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| Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 | | 8:12 pm |
Death to Powerpoint
I briefed a one-star general on Monday. Powerpoint ate two of my slides. Have YOU ever tried to give an update on the Israel-Lebanon situation to a room full of incredibly high ranking people when the slide you'd spent all week working on wasn't there? I have! Death to Powerpoint. | | Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 | | 9:30 pm |
| | Saturday, January 28th, 2006 | | 8:30 pm |
bleh
So I went to look at bridesmaid's dresses today in preparation for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) jethrien's wedding. Found a bunch of cute dresses, but my self esteem took a bit of blow. When I got measured to figured out my dress size, it turns out that my bust says I'm a zero, my waist says I'm a four, and my hips say I'm a six. Gah - I'm flat-chested and *pear* shaped. But I called the boy to whine afterwards and he was appropriately indignant, so all is good. | | Wednesday, January 25th, 2006 | | 9:51 pm |
random question
So I've started working my way through episodes of Firefly thanks to my Netflix subscription. I just saw the pilot tonight, and while I'm not absolutely hooked it's enough to keep me watching the DVDs as they show up in my mailbox. I noticed something odd though - every once in awhile the characters lapse into some weird nonsensical language, and I think I heard a few phrases of poorly pronounced Chinese. Anyone know the story behind this? Did Joss Whedon just take phrases from a bunch of languages and insert them randomly into the dialogue as a sort of "hey, it's 500 years in the future and the languages have mixed with each other even more" type of thing? | | Monday, January 9th, 2006 | | 7:55 pm |
decisions decisions...
so i've been thinking about getting my belly button pierced. no idea how or why i have the sudden desire to have a sharp metal instrument shoved through my navel, though i think the belly dancing lessons and my love for all things sparkly might have something to do with it. i'm a little concerned because it takes 6 months to a year to heal...that just seems REALLY LONG, and I'm absolutely paranoid that it's going to hurt like hell when i put on my uniform for work. my tentative decision is to get it done if i can tone my abs a little more, to the point that i look good without sucking in. comments? Aaron of course, completely supports this little venture. | | Sunday, January 8th, 2006 | | 11:16 pm |
Quirky habits meme from maydove: Ground Rules: The first player of this "game" starts with the topic "5 weird habits of yours" and people who get tagged need to write an LJ entry about their 5 quirky habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged and list their names. 1) I count things on my fingers. Not the way a two year old does, but by curling a finger for each repetition, almost like I'm playing the piano. Syllables during a conversation, cars that pass me going the other way, things sitting on my bathroom counter, etc. For some reason I'm happy when things are in multiples of five, so that I stop counting on my pinky or thumb. For numbers that aren't multiples of five, I count like I'm playing scales (on the piano), and come up with weird fingerings so that I end on my pinky. No idea how this got started. 2) I do dishes by hand, even though I have a dishwasher. 3) I eat with chopsticks at home, but with a fork when I go to a Chinese restaurant (as do my parents). 4) Not really a habit, but I never sneeze only once. I always sneeze at least three times, and usually 6 or 7 times in quick succession. Also, my sneezes are evidently really weird because no one can tell if I'm sneezing or coughing. 5) When writing informal things like livejournal entries and IMs, I randomly switch between perfectly proper grammar and capitalization, and no capitalization at all. I tag superjan42, vesspers (that's Aaron btw, he got his own livejournal account so he could read what i was writing about him), evgenesis, kornia, and shnayder | | Thursday, October 27th, 2005 | | 11:15 pm |
belly dancing woes
In case anyone cares, it is REALLY hard to make your butt jiggle and do other stuff - like gyrate your hips or walk - at the same time. =) | | Sunday, September 25th, 2005 | | 11:22 pm |
just drove about 11 hours from alabama to texas. am currently hanging out in a hotel room in dallas, enjoying FINALLY having high speed internet access again. the drive was suprisingly painless; I was awake and alert the entire time, always a good thing when you're driving into counties under tornado watch (note to self - never live in alabama, louisiana, or mississippi. EVER. Living in Florida leaves you vulnerable to hurricanes, but hey, at least it's florida. Alabama, louisiana, and mississippi have no such redeeming qualities, plus you get all these pesky tornados that the hurricanes leave behind.) the boy was adorably worried about me making the drive by myself, especially since I'm currently without a cell phone. had me get a phone card and call him when i stopped for gas, then proceeded to track my progress and cross-reference it with the weather channel. it's cute when he does stuff like this; annoying as all hell when my dad does it. =) | | Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 | | 4:49 pm |
Harry Potter!!!
