Lazing about

The company had some of our mandatory training on Friday. It was some useful stuff. I came away from training learning how important it was to penetrate the female high school senior market, that the proper way to respond to someone threatening to kill themselves isn't a rifle and some privacy, and that "being an ass" and "ass-ocity" are recognized psychological terms and diagnosises (diagnosi? diagnosis'?).

One of the things that anyone in the Army can be guaranteed is that they will have hundreds of hours of their career absorbed by mantatory training not related to their actual jobs of being a Soldier or whatever their MOS is. Sexual Harassment, Equal Opportunity, Homosexual Policy, Suicide Prevention and Awareness, Domestic Abuse Awareness, Child Abuse Awareness, Enviromental Awareness, and whatever else comes down the pipe remain training distractors that frustrate leaders and Soldiers alike. Throw in the annual race and ethnic mandatory-fun celebrations and you can usually count a day involving these briefings and events as a wash.

My frustration with briefings and training such as these isn't with the briefing and training itself. Leaders need to be able to spot the various warning signs, and not everyone is adept at spotting them. A Soldier killing themself is a horrible tragedy affecting their family, friends, and comrades. And on a very practical level it's one less Soldier available for the fight. If the difference between losing one Soldier to their own weapon and having them available is an hour briefing, well, then, fire up the projector and let me see some slides. It's just very difficult to concentrate on a briefing you've gotten once a year for the past 11 years when you have work that needs done. Oh well, the block has been checked and I won't respond to someone saying "I want to kill myself," with "Well, you probably should, no one likes you anyway," like I'd planned to before the briefing.

It's Saturday and the sun is turning the Valley of the Sun into a hot, hard-baked oven. No matter how bad it is though I just remember "You don't have to shovel sunshine."

There is currently a ball of dough hopefully rising in the fridge right now. I'm trying Alton Brown's homemade pizza dough receipe. It took a couple tries to adjust to not having (not being allowed to purchase) the indgredients AB calls for. However I finally got the dough to the point when it windowpaned and I'm letting the yeast do its thing. I'll keep the six people who read me (Hi Mom!) updated on how it goes. I'll be rolling out to Home Depot to try and find some unfired brick tiles to make a brick oven out of my conventional oven.

In the interest in showing just how dorky I am I figured I'd share what's currently on the top 25 playlist on the on iPod.

Beast and the Harlot/ Avenged Sevenfold
Vitamin R/ Chevelle
Vindicated/ Dashboard Confessional
What was I thinking?/ Dierks Bentley
Live This Life/ Big and Rich
Lost and Found/ Brooks and Dunn
The Red/ Chevelle
On the Roof Again/ Eve6
Tessie/ Dropkick Murphys
When Worlds Collide/ Powerman 5000
Beer!!!!!/ Psychostick
Remedy/ Seether
America, *uc* Yeah!/ Team America World Police Soundtrack
Move/ Thousand Foot Krutch
Prison Sex/ Tool
Sweet Emotion/ Aerosmith
Crazy Bitch/ Buckcherry
Dance, Dance/ Fall Out Boy
I Hate Everything/ George Strait
West Texas Moon/ Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers
Nobody/ Skindred
Drop it Like it's Hot/ Snoop Dogg
Promise/ Eve6
Hurt/ Johnny Cash
Lips of an Angel/ Hinder

And yes, for those curious, I'm just trying to come up with stuff to fill the space. I figured a 25 item list would do well.

Welcome home Jack Army. Glad to hear it was some productive work out in the lovely, temperate NTC. Missed your wisdom and guidance.

*UPDATE*

The pizza came out pretty good. The dough was very crisp and light, but I made a small pizza but it came with enough crust for a large. Long story short, less crust, more pizza next time.