Toto... how do we get home?

A/ B Side:

I was on my way to wash my face because I was heading to bed when the Captain came out of his room (he's moved back in with us, and on our floor... ugh!) and asked if I heard the sandstorm going on outside? I was like... what? I had just got done watching a movie, and logged on WoW very briefly, so I hadn't really heard anything that had been going on around me.

As I turned around and headed back towards the outside door near my room, I could indeed hear the storm going on outside. I also looked out one of the windows and where there should have been lights from the building, not less than fifteen feet from us, there was total darkness.

Luckily for us the wind was blowing against the opposite side of the building so we could go out on the landing. We opened the door and looked out at a very brownish atmosphere. One huge dust storm is washing over us at the moment. It also started to rain... tons of dust in the air followed by lots of water. Hopefully all the water/ mud will be gone by morning. Hopefully...

And while we were standing on the landing, we could hear stuff being ripped apart and see things being blown around. If it wasn't secured, and possibly even if it was, it was being taken and moved, possibly never to be seen again. It's happened before, it'll happen again.

I'll leave you with a pic that I took. I pointed the camera straight out the door and snapped the pic. There was so much dust and sand in the air that the flash had to have reflected off every piece of sand/ dust. Interesting effect none the less:





-M

I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow.

1.

The Medical Director is always very interested in the dreams of the residents. I have always been one to have long, complex dreams. They are like movies. I often wish I could rig some kind of machine like in Tommy Knockers, sans the part where your teeth fall out, so that I could harness that power into something creative that does not disappear when I wake.

One recent dream was fairly obvious in interpretation: We are in a home in a bad neighborhood. The house is being broken into. I am fighting, clawing and scratching at the people breaking in while M sits on the couch and looks on in disgust. I am at fault here, for this horrible living environment; therefore, it is up to me to salvage it.

This dream is merely my house hunting anxiety. The idea of buying a house on my own terrifies me. Huge, major purchase. What if no one likes it? What if I make a mistake? What if our neighbors are horrible?

I am still contemplating today's dream. It seemed to have a lot of focus on travel (by plane, which is odd because I rarely fly), trusting a stranger to my things, and having to trust things would work out though they did not look like they would. I seemed impaired in several ways in this dream. I was injured and my head was foggy, probably because of medication for the hurt foot.

It would seem the antithesis of my former dream. I do not know anything about house hunting and I will have to put my trust in strangers (realtor) and some Divine entity to work things out. I was very reluctant to trust the stranger in my dream, so far as to dump the pills he told me I needed to take in the trash. My puppy was a prominent figure in the dream - at the hospital with me, wandering around the place but always returning like some hospital mascot, and the primary item of my things which the man took when he disappeared - and I am uncertain of that significance. It may be nothing more than her scratching about in her bed close to me while I was sleeping being woven into my dream.

M claims to rarely dream, or at the least not to remember them upon waking. He sleeps deeply, so I'm certain he dreams. Sometimes, he has woken me by talking in his sleep while deep in a dream. Usually, he interogates me in our sleep. "Do you have security clearance?" "Do you still want to know about the bunch-of-letters receiver/gun?" "Do you want fries with that?"

Field Mouse in the City

A Side:

Have you guys seen the new widgets over on the right hand side of the page? We've taken a few out, added one... I think it looks good. Of course I don't manage any of that stuff. I don't keep track of things like widgets, do-dads and thingamajigs. That would require me pouring more effort into this than what I feel like expending at the moment. That's not to say that I don't like providing you guys with extra junk to look at, but hopefully I'm providing you with enough material on my own so that you won't have to check the site just to see if a widget has been updated.

I know that I promised to write about my travels coming home two days ago, but this time it wasn't my fault, honest! Our generator is having some issues and as such, I've had to turn the network off for the past two days. Nothing like racing around shutting down servers and UPS systems screaming at you that they're dying and to rescue them now! The part that really sucks is that V, my boss, left out on his R&R two days ago... yes, the systems conspired against me, waiting for him to leave so that my incompitent self could be left alone with them.

But little do they know that I'm a non negotiating type who'd rather plant a thermite grenade on them as soon as fix them... but hey, that's just my style :)

On to what you're really here for!

B Side:

Ok, we finally reach our destination. It's one of the biggest air bases in the country and it serves as a main transportation hub for most of the country coming into, or leaving, the AOR. We pulled in at night, uloaded all of our bags and started to make our way towards lodging to get a room.

