Kingsquared

An odd event occurs today that I we may not see for a while – in fact – this post is appearing on the blog at that exact moment.

The time will be 12:34:56 on 7/8/9

Cool huh? Wish I had a little more but thats pretty much it. Time based fun!

Jessica and I are constantly rearranging our schedules. Each week we find that more and more things are pushed to the wayside as we try to fit everything in. Our latest casualty might be going camping this year. I don’t think we have a free weekend available until Labor Day and I’m not even sure if that is going to be free.

For people that are constantly bored – as we often say to each other – we are busy as hell.

The things that aren’t even on the radar are piling up in droves – I wish we had more free time. Our work schedules don’t help as any free weekend I get is inevitably a standby weekend. There is a small break in September when my sister comes out for a week. We might try and cram in a camping trip then if she is up to the task (she very well might be).

Ok – that’s all I’ve got the time for now – I’ve got to finish cooking lunch for tomorrow, do my workout, vacuum out my car, finish the laundry, sweep the kitchen floor, take the dogs to the park, eat dinner, and…. the list goes on

We were out of town for Leanne’s birthday when we got the call. Hello, we have your dogs.

We headed back to Lakewood and picked them up from the wonderful people that had wrangled them. They had crossed a major road but were no worse for the wear. We got back to the yard and found that they had discovered a new way to break out. They decided to tunnel out of the yard. They were just hanging out in the back yard and weren’t confined to their kennel before the breakout. They simply decided to tunnel under the main gate to the back yard. We don’t know what spurred the jailbreak but we think someone decided to jump the gun and start shooting fireworks a week early. Did I mention that it’s illegal? Bastards.

They are confined to the kennel at the moment but I’ve got to make some upgrades tomorrow. The only way to further fortify the place, save for guard towers with high powered assault rifles, is to prevent the tunneling. We’ve got to prevent it the only way that we can – concrete. Damn dogs – at least they are safe.

It’s a struggle to stay occupied on the weekends when the rest of the time zone is sleeping. I have a few things that I would like to do but I need the freedom to make as much noise as I want and I really need the warming glow of the sun above me. Sitting around is hard to do and it starts to wear on me physically after a while. What else can I do? The dogs are sleeping. Jessica is sleeping.

Luckily, I have one last weekend in the dark and a few more days of work and I can resume my normal life. I’ve been watching TV but I think I’m going clean out the garage. Sounds boring doesn’t it? At least it’s a way to kill some time without making too much noise.

We have both noticed that we spend too much time in front of the TV so we’ve made an effort to spend a little more time with our noses buried in books. I’m working on a new book by Henry Rollins and a book about Home Brewing. Henry has always been an inspiration and I always get a kick out of his books – its a shame he has been avoiding me. I don’t stalk him per se but I feel that he schedules his shows to avoid me. If I am in the desert he is in the states touring. If I in the states he is in the desert doing a USO show. If I am in Canada for the weekend he is in the Seattle area. Lately, I haven’t been able to win. He doesn’t have much coming up on the calendar for this year but I hope some more dates show up soon. I’m reading the home brewing book because I caught an article about making cider… strong cider. Our 2nd annual Halloween party is coming down the pipeline and I thought it would be a cool idea to make our own cider instead of making death grog like we did last year. Research got me on a bunny trail and soon after down the rabbit trail I went and I found that making cider and beer aren’t that far from each other. I only need a few more pieces of equipment to make beer so if I can squirrel away the money Jessica will hopefully give me the go ahead. It sounds fairly simple and it could actually be fun. We’ll see how it goes.

You’ve heard women say it before “Why in the world would I want to take care of your kid when I’ve got two of my own and a husband to take care of.” Yes, men are grown boys and maybe it’s our nature of always trying to push boundaries that makes us feel young. Some are adrenaline junkies and there are others like me that love to come up with smarmy one liners. If I could afford it I would trade my one liners in a heartbeat to be an adrenaline junky but I don’t think I could meld the two together. I caught an interesting story about a SR-71 pilots trip across the country where he had the opportunity to be both. The story is unattributed for some reason – it’s still classified, it’s un-true, it’s… – but, I like the story. I can only hope that I can continue to be a grown boy – and not drive Jessica crazy in the process.

