ammogirl

After 11 hours and a lot of traffic (and gas station food…which happens to be a lot better in France than in say…Fresno)(mmm…Ham and butter on fresh baguette…) I finally made it home from Italy around 8pm-ish last night.  It was an awesome trip.  We were there to inspect the bomb dump at Camp Darby, and I will honestly say that out of all the bomb dumps I’ve worked in (or inspected), this was the most well-run one I’ve ever seen.  

Plus, the area is freaking gorgeous.  It’s in Tuscany, and medium-time readers might recall that we were actually supposed to go to Camp Darby instead of Ramstein, but couldn’t because of the high school’s impending closure.  I have to say that after actually seeing the place, I sort of wished we had gone there anyway.  It’s really small, like…less than 200 people stationed there, and 140 of them are Ammo (like me).  But it’s like, 5 miles away from Pisa, and right next to the coastal town of Tirrenia, and it just…smells good.

I went to the Leaning Tower of Pisa on Friday, and there ARE the requisite pictures of me holding it up, but as someone seems to have lost my camera while he was on vacay in California recently, those pictures are on somebody else’s camera.  Monday.  I will have them Monday.  I also ate gelato, and it was fab.

And I ate other things.  Carby things.  Bread and bread and bread, with a side of bread.  By Thursday, I was a little tired of all the bread (seriously, bread for breakfast, bread for lunch, bread for dinner) that that night at dinner, I ordered a mixed seafood platter, which unbeknownst to me, included WHOLE THINGS.  As in the whole shrimp, including eyes and legs, and the whole crawfish, including antenna and creepiness.  YOU GUYS.  My mood, when I recieved this plate of RECENTLY ALIVE SEA CREATURES, instantly went from happy to reallllly bummed out.  I mean, I KNOW my food has a eyes and legs and possibly antenna, but actually SEEING them?  DO NOT WANT.  

The thing is, shrimp and crawfish, with all parts attached, look amazingly similar to bugs.  And trust me on this, I don’t regularly say, “Today, I really hope I can eat something that reminds me of bugs”.  It’s true!  I never say that!  So when I got this plate of bugs, staring at me with ANTENNA AND LEGS, I just sort of…stared back.  And got sad, with actual tears of horror in my eyes, not at the fact that I was eating a creature, but that said creature could, given artificial resuscitation and/or an act of god, crawled off my plate and gone about it’s business.

After about 15 minutes of being a total baby, I picked one up to…deleg, or whatever.  It took awhile, but I managed to get through nearly all four of them.  And then promptly decided that that shit?  Is not worth it.  

Bleh. Whole shrimp have centipede legs.  It’s gross.

Tschuss!!

I literally had a jaw-dropping moment just now while doing the required reading for the first of the last three papers I have to write for my classes.  I can honestly say that although I’ve read about jaw-dropping moments an infinite number of times in books, I’ve never experienced one myself.  However.  The assignment is on the adoption of health education textbooks in Texas–it’s a whole bunch of blah blah blah, concerning the process and requirements and all that, but a good portion talks about how textbooks in 28 states must go through an adoption board, which reviews the book for objectional terms.  

In this paper (here you go; you can read it yourself), it lists a table of current text and proposed changes, as suggested by one board member.  Here is what caused me to lose my jaw-dropping virginity:

Current text:  ’If you discuss the issue of homosexuality in class, discuss it respectfully.  Be aware that someone in your class may be homosexual or related to someone who is homosexual, or have a friend who is homosexual.’

That’s nice, right?  It’s compassionate, yet proposes to discuss the topic in a factual, non-emotional manner.  Let’s see what the proposed change says:

Proposed change:  ”If you discuss homosexuality in class, be aware that Texas law rejects homosexual ‘marriage’.  Students can therefore maintain that homosexuality and heterosexuality are not moral equivalents, without being charged with ‘hate speech’.”

Wait… what?!  WHAT?  lasdkjfasiodfjeoinaekfnal;ekfhalshfdlasjd.

