Adventures in Driving

Zombie Kitty of the Apocalypse

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:19:40 GMT

Kitty Shirt Win

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:03:18 GMT

Some Kinda Neat

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:04:07 GMT

Despite the world's economic down turn, and the stresses on banks and the credit crunch and any number of other media catch phrases that combine to mean "finances suck," despite all that, USAA has grown. And the only reason this is particularly noticable to me is because USAA does that profit sharing thing, where they give back some of the profits at the end of the year. To the membership.

I just got $25 deposited to my checking. How neat is that? *boop* there it is, just in time for christmas shopping.

Aditionally, i've comfirmed by e-mail my first ever Sale of a necklace i've designed and made-from-scratch, to the tune of $120 (!!!). Someone who took a tour of the Metals and Jewelry building durring that last week of fall quarter saw one of my casting projects in a display case, and through a convoluted contact loop i managed to get her e-mail, and we discused materials and colors and price, and voila. The first $60 check should be in the mail, which covers material cost, and then the first week of january when the lab opens again i make the thing, and then when she gets it in the mail and finds it to her liking i get the second half.

Pictures.

So even though my december pay checks will likely be sad and droopy thanks to the fail-business we've been doing (the next person to tell me movie theaters are recession-proof gets kicked in the face) as a whole, my finances aren't too bad.

Yay for not too bad.

Do Want!

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 05:35:10 GMT

Pardon me whilst i nerd out.

"The Art of the Anglo-Saxon Goldsmith" by Elizabeth Coatsworth and Michael Pinder, printed 2002 by The Boydell Press
(the scad library has it but i wants my own!)

There's also a source reference to something called "Aspects of the Production of Early Anglo-Saxon Cloisonne Garnet Jewelry" by A. H. McFadyen, which turns out to be an unpublished PhD thesis from Manchester Metropolitan University or somesuch. [pout]

New Year's Resolution; one month early

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:47:53 GMT

So, i used to think that my old Wright-Patt Credit Union account would become my savings account after a moved away. Its harder to get into, and with the card deeply buried in my wallet i tend not to think about it.
Except that i never put money back into it, either.

The fact that i don't set aside money very well has been a quietly growing itch in the back of my brain for months. i had originally thought to start putting some set amount from my paycheck away after minimum wage went up, but since then i feel almost like i'm making less instead of more (partially because hours have dropped since summer).
I was contemplating my financials today, after almost forgetting to set up my USAA payments for insurance and credit card, and thought to look at USAA's savings system. I'm on USAA at least once a month guaranteed. I like USAA lots-n-lots. i can't move away from them like i could move out of range of wachovia or WPCU.

If i put $50 into savings for the month of november, that'd be just under %10 after-tax savings.

The only problem with this neat idea is, i suspect wachovia charges for transferring money to other banks (yep, checked, $3 per transfer). but i don't really want a wachovia savings account. I could change the direct deposit info with work, but that'll probably take three months to finally take effect, and i'd need to open the USAA account first with $25 anyhow. I havn't the foggiest idea if i can send checks to USAA. they're busily advertising their checks@home thingy, where you can scan your check to deposit it, but i of course do not have a scanner.

Banking shenanigans, i have them. A month till New Years to figure it out.

Lets go to the British Museum

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:39:33 GMT

Found some books put out by the British Museum on both the Staffordshire Hoard and the Suttun Hoo burial.
But its in british pounds.
This could get interesting...

"Friendly"

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:38:28 GMT

Scratch That

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:31:08 GMT

Senior Exhibition has been changed. Canceled, really, with the assumption that anyone who takes Senior this winter will inevitably be taking Professional Practices in the spring. There is a SCAD sponsored Savannah event called the Gallery Hop that takes place early in spring quarter, and it seems we're expecting to have the other half of the building (up till now a different business unit) as a gallery extension of the lab, so they figure they're giving us an extra week of work time, a short break to work on displays, and we can all exhibit for free in the jewelry hall and get more public face because of being part off thee gallery hop.
So, essentially, no idea when Senior Show will be. but i know when it isn't!!

