Let's Ketchup! :)

I've been meaning to write this post for weeks. Yes, weeks. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It's kind of boring, not gonna lie.

Ok. So the last thing I left you with was my test and the days preceding it. 
I took the test on Friday August 5. The earliest I was supposed to receive my results was supposed to be a week from the following Monday. Well hot dog they arrived 4 days later on Tuesday.
I got a decent score, but not high enough to wait around for the boards to open up again. At this point, I was still in Chicago and decided that I'd enlist when I returned home.

The next weekend, my best best friend Megan came up. We had a Mafia Weekend! It was so rad! We watched Goodfellas and Donnie Brasco on Friday. Then went to a minor league baseball game that night. After the game we tried to watch The Godfather but fell asleep. I fell asleep anyway, I'm not sure if she did or not. Then Saturday we took a "gangster tour" of the city. Can you say "AH-MAZING!"? I can. It was soooo fun. Just incredible. If you're into that kind of thing, you can view the information on it here. I recommend it for sure. For lunch we went to Sprinkles. It's a cupcake place. Oh my lanta. I had the best cupcake I've ever eaten in my life. SO good. Check them out. Then on Saturday night we went to Tommy Guns. I kid you not when I say the level of fun I had here rivaled that of Disney World. Seriously. It was obviously a different kind of fun. But oh goodness. SO fun. Here's a picture! :) :)

He was our favorite. His voice was so beautiful. Oh goodness.  He was funny. Just go. Ok?

Then I took her to the airport Sunday morning and said goodbye. :(

There's MUCH more to this story, I'm giving you the abbreviated version, otherwise this post will be far too long.

Then I left Chicago shortly after.

Now I'm back home in good ol' TN.

This past Thursday I had a job interview to valet park downtown. WOOHOO. After having vehicle problems and arriving 7 minutes late to the group interview, I was still offered a job. Praise the Lord. Seriously. 

I had to get a drug test done and I'll know within a week if I'm hired for real or not.

After that, I went to the Navy Recruiting Station. WOOOOOHOOOO!!!! I told the [only] recruiter [there] that joining the Navy is what I want to do. I don't have any 2nd thoughts. So let's get this ball rolling. Unfortunately it took more words than that because we weren't on the same page for a while. I'm not sure what was so confusing but neither of us were understanding the other. 

He asked me if I had ever thought about nuclear engineering. I told him I didn't know what that was. He explained it to me...I still don't really know what it entails. Then another recruiter walked in and asked me the same thing. I said "Are you guys short on nuclear engineers or something?" the 2nd recruiter nodded his head and the 1st said "no, I'm just trying to get you more money" Apparently when you re-enlist, they give you an $80,000 signing bonus because they know you could leave the Navy and easily make 6 figures. This all sounds very appealing but I don't know that I'd even been good at it. 

So, pray for guidance in that area. I've still got a while before it comes time for me to be choosing a job. I don't want to give up on my flying dream. Not at all. But there seems to be security in nuclear engineering. Even the woman I dogsit for brought it up that evening. So..yea. Guidance and wisdom would be fabulous.

So the 1st recruiter (who isn't MY recruiter, because mine wasn't there, he just took my info for him) made me take a practice ASVAB test. 

I haven't taken a test that easy since high school. It was almost a joke. I got an 89 out of 99. I'm supposed to take the real ASVAB on Monday. My real recruiter was also supposed to call me today (well, yesterday now) and talk to me about it...and he didn't. I'll probably call down there on Monday morning to get the skinny.

So. I take the ASVAB. I meet with someone to get a job. I tell them when I want to leave for boot camp. I get physicals and stuff done. Then I leave. WOOHOO. 

I hope it's that easy anyway. Sheesh.

Tonight I went back to my high school for a football game. 

There's one man [over 25] on this planet who can make my bones turn to jell-o.

He's the head coach of the football team. 

I'll be grinning for at least a week. Count on it.

Now, you're officially caught up.
Stay tuned for more details on our Mafia Weekend. 
I just need to find the time and figure out the pictures I want to use. I also don't want to give TOO much away or there will be no sense in you doing the tour for yourself! :)

Navy Test [not] Results

I already posted this on facebook, so if you read it there, don't feel the need to read it again. If you weren't tagged on facebook, that means I told you over the phone or we're not friends :(. 

I thought this would be easier than posting a status and hoping everyone who is curious (or I who I just wanted to tell) would see it.

I'll preface this with a recap of the last 2 days so you can get a feel for the week I've had. Yesterday (Thursday) I woke up bawling my eyes out. I'd just had a dream that I failed my test by one point. Everything sort of went downhill from there. Nothing too major happened at work. I was supposed to leave at 1, then it got pushed back to 2 then 230. I left work at 230 so I could go home and get some last minute studying done for my test today (Friday). 

I wasn't even a mile from home when I was rearended...for the first time in my whole life. It was the strangest thing I've ever experienced. I really didn't know what had happened. I was sitting, waiting for the red light to turn green. It turned, I let my foot off the brake (I don't think I even hit the gas pedal) and all of the sudden I was being jerked around. I had a million thoughts racing through my mind. The most prominent were "I'm not driving a stick shift...why is this thing jumping around!?!" and "Oh! I don't want to have whiplash!" It didn't register in my head what had happened until I was [sort of] driving away and I looked in my rearview mirror. I saw the guy behind me and realized HE HIT ME! Then I had to hold myself together. I pulled over to the side of the road and started looking for my phone. It had been tossed around during the jostle and I couldn't find it. As I said I'd never been in an accident before, so I had no idea what to do. I just knew I needed to call someone. So I was on the verge of tears, my hands were shaking and I couldn't find my phone. Several people driving by stopped and asked if I was ok, if I needed to go to the hospital and whatnot. I told them that I was fine, nothing was broken. I found my phone and tried to call my uncle, to whom the truck belongs. I called every number I knew and couldn't get a hold of him. Finally I found a number for the bike shop in the truck and called there. He was very calm about the whole thing. And told me exactly what I needed to do.

