Soo slow...

So, a cooperative project... no, scratch that, TWO cooperative projects, one recently revived the other brand new, are currently moving slower than molasses. It's very frustrating because I feel there's nothing I can do in either case. Well, that's not strictly true. In the revived project, I could write something more. But in the new one I'm really waiting on other people and I find this hugely frustrating, because I'm pretty sure that as soon as I start class everything will pick up and it'll get frustrating to keep all ducks in their correct rows.
On a more positive note, I had amazing homemade enchiladas for lunch today, courtesy of Svenska, whose apartment looks a lot more put-together than mine does. We discussed the possibility of a shared birthday party after the PRT. We'll see what happens. I'd like it but I'm not going to hold my breath. I'm also kinda annoyed that my birthday probably will fall in my first week of class. Yippee. On the upside, Navy Day Ball should be FREE this year! Meaning my only expense will be getting a room for staying after! And I'm seriously thinking about doing that because I fully intend to drink, dance and have a wonderful time! And unlike Sunny Point, the safe-ride program here seems woefully inadequate. And if I did safe ride, I'd have to come back and get my car the next day. So all things considered, I think the hotel room would be the cheapest option. Now I need to find someone to split the costs with because I think it's dumb to book a two-bed room if you don't have AT LEAST one other person staying with you.
However if it comes right down to it and I can't get someone else, I will just eat the expense and call it part of my birthday present to myself.

Rifle-Qual!

Well, you are reading the blog of one of America's finest who just qualified as a sharpshooter. Yep. Go me!
Good things come to those who persist and do NOT give up, even under threat of heatstroke!
Honestly though if Mr. Highmountain hadn't offered me a waterbottle before we started, I probably would have keeled over before the qual...
So, I stood there in the entirely inadequate shadow provided by the range and I listened and I tried very hard to absorb everything that was said by the four instructors. It was harder than it might otherwise have been because I didn't actually have a firearm as I was listening to the explanation and some of the more kinetic learners were fiddling with the fiddly bits of their firearms while I was trying to listen.
So things got sorted out and we all got our stations and I DID get a firearm then. It was lighter than I expected it would be, which surprised me. It was also, I found out very quickly, not inclined to kill me via recoil, which was very nice.
I should quickly point out here that my previous experience has been entirely limited to plinking with a .22 at the end of a safety course and then shooting a handgun in Nebraska to the derision of my brother, his friend and his friend's father. My own dad just stood by looking a bit embarrassed for me. Neither of the two experiences did anything for my confidence. Then there was Boot and contrary to what you might expect, I didn't get to shoot anything there because I was waiting for a piece of paper that would declare me to be sane.
(By the way, I think it's important for my readership to know that I'm listening to Men of Harlech right now and am humming along under my breath. Yeah, I'm a little proud of myself...the reward is wicked awesome Welsh men's choral singing)
Anyway, there I was. I sat on my bench and helpful people fiddled with a box on my bench that was supposed to help me steady my rifle. I was grateful for this. And then they used very complicated and formulaic words to basically tell me "Fire at your own pace and take your time so you don't screw up." I took my time all right. This turned out to be a sort of test round. We did... five of these I think.
Anyway, at the end of the five, I was pretty proud of myself but also kind of tired and heat-sapped (heat-sapped is my own oh-so-original way of saying that because it was hot I was really tired and didn't want to do anything except die of overheating).
Little did I know that the true qualification was just beginning!
I cannot say I have ever been formally introduced to the prone, kneeling and standing stances for firing a rifle. I have been pushed into them, but not formally introduced.
First there was prone.
I will say this for prone- I couldn't fall over and that was an improvement in some important respects from the other two. The really bad thing though was my inability to breathe and fire my firearm with any degree of accuracy. I lay there on the concrete thinking "How the hell do I line everything up and fire without my safety glasses falling off of my face and blinding me? And how do I breathe?"
It was difficult, but somehow I got through it.
I kept making dumb mistakes- no 'breaking blue', but stupid things like leaving the safety on for longer than it ought to be.
Then there was kneeling. Kneeling was... odd. I didn't like it very much. Towards the very end of shooting kneeling, I sort of got the idea and got much more steady. I thought it was probably too little too late.
At last it was time for the standing position. This was not much fun either, but we apparently had ten minutes for it. I had resolved that it would not, in fact could not take me ten minutes because I had a mission to accomplish- get a good sight picture and don't screw it up by moving my firearm away from my head. I honestly had difficulty understanding how someone could _take_ ten minutes for ten shots. Somewhere in the middle, what with holding my breath and all, I would invariably lose count and despair. In my despair, I apparently relaxed enough to do well, at least this was according to one of my two coachs. I can't really thank this one guy enough though. He was kind enough to help me reload my magazines. That was about the one thing I was pretty sure I could do without screwing up too badly, but about half-way through the whole qual I got pretty badly rattled, I'm not sure by what, and I couldn't even load a magazine. I felt like a completely useless berk, but he patiently helped me out. I owe him cookies or something.
The whole thing was an experience. It was overall a good experience and I'm glad I didn't quit the handful of times I felt like quitting would have been more productive than not. I learned a lot, and I would very much like to go back at some date in the far distant future and improve my skills. But I really think I need one-on-one tutoring with someone who is very, very, very patient. Like St. Monica patient.

