Sometimes I really like my life.

A picture, not my own.

"...Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? - - Carpe - - hear it? - - Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary."

Get it? It's a smiley face, made with bullets.

Back in the saddle again...

The long road home... well if I had driven another 35 hours or so.

"Pops"

Well anyway I came here to talk about pistachios. That's right. Some of my favorite memories of being a kid were going in to Dad's room after he got home from work, he'd be watching TV or reading and most of the time he'd have some sort of peanut or pistachio or something weird, anyway, a whole bag of them. Funniest Home Videos, we watched a lot of that. After dinner I'd usually stay as long as Mom did at the table, huge gouts of laughter from the bedroom would normally lure myself and anyone within a couple miles radius towards the TV and the crowd.

But I digress.

So I've got this huge memory surge everytime I get pistachios. I see Monday Night Football or my Dad laying on his bed reading, the bag of pistachios on his chest, just relaxing. Well there I was in airborne school with my own room because no one else was assigned to mine. Which was sweet. Anyway I made the trek to the Six about a mile from where my barracks were.

For you civies that don't know what a Six is, it's like a gas station or convenience store. Military people love Sixes because they contain booze.

Anyway at the Six they had this huge bag of pistachios for like five bucks so along with two or three mountain dews I figured I'd be set for the weekend. There's nothing to do at airborne besides play video games and when that gets old, play arcade games and when that gets old you sleep. Because unless you've got a car, you're screwed.

I got my loot and headed back on that long freaking walk to the barracks. Later that night I was sitting in my bed, reading a book, the bag of pistachios on my chest and it hit me, I stopped mid-air with a pistachio in my hand.

"I'm just like my Dad."

And that made me feel pretty good, because I like that guy. I actually called him up later and told him this whole story. Now why did I bring it up here? That's easy, I love pistachios.