Musings on a Friday Night

I like Fridays. Friday morning is my weekend. You guys at home get two whole days off every week; we get either Friday morning or afternoon off. It's a 65-hour workweek out here. So on Friday mornings, I sleep in late ... this morning was a whole 20 minutes extra. Then I got dressed and strolled over to the DFAC to have a nice, leisurely breakfast. Ran into a couple of friends and we sat there nursing some really bad coffee and yukking it up for an hour. Then back to the barracks, where I did some laundry and worked on a watercolor for a while. This was my first time playing with paints in a month or more, so let's just say I'm a little rusty. Okay, a LOT rusty. Still, it was good to push some paints around again.

The other day, I got hold of the vehicle keys and decided that I wanted something other than DFAC fare for dinner. So I drove down to the BX and treated myself to a Taco Bell dinner. Never been a big fan of Taco Bell, and this stuff was nothing to post in a blog about, but hey, it wasn't DFAC, and that was good enough for me! Went into the BX to pick up a couple of things, and walked out with a couple of new CD's ... one of Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood at Madison Square Garden (it's playing now) and the Woodstock soundtrack. Then later, when I was talking with my wife, it turns out she had just watched the director's cut of the Woodstock movie the night before! Scary, huh?

Things at work are settling down a little bit. Some decisions are being made but the politicking is still ongoing. I've got a pretty good idea of what my little group will be doing and it looks fine with me. Some other decisions, well, would've been a lot better had they gone a different way ...

Living on a military base can be a very different sensory experience. Several times today, I had Blackhawk helicopters flying in pairs directly over my head. Just now, as I was typing this, the guards at the gate were firing their 50-caliber. No, there's no attack, they do that periodically during their watches ... I suppose just to ensure that the thing still works. So I'll be walking between buildings and THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD from just beyond the wall at the end of the compound. It gets my attention, but gives me a good, secure feeling as well.