(Riss:)
...I have the best intentions. I blame the rest of the world for this one.

I got hit with an emergency tasking for work about a week and a half ago and have been scrambling around since then trying to get emergency training and emergency packing and emergency buying things I thought I had but I guess I don't (or can't find them when I need them). It's technically a deployment--I get to go to the National Training Center in Ft. Irwin, CA, for a month and attempt to evaluate people who outrank me. It's weird and awkward and kind of doesn't make much sense. I attempt to look on the bright side and remind myself that at least I'm an evaluator and not an evaluatee, for the people actually doing the operations out in the godless butthole of America big Mojave Desert crater get to sleep on the dirt under improvised shelters, mostly, while I get to sleep in a barracks.

But somehow we're supposed to get everywhere by HMMWV, and no one is feeding us, and we're explicitly forbidden from leaving Ft. Irwin, which I understand is nearly or exactly as small and isolated as Ft. Leonard Wood. So I just now finished packing a huge amount of luggage, which is huge because I put all kinds of consumables in it--office supplies and batteries and things, as sadly there was no room for a civvie food stash T_T--on the off chance that I will never see a PX for the entire month.

People told me, "Bring stuff to do." If I truly end up so idle, then I could live with rummaging in dumpsters for scraps (or maybe beg at intersections in uniform--"STARVING L.T. - WILL LEAD AND MOTIVATE FOR FOOD"). So I brought stuff to do. Originally, I was going to swear off reading anything, as I have become dangerously addicted to novels since I've been here, but then it occurred to me that it's easier to pick up and put down a book than it is to turn the creativity switch on and off, so I brought the ereader with something like a hundred Black Library books on it, at least half of which I've already read in dead-tree form.

...I don't know how I got them. They just appeared. c_c

To conclude with a point: 1) people die at NTC, since it's a simulated overseas deployment and astonishingly stupid shit happens, like people getting run over by tanks while inside another vehicle, and 2) I thought I was going to be able to find a way to get Net access, but it looks like I'll be limited to whatever I can manage with my smartphone. Probably just reading, most likely, and mayyyyybe possibly doing short responses, or maybe even posting incoherently with lots of misspelled words if I manage to get sick/sleep-deprived/overcrowded and attempt to verbally chew my own leg off like an animal stuck in a trap. Thus, it's possible that I may be close to completely unavailable from now until the end of next month, or I could get hit by a misplaced arty round and never appear again among the living. o_o

So, in the meantime, I still love everyone here, and I wish that I could actually be around more instead of just talking about it all the time--which includes having time to let the others do what they want on the Net, as I hate how they have to get dragged along into whatever I do. ;_; If the worst happens, I wish everyone the very best in the future.

For now, I think I'm rambling a lot due to being sleep-deprived and I have to get up at 1AM to finish everything and pray that no one breaks into my place while I'm gone (never did set up the security system) and pray also that the cab I booked online actually makes it here on time so I don't have to drive my car to post and leave the poor thing out in the elements for the next month. Stupid movement plan...

(BTW, Yuuuuuuuu: Got your files. They even work on the ereader. I think I'm on Ch.17 now? Wish I could say more, but my brain is leaking out my ears. XP)

--Riss.