I’ve been a little intentionally vague about my new job for a variety of reasons.  First, that’s a good policy for everyone on social media – if your boss isn’t the one paying you to write that blog post, you’ll probably want to tread very lightly when discussing any portion of the company or organization.

Second, I actually work full time for the military.  I’m not going to get into what capacity, what my job is or anything else for, again, a variety of reasons ranging from security to regulations about speaking against the military and country, worries about appearing to give a military endorsement to other organizations – the list goes on.  I work in the defense sector, and we’ll call that enough.  It’s not super undercover secret squirrel stuff – it’s just not something I’m going to write about.

Except I am going to write about some of it – tangentially, anyway.  Sometimes they just make it too easy and there is no way I am going to pass up some of this low hanging fruit.  For instance, I recently have traveled to Missouri for two months of training.  I know what you’re thinking:  Who does this guy know that he got to spend two months in Missouri?  Jealous?  You should be.

While I was there, I noticed a disturbing trend.  Apparently anyone is allowed to make and post a sign.  Whether they are ordering signs from a shop or just banging one out on their own printers, these random sign makers were on a rampage.

For example:

Setting aside the orientation of this picture, this is a perfect example of someone having one bad experience and making a sign.  There just could not have been that many people wandering into this building to take showers in this locker room, given that it was set apart from any other buildings by half a mile in all directions.  I like to imagine a more thrilling scenario where an ISIS member was using the shower and somebody was all, “Hey, ISIS can’t use our showers!  I’m making a sign!”  But I suspect what actually happened was someone went to use the showers one day and had to wait an extra 30 seconds.

But in that same bathroom is a classic:

This is a pee chart where you compare to color of your urine going into the urinal with the chart.  Note that the top, nearly water-like color says “optimal.”  The only thing that is optimal for is spending your entire afternoon standing in front of that urinal and comparing the color of your pee to the chart.  Sure, you’re going to miss class because you’re doing nothing but peeing all day, but you’re well hydrated, so congratulations?

Here’s a trio from inside the chowhall, including two in the bathroom.

 

I can only imagine the sort of shenanigans that were occurring in this bathroom to make these signs necessary.  But the sign calling the toilet a stool?  Comedy gold.  I’m pretty sure that making a joke incorporating stool, brown towels, toilets, flushing, etc would just write itself if I were to go that lowbrow route.  But I won’t – I’m going to rise above that sort of humor.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:  Quotation marks are not used for emphasis.  When you use them as this sign used them, it is actually denoting sarcasm or irony.  Which makes your sign funny.

I’ve also seen some things related to signs that I feel I should share.

Here’s a print of a painting hanging in a military facility celebrating a Confederate General who had so recently become a treasonous traitor that he was still wearing his blue Union coat when he led an attack against the United States.   I was going to say that it seems oddly inappropriate to hang such a print in a building belonging to the very organization he betrayed, but oddly inappropriate doesn’t seem to do it justice.  Wildly inappropriate?  Horrifically inappropriate?

[Note:  After a little digging, I realized this wasn’t in a building in Missouri, but Maine.  I think that makes it worse somehow.]

And finally, there is this little gem from a textbook I had during my training:

The general consensus among people I’ve showed this to seems to be there was obviously a rule stating there had to be three bullets if you used any bullets.

“Ok, we need a third bullet.  We’ve already got that it’s lightweight and easy to use.  What else?”

“It’s light?”

“I think that’s the same thing as lightweight.”

“The filter don’t add much weight?”

“Whatever.  Sure.  Check the box off on particulate respirator.  It’s done.”

I have more wonderful things from my trip to Missouri to share with you later.  They won’t all make you dumber, I promise.

We bought a farmhouse.  Which is what city people say when they move to the country and buy a farm but don’t quite have the guts to say they bought a farm.  Perhaps it’s because moving from the city and saying you bought a farm seems about as logical as saying you moved to the jungle to become a witchdoctor.  Or it might just be that nobody wants to buy the farm.  Whatever.  Everyone from the city says they bought a farmhouse.

Our farmhouse, however, is eventually going to be a farm – a vineyard/farm (vintners are farmers, they just don’t usually call themselves farmers).  We already have two goats and, really, what’s the tipping point on number of animals before you can claim farm status?  I think I’m a farmer already, because I also have four dogs, two cats, four kittens, a bird and more mice than you can shake a cat at.  (I’m aware that I’m not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition, but I just can’t bring myself to be the kind of guy who writes, “mice at which you can shake a cat.”  If this sort of grammar violation offends your sensibilities, this may not be the blog for you.)  There are also five kids and one grandchild living at the house.  None of this was supposed to be the direction my life was headed.

My wife, who is also a farmer based on the terrific garden she planted and tended this year, was the first to suggest we move out of the city.  I can’t remember what specific thing it was that gave her the idea that city life had run its course, but if pressed, I’d say it was when my daughter got stuck with a dirty needle digging in the sand at the beach.  Or it could have been my son walking into the middle of a high speed police chase and shootout.  Both of these incidents really happened within a few months of each other.

The job situation in Maine is, however, not as awesome as it is in the city.  If you know anything about geography, you might have noticed that people live in cities.  Seriously – take a look at a map and you’ll notice that cities have more people the places that aren’t cities.  Mostly because that’s where jobs are located.  Given that I am not qualified to do much of anything besides putting band-aids on stab wounds and dumping water on fires caused by some of the crappiest wiring you would believe, I wasn’t sure I would be able to find a job at all, much less a job I enjoyed.  And, as I mentioned previously, I was five years away from being able to collect a retirement paycheck the day I left the fire department.

 
Eventually sanity won out and I agreed that we should move back to Maine, place of my birth and upbringing.  My wife loves Maine and, because she is better at most things than I am, immediately found a good job.  It took me another year to find a job, during which time I commuted back and forth to Lynn, MA – four days there, four days in Maine.  And in the fall we moved out of my father’s house and bought the farm.  House.  Farmhouse.  Farm.  Whatever.

To be fair, we always knew we were going to end up here, we just thought it might be a little later.  But things have worked out, so we’re staying.

Now, if people were bewildered when I told them we were buying a farm and moving to Maine and leaving my job with five years to go, they are absolutely speechless when I tell them what we’re actually planning to do is plant a vineyard and make wine.  But in ten years when I’m sitting back on my porch, watching the sunset and sipping wine we made from our own grapes and cider made from our own apples, we’ll see who laughs last.

Topics for reading group discussion: 

1. Is making reference to moving to the jungle to become a witchdoctor somehow racist?
2. If you think it’s racist, why are you so overly sensitive?  Are you concerned that witch doctors will read this blog and have their feelings hurt?  I have it on good authority that witch doctors are notoriously thick skinned, although now that I think about it that may have been in reference to actual skin thickness as a result of scarification ceremonies, not to their emotional state.
3. When the author’s daughter was stuck with the needle, is it true that his other daughter’s boyfriend also tried to pick up the needle afterward and HE was stuck as well? Kind of turning the whole situation into a ridiculous Three Stooges episode where we’re all worried Curly and Moe have Hepatitis C for a month?  Spoiler:  That’s exactly the way it went down.