Just saw a commercial for the fourth Harry Potter movie. November 18. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepppppppp!!!!! Almost done with school here in Alabama. Looking very much forward to leaving hickville, although I'm going to Texas so it's not a huge improvement. I close on my house next Friday and am ridiculously excited to start furniture shopping. I'm only going to be there for 6-8 months so it's kind of silly to get really nice furniture, but dammit it's my house and it's going to look pretty while I'm living there. So there. | | Friday, August 26th, 2005 | | 6:06 pm |
success!
For my birthday, Aaron sent me a gorgeous celtic knot-looking ring. But this is no ordinary ring - oh no, this ring is actually made of 4 separate rings all linked to each other, and only make a coherent, wearable ring when put together just the right way. Also, if you're not careful it promptly FALLS APART when you pick it up. Basically he gave me a brainteaser that doubles as pretty jewelry. My boy knows me so well. Being the nerd that I am, I spent TWO HOURS on wednesday fiddling with it trying to get it back together. Actually, it wasn't so much that I was curious about how it worked, I just wanted to wear the pretty ring, dammit. I got it to work by sheer dumb luck, and after sleeping and showering with it on for two days, I decided I should probably figure out how to really put it together so I can take it off without worry about destroying it. And I just did! Yay. In other news, I'm finishing up my second of six weeks in ghetto Montgomery, Alabama learning all about Air Force doctrine. In other words, I learn how to use big impressive words to express seemingly common sense ideas (i.e. if you want to bomb something and your bombers are slow and can't defend themselves, it's a good idea to send in some fighter planes to protect them from enemy fighers). That, by the way, is known as "force packaging." Doesn't that sound *much* more impressive? | | Thursday, July 28th, 2005 | | 7:07 pm |
geekiness
jethrien and fairylane will appreciate this... i was watching Family Guy last night and one of the storylines was a spoof of My Fair Lady. Stewie (the talking baby with the oblong head) meets a girl from England who has an awful accent, and accepts a wager from Brian (the talking dog) to teach her how to speak properly in time for her birthday party. this is then followed by Family Guy's version of "The Rain in Spain" which, in typical Family Guy fashion is horribly twisted into "The life of the wife is ended by the knife". Horrible, but kind of funny. yay for random pop culture references to musicals. | | Friday, July 15th, 2005 | | 1:14 pm |
pretty car!!
i have a car! it's a silver ford focus with automatic transmission and anti-lock brakes - an obscenely difficult combination to find with this model. I went through about a dozen phone calls with 5 or 6 dealerships before i found one. ONE. in about a 30 mile radius. it's not like i was looking for a rare car or anything, it's a ford focus, for heaven's sake. but anyways. it's now sitting in my parent's garage, and i am many many thousands of dollars in debt. yay, being in debt. now if only the air force will start paying me soon... | | Tuesday, July 12th, 2005 | | 3:19 pm |
All growed up
So, I think I'm going to buy a house when I get to Texas. Houses down there are pretty cheap compared to the rest of the country, so I figure if I have to pay to live somewhere, it might as well be for a place that actually belongs to me. I'm going to BUY A HOUSE. I'll have a mortgage! And a yard! I'll have to be all responsible and shit! So weird. | | Tuesday, July 5th, 2005 | | 12:16 pm |
Bunny!
I am now the proud owner of a gorgeous charcoal gray bunny, courtesy of Aaron's aunt, who didn't want to take care of it anymore, and his parents, who lugged it all the way from Maryland to Nebraska, so that I can pick it up on my way from Utah to Texas. (Ah, moving with the military - it's complicated. If you don't know how it works, you really don't want to.) Of course, being the proud owner of a bunny also means that I get to clean up the pee of said bunny, which I just spent the last 30 minutes doing. (ew - the stuff is orange and smells putrid.) Evidently it likes corners, and thinks that the off-white carpet in Aaron's office will do nicely as a bathroom. Grr. Need to work on litter training asap. But it's SO CUTE. It's soft and furry and does these cute little hops and nose twitches and gives butterfly kisses with its whiskers...and I'm going to stop gushing before everyone else reading this decides that I've turned into a complete idiot. In other news, I officially report to Goodfellow AFB on August 2, at which point they will hopefully let me go find a place to live, explain everything I need to do to not look like a stupid brand new second lieutenant, and give me a nice cushy, or at least interesting job while I wait for class to start, which will hopefully not be six months from now. Until then I'm splitting my time between Utah (the parents) and Nebraska (the boy). | | Monday, May 30th, 2005 | | 1:56 am |
Super Secret Society A-ha!! I've discovered it!!