Today was the last day of classes. My final project went over well, i managed to get everything done and turned in and felt rather proud of myself for having two fully finished finals this quarter, where in past quarters i'm chronically missing a mood board or a print out or an artist statement or somesuch. I recall trudging across the parking lot leaving the lab, feeling like i didn't have all my stuff because i'd cleaned out my locker and work box the three days before, and having the usual Gods-i'm-tired/now-what-do-i-do? thoughts that happen after any quarter.
Then i remembered the senior prep notebook.

So, i went home, showered, ate, and spent the entire evening cleaning the apartment top to bottom.

See? I'm getting started right away on my procrastination!

In other news, i have some serious want for decent hot chocolate, especially hazelnut and raspberry flavors. Sadly, the only sort i can find here is Swiss Miss :/ i suspect there is Land-o-Lakes at Sams, but my card is expired. There may be some at the commissary eventually, but not the last time i checked...
and then i made the mistake of browsing Ghirardelli...

on the other hand, i already have all the ingredients i need for pie. so i shall make pie instead, and have tea.
Yay for tea.

Old list out, New list in

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:20:48 GMT

metyldapryde suggested i check out the Viking Answer Lady for sources of information for my senior project.

ZOMG! why did i not know this existed before?

old book list out. New "these things, i want them" list is here for all to find :D

And i think i want to learn to speak icelandic...

Source Search

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:11:06 GMT

So i've been thinking about Senior Project a bunch. Its sorta meant to be the pinnacle of one's academic career (thus far) plus its what the Graduation Auditors look at when deciding whether you get the pass or fail stamp. Surviving classes with passing grades is not enough, you actually have to prove you learned something too! imagine that...

Anyrate, Senior being what it is, it doesn't wait to start until next quarter. Today we got the project brief to get started on our research; a multi-page notebook/binder that is eant to answer questions about what we're here for as well as what we're doing for our project, and how, and something like 50 design studies. Theres been a lot of conversation in the lab too about what we're going to do. You know how some people get to college without actually knowing what they want to major in? Not knowing what you're going to do for senior now isn't so bad, but if you don't know what you're doing on day one of next quarter, its way worse then that.

I'm taking the museum rout. Wavered a bit before, but after this quarter (where i've actually gotten to do two replica projects!) i'm pretty sure. I've only talked about it a bit with my prof, and of course theres all of winter break to ideate and adjust, but right now it looks like i'll be doing a series drawing inspiration directly from the "cloisone garnet" artifacts found in the Sutton Hoo and Staffordshire hoards. There'll be at least three final pieces, covering what i see as the three major type of museum jewelry. A recreation piece, which is an attempt to use traditional tools and techniques exactly the way 'they' might have (for SCA, its A&S reincarnate!), a replica, which only has to look realistic but can be cheap, flimsy, or fake since it's intended to stay behind display glass at all time, and something moderately mass-produceable and simplified for "gift shop jewelry."

Exhibiting is part of the Senior class grade and part of the graduation requirements, and from what i've heard its supposed to happen around week 9 of the quarter, which is the first week/weekend of march. On the other hand, theres a major jewelers tradeshow and competition that weekend, so i suspect it'll get moved by a weekend in some direction.

Its going to be a fun winter.

If anyone has any good primary or secondary sources on Anglo-Saxon metalsmithing techniques or the Sutton Hoo Burial Hoard or Stafforshire Hoard, (or wants to go to London XD) I'd appreciate the help. Look i'm networking! The neat thing about this project is there will probably be at least one SCAdian in the bibliography somewhere.

And the recreation piece will definetly be tweaked into an A&S entry. just maybe not till after graduation...

