It's been a very long time since last I wrote, and I could apologize and say I promise to write more regularly...
But I know me, and the odds are long.  I mean to be fairly regular but once you stop writing it gets pretty easy to keep letting it go, and before you know it months have passed.

So I’m going to hit some highlights of what’s been happening since last I wrote and promise to TRY to write more regularly again in the future.

I’m still officially in the Navy until the end of next month but I have started my terminal leave. (It’s not like it sounds… I’ve not developed some incurable disease and only have a couple of months to live.)  It means that I am using all the vacation time I’ve built up to take time off to find a job while my Navy career comes to it’s end.

It’s very hard to leave the Navy for me. It’s the only job I’ve had since I was seventeen, and learning not to speak in militarease is proving difficult.

So I’ve been to Canada and done a grunch of touristy stuff in Toronto, CN Tower, Medieval Times, Canada Day, Ontario Place, Jungle cat world.  A good time was had by all (even if our knight was taken out in the last fight).

Denise received her Associates degree.

I’ve received my Associates degree.

Denise has enrolled, and withdrawn from Villanova to enroll in Penn State.

I’m still in Excelsior College.

Denise, Vaughan and I have all had birthdays.

We have a new Kitten… his name is Lizard.  Vaughan on his birthday has become the proud owner of two tadpoles he is waiting to grow legs and turn into leopard frogs. (at which time I get to change convert the present tank over into a half land / half water tank.)

I found a job! So it looks like I am on my way to finally figuring out what I’m growing up to be. I am the newest admissions officer for Strayer University’s King of Prussia Campus.  I’ve been there two weeks and I’ve almost broken the habit of referring to myself as Petty Officer Mauer when answering the phone. I actually have a big note posted under my phone reminding me NOT to say Petty Officer!  The hours are hard to get used to. I’m used to going to work early and getting out early. Now I go work later in the morning and three days a week get off at 6 two at 7. This leaves me getting home at 6:30 and 7:30 (without traffic) and I find I HATE it. I hate it because I only have an hour till Vaughan is supposed to be getting a bath and heading off to bed three days a week and 2 days I’m getting home just in time to start the bedtime rituals.  I hate it. Half the money and crappy hours… welcome to the real world. Now it’s not all bad, I’m not working an extra shift every week “just because”, and I know what my schedule will be a month in advance… at least. That’s nice. Strayer is a good company to work for, and I’m settling in, but it’s an adjustment to be sure.

I miss flying already.

My back pain moved into my tailbone and hips. I’ve not been able to train in months… since I last wrote.  With the pay cut and the hours I have to suspend my training. So until I get a better handle on my new job, and the retardedly constant pain in my hips subsides, and I get used to this new “no family” friendly schedule I will be training on my own.  I hate that too. The way I see it, it will probably be about a year before I’ll be able to think about going back to the school.

So that is the bare bones of what has happened. There were many stories to be told.. like the cleaning and set up of the pool, and the bullfrog that had made our pool his home.  The one where the heat wave had the water in the pool, without the help of the thermal cover, reached over 90 degrees.  The birthday party was crashed by a mother of one of Vaughan’s friends so that she could spend the afternoon in the pool.  The day we went to Sesame Place and the storm chased us all away… and after having only spent five hours in the park, riding the roller coaster twice, and the water slides 2 or three times each…. We have to go back… we missed a third of the water rides.  Swimming underwater for the first time. Alex the pirate car finally roadworthy again. The second interview conducted by cell phone and email cause I was in Canada. The extra week and half in Canada because they are retarded about passports and don’t even follow their own paperwork. (Nice to know all government agencies no matter what country are basically the same.) Washington’s crossing of the Delaware. Joining the new millennium and getting not just a cell phone, but a flip cell phone!!!

So I look forward to trying to write regularly again, and becoming just plain ole Joe citizen.

The weekend before last we visited the City Tavern and Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia… which if you’ve visited this blog recently you already knew.  It was a fun and interesting trip. My wife Denise is was the instigator for visiting Eastern State, as she had read about it earlier as well as having seen it featured on some haunted places investigative show on discovery channel (or history channel or some such.) some time ago. 