Of bills and deadlines

So I'm pretty good about making sure the bills stay paid. I pay my phone bill on the fourth of every month because for whatever reason that seems easy for me to remember. I have an electricity bill now that I try to pay after my second paycheck though I still haven't fixed a date for that. I have an automatic payment set up for my car the day after my second paycheck. And this month, my student loan, my biggest, baddest concern, may or may not have gotten away from me. You may ask, how did this happen?
I'll tell you.
So, it was about the eighteenth of this month that I tried to pay my student loan online. I hadn't had to do that in a while. Usually I pay via money order or check- more frequently by check these days. But in a fit of stupidity, I had packed my checks and mailed them in one of the boxes to my parents' house. Ooops. And my mailing address had still not quite caught up with me. So there I was, without my checks. I tried to pay online. I submitted all the information correctly, I thought and called it good.
Then today, on a whim, I checked my bank account balance. It said I had a lot of money. This was both surprising and alarming, because the vast sum of money I had in it, I had already designated for paying off my student loan this month, and in fact had thought I succeeded in that. I called them today, at quarter to five and asked if the payment had in fact gone through and they told me... drumroll... No. It hadn't. Something about the account number being wrong.
But had they told me or notified me in any way? No.
I was just going to proceed under the assumption that all was well until I got an angry letter from them, apparently. Good thing I checked today, and not at minute too soon.
I got back into my account and tried desperately to right things. I resubmitted a vast sum of money to them and got a screen telling me that my payement would be processed as paid today since it wasn't five yet, but as I now know from my previous experience that could be totally useless if I have mistyped a number or have some kind of incorrect account info.
ARGH!
Why didn't they notify me?! Why?!
You know what? The important thing is now I know that doesn't work. And I've learned- if I have a suspiciously large amount of money in the bank for too long, something has probably gone wrong and I should see to it.
Even if the worst happens and I get in trouble for paying this stupid thing late, I have learned a valuable, painful, costly lesson. Even if I don't get dinged for cash, this is playing merry hell with my nerves. I don't know how I'm going to eat that delicious dinner I smell cooking right now. Argh... Frustration.
Fear.
Unhappiness.

Y-M-C-A!

So I signed up at the local Y. You might ask, doesn't Ft. SINYF have something like nine gyms? Why on earth would you pay money for another one? I would tell you- because the PRT is coming up. And sometimes I don't feel like driving all the way back to Ft. SINYF just to PT. Speaking of which, I have set myself the laudable-but-we'll-see-how-it-goes goal of going to the gym every single day until the PRT. I already know it's not going to happen over the long weekend. If I'm especially good, I might get up early on Friday morning, but they'll probably be closed anyway so it doesn't really matter too much.
Also talked to the parental units today about upcoming trip. They're disappointed it won't be for longer, of course. I tried to explain, but it wasn't good. I understand that they love me, we just can't be around each other for any length of time.
Maybe some day I'll be able to tell myself that it just doesn't matter any more, that holding on for any longer to a bad memory of the past is only going to hurt myself more.
But I can't stand it when people who know me and say they love me can think the worst of me with no remorse and no memory of doing so.

