Enough with the angst, already!

Well, the good news is that I passed the PT test. The bad news is that it was with a “Marginal” score–though if I’d run 3 seconds faster I’d have a “Good” score and no additional worries. As it is, I’ll be watched closely (think of it as PT probation), be sent to workshops on healthy living (PT purgatory), and I’ll be redoing the test in 90 days (Rinse & Repeat). However, it might just help me develop a little more discipline and a little less laziness about the whole exercise thing–which would be good. So all in all, I’ve got a couple minor hassles but no major fallout to deal with. And a good incentive to run the mile-and-a-half at least 3 seconds faster.

Though if you’d talked to me 10 hours ago I wouldn’t have been nearly so philosophical about it….

But regardless, life goes on. I got to present to my branch some analysis I’d done (yes, real analysis done by an analyst–what an unusual thing!), and I’m now lead on a new project of developing a standardized survey that we’ll be passing out at the end of the wargames we run. And given that so much of my last year was devoted to the ins and outs of polling, it’s something that I do feel at least partially qualified to do. I’m excited!

I’m also getting kind of excited about this Korea trip. 3 weeks in a new place should be fun, even if I’m not the super-shopper type (everyone keeps telling me to keep an eye out for “Coach” bags and “Rolex” watches…). Besides, with the watchful eye of the government upon me, 3 weeks away from mandatory PT will be a nice break! See, there’s an upside to everything.

And of course… don’t forget to say “White Rabbits” when you wake up tomorrow morning!

Testing worries

Arrrgh! I’m a bit of a wreck today. My annual nightmare has come back to haunt me… yes, the dreaded PT test. I’m taking mine tomorrow morning (prayers would be deeply appreciated)…

Actually, I managed to put off thoughts of this test pretty well. Over my days off last week and the weekend, I could tell that it was bothering me, but I let it be shunted aside with reading and shopping and TV–no sense in getting in a state about it too early, now is there? However, a sunburn that I received on my shins from lounging on my new porch chair has taken a weird turn and become sun poisoning or maybe just a stress rash, so I know I’m internalizing the worries. It’s funny, because living with this low-grade stress, even for a couple days, really reminds me of my usual state when I was deployed, with that adrenaline constantly running through my veins. Of course this is for a different and much more mundane reason, but my body processes it in the same way. Gotta love it.

The Air Force’s “Fit to Fight” program is well-intentioned and probably, all things considered, does help all of us be a little more health-conscious than a once-yearly ergo (bike) test. However, when one is not naturally athletically gifted, it becomes an endemic worry. And while I might be gifted at many things–usually school related– athletics is not one of those areas. (Unless you’re talking about swimming… maybe I should have joined the Navy…)

Unfortunately, my build is all wrong for running and, to put it bluntly, I loathe the activity. I have to do it, and regularly, because of this program, but I’ve never gotten better than passable at it. I’ve learned that if I gut it out, run a tortoiselike mile and a half, and make my entire goal just to keep to a run for that entire stretch (no excessive goals, like speed or time!), I can pass the test with a reasonable score. But it’s always a question mark.

I shouldn’t get so worried about it–even when I was out of shape the first time, and ended up running less than a half of the whole run, and walking the rest because I got excited and tried to keep up with the pack when I started out, I still passed the test. So even if I had to walk tomorrow, I’d be OK, most likely. But it’s unpleasant to have this particular worry brought to my mind’s forefront every year (though I’ll admit that I’ve managed, through psychosomatic exercise-induced asthma symptoms one year and a deployment the next, to make it every 18 months).

This must be what it’s like when you’re not a great test-taker. Tests in school, and particularly standardized tests, always provoked some adrenaline reaction in me, but it was more a matter of trying to do the best that I could possibly do. I was shooting for the 99th percentile, whenever I could possibly make it. People talk as if that’s what I should be doing with the PT test, too, to which I will answer with a round “Ha!”. Getting an Excellent score on this test (90+ of 100 points), while I suppose is technically possible, would take so much intense effort for me that it’s supremely unlikely to happen at any point in my career. I plug through and follow the rules and stay in shape, but I’m really just shooting for the passing grade here. Which bothers me–nowhere else in my life am I satisfied with the mediocre–but of course, once the test is over I feel happy and free and buy an ice cream in celebration.

And if this year is the year that I don’t pass, then I’ll regroup, put out some intense effort, and retest in a couple months for a better score. At least they do allow us that type of redemption. Though if I’m spending a month in Korea I wonder where I’m going to be doing the exercising. But that’s a worry for another day.

Hooray for Iraq!

They just won the Asian Cup… That is so great!

