Bits of this ’n’ that

 
I had a bit of a WTF? disconnect last week. On the news was a brief item touching on the Democratic debate, the one during which Barack Obama said that he would meet with world leaders (including our enemies) without precondition, and Hillary Clinton said she wouldn’t let herself be used by those enemies for propaganda advantage. The news item itself dealt with the reaction of registered Democratics to that exchange … and indicated that most of them scored Obama higher than Clinton.

Huh? Huh?

Let’s be clear on something: I despise Hillary Clinton. I don’t like her politics, I don’t like her morals, and I don’t like her personality. Normally, anything bad for her would give me cause to celebrate. On that particular matter, though, she was dead right, and Obama was dead wrong, and to hear that Democrats — not the out-of-touch ivory tower leadership, but the rank and file of ordinary citizens — ruled it against her, simply took my breath away. Do they truly live in a different world from the one I occupy? Are our perspectives so starkly disparate that there’s no possibility of reconciling them? The thought is bewildering and frightening.

We live in interesting times, and they become more interesting with every passing day. And — recent good news from Iraq notwithstanding — I expect things to get worse before they get better.

*               *               *

In more directly personal news:

My running program is going better than ever; in fact, I’ve expanded to twice a day. I’m doing the two-mile run now two minutes faster than qualifying time, and if I can trim another thirty seconds I’ll be scoring at 20% higher than the necessary minimum. I’m scheduled for an APFT in two days, and I’m more confident than I’ve ever been. In Iraq I gained weight, and had to work off some of it after I returned home; same in Afghanistan, though not so bad (the SF unit I was with had a good gym). Here, I’ve lost twenty pounds, taken up three notches in my belt and one in my watch-band. I feel good.

After a hiatus of several weeks, I’m doing more work on my rewrite of sroni’s “Queen’s Gambit”. Nothing spectacular, just trying to hold myself to the consistent 500 words per day that was working for me before. More than that, I’m beginning to get a feel for the story again. I already understood it — I had considerable input into the overall plot while Roni was writing her draft — but now I’m getting inside it. And about time.

It appears that the Internet-connected computers at the MWR have been modified so that they won’t recognize flash drives. That’s annoying and inconvenient, but fortunately I can accomplish most of the information transfer I need to do by using a floppy disk. Still haven’t been able to get the wireless card operating properly in my own laptop, though.

In previous deployments, I’ve found myself getting depressed as the end approached, depressed at the thought of going home. This time? maybe not.