Awesome German food!

So a bunch of us went out for awesome German food last night! I'd like to take all the credit for finding a place that everyone really seemed to like- and disavow anything to do with everyone getting horribly lost. It's Google's fault. _I_ corrected that as best as I could, texting people the correct address as soon as I realized the problem.
The food was really, really awesome. I got the Jagerschnitzel and it was soo nice. It was probably the best German food I've had since being in Germany!
A good time was had by all, though one of the company was a bit lonely since he's not in exactly the same job as us and he might have been feeling a little lost. I hope that I was a good hostess (in so far as one is ever a hostess when your party is out at a restaurant...) and helped him fit in. I'm not sure how successful I was at that though.
We played another two rounds of 'Who Am I?' (first I was Napoleon (elected ruler, technically not French) and then I was Werner Von Braun. I got both and had a wonderful time. My two mystery people were Cleopatra and Louis Armstrong :D) over at DrunkLeprechaun's house, and that was fun. His cat is a complete and total spaz and it was hilarious to watch the cat interact with him and everyone else there. His wife is also a little spazzy, though perhaps the prank FB update that someone made was crossing the line. If I was her, I'd sort of expect it from his loony friends by now, but that's just me. Whatever.
We drove the non-car owners back to their respective barracks, after a long, thoughtful conversation about personality types. It was a good time. The conclusion? Most of us are introverted peeps. That wasn't a huge revelation somehow... But we all managed to get out and have a great time. Except for the losers who didn't show. Oh well.
And soon a bunch of cool people are going to go away and I'll have one less useful thing that I can do in my copious spare time. This means I'm going to have to novel more and procrastinate less. Bother.

Rant Alert

I've had a thought- not very original but here goes: "Blogger- for when your rant won't fit onto Twitter!"
I don't mean to use this place solely as a soapbox from which to complain and shout about the injustices of the world at large or my job in particular. It's just a relatively safe forum in which to do so, when I need to. So the topic of this rant is technology and chits.
In the olden days, you filled out chits by hand. For obvious reasons I'm glad we don't have to do that any more. Many trees died some pretty needless deaths as a result of that. Then we progressed to Adobe and had chits you could fill out and then print off and route to your respective people. One shot, one kill. If you forgot to put down something important, you'd have to do it all over again. Oh well. You'd use another piece of paper and deforest some more rainforest. Now, we have an improvement! It's a difficult to navigate, hella confusing, poorly laid out improvement! We all hate it! I think everyone on up to the highest levels hates this. It's as though the people who designed it never tested it, they just threw it together while drunk and at three AM and called it good!
Okay, no more ranting, end rant here.

On a more positive note, I'm getting caught up on my novel. On a less positive note, as we all start finding different extracurricular things to do, our carpool may be drifting apart. It happens. It was nice while it lasted. Who knows, it might still last a while?

AugWriMo

So I should be working on the WriMo, but I don't want to. I've been reduced to having a character of mine work in thinly disguised bits of real world history. None of these characters have turned out quite the way I thought they would. And honestly my attention is kind of being stolen by the party in the back of my brain that claims that they ALL fell down some stairs and hit themselves upside of the head on both sides. Really. Dangerous stairs in this port. Very dangerous stairs. Except for the one clever cloggins who insists that he hit himself repeatedly while drunk. Nothing to see here, sir. Nothing at all.
They intrigue me. They really do.
But I will be strong! I will stick to one story at a ti- oh we know how well that's worked in the past... But really. Tonight I will break 10k if it kills me. And then I just have 20k more to go because I'm not going for the big 5-0. I couldn't, not now anyway. Maybe in September if I'm still stuck on the 'let's weed with screwdrivers' team. So now, I shall stop procrastinating and get back to work!
Oh, for any amongst the readership that cares, the whole babysitting thing this weekend went off well and without a hitch. Much fun and ever so grateful to be single and childless still!

