...about everything I said,
But here it goes again...
Busy, busy, so much gone by and yet - so little to talk about. But I'm sitting here in the USO Internet Cafe (*contains no actual cafe) with nothing to do, it's 6 AM back home and nobody's going to be awake for a while, and I've done my daily k - Sunday is Letter To Wife Day - but I might as well write anyway. Also, this is the last opportunity for a decent internet connection for about a OPSEC, since we won't be coming back here anytime soon and wireless connections in our other two ports of call this deployment are... fickle.
So... hi.
Very little has changed since my last update, really, except to add "more so" to everything I said before. It was hot - now it's more so, as summer inevitably looms. I have, in fact, written a poem about it - a little bit of doggerel I tossed off for my friend Allison, and I'll throw that in at the end of this, just for S&Gs, since that postcard should have reached her by now.
I mentioned that I was losing weight - I've lost more. I'm down from about 310# at the start of this trip, with a definite weigh-in of 308 at one point in the early weeks, to 286 1/2 yesterday when I checked. Losing fat has also come with a gain in muscle - I've been hitting the weights pretty hard - so I've probably lost more than twenty pounds thus far. I've got a long way to go before I fulfill Goal 1, but since we're only halfway through the year and I'm almost halfway there, I figure I'm off to a good start.
We've been working - and now, more so. Our regular captain is on leave, and the temporary captain doesn't have his hangups about offering overtime - so, we've been able to get some extra work in on the evenings, and scuttlebutt says this may be a regular thing soon. Even if it isn't, our operational tempo has been pretty steady, and while I can't talk about our customers in detail (as much as I'd like to gripe about the unprofessionalism and sheer incompetence displayed by a Left Coast MSC T-AKE we recently fueled), I think it's safe to say that situation is unlikely to change.
I've been reading... a lot. Finally got around to reading A Perfect Blood, the latest Hollows novel from Kim Harrison (*contains no actual Hollows... I'm wondering which novel actually had that rundown, magic-infested neighborhood featured prominently in it; it's been a while...) - short review, not the best of the series, not the worst, takes a little while for the main character to get over her whinging and resume arse whupping. I've been managing about a novel every day to every other day, and keeping up with my nonfiction reading, as well. So, that's coming along. I've also been catching up on movies, something I don't watch much when I'm home, and I've made it most of the way through the current run of "Lie To Me" thanks to my generous, loving, adoring wife.
I've been writing... well, this one's a "more or less so," rather than a "more so." We had a week there where I was working twelve hour plus days pretty constantly, so I didn't have much time to keep up with the daily accounts; a lot of days, I don't quite have the motivation (or the willpower, to be honest) to push myself to a thousand words. Some days, like today, I comfortably pass that, but they're far fewer in number. I have managed to come up with not one but three ideas for this year's NaNoWriMo; I played around with the idea of enrolling in Camp NaNoWriMo this month, but decided that I had enough on my plate already without adding in insane deadlines. Besides, the last time I was on this ship (2007), I finished out NaNoWriMo with projectile vomiting and dire rear from hell. I'm not saying the two were related (there was Djibouti involved), but I'd really rather not take the chance...
And that's about it, really. One of the things about life at sea, you fall into a routine; every day is much like the one before is much like the one after, or as I mentioned to a friend who made the mistake of giving me a bellyfull of TGIF optimism, "At sea, every day is Monday." I actually took a half day today, seeing how it's a)Sunday, b) my last opportunity to get some quality internet time for a while (and I'm trying to download Wikipedia to my computer, a Quixotic quest if ever there were one...), and c) my cheat day on my diet... not that that's gone particularly well. Nothing appetizing for lunch, nothing appetizing for dinner, breakfast was barely tolerable... I may head over to the Seaman's Center for a pizza later, but that's about as far (or as much money) as I really wanna spend. One good thing about the coming month; plenty of opportunity to save.
But here it goes again...
