Star Irony

I know it has been a while since last I blogged.  I apologize for leaving you all without entertainment for so long, but I lost focus for a bit with all the drama going on in my office.  Morale here is slowly improving in the absence of my boss who will be out for the next three weeks or so.  The new CPT is settling into his role of being in charge quite well and has adjusted the schedule to allow the shift workers to work shorter hours.  With my new found free time, I have found the Post Office to actually be open and was able to mail off a few packages.  We are about 87 days away from being unemployed over here, so I am conducting retrograde operations in my room.  I also made it to the USO to fall asleep in a recliner while watching a movie in their modified theater.  I have also been knocking out my redeployment training so I have more time to spend with friends and family immediately upon our return.  It is mostly online death by power point, so it really isn’t all that bad. 

Our priest returned from his two weeks of leave this week.  He was in very good spirits and told us he missed us.  He was regaling us with stories of home.  He mentioned that he came across some office drama while he was home and told them that if they had time to complain, gossip, and cause drama, they were not working enough and needed more to do.  I think that is what is wrong with my office.  We have entirely too many people “working” in this office and the boss hoards work for himself, leaving the rest of us bored and with lots of time to cause drama.

Another irony of church last night was that I had plans to meet friends on the boardwalk for coffee and people watching afterwards.  Part of the homily was a challenge not to judge people for seven days.  That is the whole point of people watching!  It’s like he knew!  With that guidance, we changed our plans and went over to the USO to fall asleep in recliners while watching whatever movie was playing.  We walked in towards the end of the movie “Django Unchained” which we had all seen, so it was easy to fall asleep in the soft plush recliners even though those were not our original plans. 

A very near and dear friend of mine asked what the night sky looks like out here.  She asked quite a while ago, but I wanted to provide a description that did the night sky justice and didn’t make it seem like an ordinary sky.  On most days, there is not a cloud in the sky.  Our night sky is especially clear because of this, but the sky is not like black glass it is more like black granite.  It is shiny, clear, and spectacular with thousands of stars coming out to see below somehow invoking a feeling in my stomach of awe.  That same feeling one feels when standing in front of an ocean, that feeling that says, “You are so small in this ginormous universe.”  The brightest stars shine through the darkness and constellations are glowing.  Whenever I am away from home, or feeling homesick, I always look to the sky to find the constellation Orion.  It is not only the name of the street I grew up on, but it is the one constellation I could always find as a child.  As I looked up at the sky last week for the first time since arriving into this country, the first thing I saw was Orion.  I felt at peace at once and stopped in my tracks to stare at him. 

It is always a nice feeling to have an outlet for stress wherever you are and it looks like the night sky is following me wherever my travels take me to help me find that deep breath of relaxation.  Have you ever stared at the moon to feel like you are connected to someone else staring at the moon?  Orion does that for me.