At the very least, the underside of my car should be extremely clean by now. And I know that my Ru could pass the third-class swimmer's exam should Navy cars be required to take it. (The Ru being my Subaru, of course.) He's been swimming a lot lately, Al Jr has. Jax floods significantly under the rainy conditions we've been having lately, to the point where many streets (especially in my neighborhoor) get closed down and others have an unstated Drive-At-Your-Own-Risk policy going. Plenty of cars have slipped right off the roads (I've hydroplaned a few times myself, but nothing too serious) and others have flooded out completely. So far, though, my little Ru has hung in there like a champ.

Have I mentioned that I call him the Wookie Wagon these days? The muffler's got a hole somewhere, so he sounds 'bout like Chewbacca. Folks at work say that if I got a motercycle, no one would notice because it would sound the same.

I am finally done with all I can do for this year's STA-21 program application. I'm not hugely optimistic about making it this year for various reasons, though it's certainly a strong possibility all the same depending on how many other qualified applications are turned in. But I am working on getting some college classes in this fall and focusing entirely on work again now that I'm finally done with that very draining application process. In October when the results come out about if I made it or not, I'll restart the application if I wasn't selected, and I should be able to have it be a lot less strenuous since I've already gone through it all once.

I was on duty yesterday and today (mostly by my choice) and took some time today to get caught up on some things I was entirely too far behind on at work. I'll be able to sleep a lot better knowing that's caught up. I'm working, too, on developing some tracking systems or whatnot for myself so that I cannot fall so far behind anymore.. unfortunately, my job includes a lot of paper pushing and things that just can't be made more efficient, they just have to be done. And that's tedious for me, but there's no way around it. I need to figure out more convincing ways of rewarding myself for getting through the filing and whatnot so that I will just get those out of the way and not be tempted to put them off and then fall behind. This all brings back memories of second grade when I had a little catapillar chart I got to color in sections of when I completed each job, and then if it was all colored in I got candy at the end of the day. It was the best way my teacher could find to help me find a reason to do work that bored me. And I'm not saying that that work or this current work was or is in any way below me, or that I'm too good or too anything to do the work. Just that it isn't interesting to me, so I have to actually actively motivate myself to do it. Fortunately, because of influential teachers and some parental wisdom, I have been through this throughout my childhood as well and have learned how to motivate myself when I want to. It's just motivating myself to motivate myself that can still get tricky. ;)

I'm freezing cold now, and I think I've done just about everything I can for today and need to just go celebrate our Independence and relax a little. I've gotta be at work by 6am, so I'll prolly return home shortly after a sunset fireworks display, watch one movie or so and then hit the sack. We've got a drill weekend coming up and yet I keep feeling like this will be a short week at work. Perhaps that's just because of some of the more significant (and hopefully fun) work-related events coming up in the not-too-distant-future.

Here's to life: La Chiem!