This fuckin' town is killing me

I remember calling the guy who places me in new jobs (called a "detailer") many months ago, trying to figure out what I was doing next.  I decided I needed to make up for a couple of years of cushy jobs by taking something hard.  I told him Afghanistan, Iraq or Horn of Africa - I figured they're always looking for people to fill the slots, but I was wrong.  They had nothing for me.  A couple of years ago you couldn't beg someone into an augmentee job.  So he told me he had a job for me in a certain 5-sided building sunken city of complex, non-euclidean geometry.

I tried to explain the difference between the building and Afghanistan.  "One place is a meatgrinder and a hazard to life, limb and career.  The other is a country in Central Asia."  It didn't work.  Here I am.

And it turns out I'm right.

If it's not the whacko hostage takers getting gunned down right next to your bus stop...

...or the people shooting at your building in the morning before you show up for work...

...it's the (stupid) Al Qaeda wannabees looking for friends who will help them blow you up.

Of course, you'd be right to point out that I am a volunteer and I didn't have to stay in as long as I did to get to work where I do and when I do.  And you'd be right.  Then I could point out that we also wouldn't be here if our civilian leadership had had a better notion of grand strategy and the use of the military as part of the continuum of foreign policy and not the sole source of foreign policy for the last 15 years or so, and I'd be right.

 

But I wanna' play the victim today, and hindsight is always 20-20.  Still doesn't change the fact that I eat my breakfast a mere few hundred yards from people who are trying to kill me.  They won't succeed...

These chicks will, however. 

I've been doing the Crossfit thing for the last month or so; it's been good for ripping about 15 lbs or so off my fat ass.  I had to scale this workout though (did 5 rounds and only 20 reps of each exercise) because let's face it - I'm not in the shape these gals are in.  Not even close.

Whatever.  I'm out of time and out of bullshit.  Long drive ahead of me tomorrow back up to the Land of Lovecraft to hang with the family this weekend.  I'll have time to think about the (non-) plot of my writing next month.