What a beautiful day it is today! It's amazing what a few hours sleep and a whole lot of protein can do for you. I feel soooooo much better today. The soreness is pretty much gone. I had a great work out yesterday too. Radiohead makes for some great cardio music. Every time I had convinced myself I was going to stop, another song came on that pumped me up and kept me going. I got an extra 15 minutes of workout in just on music-energy alone!

So, I'm gonna go camping today. Lani said she and the fam might come, but she's afraid of the bugs so they backed out. Don said it was because they were putting in a central AC unit in their house, but we all know the real deal *wink wink*

The wierdest thing with my throat though. I realized why my throat hurts. It's not a sore throat, but rather my lymph nodes are so swollen and tender, when I swallow it places pressure on them and they hurt. How odd is that? I feel fine otherwise, so I'm not sure why my lymph nodes would be so tender. Is there a doctor in the house? Am I going to die?!? If so, I have AD&D insurance, so you're all set dad.

Oh . . . my . . . god. I am so sore today. You just have no idea. The pain I experience as I move around is quite large. This'll teach me to miss too many workouts in a row. I hope, anyway.

The first workout is always the worst, I just have to keep reminding myself of that. It is true, actually. Once you've been doing your workouts consistently, they stop making you so painfully sore and you just get a dull reminder that you worked out the day before. More of a sense of fatigue than outright pain. But man, when you miss a few! Ugh. Every muscle hurts to move it. Hamstrings, groin, biceps. Lower and upper back. Should I keep going? *lol*

And just to add to my tale of woe, I think my allergies are finally acting up. I woke up this morning with a painful lump in my throat and my sinuses are pulsing. That's easy enough to fix though. Loratadine to the rescue!!

So what's the solution to a stuffed up head, a sore body, and a fat stomach? More workouts! I'm off to the gym. Wish me luck as I try to limber up my legs enough to do the stepping machine.

Ugh. The managers meeting is today. Five hours of listening to people talk about snapshots and customer centric thinking. If you never see another post here, it's because I went to the bathroom and committed suicide in the middle of the meeting.

There are lots of young women walking around Monroe Avenue without bras on.

Ugh, CQ again. I had to be up at 4 am this morning as well, which makes it worse. We'll see how it goes I suppose. Worse comes to worse, I can do the head-nod thing for a while if I get really tired.

I'm armed with my Diet Mountain Dew and my trusty laptop. Some people would turn their nose up at the Diet Mountain Dew, but I personally prefer the taste. The regular has too much sugar and leaves a bad after taste in my mouth. Speaking of Mountain Dew, I made an interesting discovery. Diet Mountain Dew is really good immediately after you've brushed your teeth. Something about the citrus flavor of the soda and mint of the toothpaste just works well together.

Here I go off into my sleepless night. Wish me luck!

I did my good deed for the day today. I was driving out to the field site in my HMMWV (that's a High Mobility Multi-use Wheeled Vehicle, or Humvee for those not in the know) when I came up on an object in the road. I drove around it, and realized it was a turtle as I drove past. Poor turtle! The little guy was trying to cross a busy street, but had managed to make it almost to the center line by the time I drove past.

Well, on the way back to the CQ office, I saw him in the road again, except he had made it all the way to the middle of the road. So, I pulled over and picked him up, carrying him to the other side of the road so he could proceed safely. He (I guess it could have a been a she for all I know) was kind of cool looking. Black skin with red markings and a dark, dark green shell. I'm not really sure what kind of turtle he was though. And let me tell you, he could move when he wanted to! I was worried about him biting me at first, so I figured I would nudge him with my foot and get him to curl up inside his shell before I picked him up. Instead, he takes off down the road when I gave him a little tap with my boot! Here I am, chasing a turtle down the center line of a busy road hoping no cars come while I try to get ahold of the damn thing so I can take him accross.

I wonder, do you suppose his buddies dared him to do it? Must have been the scariest hour of his life trying to cross that street.

How nice is Kelley? Kelley is so nice, she woke up at 3 am (3 in the morning!!) to chat with me on Yahoo Instant Messenger so I wouldn't be bored during my CQ shift tonight. She even volunteered to do it! I didn't ask at all. Not many girlfriends would get up at oh-dark-thirty to make sure their boyfriends weren't alone all night. I mean, maybe if they were there in person. But certainly not to chat on the internet. I'm a lucky guy.

=* That's for Kelley - for being so cool.

Blogger.com has recently come out with a commenting feature for their site, which has now made it's debut on this page! The basic idea is that you can add your own comments to anything that I add to the web log portion of the site. Just click on the "View Comments" link after each post to view prior comments, or add your own new comment!

You may have noticed already, but there's a new addition to the site. Check out the upper right hand corner of your screen - there you will find a neat little utility from Unkymoods.com. Essentially just a fun little picture that allows me to put in different faces telling the world my current mood (or at least my mood the last time I updated it.) Nothing word shattering, but I find it amusing. Which is really the whole reason I have this site! Check out Unkymoods for yourself and get signed up. Easy as heck to install and even easier to use.

Blogger.com has totally revamped their site. I'm just starting to mess around with it a bit, but it looks good so far. Much cleaner layout and less clutter. Blogger.com is the site that makes this particular part of my site possible. It's a free service, so if you're interested in having an online web log (is there an offline web log?) you should go check them out. There's lots of blogging sites out there, but I'm fairly happy with Blogger.com so far.

Day 1 of AT has begun! I think this may turn out to be a very nice two weeks. No one really needs me, and no one is really in charge of me. So I may slip between the cracks and get left alone for the two weeks I'm here at FT Dix. Gotta love the Reserves. A paid two week vacation! As long as I stick my head in once in a while so the right people know I'm around, I'm good to go (or G2G as they say in the 'hood. Yeah, that's right, I gots mad street cred. *lol*)

Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars at work. God bless America!

