Updates and otherwise

[aadler]

 
I was so busy with actual life after I got back from Guantanamo, I didn’t really spend much time chronicling it. Quick catch-up, and then on with current events.

First Cut — My Big Fat Second-Wedding-to-the-Same-Person

As I said already, Susan (my no-longer-ex-wife) and I remarried. My daughter sroni came in on Christmas break from Covenant Players (a friend of hers, whom we’ll call Stacy, had arrived the day before, at our invitation), and we had about a week to prepare a small wedding. Susan had already done a lot of the work in advance, but there was still quite a bit remaining. I didn’t take it as seriously as I should have, because I was thinking of a small family-only deal in the parish chapel. That was Susan’s idea, too, originally, but it kept growing (and this time she couldn’t blame it on her mother). In the end, there were flowers and a (volunteer) caterer, my son and I wore tuxes, my son was the best man and my daughter was maid of honor, Stacy watched the invitations and took photos, and we went on with the ceremony.

Susan had copied the format for the ceremony from an official resource, and we organized on that basis. Even so, errors crept in. We didn’t know that the Nicene Creed isn’t generally recited during weekday Mass, only on Sunday, so that part of the program was inaccurate. We decided against using a unity candle after we’d already printed that we would, so there was another. The missal Susan used to check the hymn numbers wasn’t the same as the one being used when we actually arrived, so none of the listed hymns were referenced properly. Finally, the priest skipped over the part where we would recite a common prayer, and Susan and I inserted that into a pause later in the ceremony.

And, at the end of the whole thing, we were married anyhow.

We had the reception in the fellowship hall — which is to say, exit the chapel and you’re there — and once that was over, Susan and I went to the Hilton, where I’d reserved a room for our wedding night. This left my son and daughter and Stacy with the place to themselves for the night … and if my daughter wants to talk any about the private celebration they had while we were away, she can do that on her own LJ, because I didn’t hear the details until almost two weeks later.

Close First Cut

Second Cut — Road Trip, or There and Back Again

The next morning, after a nice breakfast together, Susan and I returned to ‘our’ home. Whereupon I packed the kids and Stacy into Susan’s minivan, and the four of us hit the road while Susan stayed to put in another week of work. See, sroni and Stacy wanted to attend another wedding, of Covenant Player friends of theirs, barely two days after my remarriage. By driving instead of putting them on a plane, I (and my son) got a few extra days with our daughter/sister, besides which it was his first major road trip where he got to be one of the drivers.

So, twenty-seven hours on the highway, and I drove twenty of them. We delivered the girls to the church for the wedding, then had lunch while we waited. Then we drove them to the house where they were to stay until their next CP tour began. My son and I stayed two nights ourselves, started home again on New Year’s Eve. The year of 2008 arrived as we were checking into a motel in Winslow, Arizona, and we made the rest of the drive the following day.

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Third Cut — Military Matters

The following weekend, I reported to my Reserve unit for the year’s first drill. I wasn’t officially required to come in until three months after my Guantanamo tour ended: technically a deployment, and my terminal leave had carried until the middle of November, so nobody would have said anything if I had kept to myself until March drill (except now they call it Battle Assembly). I actually enjoy this stuff, though, and saw no reason to delay reintegrating with my unit. We’re starting a year-long train-up to get ready for another tour in Iraq, so there’s more than enough to keep us busy. In fact, I volunteered for a week of duty at home station — which started today — helping put together mobilization packets, so that the major paperwork will be done for the individual soldiers ahead of time. And I’ve already been scheduled for the next phase of my professional education, two weeks in July, and there’s another exercise which I may or may not be able to get into. Meanwhile, I sent off an e-mail this past weekend, inquiring about my DLPT scores, and I can use that to establish whether I now qualify for Arabic education at the Defense Language Institute (unlikely, if they insist on 2-2 proficiency) or for refresher classes in the same language.

(I really have come to love Persian Farsi, and genuinely want to maintain and extend what skill I have. If we’re going to Iraq for a year, though, I think I may start doing the Rosetta Stone lessons for Arabic, just to give myself a bit of advance preparation. Or a head-start, if they send me to DLI after all.)

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Fourth Cut — Personal Stuff

This is Susan’s last week at her current job; while we were still finalizing details for the wedding, she got approval for a transfer within the VA system. This will put her into a supervisory position, and provide a 20% raise on her already-hefty current salary. It also will involve her moving to where I’d been living, when I wasn’t out of the country or doing Army duty Stateside. She’ll be moving here, then, and we’ll be staying in my current lodgings for a few weeks or months while we select a better place to live. We want a house, but even with a guaranteed loan — for which I qualify through my VA benefits — it might take us considerable time to find the place we want and arrange for purchase, so we may get an apartment while we continue to look.

Twenty-five years ago, just after marrying me, Susan moved from the city where she’s currently residing to this northwest corner of the state where I’ve been ‘living’ when I wasn’t driving down to spend time with her and our son. Now she’s about to do it again. The last time didn’t work out too well. I think we’re better equipped this time through.

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Fifth Cut — Plans (mostly fanfic-related)

Because I know I’ll be deploying again next year, and because Susan and I will be using this time to settle into our remarriage, I have no plans to start anything else new or major (unless I do get a DLI slot). That leaves a bit of leeway to deal with other projects. While I was in Iraq, I wrote eight Buffyfic stories, a personal best at the time. In Afghanistan, I expanded that to nine, plus an Alias fic that just hit me out of nowhere. During the Guantanamo tour, because I felt that in Afghanistan I’d let my fic pursuits impinge a bit on my actual, you know, military duties, I deliberately cut back the pace, and did four stories over a seven-month period (approximately one story every two months, as opposed to the one-per-month I maintained during my Afghanistan deployment).

During the year of 2008, I want to do twelve stories, one per month for the entire year (where, in Iraq and Afghanistan, I only counted the months actually spent in-theater). This includes participation in NaNoWriMo for this year; I already know which 50,000-word ‘novel’ I’ll be doing for that, so — considering that my stories run anywhere from 4,000 to 35,000 words — means I’ll likely do more than 200,000 words in the coming year. Most will be Buffyfics, but at least five (one of them the NaNoWriMo project) will be in other fandoms. I had a good time last year in remix_redux and gen_remix, and intend to repeat that this year as well, but that still leaves a lot of my own projects to keep me occupied in the months to come.

Not least because, with almost half of January gone already, it’s time for me to finally sit down and finish the rewrite of “Queen’s Gambit” for sroni. I got 13,000 words into it while I was at Guantanamo, and I figure the total will run at least twice that. Given the current circumstances, I probably won’t finish the story in January itself, but I’ll at least put a substantial dent in it, and then use February — and maybe part of March — to get myself caught up to schedule.

Close Fifth Cut

So there you are. My life as it stands, for anyone who might actually feel the faintest glimmering of interest.