Apart from the fact that the shoes I'm wearing are remarkably uncomfortable (and may need to be returned to the Wal-mart from whence they came, along with the amazingly poor-quality-for-the-price makeup I bought there this past week), things are looking up here. I got a cheap little phone to hold me over 'till I figure out what happened to mine, which means I AM able to be contacted again. It'll be off more often than it used to be, what with having classes and duty and other military responsibilities these days, but my free nights start at 7pm (which time zone, I'm not entirely certain -- HOPEFULLY eastern, since that'd be an extra hour) and the whole weekend is free, and I've got pcs-to-pcs free, and plenty of minutes on top of that, for a lower rate than I was paying on my monthly bill before anyway.

We had our first test on Friday, and I am currently one of three in my class of 24 with an average of 100%. (Jim said that you can't have an AVERAGE of 100, but how else are you supposed to put that? And besides, 100 plus 100 divided by two equals 100, right? And since you added them together and divided, that's an Average by definition, right? Just happens they're the same number and all.. So there!) It amazed me how some people could score as low as they did on the test, though, because even for someone without office experience and all, the test was stinkin' easy. Perhaps that was part of the problem.. they whizzed through it and didn't actually read the questions or check their spacing (there was a knowledge- and a performance-section to this test) and office jobs are really all about attention to detail. Actually, anything in the Navy is, as long as you aren't someone doing paperwork or inprocessing at boot camp or an "A" school. They can lose stuff anytime.. and I'm told that it'll be so throughout the rest of my Navy career.. Well, rest assured, Shipmates.. I won't be losing any of your paperwork or accidentally putting the wrong code into your pay info so that you don't get a check anymore.

Meanwhile.. Last weekend, some dumb kid from the base here went to a nearby hotel bar by himself, befriended a few locals, and left with them (in their car) around 2am. Since they were going to some other bar (or perhaps another event.. I do wonder about the details of this story), he asked to stop at an ATM on the way -- instead of just using the one in the lobby of the hotel. Once he'd put in his pin, they bonked him on the head, beat him up, cleared out his account, and left him there. He had already graduated, btw, and got to leave the base within the next couple of days with limited if any further consequences.

Now, in the civilian world, everyone would point and laugh at him for being dumb, knowing that he already had his bank account cleared out and he can put that in the "sucks for me" file and move on with his life, while the rest of us can use it as a reminder (if needed) not to be dumb..

In the military world, not so. Although he got away with only the natural (and, frankly, deserved) consequences for his actions, the rest of us are now suffering for his stupidity. Even people in Phase III (the highest phase of priveledge you can get while a student here) now have to check out with a buddy as well, if they're not a Petty Officer First Class. Which means that if you want to leave the base, you gotta take someone with you, keep together the whole time you're gone, and check back in together.

The buddy system has some logic to it, yes. Personally, I'd rather be on an honor buddy system where if you choose to go out without a cohort, you take upon yourselves all the risks associated therein. Which is, really, how we functioned as *gasp* civilians. So, we have the enforced buddy system. Which has at least as many potential downsides as the problems it hopes to alleviate. However, (comma) I am not the Commanding Officer of this or any other command, and everyone here has been instructed (not in so many words) to put this policy in their own "sucks for me" files and move on with life.

Unfortunately, my "sucks for me" file has gotten rather overwhelmed since I joined the Navy, and I'm not entirely certain the "yay for me!" file is enough to balance it out at all. But, that's why I have a choice in reenlisting (after FIVE years of sucks-for-me-file-growth) and in whether or not I want to make the one potential move that I'm considering which would really break down into a 10 year commitment. But, if it worked, the latter five years (and any further career time -- I'd be halfway to retirement already, after all) would be as an officer, which may not be such a bad deal after all.

Hmm.

In earlier news -- I've gotten a few of my most frequently-called numbers from my online phone invoices (I really do like Sprint most of the time), but the thing is that since all these numbers were plugged into my phone under names and I only brought like five numbers at all with me to bootcamp (including family members .. heck, didn't even bring most of my closest friends' numbers with me!) and I don't really recognize the numbers I used to call unless context clues (like calling in the wee hours or which area code/city the number has) help me to figure it out, I'm sorta shooting in the dark as far as trying to restore my phone book in my new phone. So, if you have my number (yes, it's the same as before, of course), feel free to call. Me not calling you doesn't mean a darn tootin' thing, except that I don't happen to have your number with me or recognize it from the invoice.

My stress levels are certainly MUCH lower now that I feel like I have access to the outside world, and to some of the parts of it I miss the most, what with having a phone again.

I've started overusing the phrase "I'm gonna go postal", because that's what I tend to say now whenever I'm theorizing about some other disappointing circumstance handed to me by the World's Finest Navy. For example: "If I don't get to leave here the day I graduate (October 7th), I'm gonna go postal." Or, "If they make another dumb policy because of some stupid kid here doing something really awful, I'm gonna go postal." I think I must have overused it sometime in my life previous to now, perhaps in middle school or early high school. But it amuses me that it's come back into frequent use. I wonder if it's because of the return of "freakin'/frickin'" to extreme overuse in my vocabulary due to bootcamp.

Mmmhmm. Whatever it is, at least now I don't have to go postal because of not having A cell phone anymore, even if it's not my real one.