Who Am I?

I read a friend's blog yesterday whose "Getting To Know Me" theme I promptly swiped to use for my own blog since I could'nt think of anything else to ramble on about! :)

Ive been suffering a bad case of blogging procrastination lately! Ive been fairly busy through the summer and I have had many thoughts at different times and in different situations of, "Hmm, that would be a good blog". But alas, the thought gets buried away, to get lost in the jumble of other neglected thoughts.


So here goes nothin!

WHAT DO I LOOK LIKE?

Hmm, what a question! Wouldn't it be easier just to look at the picture on my profile! Okay, I was six foot two at one time, but I swear I've shrunk with age and now fit in somewhere around six foot. I used to have hair of dark brown color. Today what is left of it is quickly turning to a well earned gray! And I don't own a comb! I have a slight slouch that either comes from heredity, or bad posture habits, or a bit of both. I dress casual but always clean. Ive been seen in a tie about four times in my life! I wear glasses because I haven't got the nerve to allow some doctor to go roaming around my eyeballs with a laser gun and I've got this notion in my head that contacts are a big hassle.

WHAT IS MY ETHNICITY.

On my fathers side, I am strictly Norwegian from both grandfather and grandmother. I can trace my paternal tree back to the early 17th Century to a small farm called Ryalen in the mountains of Norway's Hedmark region, near the village of Hodalen, not too far from the Swedish border.
On my mothers side I am of British descent. Although she was born and raised north of London in the area known as the Midlands, her father came from Cumbria, in the far north of England near the Scottish border, and I have only recently learned that my mother's grandmother only spoke Gaelic. Whether that is Scottish or Irish Gaelic I have no real idea, but due to geographic proximity, I'd guess Scottish.
I feel a closer tie to my maternal family. My Norwegian side, has two preceding generations of America blended into it. Whereas, on my British side, I am the first American born of that family line. And then again, I recall many, many times as a child when my angered, frustrated, and exasperated father would exclaim, "You're just like your mother!" And these days, I have heard more than once my mother likewise claim "Your just like your grandfather!" Well I do share a bit of his posture and hairline! And apparently his odd sense of humor! HAA!!

WHAT WORK DO YOU DO?

My work, job, career, whatever you call it, has never been a great focus in my life. Its been a way to pay bills. I am not my job.
However for the most part I have been involved in Logistics in one way or another, since finding myself in a Transportation unit in the Air Force in 1972.
Recently someone asked me if I was nervous doing such dangerous work. That question raised a thought that I pondered for awhile. I have at times made brief mental glances at the reality that my jobs did at times, possess certain risks. However, that was probably one of the first times I gave it any real thought.
There were the times I flew as a courier with a second rate airline contracted to the US Air Force.
There was the time I found myself literally up to my elbows in Agent Orange while on a disposal project for that stuff.
For a time in my short Air Force career, I was the "transportation guy" on loan to the Munitions Squadron, probably because I was the only guy who didnt give much thought about the conseqences of swinging hammers around bombs and assorted explosives while palletising them!
About a decade ago, during a life changing phase, I took up truck driving and found that driving an 18 wheeler through blizzards, ice storms, hailstorms, windstorms, even hurricanes (Ivan), drenching rainstorms, oppressive heat, bonechilling cold, and occasional tornados, just to park for the night in questionable industrial sections of large cities became normal life!
Today I drive a gasoline tanker truck. But its all "Just a job"

WHERE DID I GROW UP?

Mostly Tacoma, Washington. As a child we moved constantly! I think I attended at some point nearly every elementary school in the North and West Ends of town. I attended four high schools, and the school I graduated from I attended twice! For reasons I'm not really sure, I've considered the section of Tacoma (and today a separate city) called University Place the town I "grew up in". Maybe because our family actually owned a home there, or because it was the one place we parked the longest. We were there about six years. I was fourteen when we returned to a Tacoma neighborhood, and those six years at that age represented a large piece of life. However, due to the number of places lived, schools attended, and various family ties, Tacoma's North End is just as significant.

