Drunk, with a capitol D that stands for drunk

I really hope I don’t puke.

So, I’m in the BSB at UIC and I need to go to the fourth floor and I get in and I press the button and it goes to the fourth floor and the door opens and my brain is all like out the door with ye because my brain is scottish and my body is all like well look at that, I pressed one again and so I came back down stairs and aye waited and stopped crying and went back in the elevator and pressed 4 and got to 4 and looked out and said move ye damn body and the body said going down and so we did.

I went to psychology and I said please take me up to four and push me off and make me go and the woman said my mom is afraid of elevators and so I know just what you’re going through and I said thank goodness and so she took me up and pulled me off and I thought I should have taken a picture so you could see for sure the things I cannot do.

I saw one of my oldest friends.  She had wet eyes and looked so kind.  We talked and talked and I was happy and drunker and drunk and now I hope I don’t throw up.

It was a shitty day and it was a marvelous day.

I took a cab.

I smiled.

I shut my eyes and the whole world spins.

I am lucky to have friends who know me like a path you take every day.

Leaving Troops Behind

The Butcher and I were watching CNN yesterday and they were talking about whether the Army is irredeemably broken.  Today I read in USA today that the Army faces a severe shortage of officers that is bound to continue into the next decade.

This seems to me to be one of the most dangerous fall-outs from Bush’s failed policy.  I know it’s easy enough to tease conservatives under 40 who support the war for not going out and actually, you know, participating in the war, but I think that beyond it being funny, it actually illustrates a dangerous problem that, and I’d wager, future administrations have: fewer and fewer people trust our government enough to turn their lives over to it.

Regardless of how you feel about this war or about military spending, we do need a standing army capable of going to war.  Right now, we don’t have that.

I think the reasons why are pretty complex, but becoming more apparent as time goes by.  We do a poor job of planning for our troops in the field and giving them operations that can actually be carried out with some measure of success.  We don’t take care of them once they return home and, when they leave the armed forces, it’s even worse.

I don’t have a solution for this.

I was on the plane yesterday with a guy who was wearing a POW/MIA shirt.

I don’t know.  I wasn’t around before Viet Nam, but it seems to me that what we haven’t, as a country, gotten over is this idea that we (America) will leave you (troops) behind.  It seems to me that, if there’s one lesson we refuse to learn from Viet Nam, it’s that–the immorality of leaving folks behind.

And I’m sorry, but not providing our service people with adequate health care or counseling or whatever it is they need once they get home, that is leaving them behind.

POW may not be exactly the right term for it, but damn, every time I see that black & white logo, it feels to me like an indictment larger than just its literal meaning.

It’s no wonder it becomes harder and harder to find folks willing to do for us the things we won’t do only to have us turn our backs on them when they’re done.

I Have No Pants!

I forgot to bring pants.  I rarely wear them, but walking around the city is easier in pants than it is in a skirt.  And yet, I forgot to bring pants.  I hope the Church Secretary is prepared to walk very slowly around town tomorrow.

In other news, even though the Best Western is a little run-down, I am in love with it.

I was sitting in the lobby and someone tried to speak Spanish to me.  Some German folks tried to speak German to me, and my housekeeper is so cool I about wanted to ask her out for coffee.

I imagine it’d be Kleinheider’s nightmare.

Also, the little restaurant attached to it, whose slogan is “Living Food and Wine” has, both times I’ve eaten there, given me food so hot off the grill I had to wait for it to cool down in order to eat it.

In other words, my first day travel funk appears to have lifted.

I’m on the sixth floor of my hotel and I can hear jazz music.

Maybe If I Had a Chauffer…

I was thinking how awesome it would be to be here with a driver.  I’d kind of want to call him Jack or Jake and I’d be all, “Hey, Jack, will you run me here?” or “I’m going to take a shower.  Why don’t you run out and get some breakfast?”

Did I tell y’all that I’m going to meet both Tatiana and the Church Secretary this week?

I am so excited and nervous as hell.  That’s going to be a hoot.

And I’m going to see the Shill and Tiny the Wonder Former-Fetus and all that is before the Super Genius’s wedding.

I’m planning on sitting down with the Super Genius’s fiance’s family on Friday and figuring out if and how we’re related.  My Grandma’s maiden name is the Mathlete’s mom’s maiden name and my grandma’s family is known for having eleventy seven children in each generation and so I am almost certain that, if you are from Michigan and have that last name, we’re probably related in some way.

My plan is to lean over and say “Do you remember when Grandpa Harry bought the elephant to farm his land with and Grandma Sadie made him take it back?” and if they say, “What?  I heard it was a musk ox.” then I’ll know.

It’d be weird to find that the Super Genius had accidentally married into our family.

But very, very cool.