mightstone2k answers the call of the wild

[Sloth the Enduring]

Let's hope your base isn't overrun.

[mightstone2k]

Let's hope your base isn't overrun.

It's okay. I have a lightsaber.

 

 

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[The Most Loathed]

[mightstone2k]

On 6/22/2017 at 9:15 PM, The Most Loathed said:

You found me out.  While I like to tell people I'm a military lawyer, I'm really part of the ultra-secret Jedi Strike Force, the pride of Special Operations Command.  We're like the Seals, except way cooler

Spoiler

 

Dream big, right?

 

Okay, so now on to real things.  Remember those three things I said I was going to do this week?  Pffft... that didn't happen.  Well, the trifecta didn't happen.  I did get my friend's taxes fixed.  But the other two?  Nope.  Work has been all manner of busy this week.  Now that I'm basically done with taxes, I'm all in on my new job:  adverse actions and foreign criminal jurisdiction.  Plus working my three cases, one of which decided to get real this week (the other two are on a low simmer).  I'm going to be deliberately vague about it, since it is still an investigation and not a court-martial.

...

...

...

Dammit.  I had a whole long post written out explaining the inside baseball about why this is ramping up.  But prudence demands that I not post it.  Internal office discussions play a large part in the tale, and it's all about deliberative process.  Attorney work product, to use the term of art.  There is a privilege that exists for attorney work product, but I waive that privilege if I disclose our deliberations to a third party.  Like, say, an internet forum.  I had links and everything, and a short dissertation on the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  Let's see if I can put this into fuzzy enough terms.  I am trying to suss out the elements of a crime under a federal statute so that I can convince people that it is the appropriate way to charge misconduct in this case.  As trial counsel, I am the master of the facts.  The other half of the art is applying the law to the facts.  And I am fairly convinced I found the right law to apply that will make this nearly a slam dunk.  My boss has told me that this is one of the ten most complex cases that will be tried in the Air Force this year.  And I, with about eighteen months in the Corps, will be trying this case.  And I am legitimately excited about this one.

 

I will be honest.  I do not like criminal law.  International and constitutional law come naturally to me.  Criminal law does not.  But this one has its hooks in me, and I want to run it down.  So I spent my morning practicing law, which is a rare feeling.  Granted, I was doing it at Streamer over a mint mocha.  But it was still practicing law.  I'm researching things other than Air Force Instructions for once.  Anyway... a lot of that is inside baseball, and I don't have the words to adequately express how I feel as a fairly new captain vis a vis a legal professional.  That's a topic for a different day.  The real point is that my week was spent going full throttle for ten to twelve hours a day.  Thank God I established a habit of morning training sessions, or else I'd not be training much or well.  Frankly, this was a good weekend to hike.  It would have gotten me out of the house and into nature.  But instead, I opted to go to the gym and into Tokyo.  I just wasn't feeling like going out in 90-degree heat to tramp up and down a mountain.  It would have taxed me to the point where tomorrow would be a rest day, and I didn't want to go three days in a row without my kettlebells (yesterday was an enforced rest day because I forgot my ID at work the night before).

 

Life is getting fairly simple.  I train because I love it.  It's like being back in martial arts, mastering the art.  Flipping the switch in my brain to training for virtuosity instead of chasing gainz and super-cool bodyweight tricks has made training much, much better.  I expect that kettlebell and bodyweight training are going to become my deep passion throughout life.  I'm thinking long term about it, focusing on making small corrections in the pursuit of perfection, and dialing in the movements.  My next step is to add hollow holds and hard style planks throughout the day and focus on mastering those positions.  The last third of the year looks to be fairly aggressive in terms of travel, so I expect I will jump into bodyweight training from at least late October through the end of the year.  So I want to perfect those two positions before I begin moving in space in those positions.

 

Food is my other passion.  I love to cook.  I don't know the secrets to being a master chef, but I like making things that taste good and fill me up.  I'm getting better at ad-libbing when I need to, like this week (more on that below).  And I like to read.  I'm nearly done with the Civil War, and then I can start diving into other topics.  Classic fiction, C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton (I like my theology with a British gentleman undertone), maybe some more history.  My brain is tired of history for now.  More of Pavel's stuff.  I need to discipline myself with the internet though.  I have a bad habit of scrolling through things on my phone that I don't actually care about, but occupy my time (Pathfinder optimization guides when I have yet to actually play an RPG, for example).  I could do better things with that.  I have the Lexis Advance app on my phone, so I could read more law.  I want to read the marriage line and the military law line of Supreme Court cases, and start digging through state marriage laws (for another article idea I have).  And I need to set an alert for new military justice cases.  That's the only way I can stay smart on new developments on my current field of practice.  And time spent reading pointless internet things is time I could put toward my profession.  So that's my betterment goal:  instead of reading pointless internet things after I catch up on NF daily, get on Lexis and read cases.

 

As an aside re: training.  I found this article on a daily swing supplement.  That's something to file away in the back of my mind for if/when I spend time focusing on bodyweight or other non-swing-centric training.  It could keep my power and cardio (okay, my GPP) up whilst doing pure strength work with bodyweight.  It's saved in my library of useful training articles.