WHAT IS MY RELATIONSHIP STATUS?

Today, I am long ago divorced for the second time and single.
In my teens and early adult years, when I discovered that girls really werent "icky" I fostered notions of a perfect Ward and June Cleaver situation complete with "white picket fences and rose bushes". The reality of life proved that such thoughts were just rose colored dreams, and today I no longer search for such things.
Certainly, a part of me will always hold out for the future possibilities, but I dont actively look anymore. If the "right one" came along I wouldn't run, but I am perfectly comfortable at this time in my life, just enjoying rewarding, platonic freindships. Today I am content and accepting of the hand dealt me.


WHAT ARE MY ISSUES?

I suppose coming from a broken, abusive, alcoholic homelife as a child, I could come up with all kinds of issues. I came to terms long ago with those earlier experiences that abusive alcoholics are their own problem. My thoughts on that are, we can choose to live their problem, or we can choose to put it in its place and move on. Sort of like the old saying of, "If someone hurts you once it's their fault, if they hurt you twice its yours."
However, that early childhood has been a direct influence for certain traits I have. I have a strong disgust for obnoxious, sloppy, especially mean spirited drunks, I see red at the thought of, or news of, irresponsible and abusive men toward women, and maybe that is in part where my occasional bouts of "mighty mouse syndrome", of jumping in and "saving the day" comes from.
However the "issues" I have today are a certain sadness, and frustration of the collapse of our society. All of our problems can generally be traced to the single aspect of selfishness.

WHAT ARE MY POLITICAL LEANINGS?

Traditionally, and from where I really dont know, I have been a Conservative Republican for most of my voting life. However in my later years a change began to develop to a different way of looking at things. Im certainly not of the hard core Conservative Republican path I supported for all those years, (if I ever really was at all!) nor am I of the Liberal Democrat philosophy either.
Quite frankly if there were a "Disgusted With It All" party I'd be a raging, card carrying member!
I find it silly that we elect a savior every four years from a pool of deception who we are sure will save us, only to spend three years hating our choices until we repeat it all again.
Awhile back I took a fun little "test" that indicated one's political leanings. The results then showed me to be a "Conservative Libertarian"
As I have said before, I'll just peacefully smile and let the rest of the world figure it all out.

WHAT ARE YOUR RELGIOUS BELIEFS?

I have always considered myself Christian. There was no real church we belonged to as a child. My mother is from a Church of England/Anglican path that we never followed, and my father's family made the attempt to at least look like 'devout Lutherans" although even the most church going members of that clan were Christmas and Easter church goers at best. We never really had a church education as kids.
Over the years, as an adult I looked into several Christian denominations to one degree or another.

Today I tend to avoid those organized groups as I have found that for the most part its little more than "We are right and they are wrong and God loves us best".

In the end, I think we all find God the way we find him.


WHAT IS MY LEVEL OF EDUCATION?

My education is one of those things I to this day scratch my head over! As a child, throughout High School, I barely scraped by. The standard classroom setting bored me to death! I remember the time in the first grade at Wainwright School in Fircrest. Lunchtime came, and we all dutifully lined up in a perfect row to follow the teacher across the playground to the lunch room door. I was last in line. When I got to the door my young mind thought, "I can go through the door, OR no one is watching so I can just duck around the corner and go home! So, I went home. I walked in through the unlocked kitchen door and looked at pictures in my dad's history books and dined on Oreos and Milk! All this at the tender age of SIX!
In later years I skipped classes, not for mischevious adolescent reasons, but rather to sit in the library reading and learning what I wanted to learn. I would have been a prime candidate for homeschooling were it available then.
In my middle twenties then a married father, I started college on the GI Bill as an alternative to unemployment during a period of economic recession. After three and a half years, I earned a Bachelors Degree in History, with Minors in English, Education, and Military Science with enough electives to amount to over five years of college credit.
But with all that said, my education has pretty much been of the Hard Knocks variety.

OK, thats ME. Feel free to comment. And as usual, this post may be edited or added to at a later date so check back often!