Three-thirty thoughts

So what am I thinking at oh-dark thirty in the morning, trying (and failing) to sleep in a large "transient" tent at Kandahar airfield?

• I hate the guy who was crinkling his little potato chips package so loudly he woke me up an hour ago.  Don't worry, I told him.
   
• Why on earth would anyone care what I’m thinking at 0330 anyway?  Don’t worry, I’m still going to tell you.
   
• There are jets taking off every few minutes here, 24/7.  I first got hooked on the roar of jet engines going to air shows as a kid.  It is still one of my favorite sounds in the world.
   
• I will never again take for granted high speed internet.
   
• It was nice chatting with my friend PT today.
   
• Speaking of PT, I had a great PT session earlier – 35 minute run in boots and utes, must have been about four miles.  I quit running in green on green around early August – didn’t seem to be a very realistic form of combat conditioning.  My joints are occasionally less than pleased, but my resting heart rate is currently…about 48 beats per minute. 
   
• It’s Veteran’s day, or just was.  As I told PT earlier, it’s hard to think of myself as a future vet – I just don’t have the hat, vest and pin collection to pull it off (yet).  What else do I think about Veteran’s day?  Well as a Marine I’ve learned a lot about what other Marines went through, and out here where I have a bed, a good pair of boots and global connectivity, that’s pretty much always on my mind.  Also, I think we as Americans have moved significantly in the right direction in the way we think about “the troops” and “the vets” as compared to the dark days of Vietnam and “baby killers.”  That’s a comforting thought, isn’t it, at a time when so much seems to be moving in the wrong direction…
   
• If you aren’t just swept away by Chopin, then I don’t know what’s wrong with you.  I miss my piano terribly.  I also play it terribly, and especially will after a year of not touching one, so that’s nice and symmetrical.
   
• I learned today that when glass breaks, the cracks move at over 3000 mph.  Interesting.  But what gets me is that cracks aren’t things…they’re where things (e.g. glass) stop being.  So it’s nothingness expanding at 3000 mph.  Just let that one twist around in your brain for a bit.  Hurts, huh.

Well that’s about it really.  Looks like about 9 thoughts – a respectable number given the time of night.  10 would be presumptuous, perhaps even arrogant; 8 and I would have had to leave out the glass-cracking thing.  So 9 it is.

Good night.