I find myself uncharacteristcally depressed today.
I suppose it doesn’t help that I had a horrible dream last night about my mother getting and dying from cancer. It was incredibly detailed and graphic, and it was long. This wasn’t one of those five minutes of ugly dreams – it pretty much lasted all night, and it had me very disoriented when I woke up this morning. So much so that I thought K.’s alarm clock going off was mine, and that I had to get up to go to work. I couldn’t figure out why the alarm clock wouldn’t shut off though, despite my repeatedly hitting the buttons. By the time I figured it out I was awake, and while I went back to sleep after the residue of the dream and the general mind haze from the incorrect assumption that it was a work day made it nearly impossible for me to fall fully asleep again.
The net result of all this is that I’m just…blah today. The things that normally would slide off my back are kind of persisting, and I’m just down. I really wanted to just relax today and play some Warcraft, but even that is wearing a little thin. One of the guilds we are allies with seems to be having some major turmoil recently, and our raids with them have suffered as a result. We’ve been trying to work a little harder on our own progression in guild, but can’t seem to get more than seven people on at a time to work on a dungeon called Upper Blackrock Spire. As a result, we can only get the first half of it done. I’m proud of that accomplishment, but I know we could finish it if we could all just find a time that worked for us. Some other guild posted today on our server forums about a Friday night Molten Core alliance, but I worry that if we express an interest in that we’ll alienate the folks who we’ve been working with outside of our guild. In a similar vein, I started using a new method of loot distribution in guild last night, and while I believe that it’s a solid method it’s going to take a while to get used to it and frustration from the players as we experiment is obvious.
I really want to go see Superman Returns in the worst way. It’s silly for that to be a source of depression for me, but there it is. I’m actually down because I haven’t seen a stupid movie.
My nephew wants to go into the Army. Let me correct that – he wants to go into the Air Force, but they are dicking him around. He wants it so badly that he’s lost like 70 pounds to do so. He’s gotten into amazing shape, but for some reason they still want him smaller. They want his BMI to be less than 20%. This is a man who is built very much like me, and who currently weighs 213 pounds. He’s gotten to the point where he’s stopped lifting weights because he kept gaining weight by building muscle. The Air Force had told him he was good to go, and that he was going to take his physical on Thursday. Wednesday they told him that he was still too big, and to talk to them on Saturday.
The Army, of course, is ready to take him right now just the way he is. They could have him shipped off to boot camp on August 1st.
Not surprisingly, this is causing my sister no end of distress. In the Air Force it wasn’t looking very likely that he would end up being in the middle of the war in Iraq, or that if he was he’d be in a relatively safe location. The Army, though? Not so much. From everything I have heard (primarly from current or former enlisted folks), the Army is infamous for making all kinds of promises about what your job will be and then changing it the day you graduate from boot camp. Even if he ends up being some kind of mechanic and not a grunt he’ll likely end up in some kind of hot spot.
My sister has already buried one of her children. I don’t think she could deal with doing it again.
My personal feelings on the subject should be pretty obvious, but I also believe that he has to do what he feels is right. For some reason, the military is something he feels strongly about. He doesn’t like school, and he (like most people raised around here) is a young person that just “has to get out of here.” I had the same mindset, but to get out I did college and then (when that failed miserably) went on the road with the Renaissance Festival.
The big difference between my choices and his is that when I realized that Florida wasn’t as bad as I made it out to be I could just up and come home. He’s going to be stuck with his choice for at least six years.
Krystalle and Bill both suggested that he look into the Navy, and I’ve passed that along to my sister. I hope he does it.
In interesting and positive news, I got a call from maladr1n last night. There’s a role for a small boy in The Pillowman, and he asked if I thought Alex would be interested. It’s not a speaking part, and it wouldn’t require a lot of time commitment from us to make it happen. Ideally, I’d be able to play the role of the boys father as well (another small, non-speaking part). He could work around my class schedule so I’d only have to miss the three Thursday nights that were performance nights.
Of course, that’s 3 weeks in a row of missing a class. Thing is, it’s a lab class. Who knows if we’ll even actually be meeting those nights?
I guess I need to write to the professor and get some kind of idea as to whether or not it would be a possibility.
Even if it’s not feasible for me to play that Father, I’d like to see Alex be able to get the role. He’s asked me several times when he was going to get to do a Jobsite show, and I think it would be a great experience for him. Before I ask him, though, I need to clear it with his Mother.
Oh well…not much else going on in my head at the moment, and not really like this is the best post I’ve made anyway. Take care out there, folks.