The Totally Radical Thread for Crotchety Old Bitches

Euo: Lol Priceless.

The two girls didn't want any of whatever got Bowser yelping like that, so they backed off... leaving one undisturbed (if grouchy) hedgehog as it took a long swig followed by a dip in their water bowl and then, eventually, trundled off.

edited 28th Aug '15 4:13:36 PM by Euodiachloris

And suddenly all of my high school friends are posting about their travels out of town/state/country. Time to water my bank account and put it in the sun and watch it grow extremely slowly.

Lera: don't worry, travel is overrated. I've been halfway around the world, and honestly it wasn't all that. Granted I never got to see Abu Dhabi or Dubai, but nonetheless...

In our way, we see lots of natural landscapes. It's mostly trees and sand and bugs.

I'm going to see a free outdoor Shakespeare play. King Lear, one of the ones I haven't read. Moreover, by a theater group and director I haven't heard of.

Here's hoping it's fun!

Um. Fun? Erm... it's one of his best tragedies, that's certain.... <_<

Well, it was neither fun nor high quality drama. The only person who had a ounce of genuine emotion was someone I knew... and it wasn't much of a stretch, as their only scene was basically their natural personality.

Since it was a free show (the only thing I paid for was a hot dog, and to the credit of concessions it was grilled fresh while the play was running and very necessary), I want those two and a half hours of my life back.

By the sound of it, you need to see Lear done with the full thunder, blood, guts and fire. It truly is good stuff (one of my favourite women in Shakespeare is Goneril — yes, she's a bitch on wheels, but I can respect her attitude and position far more than I can Lady MacBeth's).

Lear brought most of his problems on his own head, and she's not backwards in pointing that out while stabbing him in the back.

edited 30th Aug '15 10:18:31 PM by Euodiachloris

There's a production running now that casts Lear entirely with sheep.

Well, actually it's a one-person show with a human actor playing the director of an unmanageable cast of sheep, eventually just doing all the parts himself. I kind of want to see it.

Attend, Cobbies, and hear thou this parable:

Behold the circle of life in a single tree! Where there is a tree, there are many fruits; and where there are many fruits, there are many birds. These birds will indeed partake of the fruit, and thenceforth take wing to other lands far and near, and nest in other trees, and whither they go, the seeds from that fruit shall follow, and fall to land.

And so, woe betide the man who parketh under those trees.

Here endeth the lesson.

*sigh*

Alright, Cobbies, I know I've vaguebooked a couple of posts here about the crap I've been dealing with on this deployment. After this morning, I'm kind of through being vague, though I'm going to post it all in labelnotes on the off chance some of you would rather not lower your opinions of me.

^notethefirst So, I left home to start on deployment almost exactly six months ago. (One week shy of six months, actually) Standard stuff for deployment - get to the ship, get settled in, start working on quals and try to find fellow geeks to hang out with, at which I was marginally successful. Joined up with a gaming group, with requisite Gamer Girl.

^{notethesecond} Those of you with military experience are probably already doing the math there, but for those not following, said Gamer Girl and I started flirting ... which progressed pretty quickly into more than flirting. It's not actually that difficult on an aircraft carrier to find a space to be alone for 20-30 minutes, it's just a bit of a gamble whether you picked the right time span so as not to be interrupted.

^noteunzwei For the quick-witted, you probably already figured that yes, we ended up with the wrong time span one of those times, or the wrong place. But either way, someone walked in, her pants were down ... you can't explain that in any fashion that doesn't look guilty. So ... I did confess, and prepared to take my lumps. While it's possible that the CO could boot me out or reduce my paygrade (which would result in automatic separation due to time in paygrade) it didn't seem likely. (There's been a lot of people caught for this already ... and a lot more who haven't.) I confessed to my wife (faster than I confessed to security TBH) and awaited the usual sequence that leads to NJP.

^{note IV} Only, after about two weeks, instead of that, I get called to the office of the resident NCIS agent, who tells me that Gamer Girl is claiming that I "coerced" her into the relationship, because I'm higher rank than she is, and that on more than one occasion I forced her into sex. (Ignore that I met her precisely because she was hanging out with a bunch of other guys of the same paygrade I am.) While I didn't exactly have any evidence to prove we were having a consensual affair, I laid out the bare bones of everything that happened, was told by said agent that it didn't look like there was a case to hold me for sexual assault, and sent back to work. (Said lack of case comes mainly because she didn't claim this until the third time she was called down to talk to security, after I had already confessed.)

^notecinco Fastforward to last week, when I get called upstairs to legal to, at long last, sign the paperwork where I acknowledge that yes, I'm going to NJP. For the first time, I get to read her statement accusing me, and actually get to respond to the multiple actual lies she told security (such as how/where we typically had sex). Finally, I think, this will be over with, I will know one way or another what the hell is happening to me, and I can move on with it. My chief tells me a couple of days after I sign that I should expect it after we pull out of port next week.

^{noteofthebeast} Then this morning, I have to go meet with the NCIS agent again, because when she was told she was going to NJP, she insisted on filing a formal complaint against me for sexual assault. There's enough people who saw us interacting, and who have been interviewed by the NCIS agent, that I don't believe I'll be sent up to Court Martial instead of NJP. Just too many discrepancies, and in my favor is the fact that she's been repeatedly in trouble for things ranging from being late to work all the way up to blatantly cheating on a qualification exam.