The guy that hit me had OnStar so the police were notified immediately. We traded information and right when we finished the police arrived. He kept apologizing. He was very sorry. I felt bad for him.

He had to have been doing at the very least 20 mph..probably more than that. He completely mashed in the bumper of the truck I was driving, broke the tailight and damaged the door and bed of the truck. My aunt and uncle think the frame is bent. His truck was mashed up pretty good too. He was fine, neither of us were hurt. I'm feeling a little tightness in my neck today but I don't think it's anything to worry about. His was also a company truck so it shouldn't be a problem having the insurance pay for the damage (that's what I'm told anyway). 

I come home and veg out...I didn't do any studying..of course. Well, I did a little right before bed but that's all. My uncle, who does NOT like Taco Bell, suggested we have it for dinner because he knows it's my favorite!! How nice of him! So my aunt and I picked it up. I got a Raspberry Tea..that I was REALLY excited about! We got home, I took MAYBE 3 sips of it and I spilled it...everywhere. ALL of it...GONE. Ugh. I was upset.

Fast forward to this morning. My test was scheduled for 10am. It was supposed to take me one hour and 42 minutes to get to the GREAT LAKES NAVAL TRAINING FACILITY (!!!!!!!!!!!!) so I left at 7 to leave room for traffic, construction and getting lost time. I arrived in the town at EIGHT THIRTY!! BAH! So I found a gas station and sat there until 915. I still got there 30 minutes early but that's not AS bad..

I went in and the security guard checked my info. As I was waiting to be escorted to my area, a woman came down and was talking loudly to the man standing next to me who was also waiting to be escorted. In the meantime, a man came up next to me and asked if I was there to take the test. I answered with an affirmative. He was the man I was supposed to meet. YAHOO. At this point, the woman stops her loud talking and says "Oh, our computers are down" This is directed to the test man and myself. And I say, under my breath "of course they are!" So he asks me if I mind taking the paper version. I told him I didn't mind. We mosied up to his office where I filled out my test form and found pencils with good erasers. He started talking about the computers and how the files were there yesterday and then they all of the sudden got deleted yesterday afternoon, and how the AC was out. And I said "ya know, I should have expected something like this to happen with the week I've had" and I told him about being rearended and some other things. He had pity on me lol. He informed me that it would take much longer to receive my scores with the written version than the computer version. I figured well, it could take just as long for the computers to get fixed, so I might as well just go ahead and take it, I'm already there.

So he found me a nice cooooooooool room to test in. I took the first half of the test. Then I had a 15 minute break. During that break we talked about the Navy. He told me all sorts of things. Including this fact that my recruiter failed to tell me: they've shut down all boards. No one is meeting to select officer candidates EXCEPT pilots. I thought "SWEET!" until he told me the next part. The meeting is August 11. The packets were due 2 weeks ago. I want to yell "ARE YOU FLIPPIN KIDDING ME!?!?!" but instead I said "Oh really? huh. My recruiter told me that they were meeting in September" and he said "well they were, then it got moved" and I said "oh. Well he didn't tell me that..." and he asked what field I wanted to go into and I said "I want to be a pilot." And he said "Oh."....YEA. He said that this occurred about 15 years ago too, where no one is leaving so there's no room for anyone to get in. No one knows how long it will last, it's just a waiting game. Last time, they called up all the recruiting offices and told them to contact everyone who qualified for selection and tell them if they could be ready in 2 weeks to go to OCS they were in. That could happen this time...no one knows. 

We then talked about my other options. I asked what he'd do in my position. He'd originally wanted to be in the band..so he told me to go for that. I told him that option was out! lol. He said that if he were me and this score turned out to be not as high as it needed to be, then he'd just enlist, work in an aviation field and take it again in a year or so. I've been thinking about this option  for a while. Buuuut the other thing..if my score IS high enough...I could be waiting around for a long time. I don't want to throw out that opportunity because I got impatient. Ya know? So I guess we'll just have to see what happens.

Then I took the rest of my test.

He has to send my test off to be scored. They only grade on Mondays and Wednesdays and they have to be in that office 2 days ahead of time. So even if he'd gotten it out today, it wouldn't have arrived in time to be graded on Monday. Then if he didn't get it out today it wouldn't get there in time to be graded on Wednesday. So it could be a week from Monday before it's graded. Bummer. But, the good thing is it's over and there's nothing I can do about it now. 

My feelings about the test: I think I did a lot better than last time. I know that I knew postively a lot more. Like, I knew "YES, this answer IS correct" instead of "eh, I'm not really sure, but this one sounds the most familiar" There was one section that I was much more familiar with this time so I think I did a much better job on it. The only downside was that they haven't used the written format in several years so it's kind of outdated. Several of the questions weren't in the study material I was given so I had no idea at all what the answers were. I did my best at guessing.

That's the key: I did my best. If my best wasn't good enough, well then, I'll do it again in a couple of years. And that will be that. 

Aside: My aunt and I went to see Captain America. From the concessions, I wanted a Red Freezze drink,a pretzel and Swedish Fish. The Red drink was out. So I asked for blue. The Blue drink was out. So I got just regular Pepsi Freezze instead. I know, they're just little things that could have been TONS worse, but seriously!? There's one day left to this week. One day. I can make it! Ps. Captain America was good.

When I get my scores I'll probably just post it on my status. We'll see. If you'd like another note, just holla and I'll accommodate! :)