Defiantone.com

Due to my ever present boredom and need to share anything I find interesting to anyone who will listen I added my Google Reader RSS feed to my page. Check it out on the bottom right - you’ll find a listing of the latest and greatest stories that I felt were worth sharing but didn’t feel were worth blogging about. I have no idea why someone would come to me for information but if you’re here you might as well see what I’ve found interesting the past day or two.

My roommate (one of the three) told me that he was bored as hell here and couldn’t wait to leave. I told him that I really didn’t have a problem because I’m an expert at goofing off. I hope that my expertise will take me through the next week because I have little to do save for goof off and travel from one point to the next. I do have a few books I saved back in case I decide to read as well as a laptop filled with hours of music. Internet cafes are always close and there are places to play video games and watch movies. I can still go to the gym and I can eat 4 times a day if I really wanted to (I don’t). I can play card games and billiards at the rec center if I wished to do so. I could just walk around base and sweat - or I could just sweat - its warm out here. I’ve redefined warm by the way - if its less than 100 its warm. If its over 100 its hot. If its over 110 a gateway to hell has opened and is blasting us with the overwhelming heat of hell. If its 120+ well, its probably the end of the world as I know it… but, I’ll be fine.

Wish me luck - its goof off time

To save you some of your valuable time I’ll paraphrase - I’m incredibly bored. The rest of this post will consist solely of me griping about it. Ok, get on your bike and go on your way.

I rely on work to make me feel happy. When we have weather that keeps the planes grounded, as we have the last few days, there is little work to keep me occupied. As a result, I am no longer a happy camper. On a normal day people see me as a grumpy, cynical, curmudgeon. On a day that is filled with work they see me as a cynical wise ass. Last night I spent a few hours re-parking trailers - oh the joys! Most people have not had the opportunity of backing a trailer and if they do score a chance it probably does not have any steering system (campers, semi trailers etc). These are incredibly easy to park - incredibly easy. I could park one right up your… fill in the blank. We fight a different beast because we park trailers with a front steering system - much like the wagon that was always hooked to the tractor when I was a kid. They are extremely heavy and often need to be parked in gravel - deep gravel. This can make the job quite interesting. If you don’t get enough speed you’re bound to get bogged down and all progress will stop. We used to have a 4 wheel drive tug but its been out of commission for a while so we’ve been stuck with the real wheel drive model - it doesn’t help me finish my quest. Moving trailers has been the highlight of my night. The rest of the time I sat around looking for something to do - I’m not in a reading mood and the internet has lost all of its luster.

If we were killing more terrorists/insurgents/whatever the pentagon calls them I would be much happier - solely because I would have something that would occupy my time. Writing this utterly pointless blog post gave me something to do for five minutes - and for that I am grateful. Unfortunately, my creativity is at a low at the moment so you’re only going to get a drawn out version of I’m bored

I hope that cured your boredom for 26 seconds - if not - welcome to the club

Boredom will force you cause you to make foolish decisions. My latest foolish decision was to go to the gym for the past 12 days without a break. If I was a normal, healthy individual this wouldn’t be that big of a deal but I’ve got problems that don’t respond well to repeated abuse.

My latest problem started when I decided to squat too much weight for far to long. I took some serious time off my leg workout to give my lower back time to recuperate. I redesigned my workouts to reduce the stress on my back and continued exercising daily. My lower back has taken a slow and painful beating. Muscle pain, in my view, arrives in two different formats. The first is muscle pain - this pain is intense and comes regardless of what position you place your body. It feels as if your bones are attempting to separate from your muscles and that your entire body is trying to tear itself apart. This is excruciating - I deal with it 4-6 days a week. I do not take ibuprofen - I “tough” it out. The second type of pain we’ve all experienced - muscle soreness. If you stress a muscle and later stretch or move that particular area you will experience some discomfort - I rarely feel this as pain in the prevalent experience.

So - my back has been feeling fine lately. I have been stretching and doing some “yoga-esque” things to make the pain go away. My hamstrings and hip flexors cause the majority of problems. These muscles will NOT relax. I have tried for days to stretch them but they will not release one iota of pressure from my back. Today, my common sense defeated my strong desire to go to the gym and push through it. I’m taking the day off - I’m not really sure what to do with the time other than to write a series of random blog posts. I guess boredom will do that.

The did it in Abu Ghraib prison to people that didn’t deserve the treatment. I do it to myself on a daily basis. Why in the world would somebody beat the ever living crap out of their body? Why would someone push themselves until they were in so much pain that they thought they were going to puke?

