mychai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finding your way out of crap. Well, from the complete lack of emails praising the new layout of the diary, I have come to two possible conclusions. One is that nobody reads the diary much anymore. Which is quite possible considering my year of sparce updates. Looks like I will have to get a Gold membership and banner ad the hell out of Diaryland. This will require money I don't have and advertising skills I don't have. The banner ads of the past have been something to the effect of, "Come look at my diary. It's cool!" The other possibility is that you just don't really care what the diary looks like. It's the content that keeps you returning, the constant stream of witty cynicism that keeps calling you back. Ha. Heh. They are having a four-day war exercise on Ramstein AFB starting tomorrow. They are testing all of the processes the base must go through in case we are attacked here in Germany, which isn't completely far-fetched. My new class schedule hasn't yet started. We start next Monday. This means that a bunch of people from my class was given the choice to either volunteer or be what the military calls "voluntold" to go participate. The deal is somewhat nice: you get a brand new pair of boots for the exercise. Boots cost about $100 a pair. But I just bought a pair of boots about a month ago, and I didn't really want to run all around Ramstein screaming my head off that we were being attacked. I could find much better things to do with my time. Like surf the internet for cheap Smart cars ($8,900!!). So, I did what I find I have quite a talent for: I weaseled out of being voluntold. I don't have to do it! Can we all say, "Woot!"? I have a patented technique for getting out of doing things I don't want to do. It is a technique I call "Hiding In Plain Sight." It goes something like this: The head honcho comes in and asks if there are any volunteers for this exercise. Smelling a rat, I am the first to turn around and ask a lot of questions, looking as interested as humanly possible. I bring up points that others may have missed: "Did you say we get FREE BOOTS? We get out of here for the REST OF THE WEEK? FREE FOOD for the whole week?" Then I excuse myself for a long break on the john. When I come back, unfortunately, all of the spots have been taken. Me? I get to squander the hours in a nice cool weather squadron while others do the work that would require the government to issue brand spanking new boots. I've learned one thing in the past year: the government doesn't give out new clothes for the hell of it. I had Brooke take me to the commissary today. I haven't had a good chance to go stock my room with a proper supply of the food basics. A lot of this stuff is only bought once in a very long while: a huge bottle of olive oil, a box of kosher salt, flour, spices, etc. Yeah. So, I spent $160. The funny thing is that I don't have $160 in my bank account. Nor do I have $160 in my *very low* line of credit credit card. So, I had to put half on my debit card, and half on my credit card. The commissary isn't world-famous for having the best food selection. But I did make some pretty great finds. They have rabbit and duck in the meat section! This means rabbit gumbo and duck... umm... something. I also went for a bike ride today with the guy I went on a walk-about with last week. We just rode around base because it took him a while to find a bike. We are going to a nearby town sometime soon called Otterberg. They have a real nice shopping district, so I've heard. Maybe we can find a bar with a super-hottt German cook like we did last week. Did I fail to mention the cook? Woo! Ok. That's it. It's my bedtime. Email me and let me know you are still alive. 9:46 p.m. - Mon., April 27, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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