True...started first of the year. I'll just buy less tickets, not that I buy many to begin with.

Of course, you've got better chances of being hit by lightning than you do hitting the powerball anyway.

I still buy a ticket or two now and then, just for kicks.

Hello Todd. How's life?

Doing pretty good, at the moment. How bout yourself?

Survived the first week without getting dropped and considering it all I am doing fine.

Well, you keep yourself in good shape and I know you've been running a lot, so I figure you'll do fine.

Having had extremely rare assignments since I have been in, I am learning a lot of stuff I have been separated from. The main reason for this is that my duty stations have been rare independent ones where I am all alone away from Marines. But, it is all coming back to me quickly.

We lost 10 percent of the class today for various failures and they all were about 10 years younger than me. Seems like they would have trained a little harder before coming here.

You'd think they would have been prepared, that's true.

I would be lying if I said my body wasn't sore. The instructors have creative ways to make in the strongest hurt.

It's a great experience though. My platoon has a great mix of MOS's (jobs). We have infantry, air wing, a tank commander and even some admin guys. We even have one of the 23 Marines who train our dogs, both bomb sniffing and attack.

There were three here that had bellies. I thought they were the type you see in the Corps that had the freaky bodies that looked out of shape, but weren't. I was wrong and they are now making that trip home to stand before the man.

I should feel bad for them, as they will be getting the rears chewed off, but they did it to themselves.