Translation

Nonverbal...

"Hi. So, I think it's great what you're doing with your music. I gave it a listen, and you've got some good things going there. And I'm really impressed with the way that you still have your life ordered with God at the center. I remember that from high school, too. Yeah, you probably don't remember me, I was the shy saxophone who dressed weird. Just forget about that time. But yeah, you were awesome - a lot of us at church looked up to you, and you just took it in stride. I remember you and your best friend doing everything with leading music and being wacky but totally based on God the whole time - you guys really made a difference to all of us. And, yeah, I kind of absolutely had a crush on you then. But...you're with who now? Seriously? How'd you score THAT gig, that's amazing! Of course I've heard of them, I brag to people all the time that they're from my state, but I had no idea YOU'D joined them. Ahhhh, crud. So, you get fangirls all the time, huh? And, yeah, you're probably with the other 90% of college grads that aren't interested in a girl until she gets her degree. I'm working on it, you know - just, military duty has to come first right now. And dating someone who's active duty is about sixteen times more challenging than any NORMAL long-distance relationship. So, well, yeah, that's cool. Keep doing the music thing, you guys really have something going there."

...comes out as...

"Hey, haven't seen you around since graduation. How's the band doing?"

Catch-Up

Mentally, I come in breathless, thinking, "I have GOT to post something!" Upon logging in, I am informed that my last post...was really only a week and a half ago. Ah. Well then.

Time differential again. I could have sworn that I hadn't said a word here since the first week of August.

This past weekend was absolutely splendid - my parents and sisters came down to visit. There are a number of attractions around Chicago where a military id gets you in free, so we hit the Shedd Aquarium the first day. I still prefer Underwater World for, well, feeling like you're underwater, but I love dolphins (normally have to go to the MN Zoo for those) and I had never seen belugas before. I have photos, of course, but I had no idea they were so graceful in the water. You don't expect something that weighs a quarter-ton as a baby to ever be 'graceful', but it was like a different take on ballet. Ballet minus legs, you could say.

Or not. That's a really unfortunate mental image.

Sunday we hit the Art Institue and Millennium Park. I evidently love the art of the 16th and 17th centuries - I hadn't realized this before. Stark contrast, the sister with whom I spent the most time wandering the galleries places surrealism at the top of her list. No matter. Also had a great conversation with Dad, because he's got some woodworking background, and really appreciated the intricacies of the way things are put together, while I'd just looked at the pattern and thought, "oh, that looks cool."

Twinks and her family stopped on by Monday afternoon - two weeks ago, we'd been talking about them visiting base on their way back from a family vacation, but when I started night classes, it made a train wreck out of my schedule (I have friends on base that I haven't seen since starting night classes). But, we managed to snag a short time together, and I got the biggest hug I've received from anyone outside the family since I last saw Joseph. We all prayed together before they left, too - I've missed that aspect of all the relationships at Camp.

Night classes mean your liberty is completely whacked out, and it's tough doing anything with your normal daywalker friends during the week, but, unexpectedly, you do get more sleep. That is, you're allotted more time to sleep - the noise through the rest of the barracks during the daylight hours can't really be helped. My roommates have been splendid, though. I see one of them for perhaps a half-hour every morning, and I have over an hour with the other in the afternoons - all three of us are doing the best we can to be respectful of having three wildly different time zones/circadian rhythms existing in the same room.

Classes themselves haven't hit the difficult point, but we're assured they will. At the moment, it's mostly just in a style of soaking in/scribbling down a lot of information, and then testing the next day. Study time is good.

My appreciation for the cello has been renewed. Perhaps it never needed renewing, but that's what happened. I miss making music, and I've never played the cello (nor do I have particular designs to do so - it'd be cool, but right now I just want to get back to performing what I CAN play before I lose it all), and the emotion that gets caught up in it tends to leave me very grateful that I can only watch youtube in my room.

This weekend, I seem to find myself triple-booked once again, but in a scavenging sense - I've assigned one friend as much time as he wants (because I really owe him for skipping out on things the last two weeks), and everyone else can simply come as they please to claim whatever's left over. If nobody comes, fantastic, I will go for a very, very long walk.