As I suspected (having been in Baghdad during the Doha Games playoffs last winter, and for the Saddam verdict), there was a large amount of “celebratory gunfire” afterward…

The victory was hailed by a barrage of gunfire in Baghdad as thousands of Iraqis, including members of the security forces, defied a strict government ceasefire order to celebrate their victory.

This is a good thing, though, for the country. It tends to promote national unity, something that the beleaguered country really needs right now. (Though Al Qaeda usually can’t resist bombing a few celebrations. Ugh.)

Professional victims

A few days ago, I read this article, about the failed-state “gangsta” subculture in America. The article is worth reading, as it talks about the development of an inner-city underclass, where identity is tied up in the politics of being a group of professional victims…

By World War I, Sowell’s data show, northern blacks scored higher on armed-forces tests than southern whites. After World War II and the GI Bill, black education and income levels rose sharply. It was only in the mid-1960s that a century of black progress seemed to make a sudden U-turn, a reversal that long-past events didn’t cause. Beginning around 1964, the rates of black high school graduation, workforce participation, crime, illegitimacy, and drug use all turned sharply in the wrong direction. While many blacks continued to move forward, a sizable minority solidified into an underclass, defined by self-destructive behavior that all but guaranteed failure.

The article goes on to cite many examples from rap music, that highlight the glorification of criminal behavior and absolutely rank attitudes about women.

But what struck me, reading this, was how similar it sounds to what you hear about the “Arab street” and their own culture of handouts from rich, former “oppressor” countries, along with the mindset that they are victims who deserve payment for being victims, but that being victims also absolves them from all responsibility of bettering themselves or the plight of their friends and families. You can see this among the immigrant communities in Europe, as well (like those who participated in the French “youth” riots a couple years ago), which are now breeding home-grown terrorists in the biggest cities in Western Europe.

It struck me that it’s this culture of victimization and blame that is the best breeding ground for a virulent infection like Islamist extremism (and, in a prior historical example, Nazism in the German post-WWI humiliation)…

Love, again

I’ve been thinking about love again… (Eeek! Run away, run away!) I’ve heard several friends of mine weigh in on what I said about love recently, and I realize that perhaps I can’t just leave it at that. I see that I sound a little like a “typical career woman” who’s discounting the whole notion of love and having a lifelong loving relationship, marriage, and family, as somehow being less desirable than they really are. And to set the record straight, I really do believe in love. Real love, that is, not just the state of infatuation that we culturally equate with love.

The thing is, I spent a good decade or two (I started early) obsessed with the idea that I just wanted “to be married”. And within the last couple years, I realized that “to be married” was an unworthy goal. Because while that might be the desired end state, it would be meaningless unless it meant I married the right man. Frankly, I haven’t had the greatest luck with meeting and/or attracting the right sort of man. Partially it’s that I’m an unusual personality, partially that I’m looking for someone who’s far enough from the mainstream that my pool of likely candidates is pretty small. I don’t think it’s impossible to find him, and I haven’t given up on finding lifelong love in a committed relationship that will, eventually, lead to marriage and children.

However, dwelling on love or the lack thereof in my life has not proven a good way for me to live my life. When all I thought about was “finding The One,” I spent my time depressed and discontent. An obvious conclusion was that I wasn’t “good enough” to find someone, in one way or another, which I see now as a faulty conclusion.

I guess I’m saying that I’ve found that life without a relationship, without the immediate prospect of one, has many good aspects as well. And I’m trying to learn to appreciate the blessings that this kind of life will bring to me so that I’m not living in a perpetual state of wishing for what I don’t have. It seems to me to be poor training for future contentment to spend one’s single years in perpetual discontent. If I’m always unhappy because I don’t have “The One” in my life, how am I going to feel when I marry a man and he doesn’t behave up to my romanticized and idealistic standards? No, it seems to me that cultivating contentment in life as I have it now is a much better way to live and to prepare for life in the future.

If I can be happy with my life as it is now, I’m more likely to develop the habit of happiness, or at least of contentment, and I’m more likely to be able to love and accept someone in the future on his own terms. Instead of projecting all my dreams and longings on him, I’ll be able to see that most of the wish-fulfillment needs to come from myself, and that my partner is icing on the cake–a privilege rather than a right. Don’t we objectify our romantic partners when we expect them to do and be everything that we’ve ever hoped or dreamed? That doesn’t give them the room to be the absolutely human people that they are… flawed and inconsistently loving, at times, and as much in need of love and understanding as we are.

