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Friday, October 14, 2005
Short Timers
We're short timers. Shorties. Double-digit midgets. 'We are SO out of here.' We're gone, adios amigos. Vamous.
I eat my 'countdown candy' every night, we check off days from the girlie calendar in our bay, and someone updates daily the whiteboard outside our bay that says 'XX days left!'
There's much talk of home of course, including beer, loved ones, beer, favorite restaurants, beer, clean roads and parks, beer, football games, beer, talking to kind people that don't use expletives for every other word, beer, flushing toilet paper down the toilet, and even beer. We try not to talk about it, but we can't help ourselves.
Some of us make plans to get together afterward and rock climb, trail run, mountain bike, go clothes shopping (no kidding), go to minor league hockey/baseball games, ski, drink beer, and just generally enjoy being home. We talk longingly of wives and children, and also couches and beds. We look forward to reunions with bottle openers and remote controls. We can't wait to just be able to have the personal freedom to get up from our couch, grab car keys, head out the door, and just drive somewhere.
It would be the understatement of the year to say that we can't wait. Closer to truth would be that we crave it, we taste it, we clutch at it and would, if we could, physically fight people to get it.
One reason we can't wait to leave 'Barbarian Company' and come home is conversations like these:
"My last name [of SPC Litzsinger] is German, I think southern Germany, like Bavaria." "Oh, so you're a real Barbarian huh?"
"I'm originally from New England." "Oh, I've never been to Europe."
"You can pick songs [in an MP3 player] by artist, album, or 'jeneer'." "Uh, that's genre."
So when we have a day off, we try to forget how close our homecoming actually is, watching more and more movies and playing more and more games. Recently we watched every episode of 'Band of Brothers' in one pathetic day. Those still motivated enough continue to workout and run and we're now occupied by 'base beautification projects' (that are nothing more than attempts to impress the next unit here). The networked games of Black Hawk Down and Halo fell out of favor for some time, until a recent resurgence, certainly inspired by our need to forget.
I eat my 'countdown candy' every night, we check off days from the girlie calendar in our bay, and someone updates daily the whiteboard outside our bay that says 'XX days left!'
There's much talk of home of course, including beer, loved ones, beer, favorite restaurants, beer, clean roads and parks, beer, football games, beer, talking to kind people that don't use expletives for every other word, beer, flushing toilet paper down the toilet, and even beer. We try not to talk about it, but we can't help ourselves.
Some of us make plans to get together afterward and rock climb, trail run, mountain bike, go clothes shopping (no kidding), go to minor league hockey/baseball games, ski, drink beer, and just generally enjoy being home. We talk longingly of wives and children, and also couches and beds. We look forward to reunions with bottle openers and remote controls. We can't wait to just be able to have the personal freedom to get up from our couch, grab car keys, head out the door, and just drive somewhere.
It would be the understatement of the year to say that we can't wait. Closer to truth would be that we crave it, we taste it, we clutch at it and would, if we could, physically fight people to get it.
One reason we can't wait to leave 'Barbarian Company' and come home is conversations like these:
"My last name [of SPC Litzsinger] is German, I think southern Germany, like Bavaria." "Oh, so you're a real Barbarian huh?"
"I'm originally from New England." "Oh, I've never been to Europe."
"You can pick songs [in an MP3 player] by artist, album, or 'jeneer'." "Uh, that's genre."
So when we have a day off, we try to forget how close our homecoming actually is, watching more and more movies and playing more and more games. Recently we watched every episode of 'Band of Brothers' in one pathetic day. Those still motivated enough continue to workout and run and we're now occupied by 'base beautification projects' (that are nothing more than attempts to impress the next unit here). The networked games of Black Hawk Down and Halo fell out of favor for some time, until a recent resurgence, certainly inspired by our need to forget.
Posted by: Unknown / 12:07 AM 
