What I Don't Do

Lately I’m thinking about what I do here. The three jobs I have been doing are my own and that of my staff officer and the Deputy Director as they are on leave. It's not too bad, I am surviving of course. The last few days I’ve covered a number of meetings for the General as well since he has other responsibilities. Many were interesting, but for the most part they are boring, more of the same. Today it was even more clear that not all the countries in our coalition contribute the same amount. Some come with caveats that state they can’t engage the enemy. Can you believe it? We’ll talk about them when I get back. Working with all the countries that we do, I and my colleagues have developed some really good stereotypes about them.

One caveat about the news everyone. Our Commander gets misquoted all the time, even by "friendly" countries. They even give him quotes of things he never came close to saying. Point is the media has been an enemy in many cases.

As I’ve mentioned, I work about 6.5 days a week. I usually get in around 0715 and leave around 1800 for dinner. So I do have the evenings off, usually. Also during the day there is downtime. I have time to do some exercise, listen to my I-pod and spend time on the computer. Email takes a while due to the connection speed, but I like to watch movies as you know. I save a lot of time here by all the things I don’t have to do that I would normally do at home. Here is a partial list of what I don’t do: work on the house, clean the house, fix stuff, cook, clean up after dinner, watch TV shows, shop for food, drive, get gas, change the oil, care for the baby, change the baby, play with the baby, take the baby to the doctor, talk to my wife, solve all the problems, pay bills, shovel snow, pick out clothes, do laundry, fold laundry, go to the dry cleaners, pick out furniture, watch TV shows, visit people, visit relatives, call the handyman, ride my bicycle, go to kid’s parties, waterski (ended when I got married actually), and the list goes on. What this means is that in spite of what little contribution I had in some of these things, Stacey has had to pick up the slack along with some friends and relatives who are extremely giving people. It really puts a perspective on things. Yes, too much, too much ******* perspective.

A big Happy Birthday goes out to Sami who had a great time last weekend at Aaron’s birthday party for his friends. I am looking forward to the video.