Happy Valentine’s Day, folks!

For about a year and a half, I’ve been part of a Star Wars tabletop game. We started playing in a timeline parallel to late in Episode IV, and have been playing through much of the film-cannon, skirting the things we saw in film, discussing implications of film-events on our own adventures and vice-versa.
After a year and a half, we’re finally having the Battle of Endor. We’re involved peripherally to the main (movie) storyline, but it’s pretty awesome.
Also, this is the first mobile WordPress crosspost.
And Happy Birthday, Mike! I called earlier, but it went to VM.

So, I’ve let this fruit ripen on the vine. What I anticipate doing over the weekend is setting up post forwarding to LJ and dreamwidth, then making the majority of my posts here.

Testing posting from WordPress mobile app.

Wow. There’s been an incredible amount of stuff going on over the last twelve days.

First for course there was Arisia. I could try and talk about each of the amazing things I did and saw individually, but that’s probably more than I can really remember, and let’s be perfectly honest – congoing is ultimately about the people.

So suffice to say that I got to spend time with really wonderful people, many of whom I don’t get to spend nearly enough time with often enough.

After Arisia, I was able to get some good social time in with some old friends, entirely by accident. had offered up a deep fryer, and I kinda wanted it, so I went over to pick it up, and was wonderfully able to spend some time socializing not just with her and her (adorable) young child, but entirely by accident, old friends and past housemates and were there with their own two not-as-young-as-I-remember-them-to-be kids, who hare growing up to be pretty darned awesome.

I used the deep fryer. I made pastry-wrapped things with braunschwieger, cheese and mustard. This was win, but the deep fryer stinks up the joint. Lesson learned: in the future, do all deep-frying in the garage or driveway with an extension cord.

Then on to a *very* busy drill weekend. It was an admin stand-down drill, wherein we didn’t do any field training, but had to get an entire company of Marines through medical review, dental, an SRB audit, and a whole lot of individual problems cropped up everywhere. From when I woke up on Friday until when I got to sleep on Sunday, I got maybe a total of four hours of sleep.

Despite that, I did stop at East Side on the way home and had a braunschweiger sandwich and some red cabbage, and great big beer. When I got home, the lack of sleep plus the Yellow Fever vaccination I’d received on Friday started to do me in, so I took Monday off and slept all day.

Last night, more social time with another old friend. We drank some whiskey, and talked about other old friends, and generally just enjoyed hanging out the way we haven’t in about a decade.

So I’m unfucking my hermitage. Tonight folks are coming over for movies. Tomorrow there’s D&D and I’ll install my new Boxee Box.

If more people want to contribute to unfucking my hermitage, I am totally down.

I won’t be at FC – haven’t gone in years.

I will be at Arisia, it’s here in town.

Since I’m missing FC, but would like to reconnect with folks I might’ve seen there before I deploy, is there another Con I ought to consider before May in it’s stead?

Last time I deployed, I was full-time active duty. This time, I’m a reservist. That makes lots of things very different this time out, both for me, and for you guys reading this.

For me, it means that these young men I’ll be with aren’t full-time professional Marines. I notice a great deal of difference between what it meant to be an infantry Marine on active duty, and what it seems to mean for reservists. Things aren’t necessarily better or worse, but they are different.

For you, it means I’ll be coming right back here when I’m home again. I’ll be leaving from here, and returning to here. I’ll keep my apartment while I’m gone, and my cats will stay there where their uncles upstairs can look after them every day. it means I’ll be coming home TO a home, rather than to a barracks room. I’ll be coming home to family and friends, rather than to share my time with the men I’d been deployed with. Again, this isn’t necessarily better or worse, just different.

The more that I think about this difference, the more that I think I am ready to admit it means that I will need to lean on friends and family for emotional support when I come home, and to some extent even material support in terms of employment leads upon my return.

I’m not really sure what the rest of it means. I’m still thinking about all of it. But today on my 34th birthday and the 8th anniversary of my last deployment, I wanted to share with you all what I have worked out so far.

However well or poorly 2010 went for you, let us all endeavor that 2011 should go better.

That said, there’s the whole “Where did I sleep in 2010?” thing:

Somerville, MA
Pinkham Notch, NH
Madison, CT
Charlton, MA
Stonington, CT
New York, NY
Jersey City, NJ
Indianapolis, IN
Orlando, FL
Plainville, CT
Fort Devens, MA
Westover AFB, MA

All of you know that I’ve re-enlisted in the reserves. What you may not know is that with that re-enlistment came knowledge (though not yet orders) that we would be mobilizing on May 1, in preparation for an August deployment to Afghanistan.

I’ve mentioned this when I see people over the last month or so, and when I’ve called them, because it seems to me kinder to convey this sort of news in person rather than in an LJ post. I must apologize to those of you whom I’ve been unable to see lately, as this post must come as something of a surprise.

I’ll be safe and fine, and we’ll all talk about what’s it’s like when I come home in March 2012.