Being instrumental

in things.
Humans are funny critters, and I'm allowed to say that because I am one. We crave affirmation, acknowledgment and love, and we'll go to great lengths to get these things whether we realize it or not. We want this good stuff from our friends and family, from work or hobbies, and from God. Only one of the aforementioned will always give it to us. We collect stars or certificates that say we're good at things. How often do we think or realize that it's less about us and more about God working through us?
Granted, you probably wouldn't think about this as you're solving some incredibly difficult maths equation, or pulling people from a burning building or whatnot. I wouldn't know since I haven't done either. I think it's normal to not realize at the time that what you're doing that people are acknowledging is something you can do because of the gift from God that is your brains or your brawn or your training or any combination thereof.
The key is this, once you realize it, try to remember to thank God for it. That's much, much easier said than done. We want to take pride in the things we do. A little pride is a dangerous thing, as is false humility. And it sounds weird and forced some times to say "God gets the credit here", like if you just solved the math problem. Burning buildings on the other hand are considered more or less publicly acceptable times to credit God for His help.
I think another important thing that you have to do, that's part of this, is recognize your instrumentality. God picked up a tool from the toolbox and that tool was you. He needed a lugwrench and you were the right one for the job. Should you be proud that you were the right thing in the right place? Thankful maybe but not necessarily proud.
This was your random philosophical thought for the day- brought to you in part by Pope St. Nicholas I, who wrote a very thoughtful Response to the Questions of the Bulgars*!
More on that soonly!




*The people, not the grain. I can't see the grain having many questions...

Cooool!

Warning: Inner Child has breached the perimeter and is seizing-

Hihi! Its meee! Bolyongoks Inner Child! this is so coool she nevre lets me post anything! and now shes listning to stupid muzik its all gothik and depressy with a ladie who sings tooo high. my outer gronup is silly sumtimes! shes mad b-caz 2 days ago theye made her weed a walkway with a scroodrivr and she waz lik 'how dum, i no 2 langwadjes and am very smart and i am stil a gardnr. i thot it waz fun but i dont hav to polish the boots. i wonder iff pols mind that polish and polish is the same. i thot it waz weird... my outre gronup thinks i am bing a... its a big word...
anywayz! so cool! we r gettin a baby!! itz not ours of cors. we ar borrowin one and haf to give it bak on sun-day. she iz sooo cute!!! but outre gronup saz she wont get ny sleep caz the baby is very small and needs lots of help. i will help! i will tell the baby storys and watch it!
outre gronup saz no you will go asleep rely fast caz you will get bored but i say that iz not true at alll!
And shez riting a book agan witch is rubish and borin. i kan say this caz i am also n inner kritik. thers another but shez meen and rubish. i like my outre gronup but rit now shez not much fun. we hav tintin books agan but theyr all sqiggls and weird. she saz its anothur langwitch but i think ENglish is hard enuf.
anywayz outregronup iz all weird and nott happy with the weathr. i told her 'cheer up, we can go to a cool place for Krismas' but she saz thats hard now with work. i am glad i am thee inner child coz i get to go plaices without papers and thiyngs. beein an outregronup iz hard work.

Improv + packages= NOT cool...

