Today is somewhat of a sad day for me, because it is the day we all say goodbye to one of my best friends. Ryan is leaving here to go back to the US and find a job, etc. I’m very happy for him because he’ll be free from the military, but I’m also nervous for him during his job searching process. I hope he finds a nice job in a good location.
I’m going to miss Ryan a lot, because over the past few years he’s been a sort of lifeline while I’ve been through some difficult times in my personal life and at work. He’s just a cool guy and he has an easygoing way that really helps put things in perspective. We’re having a party for him today at the bowling alley, which should be fun.
In other news, I was searching for Buddhist and Taoist blogs on Google yesterday and found an interesting one which I’ll probably add to my Blogroll. Richard from A Quiet Watercourse seems to have a lot of interesting opinions on various topics and he has some good links as well. He posted about the old 8 glasses of water per day myth (snopes) back in September. I find it interesting that many people still believe this information blindly regardless of the many articles and documentaries made which dispute it. It’s nice to see someone talking about things like that.
I woke up today freezing, walked out the door freezing, and went to work freezing. It was very cold this morning. Over the past few days the temperature dropped and there were even a few flakes of snow.
It’s ok now that the heat is going, but I wish things would go back to the way they were a week or 2 ago. It was getting nice and Springy.
As some of you know, I’m in the military. I get out in December, which excites me greatly. This base is going to be a very difficult place to work in the coming year or so. My career field has been drastically affected by the decreased budget and the reallocation of money to the war effort. They are kicking many of us out of the military (not me, I wanted to go) and the ones staying in will be performing the same workload with decreased funding and much less manpower. I don’t know how that will affect the Air Force as a whole, but it is bound to wear people down and cause problems in the long run.
The plan for Information Technology in our realm is to pull everything up to the highest level for central administration. This has its advantages and mirrors the corporate sector, but it also has its disadvantages. The military has to deal with mass fluctuation of ops tempo as well as personnel. If this tiny base has to deal with the influx of personnel in the same way it did in 2003 (during Operation Iraqi Freedom) with its planned 3 personnel holding the IT infrastructure together, I predict problems on a large scale.
Unfortunately, my opinion doesn’t matter….not that it will in the civilian sector either. Maybe I’ll become a Baker.
Organic bread made from spelt is very delicious.
I’ve started a sort of creative journal on my laptop. Most of the things I write will probably stay on my laptop, but I may occasionally post some of it here. I’m doing pretty good right now. I have a little over 9 months left in the military and then Steph and I are probably off to the states somewhere - wherever I can get a job. I’m a bit nervous but also excited. I just hope I can get a job in which I’ll be happy. Anything is bound to be better than going completely against personal beliefs and values as I am now. If anyone reading this knows of any IT openings in a decent company, let me know. ;)
I hope you’re all doing well. I always try to read my friends page…I just don’t always have time to post in my own journal. Have a great day!
Cracked lips spew forth words across the tattered conference room. Like so many dry dust motes, the words float toward me. I bat them away in irritation and chase pen and paper dreams.
mess of paper
on the table
three o’clock meeting
I drew a character I like to call BatDogMan, and another character called Verbiage. Verbiage is a monster consisting of the word verbiage, some squiggly lines, some sharp teeth, and those raised up eyes people use when they are drawing snails.
I had an interesting exchange of words today about my evident lack of desire to be at work. Believe me when I say that this shouldn’t be a surprise. I have 30 days of leave available to take per year. My leave total accrues 2.5 of these days per month, and am free to take these days whenever I see fit. For some reason people in leadership positions understand and admit these things, yet get angry when someone does what they have been instructed to do. They all have obsessions with emergencies. For reasons I don’t understand, they think that I should maintain at least 14 of these 30 days per year for emergencies only. It is as if they expect my life to consist only of one hardship after another. If there are any hardships that never dissipate, they would have to be work itself and their constant meddling in my affairs. I take my leave when I want so I can be happy in life. I’d rather not base my existence after some robotic entity which would probably work forever only to be rewarded with some lube and a box in which it would store itself.
I’m home now and I’m happy. My cat is meowing so I’d best go poke her in her belly.
I ordered The Kite Runner today. It looks pretty interesting. I’m on a reading kick at the moment, but I’m hoping to start the whole writing thing up again soon. I haven’t written any poetry in quite a while, so maybe I’ll try again soon. I might even try a short story or something.
Work is great as usual. Not really… I don’t imagine normal jobs are great either, but the military is so dumb sometimes. Oh, we got a sandwich toaster today. You know what that means! TOASTED SANDWICHES. There are these really good rolls we’re going to use….and we’re going to put the ingredients in those rolls, and then put the assembled structure into the sandwich toaster. I can’t wait to taste one of those.