in the movies

Taking advantage of a day off–a real day off, today–I watched a fair amount of TV. This was interspersed between housecleaning, and I did get some stuff done, which is good. Sadly, there’s plenty more to do.

But… among the things that I watched were a couple of movies, one aimed at teenage girls, and the other aimed at teenaged boys (or teen boys at heart). The second movie was Transformers, which was great fun for someone who grew up in the ’80s and remembers the cartoon. My brother had a bunch of the toys, too, but I was never able to figure out how to transform them. I’d lose interest after fiddling for a while, and gave up on it.

I was struck by how well they did, in that movie, at portraying the military in a semi-realistic way. Their base in Qatar at the beginning of the movie was very reminiscent of Al Udeid Air Base which is actually in Qatar (though I doubt that random kids from the area would be visiting for no apparent reason–there tends to be greater access control, but it was a plot point, so I’ll give it to ‘em). And of course all the Pentagon nerve centers that they showed were much more impressive than what I’ve seen in real life. We might have the technology, but our control-rooms generally always have more of the “large office environment” feel than echoing dark caverns of doom… I remember that upon visiting the Pentagon for the first time I was terribly disappointed at its lack of metal and black glass. The crumbling 50’s-era architecture was very much like what I’d seen on any other base and was a true anticlimax.

But back to the movie. They announced the SecDef appropriately and the room stood to attention for him. Military members weren’t wearing hats inside or saluting at weird and inappropriate moments. There were no colonels in their 20’s, and the junior ranks were all appropriately young. There weren’t used cartridges strewn about (dangerously) on the floor for “atmosphere.”

Even more happily, there were no “You must not disclose this information–it would cause mass panic!” interludes. I hate these. We’re too mission-oriented in the military to think about such things. Plus which, you learn to be so hard-nosed about threats that you give the civilian population a lot more credit for practicality than apparently they do in Hollywood. If some terrible thing–like an impending nuclear strike–were to be announced, you’d expect people to be afraid, but to react in a predictable and somewhat orderly fashion (sadly, we often get surprised when confronted with the exact opposite). If the “you might cause mass panic!” conversations ever do happen outside of Hollywood, I’m sure they happen in civilian headquarters as opposed to military. We expect better of the American public.

(Rant finished.) I could sense the Air Force presence behind this movie, much like I did in Iron Man when I saw it a few weeks ago–you can sense the hand of AF promotion whenever you see the F-22 heavily featured! And featured it was… Though when I looked for it in the credits, it seems that their joint team of military liaisons was headed up by an Army lieutenant colonel and had representation from AF, Navy, and Marines as well. Good job on their part!

It’s interesting to watch the changing role of the military in movies over the years. I’ve read a lot of complaints about the spate of anti-war movies that have all pretty much tanked over the past year or so, but as I’ve been watching older movies, it strikes me that they’re more the rule than the exception. Most of the stuff that I remember seeing as I grew up was pretty anti-military (all the soldiers are cold-blooded killers at heart, except for the random maverick–yes, I used that term on purpose–who defies authority and follows his heart to do the right thing). What’s striking now is that public opinion, as reflected in the movies, seems to be making a perceptible shift to a sense that the military is on our side, trying to do good things for Americans as a whole. I wonder if this changeover will continue?

Comedy of errors

I’m tremendously amused at how my first day off work turned out. I did manage to sleep in, which was nice, but I had to be on base in the afternoon to attend a briefing about deploying. I managed to–made record time from my house to the meeting, too, which was good because I’d really cut it too close!

As it turned out, the meeting was completely useless to me. It was the normal round of “things to be aware of when you’re deploying” which I really didn’t need because 1) I just did this a year and a half ago and 2) since I don’t have dependents, there is a lot less that I need to worry about. But heck, it got three signatures on my deployment checklist, which they handed out there. I find it really interesting how, on the front end, it all sounds like it’s life-or-death that you get everything completed and perfect and have everything in order before you go… and once you get to the place where you’re deployed, no one asks about it or needs to see anything that’s in your formidable stack of papers. Well, with the exception of your security clearance paperwork, so you can get access to your office and start a computer account.

