Yo!

Dude!

I missed you too!

Thank you muchly.

And then I spent at least 18 hours out cold so I think that counts as a good night's sleep?

Certainly longer than I've had in actual months.

Yay sleeping on something bigger than a breadbox and not confined on three sides.

You expressed interest in doing one with me at the beginning of deployment and I said it'd have to wait until after I got back.

On my last flight right now so feel free to shoot me an email as far as things of interest go as far as what you want to do mission wise.

Fun fact, I have a forever incomplete mission that starts off with this song.

Love me some Acca Dacca.

*dons black as needed*

When I was just a regular ole deck seaman, I'd chip paint off things and then repaint them. And sand things, too. Along with standing lookout and manning the ship's helm- driving it!

But I've been an OS now- Operations Specialist- which means when we're out to sea I stare at radar screens and track things that we find, so we know what they are and what they're doing. I also do fancy things on paper with pencils to do calculus problems so we can find out what track things are going on against us, so can tell whether something will be getting too close to us, and how fast it actually is going.

This means I sit under blue lighting and we all look Very Dramatic while trying to not fall asleep.

Currently however I'm cranking- which means I'm working in the galley and messdecks to help feed everyone. I have over the course of the last month or so because of this worked for 21 hours straight, cut hundreds of melons into smaller pieces of melon for people to eat, and cracked a few thousand eggs.

I have become so skilled at egg cracking that when I started, I could crack eggs one handed.

Now I can crack eggs one handed in the air against each other without breaking the other egg. My high score on this egg brutality is a dozen eggs against a single egg.

...As you can guess it can get pretty boring, cracking that many eggs.

It was raining the whole time and by the time we were heading back it was flooded so I was walking in floodwater the whole way back.

Floodwater filled with camel poo and and donkey dung. Yes.

Hit me up anyways, I'm sure something can be worked out.

Well that was one of the plus sides, all these things seen and done, like getting lost in a giant bazaar.

Never found my DS, alas.

I was trying to buy gifts for friends. I picked out what looked to be cheap jewelry.

Get to the counter and they begin weighing it. This point, I'm going "huh?". Pull some items aside and decide to not buy them after all due to price- 70$ for a string of pearls.

Eventually I pull out one of the items I bought and inspect it later and go "... that is silver tarnish. This is a large silver bracelet. Oop.". The bracelet was about $50. Big chunky thing.

I also nearly bought a giant wooden camel for Huinesoron in defiance of sanity but thankfully for him I had no space for it anywhere.

I'm on a ship, actually, rather than having been on a specific base over there or anything. It was normal to not see land for weeks while we were out at sea for this deployment!

It rained on us coming in, which resulted in a real of sogginess in my dress whites while we manned the rails. (Which means nearly everyone on the ship was standing outside at all the barriers on the edges of the ship looking out while we pulled into port.)

And then it rained on us getting sushi, too.


I've got a package to send to you and Phobos anyhow, I kept getting busy while on board.

-July

It rained on us coming in, which resulted in a real of sogginess in my dress whites while we manned the rails. (Which means nearly everyone on the ship was standing outside at all the barriers on the edges of the ship looking out while we pulled into port.)

And then it rained on us getting sushi, too.

<3

I've got a package to send to you and Phobos anyhow, I kept getting busy while on board.

-July

Petra was super cool. I got rained on and soaked but the sights were super neat. I can try catching you tomorrow some time or another when I'm back home home and can start uploading all the photos I took so you can see some. Shoot me an email so I'd know when would be good for you?

As for writing, I've got a rather large PPC thing almost done that I'd actually love to have you be a beta for.

-July

Thanks!

I'm still sorry we changed ports at practically the last minute, I would've loved to have met up with you.

Well I'm not quite home yet.

We definitely need to talk shop about cowrites, though.

The book, that is.

Coffee is a thing.

Ad for deployment, I dunno. It sucked really hard at times and I've been horribly sleep deprived for roughly half of it. Saw a load of cool things though, so I dunno how it trades off.

Yeah, it is!

Hi. ;D