We get checked in and get assigned a room. The rooms are trailers arranged in a set of pods. Our set of pods are all the way on the back side of this housing complex. It's about a mile away. Not a fun walk. But we do it and because we're not quite tired, and a bit hungry, we start to walk around. My travel buddy has been here multiple times before so he knows the lay of the land. He shows me the MWR facility (fucking huge), the gym (fucking huge), they have a Green Bean coffee (not huge, but still) and then we make it on over to the dining facility.

Except this isn't the main dining facity. This is the secondary dining facility. It's still at least five times larger than what I eat in. They had a lot of different things, more variety. Quality/ taste wise, about the same.

One of the thing though that I found myself doing though was just sitting there staring at people. Not in a menancing way, or creepy way, but just looking at this mass of people just eating, wearing PT clothing in to a chow hall and eating, no guns, no worries, laughing and enjoying themselves. We laugh and have a good time, but there was a different quality to this.

This is the one that has never been outside the wire, never had to worry about things like if they're going to get water/ electricity, if they're going to face a riot because they haven't been paid... if it wasn't for all the Army people mingled in with them, you'd swear this was stateside. It's almost as if this was a stateside TDY.

This was my first time off my base in almost seven months. It was the first time I ate with real silver wear, had a real plate and wasn't wearing a gun everywhere I went. For me, it was total culture shock. It was like coming out of the wild and being thrown into the city.

We were there for about two or three days before we flew on to Kuwait. But that and being home will have to wait for later.

C Side:

So a few topics I want to discuss. Lets see if I can remember them all:

1) The pvp server business. I really don't want to. I have very little interest in doing pvp. It's not something that I paticularly find fun anymore. The pvp in Age of Conan sounds even more dreary. You can "build a castle" then defend it, or go attack another groups!

Let me pull out my best Adam Sandler voice and say, whoooopidy dooooo! I do that shit in real life. I don't paticularly want to do it in a game. What's really pissing us off though is the adament refusal of certain people to even entertain the thought of considering a different server to play on, or some sort of compromise. I can potentially see the same things that broke up the WoW group happening here. /shrug.

2) I transfered my warlock today to my mages server. Apparently while I was on vacation, the guys that I play with from work here decided to move servers. Well, let me correct myself. The wife of the GM decided to move to a different server, he moved too which caused the other guy to move. I got back and found out they had left, which basically meant I was there by myself. I didn't feel like making a new character on yet another server, so I went ahead with my original plan and transfered the lock over. I had to change her name, which kind of sucked, but all I did was put an extra character on at the end of her name, so it worked out.

3) Even though I was gone for a month, the same ole shit was going on when I got back. New petty arguments broke out between us, the new small Army team here responsible for Iraqi recruit training and the contractors responsible for other parts of the Iraqis training. The contractors are assholes and the new Army team is just... dumb. Mainly the contractors are major assholes.

4) I very rarely dream anymore. I don't feel that I sleep that deep because I usually wake up really tired. I know that right now I'm still having major problems readjusting my sleep schedule. I've continually woken up at 3am to go pee and then have troubles getting back to sleep. I hope it works itself out.

But with the dreaming... my dad had the same thing happen to him too, or so he says. For a long period of time through his thirties, he didn't dream at all. Most of the time I don't. Sometimes I do and if I'm very very lucky, I'll remember the end of it, or I might remember an impression of it, but past that I'm SOL.

I use to have really vivid, descriptive dreams. I think the reason I don't dream anymore, and the reason my brain doesn't really function as well anymore, is because I don't engage it like I should. I need to get back into school, finish my degree. I need to get back into school for no other reason than to wake my brain up.

Like Henry, there's a lot of stuff I still want to do but I feel like time is already running out.


-M

If you take a life
do you know what you'll give?
Odds are you won't like what it is

1.

I am retarded. GTA comes out April 29. I have not yet figured what was released April 22 - game, movie, TV show, book? Who knows? The date was glued in my head for some reason. GTA comes out the day after my three day holiday. Naturally.

I will have to console myself with the new hobby in Lord of the Rings Online (fishing) and the new areas and tokens and whatnot.

These two games should get me over the hump until Age of Conan comes out.

2.

