Well, now.

Two and a half months of no posting, and what a long and eventful two and a half months they have been.

I did not go to New Orleans. I was supposed to fly out that Sunday (after my last post) and on Thursday afternoon or so found out that my ticket had been cancelled without my knowing it. When I called the comptroller (who the cancellation notice had said cancelled the ticket), she said my Chief had told her to. So I asked the person between myself and my chief in my chain-of-command, and was told that the class would be coming here in September instead, so they weren't sending me to New Orleans. I was sad, to say the least. Very sad.

And then, just a month later, Katrina hit. And the New Orleans that existed the day before had changed. And I would possibly never get to see it at all, and if I did, it wouldn't be the same one everyone's always talking about.

On top of that, since the people who would have brought the class here in September were our New Orleans staff, and since the materials with which they teach the class were all in NO buildings, the class here was cancelled as well. So I've been doing this particular job since April 1st and never really got the right trainging for it, and still frequently find out that something I've been doing the whole time was entirely wrong.

Need I say more?

Having joined the Navy to see the world, I've seen a lot less of it since I've joined.

Meanwhile ...

Now that it's within the last month of waiting for the STA-21 results, I get people asking me daily when I will get those. I wish I could put one of those big buttons (like waitresses and cashiers sometimes have) on my shirt -- one that would say "The results come back in a month. I'm sure you'll hear about it by the time I do."

I am glad they care, it's just that it's similar to when I was working in Admin and people asked me daily when I was going to be moved upstairs to the pay department. That wasn't my decision or anyone else's business until it happened, and they couldn't understand how frustrating and stressful it was that nearly every single person in my command asked it or made a comment every day -- and then whatever reaction I made (even to have no reaction at all) was interpreted to mean that I did or I did not want to move up there, and my words were twisted all over the place and I kept getting yelled at for it. My response to that was that I've asked these people not to keep asking me in the first place, and it's their own disrespect both to ask and to twist my words. Of course, THAT didn't go over too well.

On a similar note, I have decided for sure (within the past two and a half months especially, and it got certain within the last two weeks) that I am not going to reenlist. I can't. I'm glad for the time I've had in the Navy (if not glad for quite all of the esperiences) but we're just not compatible. It's like with Jim, with whom I was spending a lot of time before I joined, and who was my main home-town contact while I was at bootcamp and whom I very much loved .. and then when he visited me in MS, I realized that although I did very much love him, I didn't love him in that way (which I thought perhaps I did before the visit) and that was so difficult to realize because, really, he was such a great guy and so good to me and he grew me. He had a lot of the things that it's difficult for me to find in guys -- he was always introducing me to new music that I loved, and he made me laugh so much, and we could do nearly anything together and have a great time. But I just still didn't love him like that. It was hard. And that's how it is with the Navy and I .. not that the Navy and I always have a great time together or anything, but it has grown me in a lot of ways and it has given me so many things (job security being the most prominant) .. but we're just not right for eachother. Not as an enlisted person, at any rate. I don't know that I'd be more right on the officer side -- there's still politics and many of the other things that I CAN put my finger on of why the Navy and I aren't right for eachother. But if I do get picked up this year, I will follow through with it and see how it is on that side. If I don't get selected this year, though, I don't know that I will reapply.

There is so much more happening and that has happened in the last two and a half months, but I'll just touch on a couple of highlights:

I am taking two classes this semester -- ballroom dancing and Pre-Calculus. The pre-calc is difficult, mostly because there are so many things I never learned in previous math classes, and what I did learn was so very long ago anyway. Words like the Quadratic Formula sound familiar to me, but words like "Complete-the-square" never were. So I'm relearning all of that stuff, and we have only just started to move into the real learning, which is all built on those foundations.

My ballroom dancing class is very fun, but a little more difficult than I was anticipating. We're fortunate to have a decent number of guys compared to many classes -- we have nearly one male for every female, which makes it a bit less difficult when trying to learn how to dance together instead of just practicing solo.

I still haven't gotten Al, jr.'s muffler repaired, and now he sounds like a Wookie with emphysema and asthma. I'll do that one of these days -- it's not like it's a huge repair anyway. Other than that, though, he's still hanging in there like a champ and then some. And I still get made fun of for him constantly, but I don't mind that so much because he gets me to where I get made fun of and back, so he can't be all that bad.

There aren't many concerts here that I have found out about, yet, but Flogging Molly will be here later this month (just before my one-year-at-the-NAR anniversary), and Clumsy Lovers in November. So there's at least two to look forward to. I'm planning on visiting MA sometime in November as well, to finally see Auntie Jo and Uncle Bob my other relatives up there, and hopefully see some of that music scene since I was too young to enjoy it when I lived there. Maybe even visit Boston College just for the fun of it, even though I didn't get accepted there yet.

And I've got one of my closest friend's wedding on New Years' Eve (since I don't know if she's told everyone yet, I won't say her name here) which I hope to be able to attend.

The next few months will be the whirl of the holiday season, right up through my birthday on February 1 (the quarter-century, even!) and with the future announcement of STA-21 as well as whether or not I made E-5 off this last exam, things may not settle down much after my birthday, either. But with "only" three and a half years left on my current enlistment, I'm in constant pursuit of keeping my civilian mentality and lifestyle so that if I do get out at the end of that time, I'll still know how to function in the civilian world. I've become more than Navy enough to be a great Sailor for the time being -- I don't need to be institutionalized into not functioning as a civilian. Especially now that I've decided not to go career enlisted for certain.

Part of why I haven't blogged in so long was not being ready to say all of that out loud .. but I've been open with everyone at work about it, so I'm ready to be open here.

Don't get me wrong, there are still a lot of people to whom I would recommend the military, including the Navy. And it's not that the Navy needs to change or that the things I don't like about it hurt its efficiency or effectiveness in any way.. its just that we're not compatible, the Navy and myself, where it always has been and always will be perfectly compatible with others.

The end.