Isn't there supposed to be some tribe of Eskimos that has 32 words for snow? Do we even refer to groups of Eskimos as tribes? Yeah, I guess Eskimos would be tribes. I don't think pride or flock would be appropriate.

Anyway. 32 words for snow!! Supposedly this is because snow is such an important part of their lives that their language reflects their intimate acquaintance with the white stuff. Which makes me wonder: why does the English language only have one word for love?

I mean, think about it. We use the same word to describe how we feel about our girlfriends (or boyfriends, depending on your gender. Or maybe girlfriend anyway, regardless of your gender). We use it to describe our feelings towards our grandparents and our pet fish. Towards our best friend and our favorite ice cream. We describe how much we like inanimate objects and our feelings toward our spouses and our children, all with the same word.

How inane is that? Is anyone else as incredibly frustrated with the lack of nuance in the English language for describing one's level of affection toward someone or something? Lets say we're using love in the context of a person. Affection clearly exists in different forms, even when applied to the same person. I might tell a girl whom I'm dating I love her. This is a much different state of being than when I tell her I love her on our tenth wedding anniversary. Yet the same word, the same phrase.

The Greeks had the right idea I think. They at least had three words for affection. Eros, for passionate love. We might call it lust. Erotic is a word we get from the Greek word eros. Then they had philos, or friendship-love. Sort of that steady, warm-fuzzy feeling you have towards friends or long time lovers. Affectionate is the best word I can think of. Then they had agape, the closest thing to what English speakers would call love. It really means a bit more than that though, since it carries with it a sense of decision or commitment, in the sense that you would choose to love someone, even though you might not have the warm fuzzy feelings. Like when you say, "I'm completely pissed at you right now, but I choose to act lovingly towards you." That's agape. A more mature and steadfast love, not based on feelings but based on decision and commitment.

I always liked the Greek model for thinking about love. Still not quite enough though. What if you have a mix of philos and agape? You've made the commitment to love someone, but you actually still like them and feel affectionately towards them? No word there. Or what if you happen to be a lucky bastard and have all three? Not only do you have the steadfastness of agape, and the warm-fuzzy of philos, but you got the eros going on? No words. Of course, you may be busy doing other things aside from talking about love, but that's neither here nor there *wink wink*

So I find myself without an adequate vocabulary for expressing love. Which is quite frustrating, because it leaves me in an uncomfortable situation. When you start dating someone, when do you tell them you love them? Do you tell them early on so that they know you have nice, warm, fuzzy feelings towards them? If so, you run the risk of them taking it too seriously and freaking out.

Ok, so you choose not to say "I love you" until you're sure you reeeeaaaallllly feel it. But by then, the whole do-I-say-I-love-you thing takes on a life of it's own. The phrase takes on such significance there's no way the event can ever live up to itself. That, and you spend all that time not telling the other person that you care about them, or they spend a whole lot of time feeling neglected just because you don't want to use the "L" word inappropriately.

Say it too early, they think you're either getting too serious too fast, or you don't really mean it. Wait too long, and they think you don't care about them or you're afraid to express emotions. *sigh*

There's always "I like you", which works in high school. Not too great for adults though. Makes you look a little silly. Besides, "I'm in like with you?" Doesn't really work. I guess you could always explain to the other person that in the English language we have but one word to express a myriad of emotional states, so this is why I'm choosing to say "I love you" at this time. I mean it neither lightly nor too seriously, but appropriately for the level of our relationship. But this is a bit wordy and can kill the moment. Might open up a good conversation on just exactly how do we feel about each other. But again, not too great for the romantic moment. Song of Solomon it's not.

Besides, what does this say about English speakers and their experience of love? If the Eskimos have 32 words for snow because it's such a big part of their lives, does this imply we experience love in a diminished manner because we have but one word to describe the inter-connection between people? Perhaps this is part of the problem in modern Western society. We take all emotionally significant relationships and lump them together under one word, missing out on all the nuance of the human experience in the process. Indeed, the words we have certainly influence the way we think about and perceive our world. Does the fact that all significant human interactions fall under the word "Love" cause us to miss the nuances between each of our relationships? Do we fail to recognize the difference between a good girlfriend and a good wife? Do we make the mistake of assuming that if we love someone, we love someone, period? Do we recognize that love develops and changes in quality over time? Is this why Americans spend billions on pet care products while children go hungry and uneducated? Could the fact that we use love to describe our pets but not the poor family down the street affect the way we not only view both fluffy and the neighbor family, but how we treat them and the value we assign to them? Could the same be happening when we say we love our new car or we love flat screen TV's?

It is just patently absurd. Only one word for love. Such a huge part of the human experience, so important to our happiness, so central to our very being. All we can come up with is one little four letter word to describe it all. What a shame.

http://dialanorgasm.com

The stuff you find on the internet in the middle of the night.

Here I sit on CQ, all by myself, thinking about the quart of Haagen Das in the other room. Thank god for the internet. The surest way to keep yourself awake is to jump on the closest computer and start surfing.

For those who don't know, CQ stands for Charge of Quarters. In the Army, there always has to be someone awake and ready to do something if something were to go wrong. Even at three in the morning. They call that person the CQ. Tonight, I am the CQ. So I get to sit up here in the office and try to keep myself awake. Oh, of course, they told me it was a "sleeping CQ". But you and I know better, don't we. Why waste all this valuable computer time sleeping? I get tomorrow off anyway, so may as well get a little work done.