Happy birthday to me

It's not my first birthday away from home, doing the Army thing, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I'm in Los Alamitos, and it's being okay.

I work at the 78th in the morning and the 11th in the afternoon. We've been making excellent progress on discharge packets. Since the 78th was out this weekend, I worked all day this weekend at the 11th. The paralegals I worked with are still there, none of them promoted. They are on their third Staff Judge Advocate (SJA) in a year. They may have shed First Sergeant Hitler, but the place is still ate up as hell.

But it's been positive. MAJ M, who is at the 11th to get the experience points for LTC, had to bring her little boys to work because she didn't have any childcare. J1 and J2 are 10 and 7 I think, and she put them to work making copies and running files between the offices. When I went to the PX to get a Coke Zero they were my battle buddies. And today the whole office got me donuts and a card for my birthday, which made me very happy.

I am having a quite evening at "home" tonight. Since a lot of things are closed on Sunda nights, I decided to celebrate last night. I went to Franco's on Cerritos and had an amazing meal: green salad, chicken stuffed with mozzarella and spinach on linguine with a vodka cream sauce and flourless chocolate cake. What made this meal extra good was that the serving sizes were sane. Nothing was the size of my head. I walked out full, but not groaning.

After that I went to the local Games Workshop and kept painting my Golden Knights Space Marines. It wasn't much socialization but it was some.

Lastly, I went to the Goodwill next door and scored myself a red hoodie for $4.00. I am working on collecting a rainbow of hoodies, since they give me my superpowers.

So spending my evening reading and writing and listening to music.

Thoughts on the Kindle

I've had a Kindle of some sort since 2010. My original Kindle Keyboard resides with electorprince now, Steve uses the Kindle Fire he got me in 2011, and I'm on a Kindle Paperwhite because I realized that A. my original Fire was really heavy and B. all I used it for was reading anyway.

I gave my Aluratek E-Libre Pro to the family next door because Julie (the mom) had been admiring it so and I know she's homeschooling Carrie, her daughter. I can afford ereaders, and being homesteaders, they can't. I missed it, so I got the next iteration, which is the E-Libre Air.

These come with 100 public domain books, so this is where I read "Dracula" recently, and I intend to read other books already on it when I get home. There are a number of classics that I'm ashamed to say I haven't read.

What's funny though, is that while I am reading voraciously, when I read on an e-reader I don't feel exactly as if I've read a book. It's the same experience, but at the end I still kind of wish I had that volume on my shelf. This is craziness; I like the fact that I'm not killing a tree, but there is something about having the tactile pages....

Bookbub.com is being my best friend and worst enemy simultaneously. Free books are becoming rare, but 99 cent books are the norm. I read two books by horror writer Scott Nicholson because of it, and he's someone whose books I will continue to buy. Same with Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series. First tastes are free or cheap at Bookbub.