OK So guess what or more accurately guess who. Yes that's right, it's not Annie... It's Aaron. So I've just recently discovered this little secret called livejournal ( I was nosy and reading over Annie's shoulder ) so of course I had to go back and read the past posts. It's nice to know that you all have taken the time to inform me of Annie's little distractions (such as looking up wedding dresses and little fuzzy creatures). I think just maybe I should be told of these habits. And I must say it was quite the wrestling match to tackle the computer away from her so I could read these little entries. My bite marks are still healing after trying to read the wedding dress post. So now that I've discovered this little forum I think I'll try and keep up with my girl's (since she calls me "the boy") comments. Now on to the next issue; How do I log on to this site from a location other than Annie's computer? On a totally different note, I've been having a blast at Reunions!! I hope all of you have too. CONGRATULATIONS '05!!! And Congrats to you Annie, I'm so proud of you and can't wait to swear you in as a fellow Officer! Love you. Current Mood:  chipper | | Thursday, April 28th, 2005 | | 4:41 am |
DONE!
DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE 118 pages. 4 copies. Getting soft cover bound tomorrow at 10 am. Precept at 11. Celebratory drinks by half past noon. Did I mention I was done? Current Mood: ecstatic | | Sunday, April 24th, 2005 | | 4:39 pm |
last AFROTC lead lab, EVER
Yay, parade for ROTC went well; the colonel (the man who has a huge say in where and how I will spend the next 3 years of my life) seemed happy. Some minor hiccups along the way, mostly because a certain cadet is a complete MORON. This really isn't going to be understandable to anyone who doesn't do some sort of military drill and ceremonies, but I'm going to complain anyways. So this guy is a squadron commander, meaning that he's got a group of about 20 cadets that he gives commandes to and marches in front of during the parade. Out of those 20 cadets, two have extra stuff to do during the parade and need extra training. Every squadron commander was supposed to pick 2 cadets for those jobs before last friday, when they would get trained. This seems fairly obvious, right? Pick two of your better cadets for the job, and make sure they can be at both the practice and the actual thing. As it turns out, one of the cadets he picked was at the practice but not the parade. Okay, so he gets the benefit of the doubt - maybe the cadets was stupid and copped out last minute. Still, he should have checked. We find another cadet and train him; he's a little sloppy, but life is generally good. THEN, about 20 minutes before the parade is supposed to start, I have the horrifying realization that the cadet he picked for the other job DOESN'T HAVE A UNIFORM. GAH!!!!!!!! Fortunately, we found another cadet who learned quickly and trained her. Of course, during the parade I'm watching his squadron, and I realize that the cadet who is filling in for the first job really isn't very good and that just about anyone else in his squadron would've been better. grrrrr. Being a good leader means a) being good at shit yourself, and b) choosing people who are good at shit to work for you. This kid doesn't seem to be able to do either. And he's got a pilot slot. Is it wrong to hope that he either gets slapped upside the head multiple times and gets his act together quickly, or washes out and gets assigned to run the base day care center (not the one that I send my future children to, of course. =)? Idiotic cadets aside, the day went remarkably well. The officers in charge of the awards presentations finally figured out that there are an obscene number of awards and shortened the program by a lot. Got picked as an AFROTC "distinguished graduate," which I guess is evidently a good thing. Top 10% of this year's AFROTC graduates nationwide, or something like that. Yay...more fodder for the resume. =) Alright, back to the thesis. the never-ending, life-force sucking thesis. 4 days. | | Wednesday, April 13th, 2005 | | 12:11 am |
So I've been doing a lot of thinking about this resolution to get ROTC off campus. I keep meaning to be all bad-ass and show up to one of the meetings in uniform and give them a piece of my logical yet righteously indigant mind, but other things keep getting in the way...plus I doubt I'd really be as eloquent as I'd like to think I'd be. I keep having conversations with people about this, then come up with really good responses after the fact (what was that French phrase for it again? Wit of the staircase?? Anyways...) So I get to vent at my livejournal instead. The main reason I'm so annoyed with this resolution is that it forces people to choose one side or the other. If you support ROTC then by default you're anti-gay, and vice versa. This is really really annoying for people like me, who are in or strongly support the miliary, but at the same time sympathetic to gay rights (hello? FireHazards president?). No, I don't agree with the don't ask, don't tell policy and I think it should be changed, but right now I'm not in a position to make that happen, and until then I still have to follow it because IT'S MY JOB. We don't get to pick and choose the orders we follow, because that absolutely cannot happen in a combat situation. (Commander: "Take that hill, soldier!" Soldier: "Nahhhh....."). I'll do whatever I can to make changes once I'm in a position of authority, but in the meantime don't make mine and my fellow cadets' lives more difficult to "send a message" that's not going to make one bit of a difference in the real world. This resolution doesn't even affect me at all...besides the fact that I'm (hopefully) graduating in two months, AFROTC is already off campus. But that also means that I know first hand how much it sucks, having spent a significant portion of my Princeton career commuting to New Brunswick at ungodly hours in the morning. As much as I make fun of the Army ROTC cadets, I don't want them to have to go through that too. I actually had about an hour long, remarkably civilized conversation with the guy who started this whole thing. He evidently doesn't foresee ROTC actually getting kicked off campus, but wants a critical review of the school's policy toward ROTC. According to him, there was a study on ROTC in 1989 which recommended that the school nominally support ROTC financially, but otherwise have to do with the program. I.e., no moral support for cadets, supposedly president Tilghman didn't attend the commissioning ceremony until last year. (Incidentally, she's evidently going to be a judge at the All-Ivy drag ball. Putting the gay issue aside - which event is more worthy? A social event, or a ceremony in which students pledge the next 4 years of their life to the service of their country?) So this guy wants the school to do "just the opposite" - withdraw financial support from ROTC, but be supportive to the students. Two problems with this - first of all, it's not like the university gives us that much financial support anyways. Okay, so we get a classroom in the armory and Army gets a whole bunch of rooms, but really, I don't know what else the university helps us with. Other universities offer room and board to ROTC cadets on scholarship. They have dorm buildings set aside for ROTC cadets to live in, and a lot of schools let ROTC cadets move in early so they can get started on their training. Does Princeton do that? Hell no. In fact, Princeton won't even waive the no cars for freshmen rule for AFROTC, when we obviously rely heavily on driving to get to our training activities. Speaking of cars...we asked if we could use the SVC cars to commute to Rutgers. The answer was no, because we're not a student organization. We also can't get recognized as a student organization. Funny how that works. Second, if the university withdraws what little financial support it does give ROTC, that IS hurting the cadets. You can't say that you support the individuals but not the organization...it just doesn't work that way. Either you support me and my choice to join the Air Force, and thus the Air Force by extension, or you don't support any of it. So in this guy's ideal situation, Army ROTC would move off campus, and ROTC alumni would make donations to pay for shuttling cadets back and forth to training activities. Um...hello? ROTC alumni...donations? Dude, they joined the *military* - they're not exactly rolling the dough here. Okay, so maybe the University wouldn't let any other company that so openly discriminates against any group of people on campus to recruit, but last time I checked, the military isn't a "company" in the business of making profit. Last time I checked, no other company requires its employees to be willing to die in support of its mission. See, we have this little thing called the "Code of Conduct." It governs how we're supposed to act in combat and if we're taken prisoner. The first article goes something like this (actually, it goes exactly like this, since I've known since I was about 15): I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense." Let's see some I-banking company ask its employees to take THAT oath. So I guess the bottom line is this...the don't ask don't tell policy undoubtedly ranks as one of the U.S. military's poorer decisions, but let's not take it out on the ROTC cadets, huh? At the risk of sounding melodramatic, we're willing to die for you. You think you could let us hang out on campus? | | Thursday, April 7th, 2005 | | 7:31 pm |
from wedding dresses to fuzzy animals
so instead of wasting time online looking at wedding dresses, i'm now on petfinder.com looking for cute, fuzzy animals. bunnies, cats, puppies...they're all so cute and fuzzy! i want one, dammit! *sigh* this is what happens when you're deprived as a child and only had snails and fishes for pets... | | Monday, April 4th, 2005 | | 11:38 pm |
apartment drama
Correct me if I'm wrong, but when one breaks up with one's girlfriend, one no longer has unrestricted access to her apartment, especially if she has roommates! This includes randomly opening the apartment door and walking in after knocking a few times, and, when confronted by the ex-girlfriend's mildly disgruntled roommate, using the lame excuse "sorry, I thought I heard someone inside...I really need to talk to [insert ex-girlfriend's name here]." Well genius, if you hear someone inside, the proper course of action would be to KNOCK LOUDER, correct? Instead of walking into a residence to which you have no claim? One does not further exacerbate the situation by saying "I can leave if you want," when told that the ex isn't there, thus implying that you were planning on waiting until said ex returned, in the apartment which you had no right to go into in the first place! gggrrr. I really dislike strange men walking into my apartment late at night, or for that matter, any time at all. Is that too much to ask? ah, apartment roommate drama. who needs to watch soap operas when you live in one? Current Mood:  irritated, but mildy amused |
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