Nothing much on tap for today, which is a good thing. I have a couple books in the endless series of stuff I read to return to the library, and am thinking of biting the bullet and investing in a power sander so I can spare my hands from the long involved task of hand-sanding the car. However, I'm pretty happy with what I've managed to accomplish so far- I think the hood came out very well for spray paint! Things go along fairly well, though the temperature remains a concern. I got lucky yesterday with passable temperatures, but would like to find a garage to do this in, seeing as doing it piece by piece means I'll be in the garage for a couple hours here and there, and will allow the work to go a lot faster.
Well, apart from that, there's not much to report here. As usual, I'm planning to go hit the gym, which is always relaxing, and useful, as I have a PT test this Friday. I'm less than worried, seeing as I was pushing the speed for four miles on the treadmill yesterday. Tabatha kept texting me, wondering where I was, but of course texting and running strikes me as a bad idea, mainly because it's a little too much coordination, beyond my limited resources in this department. So pretty much the same old song, with a different day to sing it on. Tomorrow I have to be in to work at 0600 for yet more funeral detail practice. This is both an honor and a pain in the ass, as I have here a chance to honor a brother or sister for their service, yet leave it to the powers that be to muck it up by giving us nowhere near enough time to practice. Like pretty much everything in the Army my team needs to certify, to make sure we can do what we need to do for a funeral. Simplicity itself, though a little more time to work on this would be good. In the Army you spend a good deal of time moving as part of a team- this is true for both drill and ceremony and for tactical applications. This sense of knowing what the other people on your team are doing does not come overnight. By the end of basic, my squad was just about finishing each other's sentences, and we could clear a room, take an objective and secure a perimeter without blinking an eye. But again, this took time, guys. This fact evidently hasn't sunk in with the brass yet. I hate to say it (and could probably get in trouble for it, but what the hell, brutal honesty, right?), but somewhere on this post is some Mel Brooks-ish scenario. I'm thinking of the scene in Blazing Saddles, where everyone is standing around the office, and mel Brooks announces "We've got to protect our phoney-baloney jobs, gentlemen!" In other words, making a lot of noise to look like you're doing something and in reality just pushing paper, instead of addressing the real issue. And this seems to be consistently the case with the Army. The problem is not that there is too much spending- rather, that the spending is completely nonsensical!
On a hopeful note, President Obama was on the news yesterday to announce an opening of trade with China, which is somewhat good, in an attempt to restore something of a trade balance between our respective countries. Good plan, I thought. But is this the problem? Honestly, I've never been sure. Do people live beyond their means? Credit seems to be the new magic word, if you've got it, bully for you, if you don't you can't even walk out your front door, it seems. I perhaps am on the naive side here- I don't give a wet slap about credit, or my credit rating, because I'm trying not to live beyond my means. Cable TV and internet are nice, and in fact allow me to communicate this message to the world at large, but are not essential. My library card is. The ability to hike in the woods is. The ability to cook food for myself and others is important. Though I'm nowhere near that idealistic, I'm afraid. One needs to spend money in this modern world, for gas, for transportation, for food, clothes, and all that stuff. I could just go live in the woods and be self-sustaining, but at the same time, is that worth sacrificing that deep and meaningful human contact we all enjoy at some point or another? To me, no. I'd rather put up with the economic inanities of this 'Brave New World' than follow some idealistic dream. (By the way, 10 literati points if you get that reference). We humans need each other, though we may tend to lose sight of that. People are naturally social animals, I've found. This does sometimes become a little confused, as sometimes the interactions people have exist solely for the purpose of ego gratification, though in ideal circumstances we find a wonderfully enlightening give and take. At any rate, looks like I've gotten way off topic here. My original question was, why is money so tight in the world, and especially in this country? Surely we are capable of producing enough of anything we could require, and huge amounts of extra. So where does it all go? Actually, this isn't a rhetorical question, where does it go? Got me, for all I know in my limited understanding (not being sarcastic, I don't have clue 1 here) it goes into a spaceship and gets shipped off to Mars, to support the population of angry red women thereon. But all I can think from this is, why is it that I can think of a better way of existence, yet this existence does not happen? Perhaps I'm missing something here- there must be some hidden logic that eludes me at the moment. Well, I'll keep you posted, world that hangs on my every word (Okay that was sarcastic), but seriously, if I can figure it out, I'll be sure to share it with everyone else.
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