Xmas for Teh Kittehs

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:53:26 GMT

I just spent some quality time in the craft section of a Barns and Noble. This is my Christmas list, essentially, to go find something interesting. Between the endless origami and wire beading books, there are remarkable things! i found a book.. guide to metalsmithing or jewelry making or something like this, it essentially covers, loosly, every technical skill that i've been exposed to in three years of scad. Soldering, pickling, cylinders and domes, Intro to MTJW my first quarter here. Chasing and Repouse, we /just/ got done covering that. And it had basic stone setting things that i won't get to cover while at scad because the class is incoveniantly scheduled. The author was colins or colier or something, but the point is even general jewelry book are interesting, since i won't always have professors to go back and ask questions of. There was a book on masterworks of gemstones, stuff on soapmaking, on 'bringing the garden inside,' a whole book on dragon designs with several pages of dragons in different media from water color to wood carving, stained glass books both basic and advanced, even a how to on encaustic o.0!
I resisted the urge to browse the books on CD section because i simply can't afford it right now. I recently saw a book dedicated specifically to herbs and spices. I got a book from the library a few days ago that is about the Sutton Hoo viking burial, its a technical archealogy book but it has awesome pictures and line drawings of the metalworks found there.

So here are my hopes for this year:
Something interesting and specific. Not just a cookbook but a cuisine book or an herb book. A gemstone book. A viking-age artifacts book. tools for stained glass work, or supplies for making bath fizzies.
Or a book on CD.

Or, donate some funds to a local cat or animal shelter, and just send me some kitty stickers or a cat toy.
I'm going to have more than a month of winter break durring which i have no plans aside from working, so i'm going to find an animal shelter or the like in the area at which i can volunteer some hours.

Because kitties need christmas too!!!

Its a Lifestyle

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:18:49 GMT

You know how there are those days when your taste buds rebel? You know you have awesome salad and chicken in the fridge but what you really want is to polish off the jar of olives, or smear jelly on toast until you run out of one or the other?

Tonight, dinner was a mushroom spam-which. It is not composed of leftovers, and it doesn't produce any.

And for dessert, i'm contemplating my fridge full of apples, and just how much chocolate syrup might be left in that bottle > .>

This sort of thing and $5 walmart flowers are my little moments of win for the week.
which reminds me,
see this site

Today Has Been Canceled

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:39:48 GMT

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Specially crafted to make my parents feel old

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 18:03:40 GMT

You know what showed up in my SCAD email the other day? the first opportunity to order graduation cap/gown/rings/ect. time and place.

Que the flood of profs "stressed for your sake" and the graduation advisor and the reminders and the papers and the proofs and the accessories that aught to live in my nostalgia chest the rest of my life. And i havn't even had senior project yet. But it all starts now, because theres only 8 months until there is no more school.

I think the fact that my carefully laid plans abruptly end in May of 2010 is the most distracting part of all of it. screw graduations, what is life without school?

that and the feeling that i'm a senior in college with a min-wage job - _-* [so aggravated]

Indian Warewolf: Full Moon Curry

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:13:43 GMT

Triumphant return to Teh Interwebz!
Through no fault of my own, of course. i never did get around to calling AT&T. Was supposed to do that today, but ended up being in the school lab until 7:30, and on the ride home i reflected that i wouldn't be getting much help tonight despite finally having the phone number of the account. I remembered seeing an AT&T van in my appartment complex this morning, at the building across the street, and thinking 'ha ha you'll have to come right back after I call!" but of course i never did.
Except, when i got home, the green blinky light of despair had stopped blinking.
Well. How 'bout that.
:D

Today's dinner is an attempt at College-style curry, as in, food in a plastic container i can take anywhere with a microwave. While cooking, i was reflecting on other meals made for the Kitchen God (yesterday was a full moon after all) and realized that not too long ago i was making my first at-home curry, to the Kitchen God, in an attempt to spontaneously reignite Red Dwarf.
I think the god behind my oven is leaving me subliminals.

Anyrate, its not too bad. Nothing like what you should expect in a restaurant, but hey, we're working on a budget here.

