Soulless & Feral

If I were going to be cliche, I’d apologize for the abject lack of updates of late. I’d reference a busy schedule, sleepiness, and/or stress as an excuse for my lack of updates. Quite honestly, all of those reasons would hold water… I -have- been busy. I -have- been sleepy. And heck… you should all know where I live at the moment (Iraq, should you not being paying attention) so I think it can be said than an ambient stress is simply part of living where I am.

But no, that’s not why I’ve been lax. Simply, I’ve been doing other things, and blogging, while fun and interesting, simply did not make the cut as far as time was concerned.

So, the highlights:

(more…)

The trick to being gone for a year is to fill the time with goals… at least, that’s the trick for me. Given that I work 12 hours a day, filling the other 12 hours is not particularly difficult. The problem, of course, is that I am pretty good at what I do, so the 12 hour day has large gaps in it in which I can either a) sit around waiting for things to happen or b) find productive things to do to make the time fly. We’ve all tried a) before and we know how well that tends to work, so I’m going to go with b). Here’s what I have cooking right now.

(more…)

Week one is down and week two is well underway. After the initial couple of days which seemed to drag on forever, I’ve more or less established a routine that has the days flowing by relatively quickly. The 12 hour shifts aren’t so bad, either… when you figure the time we take to eat and the time spent running around, the shift ends up being closer to 9 hours. Besides, working an 8 hour shift would leave a whole lot of down time, which would mean that rather than filling the days with activity (and delicious, delicious money) I’d be watching the clock tick, waiting to be tired enough to go to sleep. I much prefer the long, extremely profitable, time-passing shifts.

What’s my day like? You want to know, really? Sure!

(more…)

Things are going well so far, but again I get to learn the importance of patience.

Here’s what happened. Despite my relative diligence about maintaining some semblance of in-shapeness these last couple of years, I am at heart a bookworm. I’m used to using my brain to enhance myself, and the brain only need sleep, caffeine, and books to grow. A body, on the other hand, requires fuel, rest, and recovery time. Pushing it too far can make it hurt for days.

I am hurting for days right now.

I just took it too ambitiously. Assuming I am recovered by Monday, I’ll restart, and go slower this next time around. I forget that I have at least 6 months in which I can get skinny and get fit before anyone back home will see. Six months is a long time… I was just trying to do in six weeks what should honestly take six months to accomplish.

Reset, retry. Weight loss, at least, appears to be happening.

7/18

Okay, seriously. Someone is going to have to mail me some proper coffee. Heck, a bean grinder would be sexy too, if you’re so inclined. If you don’t mail a grinder though, I need ground, delicious coffee, Splenda, and… really, that’s about it. I suppose I could use a mug too, but I can pick one of those up just about anywhere.

Really, though, I want to reiterate why I’m here.

(more…)