no pressure - over.

drinks on wednesday night were fun, mostly spent screaming over the awesome music at each other: my teammates don't believe in the scientific method. after a long day and too much stout, i'm quite amazed that i was able to carry on a coherent argument in hebrew. it's a new high point for my linguistic capability. [as opposed to the new low point i expect when i arrive in south africa and try to communicate in english / afrikaans]

i was actually okay in the morning, and came in with a fine-tuned plan for my last day. that plan got shot to shit when we were called in for a two-hour talk on sexual harrassment (didn't we just have one of those?), wherein we made a successful and vocal argument for not paying attention and our commander closed the session with a joke: "why is a simulator like a vibrator?"...
the two girls sitting next to him simultaneously turned an interesting shade of mortified and we all scrambled to prevent him from carrying on.

after yet another chat regarding officer's course, we went off for lunch. i ran into the girl that interviewed me last week on the way to the mess hall.
at the end of the interview i told her i had prepared a list of questions for the magazine, the first being "why haven't i received my copy of last month's issue yet?"

she'd come to bring me my copy personally. isn't that sweet?

almost immediately afterwards our unit was called in to a giant rat-each-other-out session. everyone has to profile everyone else, and it wasted another two hours and gave me a headache.

i screwed up the bit about scoring everyone else - yes, that would be the majority of the peer-review. my mommy taught me that if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. i may not adhere to that all the time, but i do when it's formal and written down somewhere.

so i marked a bunch of good scores as i saw fit (even that was difficult), and left the rest blank. i know it messes with the statistics, i know that nobody cares about who writes what, but i just can't bring myself to fill in the gaps in good conscience.

my TL took me aside and informed me that although i've been keeping much calmer, i'm still coming across as really aggressive and that i need to keep that in check.

in short: i need to work on my people skills.
my primary problem is that i don't really care about others' feelings because i am, myself, apathetic. it's hard to offend me unintentionally, and i assume that everyone else should feel the same.

i finished almost everything that remained on my reduced task list, and left with a dirty feeling of a job not completed and not well done. i don't like that feeling.

i had a quick reconciliatory chat with nystire on the way home, then stopped by singer's for a breezer and a massage. i put on buffalo springfield and closed my eyes for about an hour of pure, mindless bliss, then forced myself up and walked home, showered and passed out sinking into the enfolding embrace of my bed.

getting the stress and unhappiness of the last few weeks out of my head is a bit of a project, so i'm completely rationally sitting here wearing bunny ears and wondering what i need to organize before i fly.