Shark-bite Suit

Personal Update
I am officially an EMT now. Everyone keeps saying "wow that was fast," but I sure don't feel like that true. It's been tough, but I guess I'm not done. I just applied to get into Paramedic school, and it is very competitive. I think there are only twenty slots and from what I hear they usually get at least forty applicants. I am just hoping to get to the interview portion and play the War Hero card, and hope that skates me on through.
Until I hear back from the Paramedic committee, I am working on getting hired on a fire department, so I can start learning how to be a firefighter.

Obligatory Rant
So I have been meaning to write this for awhile now, pardon the fact that it's no longer current. Awhile back I was watching the news in the morning and one of the news ladies came on and started talking about the Academy Awards that had taken place a night or two before. She kept going on and on about how great it was, and how many amazing people were there, and then at the end she said something about the next awards show, and how great that was going to be.
I sat there staring at the screen thinking about the absurdity of this. How many occasions do these people need to get together and congratulate themselves on having the easiest fucking job in the world? What other job does that? None.
The thing that really gets me is what a huge deal people make about performances by stars like Tom Hanks, or Brad Pitt, or whoever; where it's like "Oh my god Tom Hanks you were so brilliant when you pretended to be that guy who actually did something brilliant."
Very rarely do any of these big names write the story they are acting out, or perform any of the stunts. Recently I saw an interview with Marky Mark (sans Funky Bunch) after he had played the lead role in the (simply awful) movie Max Payne. When he was asked about the parallels between the movie and the video game it was based on Marky said that he'd never bothered to play the game so he had no idea. Unfortunately for Marky Mark the video game was much much better than that movie. But I find it a little offensive that he played this role and didn't bother to do any research at all into the origins of his character.
What's more is often these actors are getting paid millions of dollars to pretend to be people who actually did these amazing things, often for little or no money at all. In Jarhead, Jake Gyllenhaal got paid probably a hundred times what a typical marine gets paid, and I'm sure he got to go back to his air conditioned trailer every night and sleep on his king sized bed knowing that his life was never in any real danger.
So I'm just saying if the world was fair, Brad Pitt would make $30K a year. I realize that there are good actors and bad actors out there, and I will admit that I think Brad Pitt is a good actor. I just don't think that this totally intagible "skill" should make him so ridiculously wealthy he can afford to start a collection of children, one from each continent.

Training
I have been doing pretty good on my training lately. I'm still about fifteen pounds heavier than I'd like to be come summertime, so I gotta sharpen up even more. I have been pretty proud of myself for staying responsible when it comes to my eating and training.
I recently started doing MMA again with some of the guys from the EMT program. So far it has only been once a week, but we are looking to increase our gym time. So far I am loving it.