the Army Giveth, and the Army Taketh Away

I spent the last two days moving all my crap up and down stairs and from one end of the hanger to the other. Two days ago our company found out that 30 people from another unit were going to move in with us for the rest of the deployment, and we had two days to make room for them. This hanger had about 60 rooms made of hastily contructed plywood dividers when we got here. Since there were only 30 of us, most of us recently knocked down walls to expand our dwellings. We had it really good for about a month. Now the honeymoon is over. We have to relocate and downsize. All the crap I have accumulated over the last 6 months had to be drug off somewhere else. I still have it really good by most standards. But definatley not as good. I still have all my posh stuff like a little fridge and lots of decent furniture. I got a window now, too! And if I stand in the middle of my room, I can literally touch every single possession without having to move my feet. I'll never lose anything again! It's all crammed into a closet-sized box and the walls are so thin I can actually hear my neighbors breathing. No lie. Oh well. It's a deployment.

Just look at the difference.

Before, but with most everything moved out already.
ECHO!.....echo........echo.........




After. Cozy.
That's my bookshelf and trash can in the window sill. I had to get creative with the limited space.


So I decided to make a list of a few of the really nice things the Army has given me this deployment, and a few of the crappiest things. I'll try for ten of each.


Really nice things. In no peticular order.


1. New Free Aid Bag ($400 retail, rediculous!)
2. One year Tax Free Income plus extra pay for family sepertion, hazerdous duty pay, flight pay, and combat zone pay. woohoo!
3. A super cool free switchblade
4. A laptop to use while I'm here
5. On site gym equipment
6. A crapload of free caribeeners
7. My own room- Thank you Uncle Sam, Thank you!
8. $100 in green socks
9. An 18 day paid vacation to Alaska- in 14 days!
10. All the free food I can eat.


That's a whole lot of great stuff. And its not even all of it! I didn't even put the bi-monthly barbeques or the hot showers. But let us move on.


Some crappy things the Army did.


1. Kicked me out of the Taj Maharrell
2. Is actually charging me leave days for my R and R. Stupid commies!
3. Zero weekends, holidays, half-days, breaks, birthdays, aniversaries off. It's all day everyday baby
4. Stupid 12-hour gym-towel detail every Saturday for 3 months. Thank heaven those days are over
5. Made me buy my own drug and airway bags ($ alot)
6. Pay me less than half what they pay civilian contractees for the same job- except they work less, do less, sleep more, drive air conditioned king cab F-350's, don't get shot at, and have twice the vacation time. You two-faced cheating harlot.
7. Gave me two random urine drug tests within the last 5 days
8. Cancelled every effective training flight I had scheduled for the last 22 days. (about 15 flights) So I am still in progression
9. Revoked the right of free speech, and a few others, but I'm not allowed to talk about them.
10. The food generally sucks.


The nice things generally make up for the lame things. It depends in the day. Another perspective could be- the crappy things make the nice things seem like weak attempts at trying to buy our loyalty so the man can distract us while they're injecting AIDS into our chicken nuggets. Even so, we have had it far better than any previous generation ever did. And I appreciate those men and womens sacrifices.


Wow. I got a little worked up by that. Anyway- Any other opinions? What do my readers (both of them) like/dislike about work? Does anyone who reads my rants have any deployment pearls to add? Go ahead, talk amongst yourselves.


p.s. spellcheck isnt working today.

This is how crazy starts.

I've been trying to go to sleep for the past two hours and it just isn't working. It's because I took a nap at 6 in the evening because I was dead tired and felt sick to my stomach. Crap.

Anyway, I've been tossing and turning for hours and I keep thinking about pizza. I was watching a show with some friends this afternoon, and one of the characters was eating pizza. Before we were laughing and joking but when the pizza appeared- silence. And sadness mixed with lust. Is there a word for that? So I decided I would have pizza for dinner. On the line at the chow hall there are always these little 4 inch mini pizza things. I got one and ate one bite. Then I just looked at it for a few minutes and thought about how I am coming home in 17 days and will eat pizza every single day. Then I took a second bite from the opposite side. I guess I was hoping that side would actually taste like something close to pizza instead of cardboard. But it didn't.