Motherfucker.  That is a whole boatload of shit.  The person who suggested this change (Teri Leo, Texas SBOE member) (you’re a very hateful person, Teri) is basically saying that students should be taught that they can degrade and belittle and be disrespectful to homosexuals and…not be punished!  Because it’s not ‘hate speech’. 

There is a lot of stuff that bothers me that I can overlook, but I’m seriously…man.  I know there are some asshole judgemental righteous people out there, but how can it be okay to allow those people on a board that adopts textbooks for an entire STATE?  

Ugh.  I’m disgusted and infuriated and pretty incoherent right now.  

Why.  Do.  People.  CARE.  Mind your own fucking business.  God.

Tschuss!!

I don’t know what it is when I have cereal for dinner.  First of all let me say, I absolutely LOVE cereal for dinner.  I’d have it every night if I wasn’t, you know, married and a mom and obliged to serve a varied menu.  Not that I AM obliged, in any way, shape, or form.  But cereal…it’s addicting.  Like, I literally cannot have only one bowl of cereal for dinner.  Never.  I have tried.  Just now, I put forth some pretty amazing effort, in fact.  Yet here I sit, with my second bowl of Life, becoming just the right…mushness.  

Cereal for breakfast I can live without, and I think it has to do with that second bowl thing.  I’m never really that ready to eat a hugie breakfast, but how could I possibly skip that second bowl?  It only works with regular Life and Frosted Shredded Mini-Wheats, though.  Oh, and Cap’n Crunch, but THAT you have eat with at the very minimum whole milk, if not half-and-half or straight up cream.  

…I don’t know.  You’re talking to the girl who used to sneak Crisco out of the can and eat it off a spoon like it was peanut butter.  I have weird food things.

I’ve been really sort of…not down, not at all…but really very subdued at work this week.  It freaks people out, I’ve noticed.  I’m just really burnt out right now, and so unwilling to make the same phone call and send out the same email and track the same shipment that I’ve been making or sending or tracking for the past two years.  I think the word to describe how I feel towards work is apathy.  Or ambivalent.  On a fun note, my friend Bobby and I were joking around via IM today and I called myself a skank ho, which was a lot more amusing than I thought it would be.  Skank ho is a really funny term.  After that we discussed our admiration for the person who invented the “X/Shmex” phrase, as in, “Skank Ho Shmank Ho”.  It never fails to crack me up whenever somebody throws that in.  

I had a bit of a situation when I was ordering my lunch from the deli today.  A lunch I have ordered many, many times in the past.  It went like this:

Guy:  Hello!  How can I help you?

Me: Hi!  I’d like to have a ham and pepperjack panini, please.

Guy:  Huh?

Me: Um…can I have a panini?  With ham and pepperjack?

Guy:  Well, YES, you can have ham and pepperjack, but what do you want it ON?

Me: …a panini?  Um…a…baguette?

Guy:  OH!  A panini!  Okay.  (cut cut cut)…now, do you want mayo?

Me:  Nope, just spicy mustard.

Guy:  (mustard squirting on one bread half only)…and what kind of meat?

Me: …

Guy:  (raises eyebrows in question)

Me:  Uh…I’ll have ham, please.

Guy:  Okay, ham…and cheese?

Me:  Pepperjack?  Please?

Guy:  Vegetables?

Me:  Just the, um, yellow peppers.  No, not the jalape…

Guy:  BANANA PEPPERS!!

Me:  Yes.

Guy:  Do you want anything else?  

Me:  Um, salt and pepper, and would you mind putting a little mustard on the top half of bread too?  

Guy:  Sure!  What kind of mustard do you want?

Me:  Spicy.  I would like spicy mustard, please.

And that was that!  To my credit, I refrained from turning around and shooting an amused look at Matt and Bobby until after I was done ordering.  But my god.  It was painful getting that thing made.  

I am going to Italy for a week on Sunday.  I am not upset about this.

Tschuss!!