:: zarebski.com/word ::

A few things have come to my attention in my time here so far.

• 1. Always pee when ever you have the chance.
• 2. “Everyone” smokes two cigarettes in one sitting.
• 3. Baby wipes are not just for wiping babies.
• 4. Socks are important.
• 5. A clear sky is a clear sky whatever the environment.

Just a few things that have stuck out in my mind, of things observed since I have been here.

I feel a little weird. It’s Sunday night, clear skies, no wind to speak of. It’s relatively quiet and it has been for the past few days. I am not complaining of course. I wonder if it is actually quiet, or if I am deaf from the F-16’s taking off, or the C-RAM gun testing, or the C-17 landings all within 100-300 yards of me.

With all this anti-action, it’s leaving a pretty dull blog I will have to start having some wicked cool dreams and posting them here or something… I dunno. Maybe I’ll hit the hospital for a little volunteer time this week. I am sure there will be something to talk about from that. Whether or not I will want to is a different story.

They say the term “Arabian Nights” is used to describe the clear nights with a warm breeze blowing. The bright moon in the sky with the stars in chorus. It’s supposed to be very surreal. I suspect I will get to see that before I leave here. It’s not quite there yet though, but still, not bad.

It could be worse right? I could be shovelling snow~

~gibberish~

I saw something today I never though I would see… I saw a C-17 do a 180 on a runway. I had imagined this before, and it’s probably no big deal in the grand scheme of things… but I thought it to be quite impressive.

It landed, and came to a stop in the middle of the runway. It was dark so what I saw was more of a silhouette, except for the lights on the plane itself. It started to turn. The massive engines on the wings spun up and their exhaust kicked up the dirt and dust from the sides of the concrete pad. It created a pretty imaginative image.

~gibberish~

It seems to me that when you put yourself in a state of mind of not knowing what to expect, you are not startled by other things. Or, I should say, when you find yourself in that state of mind. Not that you would even “find” yourself there. It came to me as I walked around the compound. Little noises startled me. Flaps of tape on box cars that flapped in the wind. Those flaps were there the day before, and the day before that. It came to me that those noises did not startle me those previous days. But tonight they grabbed my attention. So I thought, was it because I was familiar with the environment?

So, because they caught my attention that moment, and had not before, I came to the conclusion that it was due to my familiarity with the environment. Thus, making me think that the reason I had not noticed it before, was because I was in a state of mind of not knowing what to expect.

~jibberish~