Okay, I have to rant here because if I do it in real life it'll get messy. WTF...
I asked my parents to send me some uniform items that I had to ship to them in the messy/confused process of moving myself and all my earthly goods to Ft. SINYF. I gave them specifics- coveralls, NWUs, ballcap. Nothing more, less or other, please. Then I remembered that I still had a package I was waiting for- a small one that I'd had sent to them. It was a custom made keychain. I asked for that to be included. For some reason unbeknownst to God or man, my dad thought I needed my crocs.
Let me elaborate on these crocs. They are a hideous shade of green- like Kitchenaid green. I bought them for about five dollars when they were no longer the hip thing. I bought them not because they ever were the hip thing, but because I was going off to summer camp and needed some shower shoes. Recap: they are cheap, hideous and not-cool. Why the hell did he feel the need to add them to the package and NOT my keychain?
Noobody knows...
I'm not happy about this. I called and asked my mom if I'd mentioned crocs at any point in the list-making process and she said no, but that Dad thought that I needed them. My dad has a history of thinking I need things that I have no earthly use for. He has the best intentions but it drives me nuts when his thoughtfulness is so completely screwy. I mean, I will never forget what happened when I was in first grade.
I was not a fan of breakfast at that age, I never really had time for it, I thought. A large part of the morning was Mom running a comb through my hair to get all the knots out and braid it so I could go to school looking halfway decent. I didn't need or want breakfast. At all. I might be persuaded to eat some oatmeal but that was it. My dad was concerned.
It was a day like any other. I picked up my pink backpack with my name written on it in shaky red sharpie and headed off for school. My lunch was in my lunch box and I was a relatively happy camper. I took the bus to school, stuffing my backpack between me and the side of the bus for added comfort. I dropped said backpack a few times at school because I was a clumsy kid, and then I hung it up and forgot about it until it was time to go home. And then the most irritating kid in my class, a white-blond twerp who probably thought that 'tact' was something you used to put up posters said "Hey, your backpack pooped!"
I stared at the nasty looking brownish smear on my beautiful pink backpack and a horrible feeling filled me. Something of mine was defaced, and not by me! The injustice of it all hit me like a hammer. I'd ruined things on my own more than once. I regretted those things, I felt so miserable when that happened, but it was my fault, I'd been the sole instigator. That another person with the best of intentions but the very worst of execution had ruined one of my things brought little me perilously close to tears. I came home and yelled at my dad for ruining my backpack. Now I feel a little bit bad about that, but still kind of not. If he'd treated me like a grownup, asked me if I wanted breakfast, what I'd like for breakfast, if I minded if he packed me a breakfast, I would have told him: "I would love some awesome organic dry cereal, or maybe a granola bar. That would be very yummy. You can put it in my lunch box and I'll eat it on the bus."
But there was no asking. There was no communication there was just a perceived problem and a messy, unfortunate solution, because I was a child.
When stuff like this whole package shebang happens, I feel like a child again. And I hate it with every fiber of my being.
Update: This post was going to languish forever in my 'edit posts' page. I thought I'd overcome my baser nature and decided to give the parents a pass as they're old and senile and if you want anything done right you've got to do it yourself. I was going to do that until I opened the other bags in the package.
They sent me a Navy ballcap all right. A Navy ballcap with an elastic headband and '1-800 Navy' embroidered on the back of it. I don't remember getting it from my recruiter but it probably came in my Navy backpack that I got for free after signing up. That was the straw that pretty much broke the camel's back. We'd packed all my earthly goods into four boxes that we shipped (at their expense, so I should try very hard to be more charitable) to their house. In one of those damn boxes is my actual Navy ballcap, the one I went through Battlestations to get. I know it's not a trident. I know it could be worse- they could have mailed me my 'Recruit' ballcap. They could have... I dunno. It's just so damn frustrating. I was really looking forward to getting to wear my coveralls at long, long last, but no such damn luck. I called, ready to give them a piece of my mind, but the phone rang and rang, so I called Tbro instead and ranted to him. He told me (pretty nicely) to quit whining and that he'd call and ask them about sending me my ballcap... at this point I think I may just buy a damn command ballcap. Or forget about it until the fourday when I can go and get my damn ballcap. I just want to throw a temper tantrum. This is as close as I'll get to doing that. I desperately want to though, I'm so pissed off that I'm not sure this is going to be enough. I seriously want to go out there and start hitting things.
Oh- and one final insult. In another well-intentioned but completely stupid gesture, they sent me my purse. I didn't ask for it. I didn't want it. I have TWO damn purses out here, and none of the THREE that I have now is within the damn regs. Not a single flipping one. I've had it, I've had it, I really would like to run around screaming now. I know, I sound like a complete and total ingrate, but I don't care. I'm so sick of being treated like a child. I know, part of the way to avoid being treated like a child is to stop acting like one. I know that having the temper tantrum I want so desperately right now would be part of acting like a child. I know I need to get everything I own from their place because right now that's still a dependence on them- free storage. I just don't want to move the books! They need to stay somewhere temperate and safe. I don't know what to do. I can't have that much stuff. I know I'll be able to downsize once I get there. I'm thinking of pulling everything that I hate but have kept because of Mom or another relative and taking it to the thrift store. Get rid of the ugly, get rid of the guilt, get a good dinner afterwards. I think that's a pretty awesome plan.
I hate improv in packages.
Gentle readership, it is HIGHLY unlikely I'll ever ask you to send me random crap that I've left at your house. And honestly, since you're not family and you don't treat me like a child, if you DID send me the wrong stuff, I'd be sad, but I wouldn't be pissed like this. Honestly.
And if you ever just want to send me random stuff, that's cool too. I gladly accept books, sweets and cash. ;)

Navy Heritage/Pride/Show-Up-In-Whites Day...

Huh?
I'm confused. My handful of readers (probably only one) is probably not surprised. I've been confused a lot of late. I don't get it... I'm in a div. that does outdoor work A Lot. And when it's not outdoors, it's cleaning. Blech. So, having us all wear whites tomorrow (except for five poor people who are still stuck cleaning) means what exactly? A half-day? I'll take a half day. But I'm not sure what that has to do with Navy Heritage or Pride. Or why everything is about Pride these days. I mean, Pride and Professionalism? I know we're supposed to take Pride in the proper wear of uniforms and all that, I don't know why we don't just call it something else.
Now for some completely unrelated stuff.
-I haven't packed a lunch once this week. This is reaching crisis proportions because today I spent 11 dollars on lunch at Panera. It was delicious so I don't really have regrets, I'm just saying. Usually I spend about five at Tacobell. I wish they had a subway on base... sigh.
-I eat really bad for me crap on PT days because I reason that I've already burned a lot of calories so I should replace them. I don't think it works the way I want it to.
-My AugWriMo is progressing. That's about all I can say for it. Right now I'm a little annoyed to find that culturally the hill people are resembling some real world hill people that I don't like. I mean, I planned for the baddies to resemble certain baddies in real life, but the hill people were supposed to be annoyingly neutral- not unlike certain places at all, I guess. Whatever.
-I want a bagel. Now. And a beer. But I'm not going to have either. I'm going to be good and go clean... after all have company coming tomorrow.

Here a chief, there a chief, everywhere a chief-chief...

Ack. So I feel stupid but I think I can blame it on the near-heatstroke.
Today I had to do lots of stuff at the annoying place. Actually I didn't even have that much I had to do, but it took a REALLY long time. I was supposed to get a ride back with some guys instead of having to walk back across base. I got abandoned though. I was pretty pissed too, especially since it took me a while to figure this out because I didn't have my phone on me and couldn't call them to see where the hell they were. So after waiting about twenty minutes, I gave up and hiked back across base. Ft. SINYF is not like Sunny Point. Sunny Point was built on a fairly impressive hill but everything isn't that far away- it's just UP. On Ft. SINYF, everything is far apart. I feel for the Army newbs. Their life must really suck...
Anyway, I managed to get across base without dying of heatstroke only to present a copy of my Very Important Chit to the wrong Chief...
I should have realised there was something wrong when I saw that he was a chief not a senior chief. And I should have realized I was in the wrong building. Should have. Didn't. I blame the heatstroke. After profuse apologies, I made my escape. I really hope that chief doesn't remember I was also the idiot who turned up at oh-dark-thirty, hella early for a weigh in... I guess none of it is a very big deal. I mean, I wasted less than a minute of his time.
It's just I hate feeling stupid. I hate not knowing who I'm supposed to talk to or why.
I'd like to add in my own defence here that I was told to give this VIC to this senior RIGHT AFTER the run at morning PT. In my humble opinion, I think I did good remembering anything at all. It's usually all a blur until I get some water and walk around for a bit. Oh- I found a way to beat the morning run blues too! If it's at-your-own-pace, skip the five minute break and just start rolling. It's very psychologically satisfying to not be the dead-last person sometimes, and to not hold up the works. And to think for a few dizzy seconds that you managed to run the whole damn two miles and change in 16.__. In reality it was like 21 something. But that's not bad. And I got further without stopping this time than I did last time. Got all the way to the second corner! My goal for Saturday morning or Sunday evening is to the Fitness center!