Boredom

I decided to see how hard I could push myself today. My shoulder is almost completely rehabbed - almost to the point where I don’t have to worry about it. I’m still working on strengthening the anterior deltoid muscle (the weak one in the bunch) so that it keeps all of the other muscles where there are supposed to be located. It was leg day - the most brutal day of the week. Leg day is an all out assault on the largest muscle group in the body. It is the muscle group that is constantly in use and the one that takes the most punishment (save for the heart of course). I went through my normal routine but I cranked it up to three sets of 20 reps. I normally work in the 3×12 range but I essentially doubled my reps while maintaining the same weights. By the time I was done with each set my legs were on fire - veins were starting to pop out from my skin that I didn’t even know existed. I could barely walk by the time that I was done - not being able to walk isn’t a bad thing in this case - it merely shows that I properly worked out the muscle group. If you’ve watched any bad horror movies and have seen zombies stumbling about - its probably close to how I’ve been walking around. We probably smell the same too - its been a few days since we’ve had running water. Unless the world goes to hell, I’ll get my first shower in days tomorrow morning.

I’ve been resisting the urge to expunge the material in my stomach - its been 30 minutes since I’ve walked out of there but the pain is so intense that I can barely hold my guts in check. Its a hobby - albeit a painful one.

Its so hard to stay conveniently occupied and entertained and keep money in the bank account. As it stands now I’m on the edge of broke; but, I’m not completely broke so I still have a little bit of breathing room. The new job is going to help out a bunch and I may catch an extra couple of shifts much to the chagrin of Jessica. I need this money and I need to get ahead of things. If I work as little as 20 hours a week I’ll net a few hundred extra a month and it gets me out of hot water immediately. I’m not late on anything right now but if I went another month this way I’d be forced to start doing something drastic like selling plasma or becoming a male prostitute. I really don’t want to become a male prostitute for a few reasons (who else has time to think this out? ) - the clientèle I would draw would be much like the women that Rob Schneider attracted in Deuce Biggalo, the STD’s would be a huge drawback, the military would probably imprison me for trying (thus exacerbating the lack of income), and it would drive Jessica away (again, another bad thing). I could start selling my plasma to make a few bucks here and there but it freakin hurts. I had a friend in HS whose sole source of income was from the plasma he harvested from his body. I’m waiting to go to the desert because I can stop paying for a two giant money killers: rent and food. Both are paid for in the desert and I can take that cash and throw it on a bill. Hopefully, I’ll be down one credit card by the time I get back. If I’m good I’ll be able to get one partially gone before I leave.

It sucks being broke but its nobody’s fault but my own. I’m stupid for doing it and I hope to hell I’ll figure out how dumb I’ve been and never repeat my mistake.

Boredom is synonymous with a lack of creativity and lack of cash flow. There are very few things I can do that take absolutely no money. Think about it - if you want to go somewhere you’ve got to drive and use gas - even if you spend nothing while there you’re out the gas. Unfortunately if you’re gone for long enough you’ll need to bring some food. Sure, you’ve got some stuff in your house that you can bring with you but thats the stuff you bought for lunches during the week. The other option is to eat on the road and spend cash that you didn’t want to spend in the first place.

So, if you’ve got some extremely low cost ideas on how to spend your off duty time let me know - you can only watch TV and goof around on the internet so much - both of which cost money - before you’ve run the gamut and need to find something else to do.

Gee - this was quite a long rambling post - it saved me from boredom for a few minutes but its a solo activity and left out somebody thats sitting on the couch begging for my attention

I haven’t been back for more than a week but I can already tell how the environment is taking its toll on me. For the past few months I have spent nearly every waking moment around another individual whether I wanted to or not. I was able to take my own time when I needed it but there was always someone to talk to. Now that I’m back in the UK I’ve been struggling to deal with the loss of conversation. Luckily, people are starting to take the hint that I’m down for about anything at any time or place. I thrive when I’m surrounded by others but flounder when I’m alone by myself. I always thought I could fight it out alone but it appears I am too much of a social creature. I cannot live alone with my vitriol, anger, frustration, and insanity. I must share it with others to let it go… I can’t let it go by myself.

I’ve had a hard time sleeping this past week. Yes, the bed is amazing and I fall asleep immediately but its the timing of my sleep that worries me. When it gets dark here the narcolepsy begins to set in. Last night, after I got home from work, I could resist the urge to go to sleep at 5:30. I slept until about midnight when I woke up for a few hours. I fell back asleep around 3AM and woke again around 7AM. I wish I could sleep from 10-5 and feel fine… I guess its my body rejecting the notion that its not going to get any natural light until I leave this gloomy island.

As I’ve mentioned in the past I have too much time on my hands and I tend to use it in a rather unproductive manner. I haven’t been in the mood to read much lately but I have wasted many hours in front of a television and in front of a computer screen trying to scour for news and information that will help me be better informed. While I’m doing those activities I tend to get distracted and two things have been interfering.

1. Crackspace (some call it myspace)
2. Tattoos

I only have a crackspace account because it allows me to keep in contact with people without trying to remember their email addresses. A crackspace account also allows me to avoid much of the spam that can plague an email inbox. So, last night in my boredom (at a time when I should have been sleeping), I was searching through accounts of individuals that graduated around the same time as me. It was odd to look at some of those people and see where in the world they were and how they failed in life. Lets face it, we were all rather ambitious when we graduated from high school and now we are facing a completely different world. I thought that I would graduate with a degree in engineering and end up married but now I found myself enlisted in the military and happily divorced. Who knows where I might go as I think I’m finally making a valid attempt (and not a feign) to improve myself and get back onto some sort of track. I’ll post a few of the more interesting finds later (when I get home to my bookmarks).

