Catching up to date

[aadler]

 
I haven’t posted much lately, beyond further ‘Retrofic’ entries (bringing to my LiveJournal those stories written before I came into LJ). So, the latest news, such as it is:

Open First Cut: Military Issues

So, for now I’m back in the land of daily digital camouflage patterns. Easy duty, this time: three weeks in a classroom outside Fort Bragg, learning the technical ins and outs of some fancy new equipment scheduled for my unit. Undemanding duty, easy pay … plus, this time out I drew an inside straight and got set up for per diem on my meals, meaning I get reimbursed at a fixed rate per day regardless of how much (or how little) I actually spend. Since I went on a diet at the same time Susan did, I’m already maintaining a lower and more economical rate of caloric consumption, so essentially the Army is paying me extra to do something I was doing anyhow.

In typical military logistics, the three of us from my unit started off on three separate flights (though we met at Chicago-O’Hare to take the connecting flight together). When we arrived at the hotel arranged for us, it was to discover that the three of us had been booked into a single — and one-bed — Jacuzzi suite. In a word, No: we got separate rooms, adjoining for convenience of coordination, and phoned back to HQ to let them straighten out the paperwork. Then, yesterday morning, we drove to the appointed class area, where we were promptly informed that the class had started the day before.

Partway through my initial tour in Iraq, I observed to our company first sergeant that wars were won, not by the army that screws up only 10% of the time over an army that screws up 15% of the time, but by the army that screws up only 85% of the time versus the army that can’t get below 95%. It’s not really that bad, but the principle definitely holds. The amazing thing is that any big organization ever manages to accomplish anything.

Close First Cut

Open Second Cut: Personal Issues

Last weekend, Susan and I attended a retreat at an abbey located a little more than an hour from where we live. Peaceful, relaxing, restorative … not so much productive, we went at the invitation of a new acquaintance and discovered that we have only so much in common with the Catholic charismatic movement for which the weekend was being held. (The parts that I liked were those elements that were Catholic, period.) It made a nice rest, though, and we look forward to returning, perhaps for a marriage retreat.

Susan, as previously mentioned, has been working on her diet. During the months she was dosed up on prednisone, for an autoimmune disorder, she put on a LOT of weight; she’s now lost sixty pounds — more than she had gained — and is at her lightest point in years, with more to come. I joined her, both for solidarity and because I have an actual official weight maximum that I have to stay below; I’ve dropped maybe fifteen pounds since I returned from Baghdad, and would really like to do fifteen more. As it is, I already feel better and more energetic, and Susan, who has a lot more ground to regain, is showing perceptible benefits herself.

My son had a birthday recently; he’s in his final year of college, and remains a delight. Our daughter, after some rescheduling, now has another official date for her coming wedding. Things aren’t going too badly in my family.

Close Second Cut

Open Third Cut: Fanfic Issues

Some days back, I abruptly and with no forethought or pre-planning got a new fanfic idea. I’ve been letting it work around in my mind while doing other things (including review of the source material), but even though I haven’t actually begun yet, it seems pretty likely that I’ll manage, during this three weeks of training, to write and polish the story in the free evenings after class. It just feels like it’s there, and all I need is to do the work.

On another note, I picked up a few nominations at whiskyinmind’s new awards site, Gotta Have Faith, devoted to stories about Faith herself.

“Jasmine Tears” was submitted in both Miles to Go (stories that show Faith post-“Chosen”) and Rocky Road (stories that mainly show the positive side of Faith), while “Seeking the Woman” was nominated for Faith in All Things (stories featuring Faith in a crossover with another fandom). Gotta Have Faith is on its first round, and I’m in favor of having due attention paid to everybody’s favorite good bad girl, so I recommend giving the site a lookover and making further nominations.

Finally, though I didn’t say anything about it at the time, “Unbidden the Day” completed a process I began five years ago while in Afghanistan; looking at the Buffyfic I had written to that point, I decided I wanted a story title for each letter of the alphabet. In the following listing, the red numbers show the actual order in which the story was written, while the asterisks indicate those fics that were already in place before I began aiming for a full alphabet. So:

*A – 05 – All Ye Who Enter
  B – 27 – Beg to Differ
*C – 02 – Come to My Window
  D – 24 – Dusk Over Pompeii
*E – 19 – Each Proud Division
  F – 28 – First Do No Harm
  G – 25 – Glass Ceiling
*H – 10 – Hell Hath No Fury
*I – 09 – In Ev’ry Angle Greet
  J – 36 – Jasmine Tears
  K – 40 – Kirlian Logic
  L – 37 – Learning Curve
*M – 07 – Morning’s Echo
*N – 16 – Notes on an Opera Program
  O – 41 – Otherwise a Perfect Sky
*P – 01 – Point of Focus
  Q – 38 – Queen’s Gambit
  R – 26 – Rorschach
*S – 08 – Solitaire Till Dawn
*T – 18 – Tip of My Tongue
  U – 42 – Unbidden the Day
*V – 04 – Voices in the Dark
*W – 13 – Whisper of a Moment
  X – 34 – X-Factorial
  Y – 29 – Yet to Be Seen
  Z – 37 – Zero-Sum Game

Close Third Cut

And that’s all. More as it arises.