^notejackpot In my favor, I suppose, is that my wife (while unhappy about my having an affair) believes me that I wasn't forcing her into anything. She's not going to divorce me (or if she is, she's not telling me until we get home), though I have a lot to make up for whenever I get back home. To my detriment, I'm still not sure exactly why I got involved with Gamer Girl in the first place - I've had temptation and opportunity on every other deployment I've done in 16 years in the Navy and 14 years of marriage, and I've never cheated on her. This wasn't even the longest deployment I've done, and we started after less than two months underway, so it's not like I can blame the separation. Also in my defense, I suppose, is that I always intended to return to my wife without Gamer Girl (outside of a few fantasies or dreams, anyway), and since she was going to her next duty station on the other side of the country shortly after this deployment, odds were Gamer Girl wasn't going to be more than a Facebook acquaintence in a few months anyway.

^{note Henry} So ... man, I wrote more than I was planning on. *sigh* There's the whole sordid situation. While it's not exactly common knowledge, it's certainly gotten around the ship. Virtually everyone I don't work with has stopped talking to me completely. Some of them won't even say hi if we pass each other in the halls. I've been restricted on what I can do at work, just in case. Ironically I've even made several appointments with the chaplain, because the whole court-martial-thing had me very seriously considering suicide for the first time in longer than I've been in the Navy. (We have a psychologist on board, but I've not had good experiences before with psychologists, and Mama Chaps is really cool and not preachy outside of services.)^{totallyofftopicandthereforesafetoread} maybe I'm being a little silly with the note naming?

^{lovepotionnumbernote} It's not that I really had some desire to lay this all out on the forums, but ... outside of my wife and the chaplain, I really have no one I can talk to about this. I can't discuss it with my coworkers (because legal), even the ones who know what happened, and I don't have any friends left. Not anymore. The Navy has been very good at teaching people to assume that failure of any kind is contagious. I can't even judge them too hard, I've been in the same situation before, where you distance yourself because otherwise the entire chain of command assumes that you're on their side and/or condone whatever they did to screw up. I'm only posting here because, well, if I do get NJP, I won't be on the internet for probably 45 days.

... Alright, I think I'm done. Sorry for venting. Sorry to anyone who read anything. I'll be over here ... I hope.

Oops: you done goofed, mate. Looks like your frontal lobes got mugged by the hypothalamus, too. :/

I'll keep my fingers crossed. Also, Missy seems to be going all out in curing you of her, forever. <_<

Personally I'd say shanked, but meh.

And yeah, that's part of what bothers me most about it. ^{forgotthenote} I mean, I get that she's upset about the situation - I'm not exactly thrilled about going to NJP myself - but there is absolutely no way she's escaping punishment for all the other crap she's gotten in trouble for. All she's doing is delaying the inevitable, and while at first I was willing to chalk it up to a misunderstanding, that's clearly not the case anymore. I had even hoped that, once everything was over and our punishment behind us, we could at least talk about it and set the whole thing to rest properly. Doesn't look like that will happen either.

Blue; Ouch. You certainly put your foot in it and tripped the "try to save ass and career" mode in your partner in crime. I do not envy your return to home that is going to be rough. Well hang in there.

Blue: yeesh, that is rough. I wish ya the best, man.

As for that harpy, that was evil what she did. But what goes around comes around, so her number's probably in Karma's system now.

I'd make your peace with it. I'd bet a lot that you're not going to get closure from her.

Don't drive yourself nuts trying to figure out why it happened. I mean, if you can find a reason, swell, but we're a species of serial monogamists, and that may be all there is to it.

I have no idea what NJP is or what sort of ramifications this has for your career, but I think the important thing now is your relationship with your wife, and more than that, the kids (three boys, yes?). Kids need dads, and they didn't choose any of this. Whatever choices you face, be their dad first.

mona: NJP stands for non-judicial punishment. It's kind of the military's (well, Navy's anyway, Army has article 15s) version of misdemeanors, it's legal trouble but nowhere near as bad as a felony (which the military version would be court-martial).

Teuf, Mark: Thanks, guys.

Mona: I doubt I'll get closure either. But it's frustrating to not know whether or not I'll even have the option for it. My wife and I haven't discussed any of this with the kids, and unless I end up separated^note from the Navy, or from her I don't think we're going to.

On a completely different note, can I say just how surreal it is to sit in a "down-home Oklahoma country kitchen" restaurant in the middle east, hearing the locals having conversations in their own languages while they eat American greasy spoon diner food. Not bad, just ... surreal. Like you slipped sideways one reality.

A little culture seep into a seemingly alien location can sometimes be almost more displacing then the strange culture in the first place.

Yup. There is nothing more alien than an "authentic" pub outside Britain (and, I'm including the Falklands in "Britain", here: damn me, but they know about pubs!).

I must be Getting Old. Even my birthday ended early with one of my "quick naps" that were neither. In bed before 8, up at 4, back down until almost 8.

So this morning, during one of my class I felt sick in stomach. It felt steadily worse so I had to leave and go straight to toilet, into which I proceeded to vomit my stomach out. After that I got pretty hungry, so about a couple of hours later I had lunch. In less than 3 hours, I vomited THAT out too.

Made an appointment with university doctor. How awfully inconvenient.

Sounds like a dose of gastroenteritis! Lucky you!

Take it easy: and, diluted, fully-sugared cola is your friend until you manage solids again. -_-

That sucks mate. Eat light soups or broth if you can keep em down. Ramen might be your friend for a lil while.