There is actually a pizza-hut here thats operated by AAFES. It's better than the crap in the chow hall but it's way overpriced, it's half the size of the american kind, and the cheese has this weird fish taste/smell that lingers in your mouth for several house afterwards. I can eat 3 small slices if I'm hungry, but I feel sick after that.

So, this is where I'm at. Here is a list of things I would literally do for a real pizza right now.

1. Run 50 miles.

2. Drink urine.

3. Pay up to 100 dollars.

4. Rip out a fingernail -they grow back.

5. Stab a small defenseless furry animal to death- excluding puppies.

6. Watch Stepmom. Twice!

7. Let the other medics practice using the defibrillator on me. Once.

8. Give up showers for a month.

9. Stomp on a nail barefoot

10. Vote for Hillary. If it got me a pizza- I'd do it. Sorry, Earth.

sigh. Back to work on that sleep thing.

By the way. Somebodys start leaving comments!

pretty please.

Wants to be a Daddy

Watching things like this make me want to have kids so badly! I am missing out on so many wonderful and tender experiences. I have heard many women blame those kinds of feelings on their ovaries. I don't have ovaries. And mentioning testicles in a blog in offensive, so I'm not going to mention them. Them meaning testicles.

If you already have all the kids you want, maybe you shouldn't watch. Precious moments like this remind me of the gaping hole in my life that can only be filled with a bunch of little Dave-Valli replicas.

If I dont get kids soon I'll have to steal me some.

Deep Thoughts

I saw this on one of our mechanics toolbox and had to take a picture of it. I don't think I have ever read anything like it before, and I don't really know what to make of it. But I thought it was an interesting statement and decided to share it.

I think it might be about tolerance. Maybe it's someones way of holding a mirror up to society and saying, Look at you- you're stupid! Or maybe it's a statement about the GOP. I can detect some irony in those words- but I could be imagining it. Or maybe Justin really hates gay communist baby seals.

Who knows.

Fun with Free-Time

It's ironic that I never watch television at home, but find so much time for it here- where I dont have a tv either. This week I watched an entire season of 30 Rock. We have a shared server with lots of tv shows saved on to to watch at our leisure. The first episode is my favorite- specifically when Liz and Tracy are talking about White Dudes.

Tracy- Affirmative action was designed to keep us minorities and women in competition while White Dudes come in from behind and inject AIDS in our chicken nuggets. Its a metaphor!

Also, did you know that when your Blogger Dashboard is accessed from another country, like Afghanistan, everything is written in Italian? Its way cool. Especially when you try to do a spell-check and it lights up every single word. Except for the the Italian word, of course. Like- a. I'm pretty sure that leisure and specifically are spelled wrong. They usually are. Oh well.

The Reptile Room

70 lbs. of Burmese Python wrapping it's self around your neck are great distractions from horse inflicted injuries. The flicking tongue at the face may well have been distraction from bladder control as well had I not been fighting to stay upright with all that weight. Stoically my bladder withstood the stresses and the scaly creature was returned to it's owners while I returned my horse trampled leg to it's bag of frozen broccoli.



(No Pythons or broccoli were harmed in the making of this blog.)

A Tense Moment

A conversation I had recently with my wife:

Valli: I sold your motorcycle.

Me: That's great, sweetheart.

Valli: And your truck is gone, too.

Me: Wonderful. (pause) You're not going anywhere, are
you?

Valli: (laughs) No, honey.

Me: Oh. That's good.

Yes, the bike is gone, and the truck is gone. Valli sold them both within a few hours of posting them on craigslist. I am really going to miss my bike. I loved riding that thing. But it all for the greater good. And by that I mean getting out of debt as fast as possible. Financial freedom has been the theme of the deployment. That said- I'm hoping to get another ride when I get home.

AND....

Speaking of automobiles- We are proud owners of a new (to us) Mercedez-Benz 300 turbo diesel! Oh yeah! Our pimp ride is the envy of everyone who died before 1982.

My wife is awesome.