I have mentally quit my job. My mind did not bother with the whole x days notice thing. It just threw the mental hands up and said, I'm outta here.

I just typed 10 pages of transcription for the Medical Director. I knew the 8 tapes prior to the one I just finished would not be the last of it. They will milk this transcription out of me until the day I leave.

The new person, who is working as a mental health technician here now, starts in May. For the uninitiated, a mental health tech is fancy talk for babysitter to mean, aggressive children.

3.

Regarding my holiday, I was told that I am not allowed to have the day off to observe Confederate Memorial Day because "you are a damned Yankee." That's okay, I'll take the day off anyway.

It will be spent going to the doctor to follow up on my ER visit Wednesday morning. The rumor around the ER was gall bladder. Just the name of the things make it seem like something you want removed. It also sounds like something horribly inappropriate to talk about - so I'll stop. I'm just getting things checked out.

I get to go to physical therapy that day as well. So all the fun of the day off has been effectively killed anyway.

4.

The great PVP/PVE debate rages on.

One day, I was wandering around Tatooine in the hopes of finding a gun. The folks in town told me about a gun dealer that lurked around in a small ratty town somewhere in the desert. I eventually found him - along with a posse of womp rats with a bad attitude.

Eventually, I fell in with the inhabitants of the run down city. This carried over into Call of Duty and also WoW for a while before the it became impossible to field a single instance run and I went off in search of larger guilds. I left the division, but I stayed in the guild and I have been a part of it for many years now.

It touts being like a family and like any good family, we fight. Currently, we are having a debate over which kind of server to chose for Age of Conan (henceforth known as AoC because I'm lazy). Start calling me a carebear now because personally I see little "pros" to being on a PVP server:

Pro
You learn your character. Okay look, I won't lie. You learn to play your character better on a PVP server when you are constantly having to fight the AI and everyone around you the entire time you play.

In terms of "hard core" the other people on the server tend to also know how to play their character. You are not likely to run into a warrior that says "but I'm not protection spec" when you ask them why they do not even own a shield. In this same vein, the PVP servers tend to be more progressive as far as game content goes because they are so tard core.

Con
The people on the server are generally nasty. They are greedy. They are mean. They use the word Chuck and Norris in far too many sentences - that is if they are even capable of putting together sentences.

You are minding your own business when one comes along and kills you. And then kills you again. After they dance on your corpse they kill you again. Then they bring some friends over to watch them kill you again. Never mind they are 20-40 levels higher than you and it only takes one shot. If the PVP on a PVP server was actually an equal or fairly equal battle of skill that would be one thing. It is not. If you try to tell me it is, you are smoking crack and I want some. If I want to PVP, I want to PVP. I do not want to be ambushed by a huge crowd, nor someone a dozen levels higher, nor someone who hides in the bush until I'm busy trying to fight off something else to notice them stabbing me in the back.

I also do not know how excited I can really be about spending a huge amount of time and resources on building a siege city that I have to sit around and defend. I am not very good at PVP. I do not react fast enough to the unpredictable nature of the enemy. So mostly, I would be busting my butt to blow a bunch of resources on a PVP city which would be crushed.

Note: I understand it can only be attacked at certain times so you do not have to actually sit around all day for days on end waiting for it to be attacked but the idea is the same, sit around and defend (at the appointed time) and watch city be crushed, with the likes of me guarding the damned thing.

My biggest frustration with all this is the fact that it is so Us vs Them. The PVP people do not even want to fathom a world where people would like to focus on crafting or something instead of defending, blowing resources, and getting ass raped every time they go outside a city. They threaten to run off to do their own thing if we do not all go their way. They say it is their money and they will do what they want.

Do they not realize that by forcing me to play on a server where I will be constantly killed(because they certainly won't stand around to protect me or even come to my rescue when I'm being ganked because "oh they'll leave by the time we get there" or "oh well I'm not going to pay a bunch of repair bills just to die with you") is asking me to do the same? What about my money? Is my money not good enough around here?

I have not decided what I will do. It looks like the majority would like to play on the PVP server. I would like to play with the guys again but I know from experience that I will be frustrated and bitter with PVP unless they have done something dramatic to make it a balanced affair.

I HAVE RETURN!