The meaty goodness is a pound of chicken tenders, chopped into largish chunks (perhaps too large) and simply sauted in very light veggie oil. Veggies were provided by the freezer section of my new favorite grocery store, Publix, wherein i discovered a bag of chopped carrots, broccolli, and califlower. Boil, blanch, add to chickenz. Using the whole bag might have been a bit much...but then again, i'm a college student, i need all the veggies i can accidentally end up with.
The sauce is Golden Curry brand, which comes in an innocuous box. i find it at the commisarry on base but i imagine its got to be, at worst, in some of the fancier groceries like Fresh Market. The contents looks like a bar of brown wax, feels like it too, but smells enough like food to make you shrug your shoulders and try it anyway. The flavor marked "medium hot" has so far shown no sign what-so-ever of spice-induced heat, so if you like'm hot, i suggest bringing your own punch. The box is poorly marked as to how much liquid on adds to make sauce. I dumped the whole lump into my chicken and veggies and added a cup and a half of water, and was satisfied when it boiled thickly.
The really neat ting is i found packaged Naan bread at the Publix also, in an island display by the bakery also containing pitas and various flattened grain products. The serving suggestings call for a grill, which i lack, and thus resorted to my oven. This naan is big and soft and fully, very bready in taste and texture, except where i gave it a light XV olive oil brushing. Its not bad, certainly makes for a filling meal, but not quite the flat almost-crispy baked taste i remember from my last resturaunt visit.

Once i'm done eating, the chicken/veggie/sauce goes into serving size tuperwares, and when food time comes i only need to leave enough time to make some minute rice and dump it on top. Yay food for the rest of the week!

In other food news, i have addicted another 5 people at school to lavander tea cookies. Kitchen God would be proud.

poof

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:05:26 GMT

My internetz are gone :( darn it AT&T get over here and make with the fixing!

Pitures!

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:00:57 GMT

Pictures!!!
It only took me 4 weeks to get around to taking things off my fancycam....

First Kitties
Dad adopted three kitties a while back, all at once. Empty Nest syndrome?

The tabby cat being startled by the clickety sounds of auto focus is Checkers, or Chex. He's a kitten barely into adult body, had full run of the house and liked to get into everything. Would show up everywhere, usually behind you, in your lap, on your food, and liked to chase the other kittehs. For this reason he was returned to the Tenth Life cat shelter. Just a bit too much of a handful...

The black kitty is Prudence, guarenteed to be more scared of you than you are of her. she startles really easy, but if a lap presents itself she'll be in it and begging for attention. If you stand just away from a chair she's in, she'll stretch her arms out at you ont he chair back and just wait and mew and stare at you with big watery yellow eyes >@ .@< She likes to hold your arm down (gently) and lick you. mmmmm salty human. When Chex ran the house she spent all her time behind the couch by the computer.

Hadee has gorgeous reddish siamese coloring. She's adopted from Ris's front porch rather than Tenth Life, and has a calm sort of street cool. If Chex came bounding in to chase she'd sit and wait, swat him across the nose, then dive for the bed while he's still sitting there confused. She's demanding too, woke me up one night with a headbutt to the face when it was apparently time for scritches.

In other news, i might just finally get that promotion my GM has been dangling in front of my nose for months. His most recent delay was caused by 'what if i make you a manager instead of a shift leader? I don't want to process the shift leader and then have to do it all over again' and 'but Ashly might transfer to our theater as a manager instead....' well, he found out two days ago that Ashley is indeed going to be our new manager, so i've already warned him i'm going to ask him every day i see him when he'll start/finish my paperwork for being shift leader. [glares in GM approximate direction] 1 2 3 now!

A few weekends ago i began a new window painting for the theater. We don't always know what movies we're getting in advance, but the GM managed to find a good list, so i had three big movies to work on; our first-ever 3D movie on our shiney new digital projector, Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs, and for October 23rd Saw VI (yes there really are that many) and the Vampire's Assistant, which is apparently part of the Cirque du Freak saga. I thought Cirqu du Freak was a primary title but no one seems to recognize it by such....oops.
Pitures here
images are from both sides of the window, so some things may seem reversed or backwards. the Cirqu du Freak text came out /really/ well because, you see, i have to paint that on the inside, so i paint it backwards :D

No Rebellion Required

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:52:36 GMT

So i understand that my profs at school want to help us reach our full potential, create new ideas rather than blindly copying old ones, develop our own creative process and ideation techniques ect ect ect.

But i don't think its possible to express how much i loved my Studio IV prof when she said our first project was whatever we wanted it to be (so long as we're using the technique being covered in some way.) Not "a narrative" and not "a ring" and not even "conceptual" which is always a crazy pain. She's letting me copy real artifacts, because thats what i want to do!

This prof is also who taught my Intro class the first quarter i was here at SCAD. knew i loved her for a reason.

Yay for freedom to self-express!

This almost makes up for Casting class..

Insert dread here

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:06:55 GMT

[sarcasm] This is going to be a great quarter, i can already tell. [/sarcasm]

Woke up this morning with enough time to take a shower and get my gear together and everything before school. Ended up with no gear to get together (oh yea, left that at the lab...) and a half an hour to fiddle. Finally left for school, right on time.

The car seemed funny while going through the parking lot so i pulled into the gas station thats right next door. Yay flat tire! sigh. I'm worried about getting to class so i opt for seeing if the tire will hold air long enough to get me to school, and i can change it after class. Of course i don't have any quarters... so i walk back to the apartment, retrieve quarters, walk back, and pull up to the air pump. The tire seems to inflate fine and doesn't hiss, or explode, so off to school.

Where i find out my least favorite prof is teaching the one class i don't have any interest in at all (but its required!). And there are 5 people signed up. All summer she's been thinking this class would be cancled, because you need 6 people to run a class. But, only 2 people signed up for a different class, which /is/ getting cancled, and one is switching to ours, so we have 6, so our class /is/ getting run. Yay for me, anyway, but my prof had already decided she didn't want to teach this class.

So i have my least favorite jewelry prof unprepared, teaching a class she hasn't taught since she was in grad school, and not really wanting to teach it at all. And a flat tire. Its going to be an awesome quarter. > .<

Time

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:41:35 GMT

Looking back, i think we tend to remember events. We don't really remember the passing as time so much as the changes that prove to us time has passed. I used to feel restless and discontent if i weren't waiting for something special to happen, which was pretty easy to accomplish when i was online dating. The next visit to someplace was always getting planned just as the last one was ending.

Lately, my days have seemed really really long. Not in a bad way, but, i can't believe that its only been two weeks since i was last in school. 14 days of forever, and now a long and arduous 10 weeks of fall quarter. I don't know if i've just been paying more attention in my down time, or what. i can't be sleeping less and having longer days because there are times during school when i feel accomplished for getting 6 hours in between a project deadline and work.

All this makes it even more obnoxious that milk seems to go bad so fast, that i can't get through a bloody half-gallon without the last third going bad. Rar. and switching to quarts saves me a whole ten cents - _-*

Bah.

Cleaning homes cleans brains. mmmm braaaaains...

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:31:29 GMT

I fit an increadible amount of stuff on one book shelf.

I spent the day cleaning the corner of my "dinning room" which holds the majority of my supplies for various projects and hobbies. The shelf is unassuming; four slots of a sloppy 11 inch depth, 3'11" long, and each nearly 13" high. its low to the ground compared to my book shelf, and when you can actually see through it, theres no backing on the top shelf. looks a lot like someone's garage project.

It hold all of my sewing supplies except the machine itself (two stacks of fabric, one bag of pillow fluff, buttong and misc, box of machine parts, ribbons, needles, threads, and measuring and marking impliments) 6 board games, two large boxes of dyes for eggs, still life artifacts, a bucket-o-acrylics, a kaboodle of other ink media (watercolor, guache, caligraphy, illumination items) the entirety of my at-home beadwork supplies and the remnants of school supplies that have traveled home somehow, three feet of reference books and sketchbooks, a box full of pencil media on top of a box of charcoals, pastels, and office supplies, and on top of the whole shelf is a ragged collection of dragon figurines and picture frames waiting for pictures to be chopped to the right size. All of that got taken out and down and repacked and purged and cleaned and put back today.

I clean things when i get bored.

Thanks to all for the birthday well wishes, it was, in fact, awesome. There was a full moon on my birthday too, a good sign for the year as a whole.
I enjoyed visiting dad and thee new kitties, and will be posting pictures as soon as i can use school computers again.
Josh, my army boy, gave me really nice earings. They are circles, but look like elongated crecent moons with the thickest part at the bottom, about the size of a dime, with three tinsy diamonds int he crecent and a larger blue stone (maybe sapphire) sitting atop the crecent within the circles. By chance, they match marvelously with a sapphire pendant mom bought for me years ago (for my 18th birthday?) which i havn't worn much due to gnerally wearing heavier and chunkier jewelry. In the 5 days since getting the earings i've worn them with the pendant twice, so yay for resurected jewelry! Josh also took me out to Cold Stone Creamery for fancy ice cream on my birthday.
Kirsten, my best buddy right now at work, tried verey hard to make a cake for me since i worked the friday of my birthday. Since getting hired at this theater i've made cakes for just about evereyone's birthdays, sometimes in layers and sometimes in mini-cupcakes, and sometimes brought in food for no particular reason. It was really awesome to have someone else try it, though she felt really bad about the side collapsing when she took it out of the pan too soon, and burnt herself a little bit. It was tasty cake though.

I'm only just now, at 8 at night on a monday, remembering that Kirsten and I and someone else from work were supposed to go see Ponyo (new myazaki movie!!) yesterday....oops! well, i never got a note so i guess they forgot too!

I bought myself a new book of a new series too. Its the Age of Fire series by E. E. Knight, and i've been drooling over it in book stores for a long while now. Only bought the first book but all four are out in large-size soft covers. Thing is, i need to finish reading my Ricardo Pinto series first, and the book i'm on was accidentally left at work this weekend, and i need to order the third book of the series off of amazon because they aren't in any bookstores that i've ever seen. The third one only just came out last april too, i think, so i'm not sure that the softback is even out yet. 'Course i thought i was buying the second in softcovere and ended up with a hardback, so i guess it doesn't matter which type i get...

Really, the best parts of the week so far have been less substantial. Sky is comming to terms with being friends, and the emotional roller coaster is finally winding down. I spent the greater parts of the last three days non-stop with Josh, and was there to say goodbye last night when he suited up and left for the plane to Afganistan. Work has been peaceful, school is in break, and i don't have to worry about bills or cars or hurricanes.
And now my apartment is almost completely clean!
Tomorrow; the bathroom!! *dun dun dunnnnn*

Nom Nom Nom!!!

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:15:27 GMT

Teh cute will es'plode your head!

Its 9:15 am. I have until 5 pm to finish my final for enameling. Its been like this all week. And then tomorrow, instead of sleeping in finally, i drive to Ohio. Why do i always always schedule ohio trips for right after a period of time in which i attempt to kill myself? eesh!

Zombies. They'll get ya every time

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:57:05 GMT

People who study diseases say the only way to defeat the zombies

is to blow them all up. And yea, they spread /that/ fast.

(hope this is a perma-link)

Slight Disruption in the Fabric of Reality

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:36:44 GMT

About 2 months ago, Sky moved to Cincinatti (again) seeking jobs as his unemployment peetered out. a week or two later we had a small argument, realized that at its root was that we each deal with distance differently, and hashed it out.

Two weeks ago we had a large argument. We eventually realized that it was this same root problem, but now our trust in eachother had been just a wee bit shaken. We did not hash well.

Monday we had a 'discussion.' Sky desperatly wanted to come visit here before/instead of me visiting north. He wanted to do this despite knowing it was not a good idea for job and financial reasons. i was strongly against it, presumably because it was a bad idea for those reasons.
By tuesday we'd both figured it out. I made a really hard decision, and Sky has taken it with amazingly good graces given the situation and the downward spiral.

We've broken up (at least until june).