Read the whole story right here

I had an interesting evening. I had to deliver an item and the document needed to be digitally signed so I had to bring along a toughbook. The toughbook did not work as designed. In fact, it completely locked my out of the network and nobody could fix it till after 0700. The promotion list came out at 0600.

I called Jessica when the time came and told her how to find the list – after a minute she had it up. The next 30 seconds seemed like hours. She was looking for my name and I thought she was just messing with me because she could sense my tension. After four or five more days she finally found what she was looking for.

My name was on the list… this is awesome!

I don’t get to wear the stripe until next year some time (that’s the way promotions work) but I still get it in the future. The best part is that I don’t have to test for the next stripe for two more years… and then I get to repeat the process all over again.

In 13 hours I will know the results. In 13 hours the results of the job “interview” will be available for all to see. In 13 hours I might be happy or I might be waiting until next year so that I can try again.

I’m waiting on promotion results to arrive and I’m not sure if I made it. I know what the average cut-off score is for the entire Air Force but I don’t know what the cut-off score is for my career field. I know roughly how well I needed to do on the promotion tests but I have no idea what my actual scores were. The wait sucks…

Last year I blew my chance by not taking the test seriously. This year, however, I spent a lot of time studying the test material. I can only hope that I studied the right material.

*crosses fingers*

The first 90 seconds of this video is what made me want to share it. The rest is a bad song that I really don’t like all that much. Well, its not a bad song per say but I don’t like it so I think its a bad song. Watch (and listen) as people make rain with nothing but their bodies.

Technorati Profile

Switching to night shift is always difficult and the events of this week haven’t made it any easier. I’ve found that it takes a good 4-5 days for me to get my internal clock adjusted to working an off shift. I need copious amounts of caffeine to make this work because I can’t stay busy enough to keep myself awake. I’ve tried to keep myself busy but there have been times when I caught myself dozing while standing up. Summer has arrived in the state of Washington and in the land of no air conditioning our house tends to get a little toasty during the day even if all of the windows are open. If it’s dark I can usually sleep but when its warm like this I don’t sleep quite as well.

Jessica has had a rough week. Jeff, her brother in-law, was in the hospital because of kidney stone and a brand new diagnosis of diabetes (boo!), her uncle passed away earlier this week, and she has been running on empty all week long. She has been stressed (obviously) and taking everything in like this simply wears a person down. Stress feeds stress and I haven’t been my normal self all week.

My normal stress reliever is a trip to the gym. The heat and the lack of energy due to the time shift has prevented me from getting in a decent workout. I feel like a weakling right now. Its extremely difficult to time to calorie intake so that I have some energy come workout time. When I work on dayshift I normally workout 4-6 hours after my last meal and 1-2 hours after my last snack. When I am working nights I haven’t had anything to eat in at least 9 hours. I feel like I am trying to win a race with nothing in the gas tank. I have tried eating immediately after waking but I hardly have enough time to digest. My only options are to suck it up or wake up in the middle of the night (or day) and eating breakfast. Can you imagine waking up at 2AM to eat a meal? I can’t and I really enjoy my six hours of sleep a night.

Little things at work have been driving me crazy. Communication from my shift to the other shifts is a one way street. I try to send out as much information as possible and in return I receive nothing. Dayshift may do something and have some solid reasoning behind it but without communication I feel that they have lost their damned minds. Ten to fifteen times I night I ask myself what the hell were they thinking. Oh well – I’ve vowed to get in a good workout tomorrow and the weekend is fast approaching. Hopefully I can ignore the little things and relax – this isn’t the end of the world and I need to stop acting like it is. I really want to be able to work myself to exhaustion but finding enough work to stay busy is a difficult task. I’m writing this post instead of doing something because I want to be able to stretch out my one hour of scheduled work for this evening. Motivation is difficult when you are working by yourself. When you have no communication with other people it’s hard to gauge how much work you need to finish to be a contributing member. I’d much rather work with someone I despise than work alone – at least I’d have some competition.