Mr. White died days after we visited him. I was missing big races and his funeral fell on the day of another important race. I volunteered to work one weekend so I could do a stage race the next weekend without threat of having to work, but Rudy swapped me with another weekend and again, I missed another race. Then six races I planned to do were cancelled. I was very frustrated because all of that weight-loss and fitness from Turkey went to nothing. I couldn't even compete.
Work, however, was going very well. My office was a riot--Mike Geary, my supervisor, egged me on and we were frequently in giggle-mode. I'd impose ten minutes of silence on myself just to get something done but my own boss kept trying to get me to say something silly. We had 'mandatory fun' which was a scheduled 15-second time period where we'd get together and at the pre-designated time, monitored by a time keeper, jump up and down and act like idiots for 15 seconds, and then back to work! I'd occasionally bring a banana.
Once we built target folders for a military exercise against an imaginary country and
told, “Make folders". I was on a night shift with Jose' and
Anthony. Our folders included collateral
damage, listing areas we might accidentally damage if we
struck the main target. We try to protect the civilian population.
Mike told me "use your imagination",so in the depths of sleep deprivation I wrote, “There is a moose
breeding farm on this facility, which has a rare, endangered breed of
moose". I had a other strange entries that night, like "a dining facility
which has a petting zoo that doubles as an emergency food supply during war"
but the moose thing stuck with me.
Weeks later I was destroying documents with disgruntled airmen, so I told them how tough my old job was. They asked what I did before the service and
I said I worked for the Department of the Interior, sniffing moose. There was a virus spreading among the moose and
the only way to detect it was to sniff the ass of the moose.
I’d be air-dropped into a remote region, sneak up on a moose and smell him.
On my worst day I was alone, cold, and as I was sniffing a moose, it farted, the steam froze my nose to moose ass, and it dragged me. Of course I just made this up as thoughts entered my mind, and I'd often talk too fast to pay attention to what I was saying. Someone would ask me what I just said, and I didn't know because I wasn't listening. I had a Top Secret SCI clearance too. How reassuring.
Amanda and I spoke often but the relationship was professional. It wasn't a problem but for the fact Miimii and I had no romance anymore. She refused to be spontaneous, took too many naps and I was tired of dealing with her. I spent four months in Turkey for this? Her job was her life--having children, second, and I was third. We'd been using donor sperm to get her pregnant but I had doubts about whether I'd want a child with a wife who gave me an ice-cream headache when I was permitted to kiss her. Then we found a roll of film next to the body of a dead mouse. When it was
developed, this is what we saw. Moo was on a rampage again.