It’s funny being an “expert” on the deployment thing, too–4 of my coworkers from the office are being deployed a month after me, and they’ve had a bunch of questions like what to take, what it will be like to get there, what to expect, and so on. I remember, hearing them, how confused and in the dark I was about my first deployment… I hardly knew what to ask but felt like there were so many unanswered questions…

Now I just have a few anxiety-catalysts. First and foremost is the fact that I don’t have any points of contact in the office that I’m supposed to be working in. Since my position is a new requirement, this is to be expected, but I’m having nightmares–literally–about getting there and no one knowing that I was coming nor what I’m supposed to do. I hope I can find at least one person who works there before I go. Even having the office address would be nice, since I’m going to need to forward my mail there. (This also factored into the nightmares.)

After I sat through that briefing, turned in some paperwork and got signatures in the right places on my checklist, I went to lunch with my aforementioned coworkers, then headed back on base to try on uniforms and see which sizes I need to order for my deployment. For the first time with the Airman Battle Uniform, the Air Force has made women’s sizes in a utility uniform. But as with other women-sized uniform items, they did it all wrong. I don’t know who thinks that women typically have 19″ waists and 40″ hips, but no one I know does. And those pants REALLY don’t fit me. I tried on a couple sizes before deciding to go with the tried and true path: men’s sizes and a little bigger than I really need. That’s what I did for my old desert uniforms and it worked well.

I’m concerned about these new uniforms: in the interest of making them wash-and-wear, the fabric is as dense and heavy as a pair of jeans. And who wants to wear a full suit of jeans and denim jacket in the scorching desert summer? I foresee some uncomfortable moments in my future (I’m heading over there in late July/early August, so it will definitely be hot). Apparently the Air Force is working on changing this problem, but it’ll be too late for me. All things considered, though, it would really be TOO humiliating to die of heatstroke when you’re in a rough town like Baghdad! (Just kidding…)

So, that done, I headed in to my office to launch an email to my deployment manager with my uniform sizes. And in my email I discovered that the helpful Personnel Center has decided to send me to SOS–again. Apparently going one time is not enough for me. I must need remedial reblueing! I resurrected a few files and sent a few notes out to people saying, “While it was a useful experience, I’d actually prefer to stick with only going to SOS once, if you don’t mind: and here’s proof that I attended–and graduated!–in February.” I hope that will convince them…

So after I’d done all that, I headed home–right at the end of the day when I would have left anyway. So I spent basically half of the workday at work–while I was on leave! Oh well. I don’t mind it at all because I don’t have to go in tomorrow… (Or so I think now!)

Leave

Hooray! I’m finally into my time off… some much-needed leave so that I can get my apartment de-cluttered and my stuff ready to pack away in a couple months… Of course, time off isn’t probably really going to be my time until Friday. The meeting that I mentioned before (first thing on the predeployment checklist–actually where I receive my predeployment checklist, come to think of it!) is tomorrow afternoon, and before that I need to arrange some appointments and sign my short-term apartment lease and try on ABUs so that I know what sizes to tell our deployment manager to order…

Ah well. I knew all along that this wasn’t going to be a time of sheer relaxation. It’s good to know, at any rate, that I’ll have some time to get things squared away. (And we just won’t speak of the three new for-fun projects that sort of magically fell into my shopping bags tonight, will we?)

odds and ends

Well, I can tell I’m feeling uninspired–I’ve done everything tonight except write something in the big blank box that’s been staring at me on the “Write Post” tab… I have a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head but somehow they’re not resolving themselves into comfortable categorizable posts. In the absence of that sort of inspiration, here are some things that have been interesting me lately:

Chore Wars: Wow, someone was unbelievably inspired to have come up with the idea for this site. You can register a group online (your household), and members create characters that win adventures and prizes and experience points by completing household tasks. Clean the bathroom? 20 experience points. Sweep the kitchen floor? 5 experience points. Your imagination (as the organizer of the tasks and adventures) is the limit. I’ll tell you what–if this had been available when we were growing up, my mom would have been on there in a heartbeat (I just had a conversation with her confirming this), and my brother and I would have been battling it out to get to the cleaning first in order to beat each other out in the adventure. I daresay my dad would have wanted to get in on the fun, too! Cool idea. If/when I ever have a household to run, I think I’ll have to do something like this. I’ve actually been toying with the notion of getting a group of single apartment-dwellers together as a group to do it… except I know I’d always be on the losing end of it.

