Was up until around 3 or 4 last night. Woke to the heater in my bedroom and the feeling I would suffocate from the heat in there. Took the dog out and it was 60 out there. Seems like all she wants to do is bark when she's outside so she came in rather quickly. Sometimes when I wake before I've had 8 full hours I sometimes have to get up for a while and wait until my body's ready to do the rest of it's sleeping. Well after my date with my son's friend's mom, she had hit me back on facebook and let me know her heart still belongs to some guy she has fallen in love with online. Her son and his wife both say he's mean to her and not very good to her. She had also commented on how he treats her and how she was still in love with him. Oh well, guess you can't see the forest for the trees sometimes. I'm nodding in and out of reality sitting here trying to blog. See ya next time.

Vichy Rd posts

I must get started blogging again. There's really nothing I'd like more. Brett has been out here living with me for a couple months now and it's been really great. No more sitting around totally lonesome and having no one to share things with. He has introduced me to his new Rolla friends and they seem really nice. I even went on a date with their mom! I have switched to Linux and it's been refreshing. A brand new way to do the same old thing online and on the pc. The thing with Linux is that you have not one OS to choose from but a plethora of them. When you get bored with one or if it starts acting up, you can simply switch to another one you may like, and keep your files without losing all your pics, music, whatever? I have settled on two that are pretty great, Ubuntu is kinda ubiquitous. There is quite a bit of support online. The other is PinguyOS. It's lesser known but really user friendly and has tons of commonly used apps pre installed, the guy even set the browser favourites that most of us would set anyway, online video content to boot! There's a brand new one out that I'd like to try called Linux Lite. It's created by a chat buddy of mine that also created the Linux Distribution Community. If they can't give some insight on there, not many can and you should probably not be using a computer in the first place if they can't help you out. The biggest thing about switching to Linux is you have to get handy with digging through the online forums. There's enough Linux users in the world that someone has encountered your particular problem somewhere and has probably fixed it and really willing to share how they did it, as it's kinda a triumphant feeling to share a fix you found. I have a bucket list. One of the items on it went away and I'm so glad I finally got to try it. I don't think I will ever stop. more to come...

It has been quite a day. My phone was turned off, again, because I am behind on the payments due to the data overages from my daughter's line which the company somehow cannot block. She has blocked my texts and calls to the phone so I can't contact her on her phone. I contacted her mother via text, in an attempt to keep from her baiting me into some kind of argument. She tried anyway over text. I told her I was going to have to cancel my wireless account because of all this. She guilted me by telling me that I was shutting off her phone and that it would devestate her. She also blamed me for not trying to contact or see my daughter and also asked me if I was going to continue to pay my child support. I told her I hadn't seen my daughter and have tried several times to be told she's always gone somewhere, either a friend's house or out of town. She went on to tell me I don't have the right to see her for overnight visitation because I haven't proved to the courts that I have a bedroom for her to stay in that was separate from my own. The divorce decree was written after this decision was made in the courthouse and judges chambers when the judge ordered my ex to go retrieve my daughter so she could tell the judge herself that she wanted to be able to see me for visitation. I went around and around with my ex, telling her this but she wouldn't listen and told me I was going to have to pursue it through the courts. I am going to have to proceed with a plan I had from the beginning, to exercise my rights to see my daughter by involving the County Sheriff and arriving at the home to take her with me for an overnight, as the court order states. I am fighting the urge to do this action without feeling I am doing it out of spite. That is the opposite of what I want to be feeling toward anyone, especially my ex, as I refuse to let her vindictiveness effect my life in any way. I will not give her that or any control over me as that would constitute failure on my part. More to come. -Chief out

I was taking classes from the month after I retired in April until August. I was told I could take online classes without a drop in my GI Bill finding, which proved to be wrong, to the tune of a 40% loss. I had taken algebra with the expectation of tutoring in the event i would need it. I did and the help never came. I failed algebra after beating myself daily with studies I neither understood, but fell desperately behind in. It left me very depressed, wrung out and generally depleted with regard to higher learning. I have long since rested but have also fallen behind in my bills due to the thousand or so dollars a month I lost in my income. I am ecstatic, though that my son has relocated to Missouri and now resides with me as an adult. He has become a very wonderful man in whom I am well pleased. My lowered money situation has made things rough on us and to top it all off, I have heard nothing about my disability from the VA. I am now enrolled in classes again and am excited to begin learning again. Management and Art appreciation should prove to be decent to get through. I have met a very cool lady from Jefferson City but have not been able to meet up with her face to face. Ah money, the filthy lucre! We were chatting a lot and texting back and forth but have chilled a bit with that after not being able to meet. Sad but true. I still haven't seen my daughter in a very long time. Months and months. I'm very sad about it. I find myself not even thinking about her until something puts her in my mind and I'm immediately wracked with sadness. It's quite maddening. OK, well now I'm depressed so that's it for this entry. Julia, wherever you are, Daddy loves you and wants to see you very badly. - Chief out

