Finally some good news about work! Well, good news rolled up in a rice coating of bad news, because the good news is dependent upon our country going to war. Which would be ... bad. But the good news is I and another copy editor were chosen to be "the war desk." Which means we work closely (in Washington still) with our present supervisors and five or so reporters who would be dispatched to Iraq and its environs to edit and present our war coverage, which kinda is the whole point of Stars and Stripes, really. No one's sure really what working the war desk would entail -- possibly different days off, possibly different hours, most likely a crapload of work, I'm told. The immediate impact is that the other editor (Debra) and I were told to quickly become experts on the military. Which we were able to coast by so far on not being. But now we have to know the units and where they are moving, the guns, the ranks -- all that stuff. Which makes me queasy just thinking about -- lots of kinda boring crap to cram into my poor big head very quickly. I went to Barnes and Noble today and looked around for help, but it seems there is no book in existence that just explains the military and how the hell it works. Like why are units named what they're named and what's an infantry or a brigade, really, and what;s the difference between an enlisted person and a noncommissioned officer and some other officer. These are the things I don't know. No such book (that I found), but I got a dictionary of military terms and history to have as a reference and a book about Iraq to burn through. Prepare, my friends, for me to become the most boring person on earth! But despite the work, I call the war desk gig "good news" because it's certainly being treated as such by the bosses at work, and I guess it'll be the reason people read the paper pretty soon, unfortunately.
Oh! And nugget of info from a formative meeting yesterday about the war desk: The boss said he thought it very likely that at some point, Debra and I would be sent TDY (militarese for tour of duty -- when they send copy editors to the bureaus to hang with the reporters and see what the what is) not to Tokyo or Germany, which is where everyone else goes, but to ... Kuwait City! Yeah, I know you're jealous. You're looking at that shiny poster of beautiful Kuwait City you have on your bedroom wall and wishing you could attain your lifelong dream of going there. Kuwait City is where the paper has rented an apartment to serve as the war bureau, the base for the reporters who will cover whatever goings-on in the Gulf region. So that's where we'd get to go. Not in any way guaranteed or even planned at all, just "likely." I'm just praying if we do go, it's not in the summer.
Not much else to report. Ramon (my sexy. sexy Jetta) got his first oil change today. So now he's all set for the drive back to Anderson in almost a week. I might have to get him washed soon. He's all caked with salt from when the roads get icy, which apparently is way bad for your car. It snowed here late last night but didn't stick. Was pretty falling down, though. Supposed to snow again Friday. Supporting my theory that this is the Frozen North and anything north of here is surely unihabitable. By me anyway. I think it's not going to get above freezing at all -- day or night -- for the next week or so here. Scary, scary.
OK, time to become a military expert. Hoo-ah! (I'm thinking it would have been easier to just enlist, sheesh).
Stacy - 1:39 PM
Sunday, January 12, 2003
No no, I'm not still hungover after the New Year's Eve party. Just haven't gotten around to my blog. Does this make me a bad person? Perhaps. But I'll never be as evil as Celine Dion, who sings a cover of Cyndi Lauper's "I Drove All Night" for commercials to start airing soon for Daimler-Chrysler. Man alive, that Celine Dion is totally NOT all about the benjamins, no siree. And neither, my friends, am I. But if you send me a lot of money, I could possibly be relied upon to update my blog more. Aha!
After a bit of a delay and learning the hard way that customer service is not XM's forte, I finally got all my equipment and now have 100 channels of musical goodness flowing into my apartment. Oh, sweet lord, XM is so wonderful. I mostly listen to the bluegrass channel, the Americana channel, and the acoustic rock channel, but I often flip around and find random goodness elsewhere. Geoffrey's favorite so far is "The Boneyard" -- a channel of crappy metal. I'm starting to suspect he's a Poison freak. Stay tuned for updates on that.
Anyway, aside from the music, two good things about how XM is set up are (1) the receiver constantly displays the artist and title of the song playing now, and (2) because of said display, you can scroll through the channels to see what's playing without actually going to another channel. So you can listen to a song while you shop around for another. Very fun when I'm in a flippy mood. So far I have heard exactly zero commercials on XM. They're there, I know, but I seem to have to good fortune of liking channels that happen to be commercial-free. I'm good that way.
Had a fun gathering with people from work Friday night at a place in Alexandria (the Rock-It Grill, for those of you from around these here parts). Geoffrey refused to come because it's a karaoke bar (opting instead to sit at home by himself playing video games and starving because he was too lazy to make/order food), and I admit I wasn't too excited about that aspect of it either, but I did want to have some fun with co-workers outside of work. And as a matter of fact it did turn out to be really fun. I endured people who can't sing belting out the Goo Goo Dolls and Bon Jovi and Creed (had to have several beers in quick sucession to get through all that) and just had fun dancing like an idiot, as I am wont to do. I even had my karaoke debut (at least I don't remember ever doing it before ...) with five other girls I work with doing Pink's "Get The Party Started." We were pretty darn cool. And now everyone knows what an excellent dancer I am.
Washington is full of cultural offerings, perhaps none so enriching as Tiny Ninja Theater's production of Romeo and Juliet. Unfortunately, I only found out it was here yesterday, and it closes tonight -- typical, I must say, of the Washington Post's arts coverage. Anyway, I'll miss the show since I'm working, but it sounds great. Here's the Web site that tells what it's all about. For those of you too lazy to follow my links, it's basically classic theater presented by a cast of plastic figures collected from grocery store vending machines. Some, but not all, of the figures are well, tiny ninjas. How can you not love it?! I highly recommend the Web site, especially the "fun" part, which lets you drag around tiny ninjas to form your own portrayal of classic drama ... or whatever.
In two weeks, Geoffrey and I will be back in Anderson for a visit! Yippee! It will be great to see all those peeps again, as well as to be in town and with said peeps when I DON'T have to kill myself over the Progress edition, a yearly special section (read: advertising vehicle) that regurgitates articles from the year before, possibly with a special bonus extra new paragraph or two. Sorry to rub it in to those of you stuck doing that again this year, but I have to say I am soooo glad to be done with that.
LISTENING TO: XM mostly. It's January 12 and I haven't bought one new CD this year! Still enjoying the ones from Christmas, I guess. I'm sure I will break back into the ol' groove again soon, though. Never fear.
Stacy - 5:21 PM