BPAL: An “underground” perfume marketer. These people are coming up with amazing combinations of scents based on cool essential oil combinations, and they’ve got a following, too. I don’t know what it is about perfume sites online… words and scents don’t combine well and it’s touch-and-go to capture an idea of what is really going on (I think this is what makes wine-tasting sound so weird when you have a bunch of informed wine tasters). But the way that they characterize scents just makes me want to buy up huge lots of them! By the way, I can tell already where my scent-tastes lead me… it probably gives you a clue when you hear that the top contenders for my must-buy list (so far–I haven’t gotten all the way through their site) are such titles as: The Lion, Baghdad, Al-Shairan, Silk Road, Morocco, Cairo, and Scherezade…

What makes it even more fun is that these are meant to be worn and to interact with a person’s skin chemistry in a way that makes them even more distinct to each wearer. I’ve found this to be a sticking-point for me… my skin chemistry is unusual in that almost every perfume I’ve tried ends up smelling like some version of powdered-sugar. Lemongrass smells like lemon bars, dried grasses smell like raisin bread… etc. (The other weird thing that happens to me is that my skin practically eats through metal–any jewelry that I wear for extended periods of time ends up pitted and compromised. Not sure if they go together, but still.) Anyway, the people at BPAL (aka Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab) have something to help here, too… a series of forums where people review every distinct perfume and you can read if something that is supposed to smell sharp and citrusy instead ends up smelling like baked goods on a few people… Incidentally, that’s probably why I favor those spice scents… if they’re going to smell like baked goods on me anyway, they might as well smell like gingerbread and pumpkin pie, right? Jasmine tarts just don’t sound tempting–besides, florals give me a raging headache!

Work when you were planning to be on leave: I’d set it up to be on leave for this week and next week, but due to a confluence of circumstances, my leave never got approved and sent on to the powers that be. Somewhat resentfully, I came in to work on Monday morning, and got a short-notice tasker to write 12–count them, 12–point papers. Most of the words were already out there, but I had to convert their format and make them all parallel in structure… not a lightweight task. I was quite pleased to see that I managed it within a 5-hour period, and I did a good job! And then today was another productive day, though more painful… a similar length of time went into a staff meeting where we hashed out the best way to reorganize the branch and divide workloads. How is it that you can have some of your most productive working days ever on the very days when you hadn’t intended to be there? (By the way, I just bumped back my leave… I’ll be taking those weeks but starting Thursday instead of Monday.)

Perhaps it’s the unaccustomed spurt of work productivity that leaves me feeling uninspired… for once, I’m using my creativity and problem-solving in an appropriate way! Anyway, it’s been a good–if slightly exhausting–couple of days. Here’s hoping that I can have a similarly productive day tomorrow!

silliness

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the punishment of planners

My dad was in the military before me, and I grew up moving from coast to coast. Something I remember growing up with was a certain stress innate to vacations and our moves from one location to another. I remember my parents would always have a falling-out at some point because my mother would want to have made arrangements and my dad would resist making arrangements until the very last minute.

We’d know vaguely that we were going to Washington State for Christmas, for instance, but probably not which dates we were traveling on. Multiply that times every other complicating factor (house-hunting, pet care, car trouble, route across country, etc.) when it was a move…

Anyway, I grew up thinking that this was probably just a personality conflict between my parents or possibly a male/female thing… but recently I’ve been thinking maybe it was much more related to the fact that my dad was in the military than anything else. My mom was expecting him to plan like a civilian would, but he ended up “planning” in the way that we military folks learn to… (Remember that phrase “hurry up and
wait”?)

I would naturally be a pre-plan sort of person–I’m more comfortable knowing what I’m getting into ahead of time. However, since the very beginnings of my association with the military, they’ve worked a very Skinnerian (behavioral) disincentivization process on my will to plan…

And here’s just one more nail in the coffin of my planning nature:

I have a lot of leave (47.5 days as of today, according to the Powers That Be) to take, and I’m not going to be able to take it while I’m deployed for 365+ days in Iraq, so it would make sense for me to drain that balance as much as I can ahead of time. I would like to use this leave time–for my own relaxation apart from work, if nothing else.

