I did.

I graduated HS in '94 and finished my undergraduate degree in '98. I joined the Army in 2000.

Interesting stories RJ. I particularly liked the water one. I hate the feeling of feeling thirsty, but being too full to drink when I train.

I don't know if things have changed since I did my orals, but I was told to bring a major food tray for the profs doing the questioning. I brought in a fancy tray of hot and cold foods and that's what they focused on the whole time, lol.

Most of the major cross department battles have been fought by the time you get to your defense anyway.

I don't THINK we're supposed to do that - I have friends in the program who have finished already, and I think they would have mentioned if they had been told to bring food.

Also, and maybe I should be worried, but there haven't been very many spats between committee members. Maybe my dissertation is just that kick ass. Maybe I just picked good committee members and they don't feel as if a paper they are reviewing for a doctoral candidate needs to be exactly the way they would do it.

Today was a good news/bad news kinda day. The good news is that the muscle spasm in my ear appears to have been a one time thing. Fingers crossed it doesn't reoccur.

The bad news is my car. I own a '04 Dodge Stratus that I bought brand new when I was in the Army (put $10k down - Army money ain't that bad when you consider you don't have many outside bills unless you are married/have kids). It's been well maintained, something like 67k miles, but this past year I've had to take it in twice. Once for the battery, once when I needed to replace and they discovered my front breaks needed something done as well.

Since those fixes it runs like it should, but today I went out to the car to go do my weekly grocery shopping and it wouldn't start. I checked and it didn't look like I had done something stupid like leave the lights on, but just in case I got my boyfriend (thankfully it's his three day weekend) to give it a jump. No dice. It sounds like it wants to start, but just doesn't start.

**** me. Grocery shopping is the easy part - I drove my boyfriends car. Getting my car fixed is slightly more complicated seeing as how the car won't start. I usually go to a place that is literally right next door to my apartment complex. In certain spots you can walk from the parking area of the apartment complex through a maximum of like 50 meters of scrub and walk into the dealer area of the shop. So if all those trees weren't in the way, this would be pretty easy (relatively speaking). Throw the car in neutral, push it across to the shop, walk over to pick it up when it's finished.

Oh, but those damn trees.

By road, it's still not far. An eight of a mile, maybe. But it's a fairly busy area during the day. Certainly too busy for us to push a car down the street, even for that short a distance.

So we're getting it over there tonight. I think we'll push it out of the apartment complex (quite a few turns, which could be an issue) then my boyfriend will use his car to push mine to the shop.

For some reasons I assume something will go wrong. Stay tuned.

So yeah I'm going to have to pay for a ****ing tow truck because my boyfriend couldn't even get the car pushed out from the parking space. I either have a very heavy car or a very weak boyfriend.

So I have to pay a towing fee to take the car less than an eight of a mile.

Out****ingstanding.

Car is now fixed. It was a relay switch, whatever the hell that means.

$98 to tow the thing, $258 to fix. Not horrible for a car repair, I guess.

A AAA membership might not be a bad investment. Free tows and flat repairs, maybe jump-starts too.

What's the deal with army people always buying Chryslers? Is that a thing?

I'm pretty sure the repair cost was reasonable. AAA might not be a bad idea though, you're right.

I don't think it's a thing.

Why did you join the army?

Inertia combined with desperation.

I had always felt a certain attraction to the military. I can't really explain why - I just liked military commercials as a kid. Remember those "be all that you can be" commercials? I was like 8 when I told my mom I was going to join the Army. She, fairly wisely I think, basically just said "we'll see" and never tried to talk me out of it (or encourage it).

This fits a general trend of being drawn to male dominated things. I was always the girl trying to play football with my brother rather than playing with dolls with my sister. Also very much to my parents credit, they never tried to make me into a girly girl (although they did, much to my constant disgust, force me to wear dresses to church), so when I was constantly climbing trees and playing sports (unlike my more sedate sister) they just let me do my thing.

I sort of forgot about the military interest in high school; I never ruled it out, it just didn't really occur to me as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in college. I picked criminology, probably because I watched too many episodes of Cops and it seemed like a cool job to me. Again, the draw of a male dominated field. When I got to college I discovered my university had an ROTC program, and I actually took classes with them my first two years. My junior year I had to sign up officially or drop those classes, and I came very close to signing - for the first five weeks I did the full ROTC rigamarole - but before I signed the papers I got too stressed out over carrying a full normal course load plus ROTC stuff (upper classman are expected to be leaders, and I hadn't done the summer actual Army training the underclassman who were signed normally did). Basically I buckled under the pressure, and I didn't see the point in adding all that extra work and not be guaranteed even a regular Army slot (only two candidates in a class are guaranteed to go regular Army and not reserve) so I dropped the course.

I finished my criminology degree in '98 and got employed in my home county as a deputy sheriff (and part time as a town cop in my home town). I applied to several larger police departments around the country (and almost got hired in Seattle) because I had promised myself I wouldn't get stuck back in my home town when I got out of college - if you saw my home town you'd understand, it's Hickville farm country in upstate NY. Nothing happens there. I had one felony arrest when one drunk guy beat up another drunk guy. Everything else I investigated was car-deer accidents, warrant pick-ups, and the occasional misdemeanor traffic stop.

So I was sitting in my patrol car in the winter of '00. It was the dead of night - I usually worked the midnight shift - and near to when I was getting off, so it was like time of the night where it's still pitch black but there's an edge of morning creeping into the sky. I was tired and probably half asleep, and it just suddenly hit me. What the **** am I doing here? Why am I doing EXACTLY what I said I wasn't going to do and rotting in this tiny little hick county? Surely there's some other place in the country where I can be a cop, someplace where **** actually happens?

I went to talk to a recruiter the next week. The way I saw it, I didn't really have enough money to travel around looking for different cop jobs, and some of the closest cities to me had residency requirements. But I could join the Army and be a cop on a base anywhere in the world!

The recruiter was basically drooling as soon as he knew a little about me - I fulfilled one of his quotas for the entire year, being college educated, but only if I went enlisted rather than officer. So, not shockingly, he lied to me and told me I had to go enlisted first, then could apply to go to OCS after basic and AIT. After I maxed out the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery), I was offered any job field I wanted that wasn't closed to women. But since I had a degree in criminology and was a cop when I enlisted, I didn't even consider any other options - I requested the MPs.

I was nervous about telling my parents - I mean I was old enough to live my own life, but I wasn't sure how my mom in particular would feel about me joining the military. She was pretty cool about it though - again, as long as her kids are happy, she's pretty relaxed about how they get there. Other than my dad and my uncle giving me a little flak about joining the Army over the Air Force (they are both AF vets), everyone was pretty supportive.

I didn't find out that my recruiter lied about the officer thing until I was already through basic. I think he felt slightly guilty, because he also got me a hefty bonus that I had no idea I was receiving until I was reviewing my paperwork one day. 12k. Pretty sure that doesn't cover 5 years differential between officer and enlisted pay, though.

There's a passage in the graphic novel Goodnight Moon where the author pens "goodnight nobody" and I always liked that part.

is the difference between ocs and enlisting the life-altering huge mega beat that i think it is or just something that sucks and you get over.

Probably somewhere in between.

It's a pretty huge deal in terms of pay and responsibility. Officers are officers (ldo) - enlisted are the grunts. I made non-commissioned officer by the time I got out (E-5 SGT, hence the "SGT RJ" - my last name starts ReJ and is difficult to pronounce), but the pay differential alone was pretty much a screw.

And of course anything like that is life-altering in the sense that my training and duty stations would have been different, which may have influenced my decision to get out, which may have influenced blah blah blah ad nauseum. But I have no way of knowing if those differences would have been for the better or not, other than I know I would have been paid more.

I got over it pretty quickly. Like, it never upset me that much. I was just like LOL **** that's messed up. But there was nothing I could do to change it and dwelling on it wasn't going to get me anywhere so **** it. I have no ill feelings towards him other than the sort of general condescending feeling I'd have towards anyone low enough to lie to someone just to meet a quota.

Also "Goodnight Moon" kicks ass.

I have motivation issues.

It's very hard for me to get started on projects, which has been a hinderance on getting my dissertation completed.

The thing is, I don't think I used to have problems with this. In college, I NEVER had to pull all nighters to write papers or study for exams. I didn't get it done extremely early, but I didn't delay until the last minute either.

I wonder if a) the multiple millions of brain cells I killed drinking in my 20s were disproportionately located in w/e area of the brain primarily deals with motivation and/or b) the fact that I'm constantly on muscle relaxers and low dose opioids is a factor.

Why do you think so many serial killers come from the Pacific Northwest?

The weather is temperate.

and

Everybody Loves Somebody Sometimes

200 days a year of rain?

RJ,

If you were trying to find out if I was a serial killer, what questions would you ask me?

I think California leads the way on this, and I assume its because they are all crazy out there.

Asking about childhood bet wetting, fire starting, and cruelty to animals is cliche for a reason - those are predictors of sociopathy, which most serial killers would meet criteria for.

Otherwise I'd ask about your relationship with parents and your romantic history. Also about your fantasy life. The prototypical serial killer should have a detailed fantasy life with heavy themes of power, control, domination, and humiliation of partners. Sexual activity with romantic partners would also show either a history of violence and control or difficulty maintaining (or lack of interest in) conventional relationships. Work history usually shows a pattern of consistent underachievement.

oh wow, I'm SO not a serial killer! 0 for 6 imo, except maybe the career underachievement part.

That all makes sense I guess, except for the bed wetting. I don't see how that relates to wanting to kill ppl.

I don't really understand why either but it's one of the triad and is based on actual research although I don't recall the study.

The fire starting and cruelty to animals does make sense.

Also glad to hear you aren't a serial killer. But really the best question would be do you kill people for your own pleasure/gratification?

If I did I wouldn't say so ldo. All I know is, now that I know I don't fit the profile, no one will ever suspect me muahahahaha!!!!!!!!1

Clearly, you play too much poker.

I've had a headache for almost 3 days now.

About 3 years ago, I started getting these lengthy headaches. Pain wise they aren't excruciating but they aren't pleasant either - some appetite suppression, some sound sensitivity. I had one last 10 days, and the longer they go the more there is pressure; it felt like there was a giant rubber band around my skull. They put me on a blood pressure medication that has helped reduce the frequency and severity of these headaches, which aren't exactly migraine or cluster but some sort of delightful combination of the two (migraine in intensity, cluster in frequency/presentation).

This is one of the longest headaches I've had since I went on the medication (side note - I have never had high blood pressure so that wasn't thought to be the cause of the headaches, this medication just has an off label usage as helpful with these types of headaches), and it sucks. It gets really hard to concentrate when your skull just keeps pounding. I used to have a breakthrough medication to use in spots like this but the side effects of it were almost as bad as the headache. I have Percoset for my back, but opiates sometimes TRIGGER a headache.

So yeah I just wanted to bitch.