I still have yet to find decent woods. Rumor has it that you need to leave the greater Chicago area for these.

When You Dream...

So, all three of us roommates do weird things in our sleep. All three of us are also on different schedules, so that the only time everyone's asleep is from about 0100 to 0500. Thus, we have the opportunity to observe each other.

I apparently talk in my sleep - or at least, I make sounds as though I'm talking in my dreams, but I don't have the energy or capability to open my mouth. Last night, however, I clearly announced in a dead sleep, "I'm a Fire Controlman in the United States Navy!"

The roommate who did overhear this one was entertained and puzzled. She's the only one of the three of us who IS an FC - they're kind of the buddy program to ETs. I'm puzzled, because I have no idea what I was doing in my dream that I needed to specify that.

...especially the "United States" bit. Was this an international altercation? I'm thinking I had to justify why I was qualified to fix something and save the day (or night, in this case), but I don't remember dreaming about ANYTHING like that.

At least this time it was just perplexing. Past nocturnal announcements have been downright embarassing.

Fire Standard

Standard I've held since Camp: If I haven't lost a kid and nothing's on fire, it's a good day.

This is mostly just an excuse. I never had anything catch fire at Camp, and kids don't exactly go missing, they just find themselves with another counselor without telling you. I like having good days, and most of the time people demand an explanation. "Why are you having such a good day?" is right up there with, "Why do you have skin on?" It's just how things are.

So, I tried explaining this to one of my friends who was standing ladderwell watch.
"What if something did catch fire?"
"Is it out yet?"
"Yessss..."
"Then it's a GREAT day! We put the fire out!"
Thinks this over. "What if it isn't?"
"Then the day's not over yet."

Same thing with the kid. If anyone's missing, your day's not over until they're found, so you don't worry about labeling it at that point.

Tonight, I'm handing off the soundboard at Chapel to another guy - he's an EOD, different training schedule than ETs, so he's more available than I am. We spend about half an hour running over the basics, and then I go putter around with a few unrelated things in the office before returning and watching him for a bit.
"I'm going to head out. You know who to talk to if anything catches fire."
Glances around the room, looks at me. "The fire extinguisher."
Big grin.

I love EODs, just for their practicality. Anyone ELSE would tell me who you're supposed to report it to, but, really now, put it out first, THEN report it.

Anyway, I apologize for all of the crankiness lately. I am very tired, yes, but really, I'm actually still feeling happy most of the time. It's still a good day.

Voice Patterns

"Whoa. You...you just said that in your sexy voice."
Dead glare. "That's not my sexy voice. That's my you-just-got-me-out-of-bed-at-some-ungodly-hour-and-I-just-might-murder-you voice."
"Well, THAT'S sexy."
-late night, they decided to pull me to stand a watch when I was already asleep. This actually happens a lot, but my voice is often very low when I've been sleeping, and while the sudden wakeup does dump enough adrenaline into my system that I'm visibly shaking, it doesn't raise the pitch at all, just makes it more snarly.

I suppose I forgot to explain before, WHY I'm so sleep-deprived right now. Hopefully that clears it up.

Rest Easy Now

In the Fleet, depending on your command, you may have what's referred to as a 19-4 schedule. For an entire deployment.

This is rather ghastly in my opinion. Not that I mind working all the time when I'm awake, but that business of four hours a "night" makes me shudder. (You sleep when they tell you it's time to sleep. Your rest time could be from 1100 to 1500.) I desperately assume that your body adjusts to the weirdness, and hopefully soon. Mine hasn't yet, and I'm still getting six hours a night most nights. Seven is really nice, eight is wonderful. Eight only happens on Saturdays when I'm off duty.

It's possible to live off of micronaps. Very high stress, your body will reject almost everything you try to put into it (including light and possibly air), and you're going to be temporarily insane, but you can live through it, and recover later. What's been proven scientifically impossible, apparently, is complete sleep deprivation. If you're not permitted even the micronaps, your body will be able to sustain for about a week and a half. Before Day 12, your heart will stop. Just can't keep up - sleep is the time for all the little workers to run around and do repair and maintenance while the system's down.