Busy, busy, so much gone by and yet - so little to talk about. But I'm sitting here in the USO Internet Cafe (*contains no actual cafe) with nothing to do, it's 6 AM back home and nobody's going to be awake for a while, and I've done my daily k - Sunday is Letter To Wife Day - but I might as well write anyway. Also, this is the last opportunity for a decent internet connection for about a OPSEC, since we won't be coming back here anytime soon and wireless connections in our other two ports of call this deployment are... fickle.
So... hi.
Very little has changed since my last update, really, except to add "more so" to everything I said before. It was hot - now it's more so, as summer inevitably looms. I have, in fact, written a poem about it - a little bit of doggerel I tossed off for my friend Allison, and I'll throw that in at the end of this, just for S&Gs, since that postcard should have reached her by now.
I mentioned that I was losing weight - I've lost more. I'm down from about 310# at the start of this trip, with a definite weigh-in of 308 at one point in the early weeks, to 286 1/2 yesterday when I checked. Losing fat has also come with a gain in muscle - I've been hitting the weights pretty hard - so I've probably lost more than twenty pounds thus far. I've got a long way to go before I fulfill Goal 1, but since we're only halfway through the year and I'm almost halfway there, I figure I'm off to a good start.
We've been working - and now, more so. Our regular captain is on leave, and the temporary captain doesn't have his hangups about offering overtime - so, we've been able to get some extra work in on the evenings, and scuttlebutt says this may be a regular thing soon. Even if it isn't, our operational tempo has been pretty steady, and while I can't talk about our customers in detail (as much as I'd like to gripe about the unprofessionalism and sheer incompetence displayed by a Left Coast MSC T-AKE we recently fueled), I think it's safe to say that situation is unlikely to change.
I've been reading... a lot. Finally got around to reading A Perfect Blood, the latest Hollows novel from Kim Harrison (*contains no actual Hollows... I'm wondering which novel actually had that rundown, magic-infested neighborhood featured prominently in it; it's been a while...) - short review, not the best of the series, not the worst, takes a little while for the main character to get over her whinging and resume arse whupping. I've been managing about a novel every day to every other day, and keeping up with my nonfiction reading, as well. So, that's coming along. I've also been catching up on movies, something I don't watch much when I'm home, and I've made it most of the way through the current run of "Lie To Me" thanks to my generous, loving, adoring wife.
I've been writing... well, this one's a "more or less so," rather than a "more so." We had a week there where I was working twelve hour plus days pretty constantly, so I didn't have much time to keep up with the daily accounts; a lot of days, I don't quite have the motivation (or the willpower, to be honest) to push myself to a thousand words. Some days, like today, I comfortably pass that, but they're far fewer in number. I have managed to come up with not one but three ideas for this year's NaNoWriMo; I played around with the idea of enrolling in Camp NaNoWriMo this month, but decided that I had enough on my plate already without adding in insane deadlines. Besides, the last time I was on this ship (2007), I finished out NaNoWriMo with projectile vomiting and dire rear from hell. I'm not saying the two were related (there was Djibouti involved), but I'd really rather not take the chance...
And that's about it, really. One of the things about life at sea, you fall into a routine; every day is much like the one before is much like the one after, or as I mentioned to a friend who made the mistake of giving me a bellyfull of TGIF optimism, "At sea, every day is Monday." I actually took a half day today, seeing how it's a)Sunday, b) my last opportunity to get some quality internet time for a while (and I'm trying to download Wikipedia to my computer, a Quixotic quest if ever there were one...), and c) my cheat day on my diet... not that that's gone particularly well. Nothing appetizing for lunch, nothing appetizing for dinner, breakfast was barely tolerable... I may head over to the Seaman's Center for a pizza later, but that's about as far (or as much money) as I really wanna spend. One good thing about the coming month; plenty of opportunity to save.
An Ode To Dubai (and the rest of the Burning Lands)
Gray sand, gray sky
The dust flies thick;
HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT
Breathe soupy air
And cough and spit
HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT
Hammer sun strikes
And we sway and sick
HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT
What do you mean,
"Summer's not here yet?!"
HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT
