Intermittence

I’m wrapping up a week-long vacation, and thought it would be appropriate to give a quick summary.

• First, a trip on Monday to Inner Space Cavern (interesting, but not as dramatic as I’d been led to believe) and Fredericksburg (specifically the Fredericksburg Herb Farm, which was excellent)
• Tuesday and Wednesday were spent piddling around town and enjoying a bit of hiking and four-wheeling with our friends Jerry and Carri Berryhill
• We headed out for Houston on Thursday, visited The Houston Natural Science Museum, which has an amazing set of exhibits, and Ikea, where we picked up a lot of cool stuff for next to nothing. We enjoyed an excellent dinner at Guadalajara Hacienda on I-10 and stayed the night in a decent Radisson suite. Before heading back on Friday, we made another quick trip to Ikea.

And that’s about it—an excellent week with my wife, away from the office. Monday will be a little hectic, but it’ll all work out.

(Yes, culinarily is a word.)

Donnell and I worked up a bit of a hunger for Indian food, and so broke out Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick & Easy Indian Cooking for something to eat. The Spicy Grilled Chicken, adapted slightly to become a baked dish, hit the spot—next time, though, I’ll use a little less black pepper.

Some packaged tabouli (with a bit of lemon juice, diced tomato, and chopped green onion) and some disappointingly biscuit-like naan finished off the meal. With the exception of the naan, it was exactly what we were looking for.

Does anybody know of a decent naan recipe?

I’m away travelling, right now—as with all my other trips, I’ve returned to my motel from dinner and am consumed with a single thought, no matter how I try to distract or consume myself with television or work:

I despise being away from home.

It’s not just the material things—Donnell, office, bed, car—it’s the psychological things, as well. I’m currently almost totally disconnected from my life, saved by just two threads: my job, which is (as you know if you’ve ever asked me after a long day at work how my day was) not entirely fulfilling, and my phone, which does a lousy job of making me feel close to my lovely wife.

As a result, I’m lonely beyond reckoning. Only one thing will cure me, and stating what it is doesn’t make me feel weak or less manly. In fact, it strengthens me…buoys me.

What will make me feel better is walking into my home and being surrounded by the warm, loving embrace of my wife.

Tomorrow’s going to be a wonderful day.

I’m having some difficulty coming to grips with why, exactly, I’m doing this.

I have plenty of things to say, but I don’t know that I am (yet) an authority on any of them. For instance, my interests include:

• Technology
• Politics as they pertain to the Libertarian viewpoint
• Web design
• Role-playing games (both of the paper-and-pencil and computer persuasion)
• Movies
• Science fiction and fantasy novels

As you can see, there’s no clear common thread here except for the overall ‘nerdiness’ of the collection. I’m stumped as to where I’m going to take this site.

I suppose I’ll just treat it as a personal experiment—do a lot of talking to myself, logging things of interest, and trying out new ideas.

Okay. No more feeling lost. This is just a place to record my thoughts and feelings and if, someday, I happen to write something interesting to somebody besides myself, so be it.

The world changed in a profound way when the Berlin Wall fell, and the United States has had a rough time coming to grips with the new order. We need permanent bases in Japan and Germany (and other countries as well, if I’m not misunderstanding what’s meant by ‘permanent’) as much as we do in South American countries—which is, to say, not at all.

It’s not imperialism, but a form of economic protectionism, driven very much by domestic concerns instead of foreign ones. No politician in their right mind would pursue the correct course of action (closing bases, or converting them into multinational military installations) because if such a plan were enacted their constituents would suffer. Our wealth-based economy is based on the flow of money from person to person, and the military provides another route through which that money can flow.

Mutual self-defense, an idea which initially seems very attractive, isn’t really valid any longer. We hear stories more and more often of the damage that our military personnel inflict on host communities, and of the impact our very equipment has on their environs (such as the noise and air pollution around Kadena). With our military’s current ability to move with great speed anywhere in the world, I firmly believe that any projection-of-force benefits that are gained by maintaining permanent installations in other countries pales in comparison to the day-to-day negative impact on the people living around those installations.

No, we don’t need to be in those places in the way we currently are. The world’s gone through some drastic changes over the last 50 years, and I have a feeling that what we’ve seen is just the tip of the iceberg. Americans are resented the world over for appearing to force their worldview and politics on others, and maintaining permanent military presences in countries like Germany and Japan only add fuel to the fire.