Since love isn’t in the cards for me, at least in the immediate future, I think it behooves me to make the most of what is in my life. Time enough for love and marriage and children when those are possibilities with hope of some embodiment. Dwelling on love and finding “The One” is a strategy calculated to ensure that I’m unhappy with what is good about life right now, and that I will be unable to appreciate the less-than-idyllic real-life relationships that enter my life at some point in the future.

So I haven’t given up on love–I’m just deferring thoughts about it until it’s a more meaningful and useful thing for me to spend my time on.

Papasan Heaven

Well, I put in my leave for the rest of the week and headed out of work early. My mission for the day was to come up with some furniture for my porch–the one sad little folding chair I had out there was distinctly uncomfortable to sit in, and I’ve recognized that if I had somewhere nice to curl up and be outside, I might do more reading than TV-watching. (It’s all about the location.)

So off I took myself to the various mega-marts in the area, stores where I’d seen a plethora of styles of outdoor seating… and much to my chagrin, they were all replacing outdoor furnishings with school supplies! (However, since Montgomery’s schools start in early August, this was perhaps good thinking on their part.)

Eventually, I made my way to World Market, and saw their clearance sale on outdoor furniture, but I went with my half-formed intention of buying a papasan chair… It was a hassle fitting all the pieces inside my (very small) car, but once I got them out on the porch, the squeeze on the way home was worth it! I spent all afternoon and evening in blissful comfort, feeling the warmth of the day subside into evening breezes, and was a little put out when the light failed due to the sun setting. I could turn on the porch light, but I think that would ruin the charm of it all.

I should have done this a long time ago. I love being outside–if I’ve got a comfortable place to be. The problem is, I noticed as I was looking around at my neighbors’ porch furniture, that we don’t really design our outdoor seating for comfort. It’s all rigid corners and upright angles… makes you feel like you’re sitting at a formal dining table all the time. No wonder we don’t spend much time outside!

Incidentally, my cat Grimalkin immediately headed for the new chair and curled up in it. Judging from the image results that “Papasan” turns up in Google, I think cats and these chairs are a natural fit.

On surrender…

Quick note–I was scrolling through some recent blogs, and found this interesting post:

Everybody wants to end the War in Iraq – that is not an issue. The issue is how to end it. There two possible endings. One is winning the war, and another is losing the war.

Great point! Even warmongers like me (said with a heavy dose of irony, in case you were wondering) don’t want this war to continue indefinitely… we’d just rather come out of it so that we’re not “hamburger-eating surrender monkeys”…

Another voice on the topic:

What I don’t understand is the people who want to throw in the towel, pack up the tents, and go home. What is gained? A political defeat for Bush? Perhaps, but at the expense of a defeat for America as well.

Out of the blue

It’s funny how things change, so quickly sometimes. Here I’ve been feeling sorry for myself (just a little) because my life was so dull… and over the course of a few days, I figure out that I will most likely be spending the next month away from home. Whoa! Yeah, an opportunity came up to go to Korea for a month–they need a couple analysts, which my office (a little recklessly) promised them. Then as we started asking around, two of the four of us currently here–a fifth is in Baghdad for his own tour–had prior obligations that they couldn’t get out of. Which meant it came down to me. I wasn’t particularly keen on going, and when today I realized it was inevitable, I’ll admit to feeling a little trapped and cranky about it. However, I’m already starting to come around to the novelty of the idea.

I just wish that there had been a little longer to prepare–as it is, I’ll be taking off most of the rest of the week so that I can square things away. In this case, that’s going to mean finding, meeting, and setting up access for a petsitter for a month (and cleaning the house frantically so that they don’t judge me when they come through for the initial meeting). I feel quite horrid to be leaving my kitties alone for an entire month. Sure, they’ll probably be just fine–but I’ve never left them alone for that long. Unfortunately, when you live cross-country from your whole family, these things aren’t so easy to arrange at a moment’s notice. Sigh. One of my friends told me jokingly that I needed to set up a Family Care Plan for my cats. (That’s a “what we’ll do with the kids if we have to be deployed at a moment’s notice” document that the military requires of all military personnel with dependents.) Thankfully, once you set up a petsitter, you’ve got a go-to person from then on.

So from stagnant summer routine to another mini-upheaval… I’m not sure that I’m quite ready for it, all my big talk about wanting to deploy again to the contrary.

I think this will be a good testing ground for me–do I really like the experience now that I have (some) idea of what to expect, and is it something that I’d seek out voluntarily the next time it’s available? That’ll help me separate out my tendency to romanticize past experiences from my enjoyment of the real experience.

