ammogirl

So, apparently what I did not remember from my 7-month stay in England way back in the day was that August, although still summer, is already fucking cold.  I mean, I knew it wasn’t going to be toasty, but I planned for pleasant.  You know, mild-to-cool.  Instead, it was rainy, and damp, and windy, and omg, the first four days there the only time I was warm was when I would get into the shower before bed.

Making it worse on Monday was the fact that I was COMPLETELY hungover.  I felt fine in the morning, eating breakfast and being chipper, but the place we were inspecting was 38 miles away from the place we were staying, and midway through that, the shakes and cold sweats hit.  It was the worst drive ever.  I held it together, though, and fortunately the first day of the inspection is always outside, and after a couple of hours I was instantly better.

The inspection went well, the bombdump there is very well run, with friendly, knowledgable, helpful people.  It’s HUGE there, the biggest bombdump I’ve been in, although there are bigger out there.  And it was gorgeous, all green and lush, with large fields–there was mockups in preparation for D-Day there, in fact.  Glen Miller played his last concert with the Air Force Band there, as well, and disappeared that very night.  The hangar he played in is still there, and supposedly haunted.  We went in there, but I did not detect anything paranormal.

I did detect spiders, though, craploads of them, and MASSIVE.  Bleh.  Also, on Thursday, the place we were staying suddenly became infested with these fly-type things, and they were ALL OVER my room.  The outside of my door was covered in them.  I mean, not just MY door, but I was only concerned about my door.  The other guys were drinking that night and kept coming over to get me to socialize but every time the door would open, another round of bugs would get in, and eventually I just shut myself in with a towel blocking the bottom of the door.  It’s like, on a scale of 1 to 10, I am probably a 11 when it comes to who the worse person on that TDY to have a bug-infested room would be.  So of COURSE it was my room.  The other guys were up until the wee hours of the morning, doors open, and weren’t bothered at all.

Um…food.  Food was…well, I mentioned the bombdump is 38 miles away from, well, anything.  And the actual base we were staying at is not so much a base as just a place for the people who work at the bombdump to live.  So, the commissary is open like, 4 hours every other day, and there is no restaurants on base save a little cafe that serves breakfast burritos and egg biscuits.  For lunch, there is a place in the bombdump that serves burgers and fries and pretty much anything else fried.

Basically, not a lot of options.  Every day I had at least one item that involved bacon, and at least one item that was fried.  For dinner we’d hit the local restaurants–pub food a couple times, Indian another.  By the time Wednesday rolled around, I was feeling like a big ol’ load of crap.  I mean, I LOOOOOVE me some bacon, and British bacon is like…heaven, but one’s digestive system, when already a bit sensitive and dependent on stringent routine, doesn’t react well to eating a whole hog’s worth in five days.  I was…ugh.  SO bloated that at one point, struggling to button my pants, I looked at my hard-as-a-rock, distended stomach and thought, wtf?  Am I PREGNANT? (Answer: no.)

The inspection went so well we had a little freetime, ending our day early enough on Friday that a few of us jumped in the car and headed to both Stonehenge and Avebury.  THAT day was gorgeous, all warmth and blue sky.  Stonehenge is amazing to see just because it’s motherf’ing Stonehenge, but you can’t DO anything besides walk in a circle around the rocks.  Which are much shorter in person than you see in the movies.  We were there for about 15 minutes, and then we headed to Avebury, which I actually enjoyed a little more.  You can walk right up and touch the rocks, which of course I did.  It’s really fab there.  Afterwards we walked through the village itself and I picked up a ‘Celtic Magic’ moodring, which I suspect is no different than a ‘cheap trinket store’ moodring, but it was only $5 and really pretty, so.  The guys made fun of me, but every single one of them asked to try it on.  I love my moodring, and wear it as an additional wedding ring.  It looks cool.

