to stay awake than to fall asleep for only 3 1/2 hours and feel awful when I wake up. This is how the night shift will warp your sense of judgment! Below is the full onset of sleep deprivation...

And so the fun begins...now we have two girls who are wide awake at 7AM to pick up the other member of our Tampa extravaganza, but she works the shift before us so she went back home to sleep, but got all the fore-mentioned symptoms of only sleeping for a few hours. So we were all packed up with everyone in the car jamming out to Justin Timberlake on I-10 to I-65. But after the first few jamming sessions, the straggler fell asleep...BOO!!! Needless to say it was absolutely crazy driving down the interstate sleep deprived but trying to keep my friend/roommate/coworker wide awake and myself wide awake with the wonderful effects of the B-12, B-6, Folic Acid, and Caffeine combination that comes from the 5 Hour Energy Shot. If you haven't tried it, please do...but do so responsibly due to the immense amount of vitamins that this drink contains. We wouldn't want anyone getting a vitamin toxicity. Yes that can really happen, and it's bad, bad, bad for you. This is why on the bottle it says that you should not drink more than 2 in 24 hours. But really, the drink gives you unquestionable energy and no crash. It's like a redbull without that yucky flavor. And since you're only drinking 2 ounces, you don't have to make stops to go to the bathroom that you would get with drinking 12 cups of coffee. So the kidneys are saying "thank you, 5 Hour."

So once we arrive in Tampa, our other team member decides to wake up from her nap in the backseat of the car and joins us for lunch at Subway, then off to the zoo. Mind you...no sleep...see below with the best buddy that we met.

So the zoo was incredible!!! We were there from about 12 noon until 4:30pm, Steadily walking around and acting like 7 year olds, who just happened to be completely sleep deprived but having a great time. Here are some of my favorite pictures that I took while at the zoo:




That tiger is my fav!!!

So after the zoo, we went back to the hotel...showered...and then went to "The Cheesecake Factory" for dinner. While at dinner we met some of my friend/roommate/coworker's other friends that live in Tampa, and we sat and chatted and laughed. By the end of dinner, the plan was to go out to have a few drinks and listen to live music, but ummmm.....when we all got back into the car, the decision to sleep was overpowering. However, we got lost on the way back to the hotel. So after laughing hysterically the whole way, none of us were really sleepy anymore...just ridiculously tired and delirious. So we got on the computer to laugh at crazy YouTube videos, and watch movies on tv until we all --one by one-- passed out from total exhaustion. All in all, to give you some perspective, I slept for five hours on Thursday night, then didn't sleep again until 2AM Sunday morning. What a whirlwind roadtrip, but it was definitely worth it! We had so much fun and memorable moments!

Til Next Time,
Suze