cross-eyed and going back to bed

yesterday:

walked to the holocaust memorial center. it was early morning, and summer hasn't begun yet, and it was stiflingly hot, and sticky. this is going to be a long haul.

it was my first holocaust lecture in hebrew. i find hebrew lectures painful, but i more or less followed, and didn't fall asleep. totally a first.

the second part was a story from an auchshwitz survivor. not only a chilling story in itself, and all the more powerful for being first-hand, but i've begun looking at the holocaust as if i was there, as if it were an event set for our future, too.

the idea that we still haven't found a -solution- to the holocaust, a way to deal with that level of genocide, is deeply disturbing.

while guarding, i had a superb idea related to urban gaming. more on that one day, hopefully it won't fall by the wayside. so many good ideas do.

got back to the base, worked for an hour, then went to guard. our section commander was in charge of the guarding for last night, and that was actually a lot of fun - plus we had a really good group (including some really lovely girls), so all in all i didn't sleep a hell of a lot.

i guarded from 2 - 6am, which turned into a most interesting shift - and my first attempt at philosophical argument in hebrew. and it really didn't go too badly.

had an adventure-game morning, running errands that produced more errands, and then we were on alert for the day. i'm very proud of myself - on alert, i went and had my head shaved. t'was fun, and the dude did a good job. i was most impressed by his attitude - it's nice to see a soldier who enjoys and is good at his job.

spent most of the day attempting to sleep in the barracks. which was difficult, because it was stinking hot and the aircons weren't working.

lunch was alright, and i spent about 20 minutes explaining to the new kid why he should carry out direct orders from the section commander. 20 minutes justifying the section commander's leadership, and explaining that if he didn't do it, i'd have to ('cuz i is in charge, ek se).

sometimes i'm amazed that "soldiers" expect total fairness in the army. and that they think that we have civilian rights. weird.

after returning weapons, i went to sort out some things in the personnel division. and discovered - to my great surprise - that in case of emergency, my mom's listed as the person for them to contact. and she's apparently contactable in an arbitrary street in tel-aviv.
wow.
so i've got to go through a whole mission to update this information, which is not amusing seeing as it's been so wrong for so long.

went back to the office for about half an hour, nothing interesting was happening, and i finally remembered to take my playstation. now to find a tv.

i came home, uncomfortably sticky and smelly and gross, had a SERIOUS shower, and crashed after putting on the washing machine. i was going to go blading, but i am totally broken - i'm hopefully going to wake up early enough tomorrow to get some work done... 'cause right now i'm about as useful as... well... something pretty useless.

cigarette count: lots. but only while officially guarding / on alert.