However, I also have a deployment coming up that requires lots (and lots and lots) of running from office to office, getting check-boxes on paperwork checked, and initials from umpteen thousand different officials. We call this lovely procedure “out-processing” and it’s a horrid but ubiquitous part of being in the military. Similarly, when you arrive on station anywhere, you have to “in-process”, and do the same thing that you just finished upon leaving the last place.

However, though everyone knows that I have an upcoming deployment and that I will spend at least two weeks of the time before it doing this business of out-processing (more, actually, because some of the stuff has to be pre-ordered or you end up with nasty problems like boots that don’t fit and not having a hat for your uniform–which happened to me last time I did this), here’s how my pre-deployment has gone so far:

I signed the paper that said I accepted the deployment. (2 weeks after it was “due” because it got stuck in someone’s inbox on the way to me.) End of story.

Finally I called the people who are supposed to start this process and they said, “Oh, you need to talk to someone else–but they don’t like people to come in one at a time, so you’re going to have to wait until they have a mass briefing, only I don’t know when they have those briefings.”

Ahhh, life in the military.

Anyway, my point was: even though I know I want to take some time off, and I SHOULD take some time off (if only to get things ready for me to leave), it’s really hard to do it because I never know when someone’s going to call me and say, “Where are you? You’re supposed to be at this meeting that started an hour ago!”

My solution to date has been to schedule a couple weeks off for this month (it’s still a month or so before I’m a short-timer), and plan to stay at home/in the general vicinity of work just in case any of those especially short-notice things pop up. I know that sometime before I go, I’ll have a road trip up to Washington State, unless the military really decides to blindside me (for instance, with 6 weeks of newly-required training–it’s been known to happen, and out of the blue like that). I hope, though, that I’m going to be able to get my stuff moved out of my apartment and put in storage, and leave my car and pets with family, in a timely and mostly stress-free manner.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

(By the way, as luck has it, the person I talked to found the next scheduled time for a mass briefing, and it is–of course–set for the afternoon of the first day of my requested leave. Sigh.)

Solving all the world’s problems

I just spent the better part of an evening watching a documentary called Sand and Sorrow, about the genocide in Darfur and our sad tendency to want to ignore it, even as we say “Never Again!” to the abstract idea of allowing genocide to happen.

I am moved. I’m not sure what to do with my mostly emotional reaction at the moment, but I know I need to do something… (Uh oh. This need to do something has driven me in unpredictable directions before…)

But some general reactions while I allow the greater necessity for action to sink in, and consider directions I must take…

I was on the fence about watching this documentary–it was produced by HBO and some well-known activist types from Hollywood, and I wasn’t sure if it would just be an infuriating collection of heartstring-pulling and pointing the finger at favorite political scapegoats… (And yes, there was definitely some of that, but they seemed to be able to restrain themselves and stay on the point for the most part.) Also, I’m never sure what to do when I watch something like that… Something about seeing man’s inhumanity towards man (or, to be gender-neutral, the unspeakable cruelty that people are able to visit upon their neighbors) gets me riled up to an extent that nothing else does.

After all, you can feel sadness about the tragedy wreaked by natural phenomena, and anger that people weren’t better prepared for it or more organized about the recovery efforts, but ultimately, you can’t completely subdue nature, and we all know it. On the other hand, when this kind of devastation is caused by human hands and the darkness in human hearts, it is preventable, it is something that you can address and take action to solve. Not any one person, but groups of people. We’re a world community now; we should be setting up the necessary methods to disallow this sort of thing.

There seemed to be a mostly-unspoken understanding that the American government should step in and provide a military solution to what was/is going on in Darfur… I’m not convinced that is appropriate. Unless you really do think that we are “Team America, World Police” that’s more complicated than it seems. But NGOs and faith-based organizations can have a great impact on this sort of thing, and I’m sure that if more Americans who feel keenly that injustices in the world should be righted would step in, and maybe spend a year raising money and maybe shipping food, clothing and blankets or medical supplies to these people, and actually went there and helped to make a difference… If more of us in developed countries would sacrifice our own comforts, even for a time, to make lives better in other parts of the world, including sharing our skills and knowledge about how to build functioning civil societies and self-supporting communities, we could make a difference.

