Just Stuff

I finally hit the gym last night. Between going home on R&R, and then having a cold, it's been a month since I last pushed some weights around. So I eased off some on both the weights and the reps. Good thing, too, because I'm sore today. Thighs are sore, abs are sore, chest is sore, arms are sore. Must've been a good workout!

Work is going pretty well. As I mentioned, I've got six big projects that I'm in charge of. Two of them have recently been started and the people we're doing them for are hounding me every day, asking about what's going on, and what's going to go on, and when, and why we aren't further along than we are, and they're going to sic their generals on us if they don't like what we're doing. And I'm thinking, dude, I've only had this job for two weeks, what the hell do you want?

The other four projects are still being developed so that I can get them onto a contract. I've never put a package together for a contract before, so I'm still on the steep side of the learning curve. And a couple of these projects are hideously complex, never-been-done-in-Iraq types of things that are confounding even our contracting experts. And, of course, the people we're doing them for are hounding me for progress reports. At least they're not threatening to sic their generals on me. Yet.

Still, I'm having a good time. These are very worthwhile projects and I'm just as qualified (or unqualified, depending on your viewpoint) to run them as anybody else is. My new bosses are very understanding and supportive, which is wonderful, and are letting me do the job however I think it needs to be done. So work is going well.

Way, way back when, I read the book All I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, by Robert Fulghum. It's a remarkable book. Robert has a knack for finding deep meanings in the simple, everyday experiences of life, and then writing about them in a way that expresses his fundamental joy in life. My sister pointed me toward his blog some time ago. Go take a look, you might enjoy it.

I finally got some mail today. It's been six weeks since anything arrived through the postal service. Back in September, we were given our new mailing address, and I dutifully sent it out to my magazines and family and friends. After I arrived here, I found out that they gave us the wrong one. Nothing like quality support from your command, huh? Fortunately, all those guys are now back in the States where they can't do any more damage here.

So now I have a newly opened back of Nature Valley Granola Nut Clusters that's sitting here on my desk, fresh from a box that arrived today. I better put it away before I eat the whole thing and undo all the benefits of yesterday's trip to the gym.