Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: The housee becomes the houser ("housed" as in "thoroughly beat" - for all the white boys – or black people that don't remember the dope early 90s)

Going to Fort Detrick today, up in Maryland. I’ve been doing the government contractor thing for a while and I’ve been on my share of bases. Some of them are actually not that bad, like Fort Sam Houston down in San Antonio and some of them are excruciatingly awful, like Aberdeen Proving Grounds. I’ve always had a fondness for Yuma Proving Grounds down in Yuma, Arizona. I love the dessert, love riding Humvees (the real ones, with turret guns on top, not those tricked out pieces of crap) out there.

You do this enough and you sort of get used to it. You learn the rules. But you generally learn them by breaking them, like when I was doing some work on a Navy ship and I started singing “In the Navy” in a low but audible voice. You don’t do that. Also, when looking over the side of a ship and you see a barracuda you don’t sing, “Ewwwwww barracuda!” at the top of lungs in my top notch Heart impersonation.

Yuma gets pretty cold at night, you’d never know it. Didn’t bring my jacket one time, someone dug out a military issue jacket. I threw it on and commented on how “cozy” it was. Guys don’t say the word “cozy” in front of a lieutenant.

I asked a Major if I was supposed to salute him. His official response was, “No. Not ever. Don’t ever salute anybody.”

I just don’t have that military mindset. My father was in the Navy but none of that mentality passed on to me.

But, like I said, I learned. I can now hang with these types of guys, go out drinking with them, use all their favorite clichés (“Throw her over an electric fence” is by far my favorite, no idea what it means but I use it whenever I can, usually when talking about strippers) and even talk about the military without letting my humongous left leaning policies stand out like Dick Cheney at an Auschwitz remembrance ceremony.

Yeah, I’m pretty left slanted. In my defense, I’ve really only worked on defensive applications, usually medically related, and always tried to carry it over into civilian applications.

I don’t really have a story today, I guess. Just sort of rambling. We’re getting out of here in an hour so I’m trying to calm myself my talking to the internets. This is my big moment: my contact, my lead and my project. 26 years old and laying this shit down while my 60 year old boss sits by and watches. I’ll be the youngest person at the presentation, standing up there and doing my shit, bringing home money. I don’t want to come off as bragging, I’m just a little proud sometimes I guess. Like I said, I’ve been doing this for only five years, and I went from a complete mess with no sense of etiquette to “the guy”.

I drove a little rented Neon into the desert and got a flat a and had to radio back to the control tower because I didn’t have a jack, had them show up, open my trunk and point out my jack prompting me to apologize because I never changed a flat before. If, at that moment, you were to tell me that in a few years I would have become “the guy” I probably would have asked you how to loosen the lug nuts on my tire.

I’ve changed several flats since then.

Amazon Associates is down, can’t create my “read a book, fanboy” or “turn off the metallica, fanboy” links for today. But last I checked my account; you guys weren’t reading or listening to any of them anyway. So, you know, blow me. I’ll have some up again starting tomorrow.

By the way, my new apartment rocks. Moving sucked. But the payoff - oh so good.

Labels: mitc

The housee becomes the houser ("housed" as in "thoroughly beat" - for all the white boys – or black people that don't remember the dope early 90s)

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

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