We flew home on Saturday, making it home like around 10pm.  OH!  Remember when I was talking about the 15kg limit Ryanair has on their checked baggage?  When we went…did I already tell you I had to take over a SatCom kit for another base?  Well, I did.  So my total checked bag weight was 31kg, right?  DO YOU KNOW how much I had to pay???  TWO HUNDRED FORTY-FIVE…EURO!  That’s like, $400.  For an additional bag!  I mean, I’m going to get reimbursed for that, but…OMG!  And on the way home, I was STILL overweight, by 2.7kg, so I ended up having to ditch my ENTIRE bag of shower stuff, shampoo and all that.  Fortunately, I don’t use expensive stuff, because that would have sucked.

Anyway, that was my week.

Tschuss!!

I’ll tell you more later.  I was just tired of seeing that last post, but I didn’t get in until after 10pm last night and I have got stuff to do.

Tschuss!

So, one of the only good things about monthly hormonal surges is not having to sleep for an entire week.  I don’t know what it is, but I have been tossing and turning since Thursday, yet I still feel/function fine.  In fact, although I didn’t actually have to wake up until 4:30 am this fine Sunday morning to get ready to fly to the UK, I found myself with eyes open at 3:15, realizing there was sort of a lot of stuff I could be doing, other than laying in bed staring into the dark.  So here I am.

I really just wanted to have one last morning to savor good coffee, before I am regulated to crappy industrial coffee from the chow hall, lightened up with crappy industrial powdered creamer, and sipped from a crappy small styrofoam cup.  I’m sort of irrationally stressed about that coffee.  Also, I hate styrofoam cups, they give me the chills when my lips/tongue touch them.  And they’re bad for the environment, but really, they’re just like nails on chalkboard to me.  Agh!  chills just writing about it!  Stress!  I would take my own cup, but!  We are flying Ryanair, a European (…okay.  WTF?  Isn’t the basic rule ‘a’ before consonants, ‘an’ before vowels?  Yeah?  Try saying ‘AN European’ outloud.  Mmhmm) forerunner to the ‘charge for everything’ flying the US is going to now, and you can only check in ONE bag weighing 15kg or less.  Which includes the weight of the bag.  I have toiletry needs, people, and I can’t let a mug get in the way of my heavy-ass jar of anti-wrinkle cream.

Every time we go on these inspections, I have the same problem.  Of course, this problem confounds my all-male traveling group, who like to extoll the benefits of using the complimentary hotel shit for, oh, EVERYTHING, and don’t pack anything from their bathroom beyond shaving cream and a razor.  And other things, I’m sure, but look: shampoo, conditioner, body wash, soap (the one hotel item I have deemed okay to use), lotion, all my one million face creams (…that sounds gross), hair product, hair dryer, hair straightener, brush, and finally, makeup.  Of which there is not a lot, but still necessary.  I’m always trying to weasel my way into the available weight I KNOW remains in their bags.

You will notice I did not say ‘razor and shaving cream’, because I am still irrationally in love with my Epil, and will never touch a razor again.  Even when the hair on my legs DOES grow back, it’s so sparse and thin and soft that I don’t know it’s there until I change into PT shorts at work and see it.  It’s a common thing to hear from me every two weeks or so that I need to epil, after which I spend the next hour really aware of my legs.

Anyway.

I am going to a Madonna concert next month with Leila and another friend, Kathy.  I know, wtf.  I don’t go to concerts.  Seriously, my last one was…omg, twelve years ago?  I don’t know.  It’s the crowds thing.  Also, I’m not all that into Madonna circa anything past 1989.  But she’s coming to Frankfurt, and Leila suggested it, and I figured since I’m really trying to work on this having female friends thing, it would be a fun thing.  In preparation, I downloaded her new album onto my iPod, and then quickly realized that it sucks.  However, if you think about it, Madonna debuted when I was in seventh grade, for god’s sake.  Suckage or not, I’ve been listening to her the entirety of my music-listening days.  I owe it to Madge to throw some money her way, I suppose.

Alright!  I have to go now.

Tschuss!