Posts Tagged ‘leave’

• Dumb crap

  Date: 2008.10.15 | Category: I was too lazy to organize these | Response: 0

  I’m in the military and I tend to not think about what I give up. I go to the desert. I put myself in harms way. I work in an inherently hazardous job. People would like to kill me for who I am and what I do. I work odd and long hours. I am forced to eat MRE’s at times. I wear the same thing every single day at work. I have actually hit the dirt because I didn’t want to get blown up. Congress dictates how much I get paid and my pay is lumped in with the overall defense bill. If they don’t approve the entire bill I don’t get a cost of living pay increase. (luckily we haven’t seen that one yet because nobody wants to see a commercial about them voting down pay increases for military members during an election year)

  These things don’t bother me – they’re all part of the job and I know it. It’s not a big deal. The thing that does get me is weekend duty. The base is having an exercise and our section doesn’t have any direct involvement. We are working 12 hour shifts on the weekend in the interest of equal suffering by all. I’m a huge proponent of equal suffering but why did they schedule it on a weekend? Do they really hate us?

  Long story short – I put in a leave request so I can have the weekend off.

  Oh well

• News snippets

  Date: 2008.08.29 | Category: Life as we know it, ahh the news | Response: 0

  It turned out that the civilians are working on Friday so I actually had one extra day of work this week. I find out about my extra shift eight hours before I was to be at work so it wasn’t that bad of a deal. They were, apparently, unsure if I was going to show up and didn’t know what to do. Someone suggested that they call me – what a novel idea. My mind has been in vacation mode since I left work yesterday so I’ve just been goofing off – yep – goofing off. I’ve had some time to snag a couple of news snippets – the excerpts don’t tell the whole story but most are amusing enough to stand on their own.

  The finale of a political convention is a little like a wedding: the bride is always radiant, and the nominee is always stirring. In an unusual turn, even Senator John McCain, the expected Republican nominee, felt compelled to pay tribute to Mr. Obama’s historic milestone with a television advertisement congratulating his opponent on “a job well done.” (No good ad goes unpunished: after Mr. McCain’s spot on CNN came a Mutual of Omaha commercial about retirement plans for the elderly, and another promising to reverse baldness.)

  I love irony

  John McCain’s campaign is keeping a close eye on Tropical Storm Gustav as it heads towards the Gulf Coast and Republicans begin the trek to St. Paul, Minnesota, to nominate McCain for president.

  Gee – it would be a shame to have people correlate your nomination with Bush and the debacle that was Katrina. It’s no wonder you’re worried about the path of the storm.

  With a day’s program that included music from Jennifer Hudson, Sheryl Crow and Stevie Wonder (“a personal highlight for me,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said), it was a bit of an Obamapalooza. Joe Biden showed up unannounced — to jam, as it were. Perhaps he just wanted to feel what it was like to address a crowd of 84,000.

  Ouch – that’s just mean.

  This time, like before, the argument is that labels would like to sell the albums as a unit instead of singles, and the new part is that some of them are beginning to bypass the iTunes behemoth distribution machine. Apple insists that labels can’t sell the whole album as a unit, and has also stuck, for the most part, to its 99 cent-per-song philosophy, which labels have fought against.

  The music industry wants to get back to the selling 10-14 songs at a time while only giving you two songs you’ll actually like. Great business plan!

  Eleven beheaded bodies were dumped close to a graveyard outside a sleepy southern city on Thursday in the latest shocking crime in Mexico’s vicious drug war.

  I read the eleven beheaded bodies and thought – its gotta be drugs. You might as well call me Carnac the Magnificent.

  Defense attorneys filed 95 letters in court Wednesday night as part of a bid to get Abramoff out of prison early. They describe him as a humbled, changed man whose family is suffering and nearly broke after his first 18 months in prison… …In prison, Abramoff has focused on studying Judaism and helping fellow inmates, friends said. He has taught classes entitled “Parenting from a Distance,” “Modern Marvels,” “Cinema Studies,” and “The Holocaust in Films,” his attorneys said. He is currently teaching a motion picture theory class.

  Almost anyone trying to get out of jail early finds religion. I have a feeling Bush is going to give him a last minute pardon – its a shame – the guy deserves to spend his time in jail. They should give a fair trial to the West Memphis Three before they even think of dealing with this guys crap.

  After Adrian Beltre’s walk-off homer in the bottom of the 11th inning Monday, the Mariners went completely nuts. Winning pitcher R.A. Dickey told The Seattle Times, “We celebrated just like we would have celebrated if we were in a pennant race.” Nothing like the manufactured excitement that comes from reducing a division lead to … 30 1/2 games

  Our team is… what’s the word? Horrendous

  The Lindsay Lohan sweating an athlete thing isn’t brand spanking earth shattering news. She’s already discussed, in a rather profane manner, how attractive she thinks Michael Phelps is, and the now, she may or may not be infatuated with a certain Chicago Bears quarterback. That’s right, Kyle Orton, you are pretty, pretty, pretty attractive. Also spied dancing with an attractive blonde at Crimson Lounge: new Bears quarterback Kyle Orton – dubbed ”super-hot” by Lohan, Ronson and Lauper, who all admired the NFL player’s dance-floor moves.

  Last year he looked like a child molester with his molestache – this year he’s attractive?

  “Gentlemen, I’m the last person to disagree with you on the chicken hawk, lying coward, sexist, racist, needs a face-lift, whore stuff, but you really need to re-cut this track,” Olbermann said addressing the Avengers last week on his MSNBC show “Countdown.” “Nobody’s life should be threatened, not even in the hyperbole of the moment. Beside, you are rappers. You have better ethics than Bill O’Reilly does. Live up to them. Don’t live down to him. Word to your mother.”

  Way to go Olbermann

• 31 days, 744 hours, or 44460 minutes

  Date: 2008.08.27 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 0

  Irregardless of which way you add up the numbers, I’m going to spend a long time away from work. I have a bunch of leave available and I decided, hey, why not take a bunch of it all in one giant go? I won’t be traveling far from home during the duration of my leave but I’ll have plenty of time away from work to goof around. I only have a few goals while I’m on leave

  1. enjoy my time away from work
  2. avoid thinking of work
  3. goof off whenever possible
  4. read a book or two
  5. study
  6. hang out with Jessica
  7. hang out with my parents (who will be here from the 6th-12th)
  8. wear all of the dogs out
  9. Train for snowboarding season (its right around the corner – hooray!!!!)
  10. Go to the Mariners game on the 9th (my birthday coincidentally)

  None of the goals are monumental and all are achievable. The only ones that will take a little bit of willpower to achieve are numbers five and nine.

  I’m going to study for a few CLEP tests while I’m on leave so that when I return to work I can enroll in school. Due to the manning situation at work (we don’t have enough manning at work) I’ll still be on mid-shift for the next few months. The current schedule looks like I will be working nights until Thanksgiving. It could be drawn out longer but we’ll see what happens when we have people return from this current rotation to the desert. As a military member we sacrifice, this is my current sacrifice; I work a shift that nobody else wants because I’m the only guy that can do it. It messes with my personal life and its going to mess with it further when I enroll in classes in late September. I should have plenty of time to do my homework at night but some of my classes are going to be during the evening. There is no way that I can avoid that – oh well, gotta get my education finished sooner or later.

  Training for snowboarding season means a tweak in my workout regimen. I’ll target all of the flexors and core muscles in my body while doubling my lower body workout. I lift legs once every 5 days and do cardio every other day. I’m planning on doing a two day leg lifting split that will have me doing one day of ridiculously heavy lifting followed by another day of endurance lifting. I’m not worried about the heavy lifting – I’m worried about the endurance lifting. Simply put, its going to hurt – alot.

  I should have a busy, and hopefully relaxing, month ahead of me.There are times when it’s great to be a government employee – thank god for paid leave.

• We only call it camping because we sleep in a tent

  Date: 2008.07.22 | Category: Life as we know it, photos | Response: 0

  Jessica and I joined Jeff and Leanne at a campground near Ocean Shores, WA for a few days of camping and relaxation. The weather didn’t completely cooperate with us as we spent much of the time huddling around the campfire shivering but at least we didn’t have to deal with any rain. The camping trip had the added benefit of being miles away from the airshow at McChord. Even if we didn’t watch the airshow we would have been unable to avoid the crowds in the local area – the turnstiles recorded 340k attendees – yikes!

  We spent a little time out at the beach and out on the jetties – Jessica saw a porpoise in the distance and was excited -

  admin edit – photo removed

  Here’s a few more photos from the weekend

  admin edit – photo removed

  All in all it was a good trip – the worst part was our sub-par air mattress that is still extracting revenge on my shoulders and neck.

• Camping, studying, leave, and an airshow

  Date: 2008.07.15 | Category: Life as we know it, rants | Response: 0

  Jessica and I have been trying to study this past week but distractions are slowing down our efforts. She has got a few days left of school and she is cramming to get it done. She pulled her first late night session of trying to get it all done – I told her that that almost made her a real college student. If we had cans of natty ice sitting around the house she would could complete the college experience.

  I’m studying for a test that I take Thursday morning. If I do well enough I get promoted. If I don’t, I take the test again next year. Its my first time testing so I’ve got to make most of the points from the test – the bar is set at 69.5% on each test – a fact that I know simply because I’m testing out of cycle. You would think that I should be able to attain my goal – but – these tests are hard and they cover a large range of material. I’ve got my work cut out for me.

  Friday I’m going to “volunteer” to help out for the airshow that I won’t be watching. Someone above me either mandated or volunteered six people from my flight to help. There are really only six of us. I knew that I was going to be on leave at the time but I feel obligated to help out. This situation highlights what we’re facing at work – we are always short manned while constantly being farmed out to additional duties. We’re behind at work but the additional extra-curricular taskers never seem to slow.

  When my “volunteer” work is complete on base we’re off to the ocean for two days of camping. Jeff and Leanne (Jessica’s sister and brother-in-law) will be joining us. It should be a fun and hopefully relaxing time. I want to wear a custom screen printed shirt with “Voluntold” simply written on the back – most would look and think volunteer – I want them to know the real story. I don’t think it would be appropriate but it would be comical.

  I’ve got projects around the house that I need to do – I’m not quite sure when I’m going to work them in. Maybe next week? Only time will tell.