So, it could be a lot worse than the present symptoms. They're interesting, though. Hierarchy of needs in action some days - I can get up and work because I need to, but I can't eat. Just not enough sleep. That's rare, though - the appetite vanishing is more of a stress thing than anything else. Your muscles hang off you a little differently, too. Skin hurts. That's a new one. The dermis aches, and the epidermis stings. Actually, feels almost exactly the way it did when we all got tear-gassed.

But the dreams, man, the dreams! I have amazing dreams at night. And I love the way falling asleep feels, when you actually get there. I didn't realize before this that you could feel "when" you were asleep. Actually, when you're asleep, it feels like everything's okay. The stress lifts, there's a distance between you and what's going on and everything you have to take care of, and you forget how much things are screwed up in your body and remember your body the way it's SUPPOSED to be. Maybe that's why I couldn't read it before.

I actually fall asleep now by dreaming about sleeping at home. On the couch in the living room, with a book forgotten in my hands and flopped down on my chest. Or out cold in the family room in the wee hours of the morning - I sleep there when my room's not an option for one reason or another, and there's something kinda cool in the atmosphere out there when the house is asleep. My room is my lair, kind of, and it's so strange to dream about a bed and space that are "mine" as much as that space is. I don't think about that one very much, because it feels too good, and it's hard to come back to here.

Obscurely, my sister's room is where I best DEEP sleep. I don't know what it is, but if I go to sleep in there, I am OUT, and usually for a lot longer than I normally would.

Anyway, I'm on duty today.

"I Got A Nickel!!"

The problem with gaining some solid perspective on the things we previously feared seems to be that fear is one of the greatest motivators of our lives. Take away that fear, and in its absence, I seem to float in a sort of complacent zero-gravity. When you figure out that you actually CAN deal with just about anything, the stick-shaking consequences don't carry as much weight. You have to actually pursue what's good, because you're no longer concerned about fleeing from what's bad.

Dangerous, dangerous. We're not made to sit still.

----

On a completely unrelated note, I was standing as the Petty Officer of the Watch for four hours on our quarterdeck. The Messenger of the Watch stands next to me - he's responsible for doing whatever running-around needs to be done in those four hours. I'm responsible for everything that's not supposed to happen on the quarterdeck.

During long watches, you find little things to amuse yourself. I don't know how well this would fly on a ship; I'm not there yet. Here, you'll often come in late at night to find the Watch playing The Name Game or something equivalent. Everyone has something. We do our job whenever people come by, but when you're faced with a good three hours of studying the opposite wall, you'll naturally begin to play with something. I like Sudoku, personally. This time around, the Messenger decided that he was going to ask for a quarter. From every person who passed by.

The splendid thing about asking for a quarter is that it gives the impression that you're very close to whatever it is you wanted out of the vending machine. So, even if someone doesn't have a quarter, they might still give you whatever other small coins are to be found in their pockets. He ended up getting three bottles of pop over the course of that watch, plus some 96 cents.

We stand between two flags - the National Ensign and the ship's flag. The USS Franklin was hit during the Battle of Coral Sea by two kamikaze pilots, killing over 900 sailors, but she still made it back to port; she's known as "The Ship That Wouldn't Die." The flag commemorates this incident. All of the barracks are named for ships that served well in battle.

I came back just as two Rovers from the Bonhomme Richard were walking off with our ship's flag neatly rolled. I raised a questioning eyebrow at the Messenger and he just assured me, "It's cool, they're from the Bonhomme Richard." Right. This explains nothing. All right.

Later, the watchbill coordinator came by and noticed the conspicuous absence (unsurprising - it's eight feet tall and a very strong blue), and demanded to know where the ship's flag was. I explained, "The Bonhomme Richard, ask the Messenger." Visibly agitated, she turned to the Messenger, just coming around the corner from some other task.

"The Bonhomme Richard stole our flag?!"
Not hearing her, he cheerfully announced, "I got a nickel!"

This unfortunate timing led to a swift-spreading rumor in the barracks that the Messenger of the Watch had given the Bonhomme Richard our ship's flag for a nickel. While it later transpired that the B.R. had been given the task of collecting all of the ship's flags for a parade that was to take place the next day, we're still hearing some echoes of it.