I’m all for awareness-raising and all that, but if all we do is gather in rallies, cry and hold hands and sing “kumbaya,” we’re not going to achieve much. And yes, all voices should be heard, but after a while, all the talking is too much and people just need to shut their traps and go out there and change something. Witness the difference that Mother Theresa made by stepping in and making things happen… on the scale that one person is able to do…

All that being said, I find myself oddly proud to be a part of a country, of a world, where people who have so very much are so moved to better the lots of those who have so much less… or nothing. I think we just need to harness our energy to see wrongs made right. Hmmm.

Digital presence

I don’t consider myself an early adopter, nor even much of a tech geek. I enjoy new software, new devices, and so on, but I don’t want to know (much) about their innards, and I find that the ins and outs of how something works usually bores me senseless… However, at the same time, I love the frenetic pace of change and being part of the digital age. I love that content is user-driven and interactive, more all the time, and I want to stay on the front edge of the developing trends in the digital world–because that’s where you’re going to find the future, I’m convinced.

Granted, it can be difficult to keep up with the pace of change… I feel uninspired and dull more days than not, and I don’t have something clever or snappy to say for my Facebook status update, or I can’t get past writer’s block as I stare at that unforgiving blank screen in the “write post” portion of my blog… but I muddle through these issues (along with the days where I just don’t feel like doing anything online), because I know that I feel cheated when my friends or the blogs that I follow are slow with their updates.

I am convinced that digital presence is the future… that just as it would be inconceivable today to do an office job (perhaps any job) without email, in ten years some form of what we now know as “social networking” will be an unequivocal part of our lives, particularly our professional lives. (Though it also will facilitate other activities and group functions.)

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. At present, when I get to a new city, I look for everything that I need online. Stores, restaurants, ballet classes, used bookstores, people I might know who might be living in the area, events… pretty much anything of interest. I find myself stymied again and again by this, since when you don’t live in a big hipster city, businesses are slower to go online. I don’t think that they realize they’re potentially missing out on my business because they don’t have a simple website saying, “Hey! We’re here! Here’s what we offer! Contact us here…” And while just one person’s business may not be a big deal, I represent a coming wave of digital residents, people who live and… practically breathe online.

I keep being made aware of the great divide between people who are a part of this digital community and the rest of the world, because I keep getting in conversations that go roughly like this:

Other Person (generally, but not always, older): I’m just so concerned because my son/friend/brother-in-law has taken up this social networking stuff and he’s posting all this information online.

Me: Well, you know… a digital presence is really the direction that the future is going, and besides, it’s not like all that information isn’t already out there.

Other Person: But isn’t he concerned about privacy, and that anyone can access anything about him?

Me: Well, it’s pretty much granted that anyone can already access any information about him.

Other Person: But what about his privacy?

Me: Really, all that info is out there already. Besides, have you considered the fact that this is the wave of the future? I think that soon we’re going to HAVE to have a digital presence in order to stay relevant.

Other Person: But what about privacy?

(At this point I generally give up, shrug, and wonder what is so sacred about this cow named “Privacy” that makes a person voluntarily give up being a citizen of the future… but figure it has something in common with the sentiment that old-timers used to voice when they said, “If God had meant us to fly, he would’ve given us wings.”)

Truly, I’m convinced that refusing to take part in online networking–where you necessarily have to post pictures, personal information (within reason), and people you know–will increasingly relegate people to the sidelines in the emerging (digital) world order. For instance, email now seems to me a completely behemoth form of communication… I’m as likely as not to lose track of people who aren’t around me daily because I get so much trivia through my inbox that their old emails get swallowed by it.

With social networking sites (I’ve been subsumed by Facebook) and blogging, you can syndicate your access to your friends. You can subscribe to their feeds and be passively informed of what’s going on in their lives. You can either do this with a collective feed of everyone’s status, or you can pick individuals of interest and find more about them. You can rediscover those friends that you lost touch with years ago, and even people that you used to be tight with (in high school youth group, perhaps), but forgot about the second that you went your separate ways. You can choose how much you want to know about all these people, and how much they’re allowed to see of what you have posted. And you can keep discovering more people as you see who your friends are friends with… and often rediscover people that way, too. I tell you, if email is the equivalent of having a telephone conversation with a friend, then a site like Facebook is equivalent to walking around a college campus and running into people that you know–mostly acquaintances, sometimes better friends–and having short “hey man, what’s up?” conversations that are completely appropriate to the time and place.

As I tried to explain in one of the infuriating conversations detailed above, I am more likely to keep up with people who’ve taken the step and moved to the social network than I am to remember people that I haven’t emailed in months/years. You need the network setup in order to keep tabs on people, much as you would via gossip and short conversations in a community of the past. Seriously, digital communities are the answer to the wail that we used to hear all the time about how “modern technology has destroyed all sense of community among people”.

Ah well. I’m pretty much preaching to the choir, here. I’ve just been wanting to say this because it’s been irritating me that people are waving around the sacred cow-siblings Privacy and Security as an excuse to cower in an internet blackout and make it impossible for me to find them with a simple Google search!

If you’re realistic, you know that your digital presence is just another side of your public presence, and that eventually the digital presence will be a necessary part of public presence. I believe that politicians have finally discovered this… it won’t be long until the general population wakes up to it, too…

international encounters

Today at work was very interesting. I’m a controller for another wargame this week, which has mostly involved sitting in the room and helping them run our idiosyncratic software for the course of the game… As a mere captain, surrounded by Lieutenant Colonels and Colonels, I can mostly fade into the background, which suits me perfectly. It did occur to me at one point that I was the only female in the room… but then, in the military that’s not too unusual anyhow.

But what did strike me today was something that I guess you could only encounter in a setting like this. I got to listen in to a fascinating conversation that an Israeli Air Force Lieutenant Colonel was having with two local colonels, all about the future for the state of Israel, the fallout of the summer 2006 war, and likely directions that Israel and Palestine may take in the future. Intriguing stuff! I was utterly fascinated. I’ve done some reading of Israeli blogs, so I’ve gotten some of those perspectives before, but it was definitely interesting to hear it from someone in person.

But not only that–today, also, I got to have a conversation (this is one that I was actually participating in) with a Colonel from El Salvador about life in Iraq, and our respective experiences there. What strange connections one can make in the military! He apparently left about a month before I arrived there last time. Anyway, I was just struck by what a cool thing it was that I could have two such intriguing experiences in the same day.

I’m looking forward to working in a Coalition environment again, where it’s normal to meet up with other military members from other countries. It’s fun because (being in the military) we generally share a certain conservatism, hawkishness, and general respect for authority… though of course all of that is relative to the cultures from which we’ve derived. (For instance, I believe that even the most hawkish of Scandinavians would still register left of center on a U.S. scale…)

Azriel’s folly

Well, because of a pathologically needy endearingly affectionate cat / beverage / keyboard incident, I was out of commission computer-wise over the weekend. While my weekend computer usage is typically minimal, of course I thought about it and wanted to be online for this entire weekend. (What was that about wanting what we can’t have?) I attempted to dry out the keyboard (after unplugging it from the computer, of course) for three days, but this evening when I tried to plug it back in, I got the evil beeping of death, and after several attempts I had to accept the fact that my old keyboard was toast. Thanks a lot, Azriel…

By the way, he was forgiven nearly as soon as I discovered that I could use the “on screen keyboard” to tide me through the worst of it… it was unwieldy but workable for a short time.

However, a new Circuit City has just opened up a few blocks from where I live, so I hied myself over there and found a new, nifty Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Only downside is that they take batteries (which will eventually run out), but since I had been deployed not long ago I developed a battery-stockpiling habit so I had good Lithium batteries to place in the devices.

However, the not-so-good piece of this was that, while I was wandering the computer aisles, I noticed some beautiful, gorgeous monitors, and was reminded of the fact that the starving-student base model flatscreen that I’d purchased in January 2004 had annoyingly low resolution… and long story short, I now have a 22″ flatscreen capable of 1680 x 1024. Ahhh, such joy! Of course, now I’m starting to feel that my CPU (also bought January of 2004, and also base model (I did add some extra memory to it, but it’s nothing by today’s standards!) is not enough for me… And all this when I know I’m going to be out of the country and NOT using a desktop computer in my quarters. Sigh. Oh well–at least the monitor and keyboard should be easy to pack and store.

(It’s always a dicey prospect, heading into an electronics store for one simple purchase…)