R&R

I did a little bit of homework today... How I hate these dictionary hunts. And I repotted my plants, purchased a paper shredder, cleaned a bit, and did laundry. One of the Marines in my platoon is moving and called to offer me a bunch of his stuff, which is nice. I get the details on that tomorrow. Outside of that, today was the final day of a very relaxing weekend.

The Hooah and the Musician both crashed at my house after RHPS to save me 40 minutes of drive time so we woke up this morning and chilled. The Hooah slept in later than the Musician or myself, who started cleaning. Then I ran out for a couple errands and to snag donuts and bagels. I came back to them watching Metalocalypse on my computer. We inhaled baked goods and watched some more Flash before finally deciding that watching a movie would be fun.

We went out and, after a couple flips of a coin, wound up renting Red Dawn. It was my pick and while the Musician sort of watched it, the Hooah was distracted throughout most of the movie. They did, however, pay enough attention to make some really noisy (if amusing) commentary. I actually had to turn on the caption just to understand the dialogue. All in all, it was a good movie. It avoided playing into the unbelievable, happy cliches and actually did a fairly good job trying to realistically handle the subject matter. I have a growing list of old movies I want to rent and watch that I either never saw before or saw so long ago that I forget what they were about.

After the movie I took the Hooah and the Musician home... It was already late in the afternoon. I did a bit of work but then wound up killing more time. Heh.

I had a really good weekend. It was as unproductive as it was good but I don't mind. I was feeling homicidal Thursday afternoon so I think I was due for a mind-numbing break... This weekend helped me realize a few things too.

My standard for what hanging out with friends means has been raised. This was the first time I can remember hanging out with friends... especially for this long... without the undertones of stress. Even my best moments with the Momrine had that undercurrent of stress. This weekend started with an awesome D&D game on Friday and kept on going. I laughed, chatted, shared stories, told jokes, teased mercilessly, let people into my space, etc. more than I ever have before. It's a new, incredibly enjoyable experience that I want to repeat often.

The Hooah and I have a very strong relationship too... It lends a lot of strength to my idea that 'family' status is earned and lost based on your actions and not your blood. I've never been more comfortable with someone before and, just to remind everyone, it's not romantic in the least. We're siblings. I'm the older one. We tease each other and don't mind. I have no problem letting her into my space. We trust each other. A few times this weekend I would just reach over and snag a sip of her drink and it made me think of that infernal "water brothers" thing that the Momrine and Guy tried to force on all of us.

It just struck me how that "water brother" thing had the ceremony, was declared to be special, blown up into this huge deal, and ultimately meant nothing except an excuse for bad behavior and a way to try and guilt trip the Hooah into putting up with their nonsense. I never liked the idea. It was that sharing water made you closer than anyone else but, as you all know, that obviously didn't work. The Hooah and I, however, had no ceremony, no fancy declaration, never made a big deal out of everything... But our relationship is actually akin to that of siblings. And we do share 'water' as I have no qualms about snagging some of her tea because it's tasty and available. Anyone who knows me knows that I am usually reluctant to share drinks like that. Same thing when the Hooah and the Musician slept over and I was splitting up my bedding with them. It crossed my mind to try and give her the blanket I wasn't in direct contact with and she looked at me funny and asked me what our relationship is. Siblings. So she doesn't really care.

I'm not doing a good job of explaining it. But, for the first time ever, I've found someone that I'm really, really comfortable with... And we are rather different. We've fought in the past. But both of us know that we can count on the each other when things get rough. My relationship with the Hooah really is the one good thing to come out of this whole mess with the Momrine. Besides my meeting her at the game, the BS from all that helped strengthen our relationship.

I also really like the Musician that she is so fond of. He did a lot of little things this weekend that strike me as classic 'nice guy' things... Such as offering to help me with this or that and pitching in for gas and food. Little things that I didn't have to mention and most people never consider. He's also very intelligent and has done things with his life. I'm very happy for the Hooah.

Another thing (totally unrelated) that struck me this weekend is that the female form has lost the sense of wonder it used to hold for me. I used to look at the female form as mysterious, magical, wonderful, beautiful... Now it's rather dull. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's because I've been exposed to it more? Maybe it's because I invested my sense of wonder in someone who really wasn't and it stripped away that naivety? The Hooah says that when you find someone important that the feeling comes back. I was contemplating that and was thinking that when I find a girl who leaves me awe-struck in all of her natural, simplistic beauty that I'll be on my way to finding a winner.

It's still a somewhat sobering situation. I want there to be some wonder in the world.

Back to work tomorrow. Long weekend coming up... And the Hooah will be out of town so I'll probably be stuck in my apartment being bored. Heh. I need to make more friends but it's not easy finding decent people. Especially when you already have one or two awesome friends and don't necessarily feel compelled to associate with the not-so-awesome people.

Action-Packed Saturday

Language: So... I had my first actual session with the Marine I am supposed to be tutoring. What a mess. I spent the hour and a half or so just going over his horrible study habits. Right now he's been getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night but when I asked him what he does with his time he has five hours unaccounted for. Even using his most generous numbers. He has the BYKI program but he has none of the lists and has been making his own. The problem is that he doesn't like a list and deletes it. Ugh. So tomorrow I am bringing him all of my lists to study from. He's banned from making new lists.

Apartment: Kitchen stuff acquired! Korean furniture... way too expensive. Ouch.

Personal: WOOHOO! Today consisted almost entirely (after the tutoring and spot-checking my Marines) of hanging out with the Hooah and the Musician (her new friend whom I just met... he played clarinet for the Pope once and knows a handful of other instruments). We drove down to my grandmother's city with the intent of getting my cooking stuff for the apartment but to kill time we wandered around the Korean part of town for a bit. The yo (Korean mattress) that I wanted was $280 instead of the $40 I was told it would be. Ouch.

We also stopped by a comic shop. They didn't have the comics that I wanted but the Hooah snagged a couple. Then we went to a gaming shop and the Hooah and I both picked up miniatures for our new game. It's hard finding good miniatures. Honest. While we were there we heard about a gaming convention for troops in Iraq. That's pretty awesome. Earlier today we heard of a local convention in June that we plan on raiding.

We finally caught up with my grandmother and she treated us to sushi... Mmmm. Sushi. So good. Then we picked up the kitchen stuff and ran over to the nickel arcade for about 30 minutes of game time before we had to hit the road to arrive at the local Rocky Horror Picture Show on time. This one was local but not quite as good as the one in the next city over. However, it was my second time going ever and I caught a whole lot more of the movie this time. The Musician was a virgin to the show but the Hooah didn't really trust the crowd or the cast (they were less professional than the other show) so we didn't make him go up there... Nothing wound up happening anyways. After the show concluded we killed 40 minutes trying to find a 7-11 because the other two were worried I'd kill them all without coffee. Then we drove back to my mess of an apartment, I gave them half of my bedding, and we racked out.

This whole trip was my idea... Which is a first. I'm not normally the one suggesting or organizing any sort of social interaction. A few people seemed surprised that I would be the one to suggest going to RHPS. It's a fun way to unwind and I figure that if the worst thing I do for my amusement is scream obscenities at a really bad movie, I'm golden.

It was a lot of fun... We'll have to do something similar later.