I really enjoyed my day exploring Philadelphia’s past. In fact I’ve been reading up on the history of the Penitentiary since we’ve taken the tour.   There is a brass/bronze plaque in the Center of the prison commemorating the “EVERLASTING HONOR OF THOSE INMATES OF THE EASTERN STATE PENITENTIARY OF PENNSYLVANIA WHO SERVED IN THE ARMY AND NAVY DURING THE WORLD WAR”.  I am assuming it commemorates the First World War because if it were commemorating the second, it would have said WWII… 

That is however neither here nor there. I was bothered when I saw this plaque, and two weeks later I am still remembering and focusing on it. It has made a deeper impression on me than I at first realized.  I was and am bothered by this memorial because the men it honors are not listed on it by name, but rather by their Eastern State Penitentiary inmate number.

There are 121 men listed by number on the plaque 120 who served and 1 who gave the ultimate sacrifice. That man was B3686… Mr. B3686 who, I will grant you was a criminal at one time in his life, served his time and paid his debt to society, then went on to honorably serve that society in the military (as did those one hundred twenty other men listed), and who ultimately gave up his life in that service.  How do we honor him (and those hundred twenty others)?  We erect a bronze plaque that remembers them not as they were known in service to their country, by their names; but as they were known before. Before they paid their debt to their country, before they served as soldiers and sailors. We elected to remember them by their inmate number. 

We are in debt to those men, and in particular we are in debt to B3686, whoever that number is…

It bothers me because I too served this country, proudly, for the last twenty years, and those men helped to lay the foundations and traditions of our military that have stood me in good stead.  Have allowed me to serve our country, our society, and I would like to believe that all of us together, those soldiers and sailors in our past as well as my fellow Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen serving today are worthy of remembrance by our names, not as faceless anonymous numbers.

I am making it my quest to find out who those numbers are, and to somehow make their names known.  I think I have found a vehicle for the second part of that goal.  

Every year the Eastern State Penitentiary takes proposals for art exhibits to be displayed in the facility, and my artistic muse has been awakened. I am thinking that I would like to build a diorama of 120 GI Joe type action figures in period uniforms standing in formation at action figure B3686s funeral under Plexiglas.  However the 120 figures would have featureless faces and the one in the casket would have a mirror for a face, so that when you look down at his face he is you, this nameless soldier is all of us. Then on a brass plate on the front of the display I would like to list all of those men’s names.

There are two major things that I would need to do to complete this project. I need to research those inmate numbers in the state archives which would be time consuming but possible.  The second is that I would have to find or make all those WWI GI Joe uniforms, and I can not sew.  

 Anyone know where I can get a mix of 121 WWI GI Joe uniforms? =)

The plaque reads:

TO THE

EVERLASTING HONOR

OF THOSE INMATES OF

THE EASTERN STATE PENITENTIARY

OF PENNSYLVANIA

WHO SERVED IN

THE ARMY AND NAVY

DURING THE WORLD WAR

DIED FOR HIS COUNTRY

Remember them America. Honor them.  These nameless, faceless, numbers who served for you.

Honor – Courage – Commitment

It was tournament day in South Philly at the Amerikick Karate School.  I have never been to the South Philly School and it’s small. Not terribly small, but it felt smaller than Willow Grove did last summer when I attended my first tournament, and I thought that was small.  

Vaughan didn’t compete this time and I am a little embarrassed to say that this was a combination of his not practicing and my not wanting to get up early after working Saturday to make his competition times. 

I did compete in all three competitions, Forms, Weapons, and Sparring. I was really happy to see that we had a more adult competitors this time, five adults this time and three from Willow Grove! (Woo Hoo Willow Grove!) The only problem was that not one of us was the same belt. There was a Yellow, an Orange, a Blue (me), a Green, and a Brown. 

We all agreed to compete against each other for the forms and it went pretty much by belt, Brown = Gold, Green = Silver, Blue = Bronze, and Orange and Yellow fourth and fifth.

