Dawn is Not Your Enemy

Well, here it is again, Friday. I have funeral detail yet again tomorrow, Saturday morning. Oh joy. Well, looks like I'll have to hit the gym tonight. I've been feeling pretty out of sorts lately, mainly perhaps due to the messed-up schedule I've been keeping. Either that or the car is leaking exhaust. But at any rate, doing pretty good lately. I'm looking forward to a long run on the treadmill tomorrow, to the strains of various songs I happen to throw into my mp3 player- very convenient devices, these! Just in case you were dying to know, here is the current workout playlist I have- more or less in order-
-Alabama Getaway, by the Grateful Dead
-Eat Some More
-Sanctuary
-Brutal Planet, all by Alice Cooper
-Living Dead Girl
-Sick Bubblegum
-Never Gonna Stop, all by Rob Zombie
-Illumination, by Henry Rollins
-A Real Indication, written by David Lynch, from the Twin Peaks soundtrack
-Cartoon Heroes, by Aqua
-400 Bucks, by Reverend Horton Heat
-Everybody Get Some
-Stud Pony, both by Dino Lee
-Zombie Dance, by The Cramps
So there you have it, go forth, lift weights and try not to fall off the treadmill. Why then not use the earth outside as my personal treadmill? Well, because winters in Oklahoma are neither snow-filled nor picturesque. We get two things in spades- ice and wind. The combination of the two means dry, sub-zero temperatures- actually it's probably too cold for snow to form. At least I have a nice warm gym to hide out in, and am not in the field. I'm thinking my potential next duty station, Fort Drumm, can't be a lot worse than an Oklahoma winter. Connecticut, I'm told, gets snow dumped on it in amazing quantities. But then again, as long as you don't have to drive in it, it's pretty nice to see. Here we get black ice- that's neither nice, nor sometimes easy to see. Well, at any rate, back to the grind that is the rest of this day. I'm getting issued plates for my armor today- the vests we wear contain one type or another of ballistic plates designed to stop bullets. Will we be shot at? Yes and no- live-fire convoys are usually not fatal- and we're usually not the guys getting shot at, we're aiming at non-living targets. I hear there are new, thinner and lighter plates out there that are compatible with the old armor we have, and incorporate a layer of some manner of ballistic gel. However, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for those, with all the budget cuts that seem to be going on around here. (This is why we should have NCOs making decisions, not officers...)
At any rate, life goes on! If I don't end up reenlisting, it looks like the transportation industry is either remaining steady or picking up, depending on who you listen to. Either way, military driving is a definite plus, and chances are I've maneuvered something much larger and much more dangerous into anywhere I'd need to maneuver a semi. But that's a little ways down the road, hopefully the White House will come to their senses and realize the answer isn't cutting jobs in the military, the answer is creating civilian alternatives. But then again, I'm just a grunt, I don't have all that fancy political know-how that I need to pull down a gigantic salary while the country goes down the tubes. See, again, just a grunt, that's how it looks to me. Clearly my limited understanding fails to grasp the big picture here, that by the proverbial fat cats getting fatter, this benefits the millions of people who don't have a job- this more than anything else explains the influx of recruits, as there simply is not work out there. But again, what do I know, I'm just a truck driver...