As of midnight tonight, I’ve officially been in the military for three years. It is hard to believe that a mere three years ago, I was getting ready to experience one of the most life-altering events many like me have done before and many more will do even after I’ve died many years from now: the first night of Basic Military Training. An experience that was, at the time, one of the most frightening events ever to happen to me and one that at the time I was sure that it would be the end of me.
Luckily, that was not the case as a mere three years later, due to not being put up for SrA Below the Zone and the length of my contract, makes me a senior airman. I’m still in Minot, still doing what it is I normally do on a Friday/Saturday night (at least, for the time being) and still generally not caring one way or another what happens to those who live around me, which is more than likely what they think about me. Such is the way of things.
In other news, I just downloaded and installed Google’s 3D modeling tool SketchUp 6. So far, the only complaint I have is the application really loves snapping the line/face/prism to anything and everything that may be around it. The worst part is that as of this writing, I can’t turn it off. Sometimes snapping to grid/object is a godsend… not this time.
So there I was, caught in the treacherous, fiery depths of the BOB wasteland, despair written on my face in only the darkest of indelible ink, cast aside once again since the powers that are had decided I was to return to BOB as I was not deemed yet worthy of the grace and mercy of PRP due to administrative blunders.
Slaving away on the infernal lamination apparatus, my hope was dimming by the moment, and I still had roughly300 pages of super secret pages of information to laminate. Just when life could not get any worse, a ray of light punctured the dark balloon of despair with a message:
Be in my office at 1445 for pre-PRP certification briefing.
As suddenly as my life had been overshadowed by grief and damnation, this messenger had restored hope and confidence where there previously was none. As this news was delivered, the land of BOB began to shake, which signaled the beginning of my escape from potential damnation and scorn from above.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
It was a dark and cloudy night, the photographer had been walking for forever trying to snag the perfect shot, but due to the fact that it was growing darker by the moment, and he forgot to bring the external flash, thinking he could get away with the built-in flipjob. This prove to be of no avail, as all his shots took on the properties of terrible point-and-shoot monstrosities.
As he was about to resign himself to yet another failed night of having overly flash-filled photographs and the hours of post processing work that followed, he heard a sound that reminded him of the ambient audio snippet of glory as the clouds parted and a beam of light poured down from the heavens! From this divine beam came a angel dressed in a peculiar looking vest and a beat up baseball cap that might have had a funny looking swish on it at one time, and in his hands was the answer to the shutterbug’s dilemma: an add on flash that was specifically designed for his camera, with a built-in swivel for the composition-saving practice of bouncing the flash for an indirect lighting technique!
As he received this photo-saving device from the vested angel, the photographer felt a sweeping rush of emotion come over him. The generous angel put his palm on the fotomeister’s forehead and said, “Go, enthusiast of photography, and expose that sensor to properly-lit masterpieces in the name of the Divine Shutter”. When he finished, he disappeared in the same manner that he had come, leaving the enthusiast wondering why he had been so awe stricken that he had forgotten to take a photo of the occasion.
Since I still lack the necessary qualifications for doing the duty that I have been stationed here to do, I have been demoted to a BOB (Back Office Bitch). This is, as a superior of mine puts it, a type of ‘gainful employment’ which means I’m doing something other than merely existing and reporting in on certain days. In a way, I’m happy, as it means I’m filling a role other than that of getting paid without really doing anything. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I am not doing what I am supposed to be doing nor am I working with those who I normally would.
However, I am not really dismayed, as it means that I’m not a part of “Flight X” which consists of a group of people who are either being discharged for various less-than-pleasant reasons, or are unable to be of use for reasons. Flight X is reserved for those who don’t want to make a positive contribution to the overall good of the unit but haven’t been discharged yet.
More information as it becomes available, so stay tuned.
Balls deep in the middle of one of the coldest military bases in the continental United States, wondering to myself ‘is this as good as life is going to get, and if so, why didn’t anyone send me a memo informing me of this?’ At that moment, I felt myself grow light and blew away on the stiff breeze of the northern winds from the seemingly never ending Alberta Clipper…
Then I woke up, and remembered that there I was, still in North Dakota. Yay for me.