On Every Street in General

There’s gotta be a record of you someplace
You gotta be on somebody’s books
The lowdown, a picture of your face
Your injured looks
The sacred and profane
The pleasure and the pain
Somewhere your fingerprints remain concrete
And it’s your face I’m looking for
On every street…

Man oh man life moves fast, when it wants to.

Twelve hours ago I was cooking and listening to Guns ‘N Roses November Rain, obviously trying to depress myself.

November ’90 I was at the EA-6B RAG. It was our first fall in Washington State.

We had been forewarned. While Whidbey island is in the “rain shadow” of the Olympic Mountains, mid October God turns off the sun and turns on the hose.

It was inky black all the fucking time, constantly pissing rain.

I was in my late twenties, but I felt my life slipping through my hands. I was so convinced I was going to fail. That feeling in itself made me bear down so hard I am baffled why I didn’t have a stroke.

I’d drive home after whatever simulator event or flight I had. Eat leftovers X1 left warming in the oven. Take a shower and go back to work. Hours and hours of chart study, grinding through missions on the TEAMS machine. Prepping target packets. Loading RRS tapes with mission critical crap for fake missions to be flown in the simulator.

Then heading home after the EW library closed at 2300. Crawl into bed at midnight to get up at 0400. Shower, bagel, coffee and back to work.

We were all type A assholes, and an unforgiving lot at that. It exhausts me now, just thinking of that life.

Holding on to marriages is a completely different subject. The average number of marriages for Navy Aviators is 3.5. I’m a little below average at 2.0. The guys who held it together had strong religious components to their lives.

Take that for what you will. I occasionally wish I had a more pronounced religious leaning.

Alas that would be for a different life.

I got up at 0700. Pitch black bedroom. I sat the edge of the bed, staring at the clock. Wondering if 0700 was AM or PM. The vampire life sucks the life out of you. I’m trying to come up with something profound there and coming up empty.

I looked at my to-do list. It has been raining overnight lately and everything stays damp. The joy of living on the coast. The yard needs mowing and I poked around outside, trying to figure out when it would be dry enough to wack and mow.

I came inside, made coffee and checked my email.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” — Ferris Bueller

I have an interview tomorrow at 1345. Designer 2/3 at GD.

With my mad skilz in Access and Excel, now 10 years long in the tooth I should be a guaranteed in. If I can get 25/hr I’ll jump ship. Especially if I can get first shift.

I don’t know what is De riguer for interviews in this day and age.