Early In the Morning

I woke up an hour early this morning to get my uniform and boots ready for inspection (I’m all about the morning of, not the night before) and was so distracted by my new camera that I was close to late to quarters. I’ve always thought that I would never post a photo of my face on the blog. It seemed a necessary security measure because I really don’t want anyone from my command to stumble on my thoughts: it could put me in a tight spot. But the truth is that if someone from work manages to navigate to the blog, and if they think they might know me, well… then they know me. There are too many facts tucked away in these paragraphs. It’s too late to hide. So, photos of my face it is.

Today was my annual trip to the gas chamber and I was ready to fly in the face of Navy teaching and wear my contacts. They tell us in boot camp that the CS gas will fuse our contacts to our eyeballs and I just don’t buy it. After riots I never hear of protesters with irreparably damaged eyeballs and I’m pretty sure I would if that’s what was really going down. The evening news people would be all over it. I posted my speculation on the Myth Busters web site and learned that OSHA, the very group who is most concerned with my safety, say it’s not a problem. If you can’t trust OSHA on matters of personal safety in the work place, who can you trust?

After a slow march to the chamber (we walk there so that we’ll be forced to walk back so that we can air out our uniforms) I took the contact out of my left eye and discretely disposed of it in the grass. It seemed the safest thing to do… just in case. We lined up: two side-by-side lines of twelve, I was the first person on the left.

“Is anyone wearing contacts?”

Silence

“Is anyone pregnant or think they might be pregnant?”

Silence

“All right. Everyone don your masks.”


And I got scared. I mean really, really scared. Like I was about to face my executioner. I quickly pulled the remaining contact out of my right eye and flicked it onto the ground before I donned my mask.

When it was all over, when I was walking out of the chamber and flapping my arms to release the gas from my uniform, I was disappointed in myself. Myth isn’t supposed to trump reason, at least not in my brain. I place a very high value logic and science, or at least I thought I did, but this is clearly proof to the contrary. Is this just the beginning? And if so where does it end? Am I going to wake up one morning and think we should teach Intelligent Design in the public schools?

I'm scared.

Cheese

I just got a new camera in the mail so I'm giving blog photos a go. I have lots of work to do on exposure and F-stops and all that photo-type trash. I can only begin to imagine what this will mean for my posts.

A poorly focused self portrait:

Craterless

I’m not driving up the coast with my mom today because someone decided that it was absolutely essential that we execute a Rapid Runway Repair exercise. But here’s the skinny: we’re not using a real runway or even real craters, more than half of our people are absent at the range or water well class, and we’re skipping about 8 of the most important and difficult steps necessary to plot a new runway. So I have to ask, what about this is so important that my mom is off on her own?

The weather today is amazingly beautiful: it’s sunny and mild and perfect. A friend drove me home for lunch and when he dropped me off said, “It’s way too nice of a day to be in the military.” He’s right.

Spring Rain

This morning, in lieu of wearing our normal PT gear, we all came to work in sweats, combat boots, and carrying our gas masks and chemical suits. The idea was a morning full of drills.

At muster time it was overcast. As we waited for our company commander it started to sprinkle. And by the time we were in the throws of quarters the sky had opened with a vengeance and pelted us with hard, cold, sideways rain. Our clothes were soaked. We were shivering uncontrollably. The drills were cancelled and now I’m at home early eating hot crumpets and drinking copious amounts of black coffee.

It’s been a great morning.

CPX

Operations ran a mini exercise this morning. It was supposed to last the day but our failure was apparent early and was so complete that the evolution was cancelled. I’m pointing my finger at the Comms platoon: they distributed radios that weren’t compatible and because each group was in a different location, and therefore couldn’t see any of the other radios, no one realized what was going on. The hours we spent sitting around waiting for the radios to work were punctuated with the frantic changing in and out of our gas masks and chemical suits. It was embarrassingly ridiculous. I imagine we’ll stay late Friday to give it another try.

Four More Days

My mom is visiting and we’re both going a little crazy. Each day delivers more rain than the last so she’s cooped up in the apartment drinking coffee and reading. It’s not such a bad routine, especially for her because it’s the sort of thing she’s prone to do, but that’s just the point: she could read at home. I’m on edge because work is a hornet’s nest, the kind of hornet’s nest where there are a few predatory folks buzzing about making life a lot more difficult for the rest of us, so maybe it’s not a hornet’s nest, but it’s miserable nonetheless. I want to quit. Yesterday I woke up in a mild anxiety attack and last night I had this crazy dream where I killed an elderly woman and then double hole punched her flesh before hiding her body in a handbag. Seriously. Something’s gotta give.