All in all, I think it’s a good thing–for all I felt like a (very cranky) martyr for several hours this afternoon. I still feel a little… miffed, I suppose… at not having specifically chosen this particular trip, but such is life in the military, after all. They say that once you volunteer for a deployment, it’s quite likely that the floodgates open and your name comes up for all sorts of other things. It could make for an interesting next couple years, then…

Weekend hodgepodge

Well, I’ve had a lovely weekend. Top priority was catching up on my sleep–I’d been spending too many nights up past midnight (and with a military schedule, that’s not workable for five consecutive days). And catch up I did. Perhaps too much so, but it was nice to be able to do it. Incidentally, that’s why I was so wordless the last time I wrote–my poor brain was just too addled by the sleep debt for me to put any good thoughts together in words. However, I thought that tonight, fresh from my refreshment (and starting to build this week’s sleep debt), I’d put up some of the half-thoughts I’ve been collecting.

#1: Repopulating Darfur with Arabs:

An internal UN report, obtained by The Independent, shows that up to 30,000 Arabs have crossed the border in the past two months. Most arrived with all their belongings and large flocks. They were greeted by Sudanese Arabs who took them to empty villages cleared by government and janjaweed forces.

One UN official said the process “appeared to have been well planned”. The official continued: “This movement is very large. We have not seen such numbers come into west Darfur before.”

How interesting… What if the Muslim world was considering Manifest Destiny of its own, and we were to see, over the course of the next couple centuries, a systematic change in Africa’s demographics… Would they put the indigenous tribes in reservations, or keep pushing them further south, or what? What would this mean for the continent? How would it reshape the world’s future? (The sci-fi writer in me wants to pursue these possibilities and see what they might mean for the future.)

#2: Harry Potter (of course):

I suggested to my friends that we check out one of the book release events going on, Friday night, for the historic (in a pop-cultural sense) occasion of the release of the last book. I hadn’t saved a copy in advance, and didn’t even buy one, but it was fun to see all the people there, half in costume. They hosted activities, but my friends and I came up with our own: a scavenger hunt. I’ll write about it for real once I upload the pictures I took. Actually, the funniest thing is that I went back on Saturday morning with the half-formed intention of buying the last book, and got sidetracked, bought a dozen (more or less) other books, and then spent the rest of the weekend reading. But I realized as I left the bookstore, bags in tow, that I’d forgotten to pick up Harry Potter #7. (I guess it wasn’t really that high on my priority list.)

#3: Surprising productivity:

I don’t usually do much on the weekends, and I give myself the room to be lazy, since work all week usually wears me out. However, as I was tallying up the things that I did this weekend, I was surprised by them (especially considering the sleeping in and book-reading I did). 6 loads of laundry, 4 shelves of books, I finished one of the knitting projects I’d been working on–one I started in Baghdad–and started a new one, I started going through magazines and collecting the clippings that I wanted in a notebook, I finished 2½ books, and completed a few other little cleaning projects around the house. Not bad for a weekend.

#4: Readers and writers:

One of the shows I half-watched as I read through book #2 was a house-decorating show, where they tracked a couple different families who were moving into new houses. I won’t get into the details here, because it would be a lot of explaining for little to no purpose. However, the thing that I noticed was this. One of the couples had (IMHO) abysmally pedestrian taste. The first thing that they hated about the house that they were moving into was the cobalt blue tile in the kitchen and paint in the living room (I loved it!), and they particularly hated the built-in bookshelves that the previous owners had put into a home office/library. (Whereas their first act was to install a wet bar into the house.) Anyway, they tore out all the bookshelves, put up a couple computer desks, and said with conceited smugness that they were going to write, not read there.

It got me thinking. Not long ago, you’d pretty much assume that a writer was also a reader. It used to be that the two went together for a person who likes words, lives for words, deals in words as their primary medium. But now, with instant computer access and blogs and ‘zines all over the place, I think that maybe the two concepts are diverging. “Writers” can be completely uninformed but have a clever, snappy and “snarky” way of putting things, and might not have any real literary knowlege to back them up. And readers, since books are difficult (though not impossible) to read online, tend to be a little behind the times, and if they do decide to write a novel, it’ll be something that takes a while and isn’t snappy and 2,000 words off the top of their head.

Are we killing off literature with online publishing? Just a thought…

Another late night

Well, the filibuster resulted in the oh-so-shocking result of nothing happening, and Congress seems to be back to normal. Even the news seems to have gotten tired of all things war… I’m surprised they stuck with it as long as they did. I think I’ll be happy if they just don’t return to immigration…

Arrgh. All that web-browsing yesterday (and a week of consecutive late nights) has made me sleepy and rather at a loss for words. I guess we’ll call it “writer’s block” and leave it at that… Stay tuned for the return of a Kj with words at her command…