I’ve also been scouring many of the tattoo sites for ideas… why? Some people believe that their body is a temple… well, mine has decorations. At one point, I thought I wanted a zoomorphic tattoo but I couldn’t find anything that was raw enough for my tastes. They were all rather smooth looking and too… estrogen rich. I even looked at much of the history behind the tattoos to find some of the original inspiration for the designs but could only find a few examples, none of which I liked. So, now that I’ve looked at a whole bunch of designs I will probably start looking at a whole bunch of artwork and see if anything there interests me. Many of the tattoo designs that I have seen are too small in scale and are only suitable for people that aren’t sure about the whole deal… skin real estate is prime and you only have one shot to get a certain area correct so I’ve got to make the right choice the first time out. There are no second chances… well, there are but coverups and removal are very painful and don’t always work.

Got a long weekend coming up as we are getting out of work tomorrow for some mandatory fun… I’m not sure what I’m going to do to fill the time (aside from habitat for humanity on saturday) so I’ll have to keep my options open. I don’t want to waste a lot of money so I might just go out and grab some food or something like that. Hopefully I can find a way to satiate my need for constant action.

I’ve been sitting around for the past few days and have thought of little but at the same time I’ve found that my mind is in constant motion. It appears that I am just waiting for time to pass and for things to happen rather than trying to get out there and make things happen. I wonder if I should stop the pacifism and get more agressive with the way that I treat my life. Then again, I have been told that I can be a bit of a jerk at times.

At work I’m at a bit of an impass as the majority of my work is done here. I really won’t have any major projects to complete before I leave, all that I need to do now is wait until August when I can get the heck out of here. I have been busy the past week and the work has been great. In case you aren’t aware, if you can keep me busy at work I really don’t mind it all that much but I really wouldn’t do it for free… it is work afterall.

As long as everything goes through as planned, I should be home in November/December of this year for a weekish and then home again next year for a period of time yet to be determined. I know that with my personality type that there is only so much time I can spend sitting around content doing nothing. After that, I know that I need to keep busy or the boredom will take me down for the count. So, I was thinking that maybe next year when I go home I should find something that I can volunteer for to take up my time for a week or two. I wonder how hard it is to get involved with habitat humanity or something of the like. I don’t think I’ll have the type of fundage to go do something really cool but I’d also like to take a trip to Russia before it becomes closed off again. I’ve talked to a few people and they’ve said that the policies in place in that country are starting to form a new rift with ours. Its not communism but their business and social practices among other things.

Ole girl is out of town for a few weeks so I’ve got to do some cleaning around my house and get rid of as much crap as I possibly can. Last night I went through one of my closets and threw away almost two weeks worth of garbage. Its a shame that I didn’t do it the night before as I had plenty of room left in my trash can. If you didn’t know, here in my local council (think of it as a small chunk of a county) they only pick up trash every other week. I alternate trash pickup with recycling and you only get one bin each. There is no size varienty. WYSIWYG.

I was once told by my dad about something he said while at work. He said “its insane to do the same thing repeatedly and expect to get different results” or a close approximation of that. I wrote something in one of the letters for our big inventory the other day that was similar to that but slightly… meaner. They made me change the entire paragraph around so that the truth didn’t sting quite as bad. Its a shame… it was good… here’s a chunk

All of these discrepancies can be attributed to mistakes made while processing … Obviously, given that the number of discrepancies has not decreased since the last inventory, it is known that the current system … …is ineffective. … … Continuing to use the same system without change would most likely result in no positive impact on the discrepancies seen here. Repeating the same process in the same fashion and expecting different results is ludicrous.

I originally used the term insane but I thought of Space Balls for a half a second and thought using ludicrous was a much better option.

There has been a fundamental shift in the way I act and interact with the people that I call my friends over the past few months. Much of it has happened after I graduated from ALS. In the past I would go out and do what they wanted regardless of the activity because I felt that I had to belong. Now I feel like I whatever they do is up to them; whatever they do they do and I travel down my own path. I’ve had a new friend over the past few months that has given me respite from boredom and given me a new outlook on many things. She is so comfortable with herself that I can be myself without restraint. Its refreshing.

This change in my opinions and habits has led me to be ostricized in some ways. No longer do I get invited to go out and get smashed; no longer do I get the latest and greatest stories; no longer do they want to talk to me out of the blue. There seems to be a rift that has formed because I’m not going to put up with it unless I really want to.

In a few weeks I’ll be without friends as I’ve moved away from some and others are moving away from me. I’ve found that I don’t deal well without contact and I wish that I was stronger and could last longer. I can only hope that I don’t feel the need to do things I don’t want to do to fit in.

More and more with each passing day I’m more aware of who I am and where I wish to go in life. Its a shame I can’t effectively translate my viewpoint to those that surround me.