I needed to make a decision about Me instead of "Us" and wanted desperately to spend more than 2 months living on my own. It occures to me that this may be the only good chance in my life to do so, because how often is someone you aren't living with willing to pay your rent for a year? And sky needs to focus on something beside either I or his family being 700 miles away.

We are staying friends and in slight contact, and shall see how we feel after graduation.
Best of luck to you, Sky.

Us and Them

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:22:37 GMT

Books and movies excel at presenting the mysterious army. They are a separate segment of society, people walled off and trained rigorously, mysterious unknowns with their own language and rules, matching uniforms, tiny details that the rest of Us miss but that speak volumes to Their own kind. In movies, we see the monks training, a hundred men performing the same actions simultaneously, and though part of our rational brains say "choreography! pattern!" still there is a vague awe that so many machines of destruction would follow the orders of one commander, that one mind could bend so many to its will as to marionette scores of them at the same time. In books it’s the brush with a guard force, armored monsters who protect without apparently communicating, who glower and intimidate. A strange symbiotic relationship where two completely different creatures depend on each other, one small organism feeding off the other but somehow providing protection for what remains. Machines and monsters and creatures, the mysterious army is always Them.
Recently I started realizing how much even our own solders are like this. For a civilian on the outside, the army base is walled and gated, restricted. Inside there’s no map for the visitor, no signs. If you're here you are expected to know where you're going, or have a guide who will keep you out of trouble. The playground across the street from the commissary seems out of place with the lot full of tan covered trucks and rugged vehicles down the road, with the lines of squat long buildings, all featureless and identical, with the office strip and departments identified but still mysterious, because of course the uninitiated has no idea what DEER stands for, or PX, or whatever. Sometimes army guys come to the theater and I heard part of a conversation; English certainly but so full of jargon and inside jokes that its unintelligible. Speak freely men, no one can understand you except your own kind. Us and Them again.

I've been noticing this because I’ve gotten to peek in under the camouflage curtain lately. I made a friend, Private Sheard, the "other guy in the helicopter", a guy my age who sees movies regularly and stopped to chat with us one slow night. We've been hanging out, swapping pop culture references and indoctrinating each other into the other's lives. What, you actually pay your own electricity? What, you don't? I showed I’m around downtown and River Street (2 years in savannah and he'd never seen "the" tourist attraction spot. we both decided he wasn't missing much) and he helped me navigate the base. I saw his room in the barracks; a hallway with a fridge and microwave, two doors to tiny bedrooms with huge walk-in closets. One bed, one tv and stand, one chair, one window. Three piles of laundry in various states of dirty. I marveled at the simplicity of this life. He tried to grasp my alternating schedule of days with work and without and classes at different times, wondered at my clock watching and constant texting.
I discovered that this soldier isn't in the army for politics or pride. In fact, he didn't know most of his unit's feelings about the President or the political culture. He's there because he wanted to fly helicopters. Training is just going to work for him. just a job like the rest of us. Except his friends and his workmates are always the same people, there’s no division or conflict of desires. He makes the whole army thing seem less exotic, in fact, plain and austere. One uniform, made to be comfortable as well as functional because of how much time you spend in it. Go to work. Entertain yourself. Find food when you can; cost is rarely an issue. Every day is different but the people are the same, and every base has the same offices and protocols if only in different configurations.

I dropped him off at the airport yesterday. He's going to visit extended family in a small town in New York for two weeks. The week after he gets back, he's getting sent out to Afghanistan. He isn't disgusted, he isn't excited, he isn't afraid. It’s just going to work, it’s just doing the job. Same people different place. Politics don't matter when you just follow directions.

As I drive through the gate and head for the commissary, I see the same face again and again, short hair and lean build and walking in the sun in full uniform like its normal. Covered in patches and stars and bars I don't understand. Going somewhere I can't fathom. The camouflage curtain swings shut again. Us and Them.

The radio program On the Media ran an article today called "A Local Paper's War Story" about a soldier who became a journalist, then got called back to the force. It deals with the mistrust between military and media, but also makes you wonder how much you really know about whats going on 'over there'.