Military Pen Pal - Update

Quick entry.  Today was the last day of my spring break, so what did I do?  What I always do.  I waited until today to do 6 loads of wash at the laundromat.  I went shopping for items to send my military pen pal in Afghanistan.  Of course I went way over budget.  I ended up spending about $300.  My original plan was to send off a large box of snacks, food, and activities.  But considering how much I spent, I'm now going to ration out the items so that I'll be able to ship a care package each month for several months.  While I was shopping I was thinking about what the soldier might want.  But Red Bull, did a really need to buy that.  Since I waited until the last minute, I won't be able to send off a box until the weekend.  I settled for writing an introduction letter.  I'll put it in the mailbox tomorrow on my way to work.

I'm back...from nowhere.

I think the title says it all.  I wasn't in the blogging mood, so I stopped for a while.  What did you miss?  Well, minus work related topics, incidents, etc... nothing was missed.  In fact, you could have reread any of the previous posts (substituting the date for the current date) and you would have a fairly accurate summary of the past 4 months.  The only real  change is my waistline.  I'm now about 230lbs.

So, what else is new?

I just made another impulse purchase on Amazon.com.  Once they have your credit card info, some of us are just one click away from the poor house.  Latest purchase?  The Total Home Gym 1800.  I watched an infomercial that I've seen in on form or another.  I got online to see how much it cost, and one click later, I'll have my machine in about a week.  So what happened to the expensive clothes rack (exercise bike)?  It has been collecting dust as a...a clothes rack.

Other new information?  I adopted a soldier.  Another impulse.  Bored at the computer, having failed with the online pen pal request both near and far, I decided to try another route.  I would try find a pen pal with a soldier.  The other option was prison, but well,...I'm not that desperate.  Anyway once I had the idea, I thought it would be no problem to find a program that would match civilians stateside with soldiers overseas.  Well, nothing seems easy after committing to an idea.  After searching various sites that just didn't seem right, I found one that I thought was exactly what what I was looking for.  Well, being the slow person I am, it took me a while to register, a while to figure out how to enter the site, but I managed.  I just assumed that the fee they were asking and the difficulty was to protect the soldiers.  Only after registering (making my payment) did I guess that it was a dating site, I'm guessing to match soldiers with civilians.  No one was interested in being pen pals.  Oh, except for the 3 different women who posted seeking long-term relationship on their profile.  Although two of the responders seem to have faded away, one woman seems to be a bit too eager to provide that she is only looking for a friend.  Although she seems very nice -- I do wish her the best of luck with find a pen pal that will make her happy.  Just from the few emails we've exchanged, I can tell we have ZERO similarities.  I'll just leave it at that.

Well, I tried again, but this time I think I might have found the correct type of site.  This one was fairly easy to register and has a fairly easy requirement.  I only have to send one letter once a month to the soldier that I've been assigned to.  There was another nice site, but it required one letter per week.  I like the idea of sending a letter per week, but I'm too much of a procrastinator, and I would rather not make that kind of commitment.

Yesterday, I was approved for the program.  I received my soldier's information.  Considering they didn't ask much during the registration, I'm guessing my soldier was just a random pick from a list.  So, what information did I receive?  The soldier's name, age, rank, location, start and end dates of deployment, and the soldier's needs and wants list.  Wow, kind of like a prison.  Sorry about that.

Below is a cut and paste of the soldiers information:

> Rank:
> Branch: Army
> age: 28
> birthdate:
> dateDeployment:
> ReturnDate:
> Mail Stop Date: Jan. 1, 2012
> location:
> Hobbies: general
> needs: Batteries "AA" foot/body powder body wash razors baby wipes Q-tips sun block chap stick with spf
> wishes: sweets electic razor word puzzle books DVD's Beef Jerky books chips

Seems like very reasonable requests from a soldier on the front line.  I left out the specific information about the soldier.  Oh and no, I am not a war person, far, far, faar from it, but this seems like an easy way to show support for those men and women overseas.

Anyway, I wrote a quick letter yesterday just so I don't fall into the procrastinator's pit.  Once I commit to something, then I tend to be dependable and reliable.  Tomorrow, I'll head out and try to pick up as much of things listed as I can.  I will also add in a few second-hand items I have -- I hope he doesn't mind the second hand items.

As you readers of my blog already know, I can waste money like there is no tomorrow. But if this program is legit -- to save myself the embarrassment in case it isn't, I left out the program's information. If it turns out to work okay, then I'll provide more information.

Oh, I just received an email saying that my registration is completely approved (I had difficult also with this site).