Only two of us competed in Weapons, myself and the Orange belt. I performed with the sword and she performed with Kamas.  I took Gold and she took the silver. 

Then it was time for sparing. Only three of us competed in sparing, the Yellow, myself, and the Green. We all took gold for our belt and then for fun we went against each other. I didn’t do as well as I would have liked, but it was fun and a learning experience. It’s the first time I’ve been caught in the side of the head with a ridge-hand, and I won’t forget the experience. All in all a good day. The advice of the Sensei’s from the other schools is that I need to slip my head more, and work on lunging with my kicks, though they all agreed that my handwork was really good.

That was encouraging because hand work is what I have been focusing on for the past few months. So now it’s time to work on moving (slipping) my head, and then my kicking. 

So I came home with two Gold medals, a Bronze, and the admiration of my young son. What more could a guy ask for? 

I’m already looking forward to the Willow Grove tournament in August.  I do wish however that the New Jersey school tournaments weren’t on the same days as the Pennsylvania school tournaments as I would like to go across the river for one or two tournaments and get to know more of the students in the Amerikick system. 

No photos this time. Sorry. I left the camera on the end table as I left this morning.  I promise to remember it for the August tournament.  I hope your Sunday was as good as mine… Next weekend I think maybe we need to hit a historical park… it’s been a while and there are so many nearby.

 
Good night Gracey.

I've been debating for two weeks (since I've been able to start training again) whether or not I am going to enter into the tournament at the South Philly School next Sunday afternoon.  I want too. I really really want to, and I'm feeling pretty good about my short 2 Kata. Soooo I'm thinking I am going to go. I am going to perform Short 2, and I want to perform with a weapon as well.  My propensity is to perform with Sword as it is the weapon I am most comfortable with and have a performance Kata for. But I've done this Kata twice before with VERY little tweaking, so I was thinking maybe performing Stick set 1 which Sensei Dave has been working on with me.  I like the IDEA of performing Stick set 1 but the reality is that I really enjoy the sword work much more.  I'm still debating...  My wrist and elbow are sore from practicing sword as I try to incorporate more flipping and twirling of the blade, which has little use in combat but certainly looks cool.  I did spare at the last tournament but after cardio class on Thursday I was a kinda sore... from the surgery sore... and this is inclining me toward non participation in sparing. 

*** I know it's late but I would like to congratulate Rick on his promotion to Blue belt earlier this month. Way to go Rick!!!

Saturday we took hired a kid to watch our kid and took a day trip into the city.  It was a good day. We drove into old city and had lunch at the City Tavern where I ate entirely too much but I do love the food (even if it is over our normal budget.) and the deserts.

If you are visiting Philadelphia you MUST visit the City Tavern.  For more info look here

http://www.citytavern.com/history.html

Then it was off to Eastern State Penitentiary where we spent the rest of our afternoon. Eastern State Penitentiary is the first Penitentiary in the world. It was super progressive for it’s time period in that it was not a prison meant just to lock up a criminal but to reform them, to make them penitent of their crimes, thus the name. It is this foreboding structure covering eleven acres surrounded by a half mile wall that is thirty to forty feet high (and ten feet under the earth). Eastern state originally built two miles from the city of Philadelphia was eventually surrounded by the neighborhoods of Fairmount so that now it’s this large gothic castle ruin standing incongruously in the midst of those row house homes and businesses. It was a benchmark facility and correction program copied all over the world.  While the architecture proved exemplar and is still copied today, the correction model found itself difficult to follow, and impossible to implement when met with the pressures found in ever increasingly overcrowded and understaffed facilities.  The merits of the isolationist tact taken by the Quaker founders of this system are still debated to this day.  Again if you are visiting Philadelphia or you live close by and you haven’t been this place is a MUST see. Unlike some other attractions this one is very reasonably priced, and there is free parking to be had on the street as well as a reasonably priced parking lot if you can’t find a street spot. Just remember children under seven aren’t allowed… and having been there I agree with that policy.

For more information and some very interesting reading look here.

http://www.easternstate.org/