A Side:

Howdy strangers! I'm sure many of you have been wondering where the hell I've been. I was on jazza baby! I had my 15 days of R&R back in the states! It was really really good. Of course getting to the states was an adventure all in itself which I'm sure you're dying to hear ;) (Of course you are! You're not here for the witty WoW commentary, I'm pretty sure of that)

Lets rewind back to about Mar 23- 25th. If you remember from one of my last posts, we had two huge windstorms back to back here. That coiencided with my getting ready to leave here to go on R&R. Those windstorms basically dicked over the entire air travel schedule here in the AOR. See, not only does it basically ground all flights for those days, but then it creates a back log of travel requirements. Bascially it fucks the scheduling all up pretty hardcore.

That was what was facing myself and my travel companion (because you never travel by yourself, you always have a buddy; plus his R&R was scheduled for the same time). Along with my travel buddy, we had 5 VIPs out here who needed to get back to their bases. Total of seven people trying to get out of here, along with everyone else in the AOR who needed to travel. Can you maybe see where I'm going with this?

The first night that a flight was suppose to come in, we all travel out to the helipad and waited. And waited. And waited... basically we waited for about four hours but alas it never showed. One of the problems with air travel here is that they don't have a good scheduling system in place to let you know when birds are arriving/ departing. They can tell you, Nope, no flights are scheduled for today, then an hour later two choppers land. You're like... wtf? But that's the Army for ya. The more I'm around these people, the more I'm confused as to how they get absolutely anything done, because they can turn the simplest processes into huge cluster fucks. But getting back to my travel log...

The second night was much like the first. Got out there, waited and waited, but no bird. The third night we had two shithooks (that would be Chinooks to the civilians out there) land. But as we were waiting this team of about 20 Army guys, and all their gear/ shit, arrived as we were waiting. Yes, your faithful narrator was bypassed yet again, as were the other six guys with me. Watching those two shithooks take off without me... well, it was a bummer.

Of course what made it not so bad was the fact that during these days that I was waiting to get out, I didn't have to work. So I basically had a couple of days off to just relax and chill out. Very nice!

During these days, the idea of catching a ride with a convoy kept being brought up. Specifically by the person who I was going on R&R with. Travel in and out of here is so hit and miss, mainly miss, that this is about the only reliable form of travel. So on the fourth day, that's what we did. It was either that, or not make it out at all and miss my flight home. Considering I hadn't seen Heather and the boy in almost seven months, I reluctantly accepted.

We hooked up with an Army team that had come in the night prior for a routine delivery over to the Army FOB on the other side of base here. My travel buddy had been in contact with them and made the arrangements. We got over to them at about 6pm along with one of the VIPs, our first sgt. The three of us would be traveling, at night under the cover of darkness, along with these guys. Once I was assigned to a truck I went over and introduced myself to the crew. We all hit it off pretty quick, which was really nice, and it turned out that the driver was a pretty big WoW player before he left for Iraq, so that gave us a good bit to talk about.

The drive over... hmmm, how do I explain it? It was four hours of nerve wracking, constantly being on edge, sharp and alert... it's something I never want to do again in my life. You're in full battle rattle, meaning your IBA (individual body armor), all weapon magazines (7 M4 and 3 M9 magazines), helmet, DAPS (shoulder blast protectors), weapons and anything else you've strapped to yourself. The truck we were in didn't have A/C, so even though we were riding at night it was still hot as shit because you're trapped in all your armor and the Air Force designed one of the hottest uniforms on the planet and then gave it to the service members going to one of the hottest places on Earth (really fucking smart right?).

Of course that was my reaction to the situation. These Army guys though, they'd been doing it for close to fifteen months! They were pretty damn calm, cool and relaxed about it. Very professional, which is really good. We talked the entire time, about WoW, about what my team was doing out here, about stupid things the Army and Air Force does... basically, we just shot the shit for the entire ride.

Part of what made the ride so long though was the fact that we were escorting KBR trucks. Let me tell ya, KBR is making an absolute killing on this war. Just Google them and see what ya bring up. It's disgusting. Anyways, on the ride over two of the KBR trucks broke down. The Army guys let me in on why that happened: KBR doesn't maintain their equipment worth shit. The drivers don't do any kind of checks on their vehicles before they leave. They just get in and go. These Army guys hated doing anything with KBR because of it. I don't blame'em. The two times we stopped, both times it took near twenty minutes before we got moving again. Twenty minutes where anything could've happened. Not a fun experience.