Well, now I feel silly...

It was good to get that rant out of my system yesterday. I got up this morning and went to PT, to hear the four most beautiful words at a PT session (well, second most beautiful phrase since the first one is 'PT is cancelled') ''At your own pace'. Thank you, God!
So I at-my-own-pace ran the 'little' loop. It took me a while, but greatly to my surprise I was NOT the very last person! Shocker, I tell you! I was second to last, I think. There was an older petty officer back there, somewhere. He never passed me, therefore I was not last, right? I ran and I ran and I ran... I got farther than I did on Monday without stopping, much to my happiness. I was still hella far back, and still providing 'motivation' for the other people near the back. If it looked like I was about to catch up, they took off.
It's weird, really. Despite that rant and the fact that I'm dreading getting up at oh-dark-thirty tomorrow morning too, I don't have the special terror of running that I once did. Maybe it helped that Warrant didn't yell at us today. Somebody in the back was yelling, but it wasn't as frightening.
And then, at the very end, I got some good news. Warrant asked who was planning to bike or elliptical and told us that we would start machine PT on Monday. Thank you, thank you God! Finally! The bad news- and it's not very bad, is that apparently they supervise the bike/elliptical very strictly here so you can't get away with half-assing your pushups or situps. I'm not too worried about that. I'm good with both and I can only improve. And I will improve. Life has taken a dramatic turn for the better with regards to PT. When it comes to other Div. things, still not so much. But I got a lot of useful things done today and will continue to do lots of useful things tomorrow, hopefully. I need to make a list so I don't forget anything important...
And I'm now 4k behind on my AugWriMo...
I'll fix it...

PT! Good for me! Good for you! Aaarggh....

So, I am back on a more strictly regimented PT schedule. I hasten to point out to my dear readership that I WAS going to the gym every single day in the evening and biking or elipticaling my little heart out. Every single blessed day. I was sooo good. And then I joined the Div. And suddenly my time was less my own. I expected that. I did not expect Monday morning to be the most painful run I've had in a long time. Perhaps I should have, especially since I haven't run in a while. But then, I thought why bother?

I bike my PRT. Laugh. Go ahead and get it out of your system. It's hilarious, right? That we're allowed to plop down on a bike and burn calories for 12 minutes in lieu of a run. Well, stuff you. It's a damn good work-out and it's CARDIO which is what matters. Besides, would you say the same thing about swimming? Well, probably. But I'd love to see someone get horribly shown up- 'Oh, swimming's EASY! I don't need to practice, I'll just show up and PRT!" Hehe.. You die by lap eight if you do that...
I on the other hand, can just throw myself into the pool and push out 12 laps in the required time. I've done it. I don't recommend it, and I know I could have done better if I remembered racing turns, but that's neither here nor now.

The main thing right now is this- in less than 10 weeks, I'm supposed to do my real twice-a-year PRT. Does it make ANY sense to not practice how you're going to play? No. Not really. Is there any earthly reason why I shouldn't be doing machine PT instead of this running crap? Again, no. The only thing I've heard said for running is that it builds division cohesiveness. I fail to see how that works. Yep, everyone cheers for me when I 'do my best' and drag my dying body over the line in one last, all-or-nothing sprint, but there's less cheering in the first half-mile where I'm stumbling and kicking the person behind me.... Because the slow people run up front. I hate it, I hate it, and it's not helping me.

They might say "You'll slack off." Like hell. Honestly? I have my crows. That's supposed to mean something, I thought. Means that I can handle a little extra responsibility and can be trusted not to completely screw up if left unsupervised. At least that's what I thought it meant.

Anyway. Tomorrow at oh-dark-thirty, I will probably be running. If you think of it, say a prayer.

Oh yeah, one more thing- if you want to say something clever like 'You can bike in your own time' the answer is 'No I can't. My body is all-over-agony from yesterday's PT...'