so it's been like a year since i posted in this blog... a friend of mine has inspired me to begin blogging again about my life, more as a journal than anything else. it was when I had shared a link with her to my blog that I actually started to read the damned thing again. I scrolled all the way back to the first entry and found that the posts contained such disheartening content about my situation that I had to rethink my life. I have been divorced around 4 to 6 months now, living in my tiny hovel in Rolla. I pay child support in a handsome sum, and refuse to not live in some fashion that reflects how hard I've worked and what it took me just to get here. Internet, dish tv and the like. My son Brett, 25, has moved out to stay with me! He's a wonderful man and I cannot express just how amazing it is to be around him as an adult. He's very intelligent and gentle in every way. I love him so. I have fallen behind in my bills, rent car payment and others, and am facing bankruptcy just to keep the creditors at bay. I have applied for help from a couple agencies set up to help retirees supplement their finances with donated funds, as I await the outcome of my disability claim with the VA. God I hope they help me out! I hate being broke and overdrawn by the 10th of every month!!!

This Guy In My Chain of Command, aka Idiot

I have not blogged in quite some time. I have come to peace with the fact that a person who has done more to encumber my career in the Navy over the years is going to be ENTITLED to a portion of my retirement. I am living in the little hovel in Rolla after my first term in college on the GI Bill. I am mulling over the CPO Mess at my last command and weighing the dimensions of just how that fits in todays' Navy. To be quite frank, IT DOESN'T! When the leader of the CPO Mess is the CMC with no ability to step back and let his Chiefs lead in their own abilities. To step in and brood over the actions of a man in a leadership position where that man is, by design, created by his fellows, to make the decisions that will control the lives and careers of those in his charge, is beyond mere micromanagement. It is absolutely reprehensible at it's core. From those people-decisions the Chief makes to the tiniest seemingly meaningless deeds that are automatic to most Chiefs, this man had to have a hand in and a thumb on top of. As an example, there was a time when he had contacted me in my last few months as I sat at a friend's house with nowhere else to go, as I was basically homeless after separating from my wife, he asked me if my Mess could help. This man not only scolded me for showing up late to an event that he himself had not only showed up late for the past two years, but hours and hours late. Chief's initiation is a get there when you get there kinda event. Most of the people he was mentioning as he chastised me had only shown up in the last few minutes. He not only scolded me, but took me aside and commenced to chew me out for over an hour and a half, telling me I had disobeyed an order and actually disrespected the entire mess and him. He had a member of the mess go around and take up a collection for me which ended up being a whopping $160. He presented it to me and commenced to tell me a story he had told me on two separate occasions which had absolutely no bearing on my situation whatsoever, and gave me advisement that was not only wrong, but illegal! A couple weeks later, after someone in the Mess had retired I had been having heart attack like stress symptoms at the office and my doctor couldn't see me until the day of the guy's retirement, of which I didn't really know this man and didn't get along with him, nor he, me and I didn't plan on attending. He called me later that week and after chewing me out for a while he told me he was ordering me to pay back the money the Mess had given me to the CPOA treasurer. If anyone has any knowledge of how a Chief's organization operates, the Mess is to be held separate from the CPO association. To pay the money back that some members of a CPO mess came out of pocket for, into the CPOA goes against that separation in every facet of the very bylaws of the association it is being payed into. But as I was in the last few months of my career and this being my last Mess, I set out to pay the money back in a way that would greatest benefit the Mess the best. I would open an online account that would draw from my initial investment to pay for itself so the members of the CPOA could pay their dues at any time by simply going online. This was again interpreted by this man as a direct violation of his order to me to just give up the cash to the treasurer and be done with it. This is what a Chief does. He takes a situation that could be negative and transforms it into a benefit to his community, his people and his Navy. This is only a tiny part of the reprehensible actions of this command structure of which he was a part of. If I made a list of careers that had been shredded by the decisions made by him and this command structure it would be lengthy, to say the least. This is without a doubt the worst part of my career and I have wished more than anything to forget this tragedy of a chain of command that cares not only for it's people but has went out of their way to be a bludgeon to ruin their careers and personal lives. I just wish I could forget it. more later...

making a list

I've been under the weather the past few days so no blog updates until now. I have been having the weird dreams about the ship and aircraft. No more amorous ex's though.
Lately I've been giving thought to how things will end up after the divorce. I will certainly be paying half my retirement to the ex and child support as well. My GI Bill payment will be a huge help with the bills. I'll just be happy to not have to pay her way anymore. I can not wait. It still pains me that she would get any part of my retirement when she has done less than nothing to earn it as a spouse. I have learned she can even continue to receive the retirement if she remarries if it is not adressed in the divorce decree. This sickens me to no end that there would be a large possibility of her suckling the retirement teat she never earned by any degree.
I have been making a list of things I would want when my pay is my own. This gives me more perspective on being independent and able to do for myself without the threat of marital reprisal.

I cannot continue blogging today with the thought of her getting my retirement even if she remarries.

more later...