Eventually we did make it. When we got there, they dropped us off, we all wished each other luck (they only had 3o days or so left in country before they left, so I wished'em safe travels, and they did the same for me and my R&R), and my travel buddy and I went and obtained billeting for the night. He asked what I thought of that, doing the convoy (he did convoys for six months right after Baghdad fell) and I basically told him no more... that's something I don't want to do again. He laughed and agreed.

B Side:

No B Side for tonight. It's 10pm and time for bed. But I do have a lot of things that I want to talk about. Things like culture shock at seeing mass people again, being home, coming back... lots of little things. So over the course of the next few days I'll be blogging a good bit and spilling more beans.

Also, I know my writing above may be a bit jumbled. I'm a bit rusty seeing how it's been over a month since I last wrote something, so please excuse me but you'll just have to get the fuck over it and suffer till I get my sea legs back, as it were =)


-M

I've seen angels fall from blinding heights
but you yourself are nothing so divine,
just next in line...

Something Old, Something New

Work continues to be catch up from the two blissful weeks of vacation. I continue to have to tell my supervisor that the work of someone above her and in a completely different department has to come first over the work that I'm supposed to be doing for her. The rumor is that the Medical Director's transcription will be going to a service sometime this week and that these tapes I'm catching up on will be the last. I will believe that when I see it.

I've come up with a new method of communication with P and so far it is working well. He does not like to be nagged about chores. I do not like to have to tell him what he is supposed to do 500x daily. I made an action list page, similar to the ones I use at work and home. I create a list of things he is supposed to do each day. We go over it the night before to be sure he does not have any questions. He has control over when he does the items provided he does them that day and does not wait until bedtime to work on the list. This clears our conversations for more pleasant things, less likely to create arguments between us.

I'm also trying some new things to get the puppy housebroken (yes, I'm afraid she is not yet housebroken, she is much more difficult to train than my lab). So far that seems to be working also.

I am not so naive that I do not realize we are all in a honeymoon period regarding these new methods. They may fall apart but I will enjoy them working as intended for as long as I can.

Something Portal, Something Cool

I installed Portal on my new computer. I was determined to finish it this time. I played the game from start to finish last night. What a delightful little game. The writing is so clever. The puzzles are fun and challenging.

Tomorrow, I pick up the new GTA game. Somehow it seems wrong for a person working with young adolescents with traumas and mental disorders to look forward to coming home to pimp slap some bitches and outrun the police. It's all in good fun.

Something broken, Something blue

I have hit a wall in my rehabilitation for my back. It is no worse and no better. Sometimes, it feels almost normal. Other times, I can hardly move. I feel old and broken.

The bigger bummer is spending another several months alone. In this time, I have to move our household and find and buy our first house. Also alone. To paraphrase the highly overused quote from Gone with the Wind "I don't know nothin about buyin no houses!" I look forward to having a house and being settled into it but I loathe the process which proceeds it.

I have not heard anything from the college where I have applied for a position as an English Instructor. I called the chair a week or so ago to see how things were going. He was drowning in work (budget to write, 5 jobs to hire for, classes to teach etc) he sounded frazzled. I hope it is only this frazzle that accounts for the lack of communication. He said he would be calling me soon for an interview. I would really like this job. I am ready to work in my field. I will keep my fingers crossed for a little longer before I start to panic.

Goodbye, again

I am Clare Abshire in The Time Traveler's Wife. In a few short hours, my Henry will go away again. I will not be sure where he is or when I will hear his voice or feel his touch again. I will wake up to the empty space. I will wander through my days, as if asleep.

I think there is something harder about saying goodbye for the second time.

I am sitting in front of my new computer, sleek and black like a wet dog.

P sits in front of the new TV, also sleek and black resting like a picture frame on top of an unfinished oak credenza. He is playing Halo 3 and luxuriating in the extra space between the TV and himself.

M sits in front of what will become P's first computer. I have my back to him but it is comforting to listen to the click of the mouse coming from somewhere behind me. I know where he is. I know he is safe - as safe as anyone can be in this finite amount of space we have to live.

The puppy is a comet of black soft fur shooting across the room, sometimes stopping to bark at the strange suited men in the new window. She has no experience with television.

The older dog sits at my feet trying to remain inconspicuous in the hopes that the comet will stay out of her orbit for a little while.