About Change.

I'm going on R&R soon, and I can't help but have this feeling in my tummy that change is coming. It is both exciting and terrifying at the same time, but this change is good. There are times when change is bad, say when you find out that there is a baby coming that you hadn't planned for. That can be very life altering change in certain circumstances. Should that ever happen to me, I would react stereotypically as many men would: a look of sheer terror coupled with quick financial accountings about whether the arrival of something completely dependent on you ensures a life of utter and complete poverty.

Most of the potency of this feeling can be attributed to a completely predictable schedule and series of events for the last eight months. Wake up, exercise, breakfast, work, lunch, work, dinner, homework, sleep. Repeat process. If anything is positive about Iraq, it's that you are always entitled to adhere to a strict system of routine. Acclimate to this reality or get kicked out of the military and find yourself jobless and financially destitute.

The concept of a personal life is literally AWOL in the deployed lifecycle. You wear a military uniform 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for just short of 365 days, if not longer. The sheer prospect of having to decide what combinations of clothing you're going to wear for 14 days while your on leave can be daunting to say the least. And this is just clothing we're talking about. Wherin lies the prospects of making any rational determination about anything more complicated than that? It's like you're 18, evicted from your home abruptly, forced to accomodate to the big-bad-scary-world, in all of its glory.

Arizona, here I come.

Crazy Product Reviews (Part III)

Again, my Amazon.com profile is right here.

Cast Aside Your Burdens and Taste a Piece of Heaven!, May 16, 2009
By J. Wactor (Tucson, AZ) - See all my reviews


It was the winter of 2008 and I was stationed in Camp Taji, Iraq. While I slept comfortably in my tent, a nameless entity infiltrated the battalion tactical operations center (TOC) and discarded a vital piece of my drip coffee maker away, thus rendering it less than useless. It was a cunning and ruthless tactic meant to demoralize the Coalition Forces and send us back to the states dejected and caffeine deprived, and could have worked, had it not been for the reinforcements of the Bodum Chambord Coffee Press.

Whereas I'd originally believed French Press aficionados to be prissy and stuck-up with too much free time on their hands, I've come to understand that perhaps I merely have been too addicted to coffee to logically consider that 8 oz. of coffee may be all I need for one day, and such small quantities can be crafted carefully instead of brewed in bulk. You are talking to the person who until recently drank around 40oz. of coffee daily; I had no time or patience to skillfully brew small quantities of French-Press coffee. It was an absurd thought, one that I never thought I'd entertain, but this little French-Press coffeemaker has transformed an addiction of coffee into a genuine admiration and enjoyment for the art of coffee making.

Combined with an exquisite choice of beans this coffee maker will simply revolutionize a coffee drinker's taste buds. Each cup of coffee will ease the burdens of your proletariat lifestyle; no longer will you be forced to drink Victory Coffee all the days of your life. With this little baby you will drink from the fountains of the bourgeoisie and know emphatically that life really can be THAT GOOD.

But seriously, buy this French-Press maker. I will never drink another cup of drip coffee again, and neither will most of the coworkers I've shared my brews with. It's heavenly.