…here is a little update on what I've been up to since I escaped the evil clutches of the ELR and made my way back to the real world here in Texas two months ago.
As soon as I got back I started gearing up for a month of adventures with my buddy Ivan (who some of you might remember as the marine buddy of mine who visited me in December on his way to Thailand).  These adventures started out by going with our friends Kevin, Meg, and Jeff on a beer cruise.  A beer cruise?!! "What's that" you say!  St. Arnold, our favorite microbrewery in Texas arranged with carnival cruises to take a group on one of their Caribbean cruises all the while providing us with endless drinks, pub crawls on the various ports, poker tournaments, and general shenanigans galore.  We went to Jamaica, Grand Cayman Island, and Cozumel, all the while having ceaseless Nerf gun warfare and becoming the undisputed Cornhole champions of the ship.  Good times!
The next adventure a week later was a camping/hiking trip out in the Gila National Wilderness out in New Mexico with Ivan's old friends Luke, Marcus, and Jeremy.  What an experience!  For those who don't know, a national wilderness is different than a national park in that there aren't roads or park rangers to give assistance if you get hurt and the only things there are what you (or you pack-mule, which we didn't have one) carry in.  We ended up hiking 30+ miles hiking up through canyons and doing over 50 river fords wading up to our waists in icy cold water, all the while with 45+ lbs packs strapped to our backs.  It was beautiful but a real challenge – I had a rough fall the 2nd day and hurt my knee fairly bad, had I not spent the previous year hiking around the Kramer and the Wank, I probably would not have made it.  And despite see lots of tracks, we never saw any bears or mountain lions.  It was a real personal accomplishment, but after our 5 days there in New Mexico, Ivan and I immediately headed back to his home in Uvalde and started gearing up for the next leg of fun.
So two days later we went with Jeff and Ivan's dad and spent several days fishing and camping out on Matagorda Island State Park.  We had fair luck gigging flounders at night while we were there (just delicious grilled over an open fire right out of the water), but it seems the redfish and sea-trout just weren't biting while we were there.  Nevermind, I saw a lot of wildlife as I explored the island and the weather was beautiful our time there, except for the morning we went back to the mainland from the 10-mile-out-to-sea island.  The wind was blowing so hard you could hardly stand up and the little boat speeding up back just bounced from crest to crest on the rough waves, spraying us good – it was better than a rollercoaster.  The day we went home (Easter Sunday) was exactly one month since Ivan had flow into H-town for the cruise and so our month of adventures was complete.
I've been doing a lot of research into nursing programs because I'm seriously considering getting back into school very soon to try and do that, but you would not believe how difficult that is proving!  Hopefully I can just find a field of work I can find enjoyable and fulfilling and can survive off of.  Lately, I've just been picking up a lot of random jobs (pressure washing, performance auto-parts assembly, wallpaper stripping) that have been keeping me busy.  And since I no longer watch TV, I've managed to run quite a bit in my awesome Vibram FiveFingers (thanks for telling me about them, Connor) and bike a lot so my calves are getting huge.  I was hoping to get in good enough shape to travel out to AZ for some biking with Zak, Chels, and Whit but it turns out that our favorite extinguisher-wielding, always scharf cook has injured his leg skateboarding (even had to have surgery) and will be out of commission for several months.  Feel better, bro!
Other than that I have mainly just been doing a lot of hanging with my niece and nephews and my close friends around here.  My birthday was last week and so I finally went and got the tattoo I'd been planning for so long (a thanks to Haf for helping photo the design template).  I couldn't be happier with it!  When the corner of it peeks through an unbuttoned button-up shirt it looks like I finally took everyone's advice and had some chest-hair tattooed on, haha.  I'd like to thank Brett, whose skill and speed with a tattoo needle were dazzling.