Accused burglar shot by relative

Fort Benning soldier arrested in slaying

Two slayings push total to 27

Yeah, those are just a few of our recent headlines. Merry fucking Christmas, right? Well, the 27 total slayings for 2008 was before the burglar was shot by a relative. It's actually at 28 now, though who knows what happened last night that hasn't surfaced yet. We've had five murders in a week. It's crazy. I guess I'm getting used to it, although I got pretty rattled by the Wednesday murder that occurred less than a mile from our house (we heard the sirens heading to the scene while we were walking the dog that evening). It didn't happen in our neighborhood, but you could hear it down the main road. I think this subdivision is pretty safe, actually, and I'm pretty sure a couple of soldiers are moving in across the street - I think I saw them signing the lease yesterday in the driveway with the homeowner. There are several other soldiers in the neighborhood, which makes me feel better, though with the above headline, maybe it shouldn't. Oh well. Our ADT system is getting turned on tomorrow, and we bought the HK USP 45 last night. Freaking costing us an arm and a leg for home security, but what can you do?

I'll tell you what else is costing an arm and a leg - Christmas. Holy crap. Trying to be "adults" and buy for everyone has killed us, and then of course mailing everything. We spend at least $75 in shipping on everything. And then having our anniversary right after Christmas, geeeeeeez. We almost decided not to do anything. But what the fuck? We figured we gotta do something for us - celebrate us. Joe's got something planned, but I don't know what. I guess I'd be more excited if I wasn't completely stressed about money. Oh well. Time to get a job. Then I can work full time and do everything here and take care of the dog. I can't wait!

Even though I'm pretty well ready for Christmas to be over, I am excited to see if people like what we got them. I'm also excited for Joe to be home for a few days. Further, I'm very excited for Cody and Carla to come visit. That's pretty much the highlight of the season! Having guests coming is also helping Joe and I get the house more settled. We're tearing off the wallpaper in the guest bathroom (we got permission), so we're preparing that to paint. I've also started working on refinishing another old dresser to go in their guest room. Woohoo.

That's pretty much the scoop. I missed out on writing about some cool stuff. One thing in particular was going to a Ranger School graduation. I didn't know anyone graduating, but I tagged along with some friends anyway just to check it out. It was AMAZING. There was a "Rangers In Action" segment which showed demonstrations in repelling, zip-lining (or whatever they call that in the military), hand-to-hand combat, fast-roping down and an execution of an LRRP extraction from a blackhawk (yes, dude, a blackhawk flew in), and of course several explosives. The demonstration portion ended with a guy zip-lining down into victory pond, and immediately after he hit the water, a line of explosives went off the beside him. It was really amazing. Sounds cheesy, but it made me feel really proud to be an American. And as they say, RANGERS LEAD THE WAY. ALL THE WAY.