d for deranged

today was awash with malignant coincidence and peppered with good fortune.

a) i made it on time for the shuttle, which made my morning far easier.

b) the one day i urgently need our unit commander to be in, he's registered as out of office for its entire duration. i had a chat with his secretary about alternative high-ranking officers to court-martial me, and we discovered a few minutes later that our commander had to come back for something else, and i got scheduled in.

c) i made an organizational boo-boo this morning.

d) i missed the easy bus only because i was certain i wouldn't have made it.

e) i had to pay for a bus in uniform. that sucked.

f) so...

i'm walking towards the main gate of my old base. i'm on time, i'm drinking from a 500ml bottle of sprite and my mind's not particularly focused. it took me a second to register that there was water dripping a few feet away from me. it took me another second to register that it wasn't water, and another slow second to follow the stream up to the source: some asshole pissing from a hole in the fence above, out of the base and onto the street.

our eyes meet for a flash, he screams "oh, shit!" and rushes off (presumably still pissing), and i think i know who the culprit is. surprise, surprise, he rocks up at the kid's farewell. not only that, but he speaks at the farewell. and not only that, in front of everyone, he finished off the speech with "and <totalwaste> has just learned to be careful when walking on the pavement" before dashing off.

yep, it's the dude. it wasn't too difficult a mission to get his id number and i've already filed a formal complaint. we have enough problems with civilians hating soldiers... do they have to be pissed on literally as well?

g) it's always fun to be back on my old base, to see everyone :)

h) i am SO glad i wrote down the speech i'd been preparing! there was an important part that i learned by heart, and i was so nervous i still had to read bits of it... but all in all, it came out as planned and went down really well ^_^

the gift-giving was amusing, and the poster we made came out really nicely :)

i) on the way back to my base, i organized my soldier's id. i asked the girl what happened to the crazy woman who shut them down, and she immediately began interrogating me as to my rights to know. once satisfied that it was okay to tell me, she produced my card, but by then a line had formed and i didn't want to hold them up :S

j) i got a ride back with the kid's brother, and left something important in his car.

k) the work hours were rough, and i barely managed to justify my day with them. i'm going to have to make up hours next week when the flatmate pressure's off.

l) the shuttle was waiting when i arrived. i was the first person on, and got into an involved argument with the ars driver because he refused to acknowledge that i'm a) an officer and b) in the permanent force. the stream of bullshit emanating from him didn't relent until the guy responsible for the shuttle showed up.

once the guy responsible left, however, the argument resumed - the idiot wanted to drop us all off immediately and go home himself. it was a full-scale screaming match all the way to my stop, at which point i was the last person on the shuttle (the other's had jumped off in anticipation).

we're all going to have words tomorrow.

it's been a long, weird day for me.