total two-day break

monday night:

spot pissed me off big-time... we were in a hurry, and i'd already left the building, when i received an sms telling me to go up to the 2nd floor. a floor with no connection to anything. he says he just wanted me to see how pretty it was. moron.

we had fun at the lincoln, and got a ride home fairly late from the friend who joined us.

tuesday:

i had an early wake-up, and was strangely alright with it. the kid and i made it to base just after 6.30am, had a bite to eat, and surprisingly enough left shortly afterwards.

uncomfortable bus part i: i'm too tall for public transport. i'm very much afraid that the flight to sa next month will be intolerable.

breakfast part ii: decent-ish breakfast when we got to the first area of the trip. afterwards, we had fun messing about with bows and arrows and rope / tree climbing. then we went off on a bicycle trip. it was pretty hard going, but i got into a groove and really enjoyed it. we stopped off at some point, chilling for about five minutes, and then had to make our way back - i stayed in first gear, and really punched it all the way back. it's a superb reminder of all the reasons i shouldn't smoke - my body was fine, but my lungs were feeling shredded and i sat coughing up cigarettes for half an hour (i was counting backwards until the smokes from the night before).

we went on a long educational walk along the crater, and then returned for lunch. after lunch we bussed through to eilat, where we had enough time to shower before being shunted off to the club for dinner and dancing.

it was a fun evening. would somebody of the female persuasion please explain why, when your super-cute friend is dancing and having a good time with a guy who everyone else seems to like, you feel compelled to drag her off as quickly as possible? the only other girls who interested me were either married, or making out with everyone. sod it, i gotta find myself somebody not in the army.

my SC seems to think differently - he spent the night hassling girls on my behalf :P
it was fairly amusing, and led on to a cute incident the next day...

wednesday:

we had an early (and difficult) wake-up to which i responded with double coffee, and we headed out to the buses. as i entered both my SC and branch commander started harrassing me: "c'mon! if you're going to be picky, at least give us a basic profile of the girl you're looking for!"

i told them i'd think about it. at some point later i informed them that i'm simply looking for a beautiful (not cute. STUNNING more like) girl, 24+, who lives in tel aviv. can she be so hard to find? all the rest of the stuff generally works itself out, no? no?

we had a really good beach day: i got into the water straight away for an extremely pleasant swim, and got a great massage from one of the cuter girls. during the course of the morning we went on the "banana": my TL and i were on the back, and it was most entertaining. at some point things got a little out of hand and i fell off - my TL was the only person who noticed, and was laughing so hard that they left me there for about two minutes before he was able to tell them to come back for me :S

water-skiing cost too damn much, so i didn't; we lost the tug-of-war; i got involved in a water-fight that resulted in me receiving a serious elbow to the celiac plexus; we went shopping^*; got organized with coffee (with flake!), and returned for speeches and a krembo-eating (sweetie-pie type thing) competition wherein the participants made my previous attempt (10 in 10 minutes) absolutely laughable.

^*goshdarn cute intelligent female salespeople: i came across the dvd collection of iron maiden music videos, and had to buy it. the girl was talking to our TL and i said "you don't have anything more awesome than this, do you?"... to which she responded by pulling out the pink floyd - pulse concert dvds.
crap, so i had to buy that too. then piles compounded my error by waving metallica - black in my face, and it's the only pre-reload album i don't have the original of. all of them relatively cheap, and i just watched my cash fly away.

we had lunch, and then siesta, and then headed back to the buses.

the cute girl who got pulled away from me during the party? our TL and i decided we both want her. so we turned to our SC, to ask him to make a decision: he put up both hands and called our branch commander to make a decision - possibly the fastest a request has ever made it up the chain of command :P

killer bus ride part ii: ohmigod. i tried to sleep, but i couldn't get comfortable and there was, at any given time, at least one part of my body that had painfully fallen asleep (in general, my ass). so that sucked. when we stopped for a snack and toilet break, i literally jumped off the bus to run around waving my arms and legs (and squealing with delight), and spent the 15 minutes stretching and smoking and eating and having a laugh with / at a girl in our section who was suffering from car-sickness.

i put on the second dvd from pulse, and a couple of our elderly commanders complained (apparently word of my taste in music gets around). as soon as it started they calmed down, and by the end of the disc a couple of them were hinting that maybe i should put on the first one ;)

the rest of the ride was okay (i learned after part ii not to even try to sit), but ended in a heated argument with someone who stated as fact that pit-bulls are dangerous and can't be trusted. dammit, they're AWESOME dogs, *AHEM*, AS LONG AS THEY'RE THOROUGHBRED AND AS LONG AS THEY'RE RAISED WELL [like any child - did we not agree that every person should undergo testing for suitability to the task of parenting?].

a quick weapon reliquishment later and pile's mom gave us a ride home: what a way to learn about piles' roots. everything's clear now. at least we know where it all comes from, i mean.

-- the previous paragraph was brought to you by freud in conjunction with a perverse mind --

the kid had to shower before eating (i don't get it), so spot and i watched some of the first pulse dvd (insane!) before we all entered la gufra's danger zone... they offer a "garden of eden waffle", which is a standard milk & white chocolate belgian waffle with banana, two scoops of ice-cream and excessive quantities of whipped cream. i can't believe i ordered a waffle that i couldn't finish.

we did our regular coffee thing on the way home, and i watched a couple of iron maiden videos before showering and going to bed. have i mentioned before that my younger sister once entertained the band while they were on tour in south africa? i got scrawled signatures on the back of a cartleigh box, i must have been 13 or so, and i only discovered years later what had transpired in order for me to get it :P

i slept brilliantly, and today was fairly chilled. our commanders were all on holiday, so we made a lot of noise and kept ourselves well-entertained (and i proved myself at tracking people down), and i'm ready for the "IDF spirit" thing which is now planned for next week thursday. very exciting :D

i got to work to discover that my apps appear to be working: here's hoping that it's finally for real. we'll only know on monday :S

weekend's here!