EPTOr if the audience is younger, a nice quiet dinner with the family with an extravagant dinner, filled with mashed potatoes, steak, perhaps veggies, all that good shit. That is all topped off with a cake, perhaps cleverly designed, perhaps holding a number of candles designed to signify how many years you have existed in the world.
But today, is MY birthday. I did not spend it on the town with my friends. I did not see my family. Indeed, I spent the day (and night) gaming, and drinking soda. And I am completely content with my decision to do so. Perhaps I'm getting a few eyebrows raised concerning my lack of enthusiasm over the importance of a birthday, but I suppose an explanation should be in order. But before that, I feel a need to update on my current status.
If you have read my blogs previously, you may know that I was previously deployed to the Middle East. Mind you, I was not in any dangerous location, yet the mere mention of the Middle East has people up in arms over various points of debate and argument. At the time of my last blog, I believe I was in a strange state where I was being tossed between two different bases. The relevancy of that is more or less moot, save the experiences of two different leadership mindframes causing me to tear my hair out over frustration at policy changes. Towards the end of my tour, so many things frusrated me, most of which involved inefficiency of my leadership. Details are irrelevant, but I'm pretty sure many of you can relate with less than competent bosses. The end couldn't come fast enough, however, if there's one thing I did know concerning the end, it would come eventually, regardless of how long it may take.
I arrived in the United States a little over 3 or so weeks ago. That would not have been a relevant point if it wasn't during the extreme snow season. As such, on the route back home, I was inevitably snowed in, in Baltimore. What bothered me about being snowed in wasn't because Baltimore was snowed in, but rather because my layover location was snowed in, and as such, they grounded us for a few days anyways. We ended up staying at some random hotel, where it was cheap enough for my whole team to stay in their own room, if we so chose. I chose to stay in a room with one of the few people I got along with on my team. I ended up playing SC2 pretty much the entire time. I went out with the team at least once a day, as a way of celebrating being back in the States after half a year. But for the most part, SC2, attempting to get into Masters.
Getting back to Tucson wasn't exactly easy either. When the team got to the airport on the day of departure, our flights were consistently delayed over and over again until the team lead said screw it and get us a flight to Phoenix, where we would have people pick us up and drive us back to Tucson. We took that plan.
Getting back lead to, unfortunately, more delays before I could start leave. Inprocessing was essentially there to let the base know that I am, in fact, back in the base and I'm not dead. After every step of inprocessing that I finished, inevitably there would be yet another step that would suddenly be added on. Each day that I was supposed to be done with the inprocessing and started leave was pushed back another day, and yet another day, for various reasons here and there. After about 4-5 days of more steps to the process, I finally began leave.
Again, more mishaps occurred right before I went home. Nothing ever really goes right in these types of situations, the only real thing you could do is pretty much mitigate frustration with more patience.
-My car was left with my sister, in San Fransisco. As a result, I had no ride for a while. I had to bum rides almost the whole time.
-When I first got back, I had no cell phone, and therefore, only no real way to be reachable. It was dead the day that I left for the desert, and I forgot to bring a charger. I found out firsthand that chargers are not cheap.
-I was attempting to transfer credits over to a different college, and they had to swipe my card for the charge (I didn't have cash). The swiper bent my debit card and rendered it unusable. I had to order a new one, which delayed my leave even further.
-Because of the combined efforts of having no car and no debit card, I had no access to money. I could not get to a bank (too far), I had no debit card, and nothing was close enough to walk to anyways. I ended up ordering pizza for about a week straight. Normally I don't mind, but it's not by choice.
There were other things that irritated me, but for the most part, it was all minor nuisances.
I finally left for leave about a week ago. I arrived at my friends house a few days later, and finally have things in order. Which leads me to today.
Again, it's my birthday, and I chose to do nothing. It's been 4 or so years since I've been in the military, and I had to work every single birthday that I had since I've been in. Every single one. This one is an exception, and I have chosen to spend it in the best way that I can imagine.
By not working.
-Edit 1: Also, during my week of being stuck in my apartment with no car and money, I made it to Master's League. Booya.
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