 

And now we get to the week in food.  I ran out of the sweet potato protein bars, so I whipped up a double batch of Primal Fuel bars from Mark's Daily Apple.  They are tasty, but I have no idea how he got 12 bars out of a single batch.  Cutting mine into 24 made a bunch of bite-size bars.  I suppose I'll just have two in a serving.  I am not making any recipes this week.  I just want to crank out some rib-sticking, veggie-heavy recipes.  So I'm making oxtail curry and Italian pork stew.  The stew is going to be basically the same as my garlic beef stew, except with Mrs. Dash's Italian seasoning (gotta use it up).  I got a head of red cabbage, two onions, and some mushrooms to use in that one.  I'll fill it with frozen veggies to capacity when I see how much room I have left.  I'm excited about the curry.  I believe I've expressed my deep and abiding love for oxtails before.  So this evening, I'll start the oxtails in chicken broth, coconut water (left over from the coconut cream I needed for the Primal Fuel bars), yellow curry paste, garlic, and ginger.  Tomorrow morning I'll strip the meat off the bone and add veggies.  I have half a bag of dried split peas I'll toss in, plus I bought potatoes and bok choy.  Again, I'll fill with frozen veggies to capacity when I see how much room I have left.  Ad-libbing for fun and profit.

 

This week will be busy.  Our Chief of Justice is backfilling another legal office for three weeks starting Monday, so I'll be acting CoJ and Chief of Adverse Actions.  That's the main focus of our office - boss's priority - so I will be a busy guy.  Our newest lieutenant is coming in Monday, and I am her sponsor, so I will be running around base with her Monday afternoon to get her settled.  And helping her out over the course of the week, naturally.  Wednesday night we'll have a "welcome to Japan" dinner for her, and Friday night we're going to Shibuya to farewell one of our outgoing captains.  Oh, and the cadets that are coming to Yokota arrive on Wednesday.  I need to in-brief them, then turn them loose.  But Monday/Tuesday will involve finalizing their schedule and tying up some loose ends for them.  Expect many late nights this week.  Again, thank God for early morning training sessions.

 

Thankfully, next weekend is a four-day weekend.  The other lieutenant and I will be going to Kanazawa to hike Hakusan (Mount Doom) over the weekend.  That's the first of the three holy mountains.  The goal is to hike Shayol Ghul (Fuji) on 11 August and Erebor (Tateyama) over Labor Day weekend.  It's an aggressive hiking schedule, especially if I get picked up for the August course in Alabama (15-25 August), but so be it.  The quest begins!

[mightstone2k]

In my quest to be a better lawyer, I finally sat down and set up some Lexis alerts.  A few searches related to military justice, criminal procedure, and the fundamental right to marry will be run every Saturday, and updates will come my way.  The first two are for my job, and the last for an article idea.  Woot.  Last night's farewell dinner went well, although I ended up drinking more than I expected.  We finished the night at a small bar, and my friend's Japanese girlfriend translated our drink orders.  I ordered a double of bourbon (neat), and got two glasses.  We all assumed that the bartender understood "double" to mean "two singles," which would not be the most bizarre lost in translation moment we've seen.  Nope.  Turns out he gave me two doubles.  So I drank four shots of bourbon in about thirty minutes.  I was slow and lethargic this morning, and my training session turned into a light day.  It went pretty well, actually.  Much better focus on power breathing and bracing in the shadow swings, and I felt better walking away from the gym.  Hung over training:  an integral part of every successful person's regimen.

[Kishi]

On ‎6‎/‎24‎/‎2017 at 5:03 AM, mightstone2k said:

They are tasty, but I have no idea how he got 12 bars out of a single batch.

 

Looking at the picture, it looks like they're kind of bite-sized to start with. They look dense, but it doesn't look like they get a long of length or width.

 

On ‎6‎/‎25‎/‎2017 at 1:18 AM, mightstone2k said:

Hung over training:  an integral part of every successful person's regimen.

 

Hang cleans are better hungover. True story.

[The Most Loathed]

On 6/24/2017 at 4:03 AM, mightstone2k said:

So I spent my morning practicing law, which is a rare feeling.  Granted, I was doing it at Streamer over a mint mocha.  But it was still practicing law.  I'm researching things other than Air Force Instructions for once.  Anyway...

Food is my other passion.  I love to cook.  I don't know the secrets to being a master chef, but I like making things that taste good and fill me up.  I'm getting better at ad-libbing when I need to, like this week (more on that below).  And I like to read.  I'm nearly done with the Civil War, and then I can start diving into other topics.  Classic fiction, C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton (I like my theology with a British gentleman undertone), maybe some more history.  My brain is tired of history for now.  More of Pavel's stuff.  I need to discipline myself with the internet though.  I have a bad habit of scrolling through things on my phone that I don't actually care about, but occupy my time .....

 

I will be totally honest in saying that I didn't totally follow the lawyer bit. However, these sentiments, I 100% get. I don't actually know what I am, professionally speaking, but I know how it feels to practice my craft versus not. I know how good if feels when a project lines up perfectly with your interests and skills but also demands a little more of you. I, as a rule, don't work overtime but there are times when I want to just keep working. Generally I still force myself to shut down for the day but I'll make little excuses to look up and learn related things in my personal time and bring those back to work. I also know about the long stretches on motivational wasteland that can come in between those. 

 

I've also kind of built up a library or outside interests. One of the greatest challenges, I've found, is grooming that list. I used to spend tens of hours playing boardgames, learning about them, thinking about them. If I wasn't cooking or working out, that's probably what I was doing. There came a point where they were less of life and less of my interest and I had fade them out a bit to make room for other things. They aren't gone but I had to make deliberate and sometimes unhappy choices to refocus on other things. Maybe there will be time when I pull them back forward.

 

It's my opinion that the deliberateness and the recognition of ones limitations is key. I see lots of nerds on here, trying to do everything, read the books, watch the shows, learn crafts, work, have a family and so on. They're constantly dissatisfied because they aren't doing enough of anything to sate the hunger but they're unwilling to put something on the shelf to make that happen.

 

I have the phone thing too. I'm pretty convinced that the modern cellphone is just a time-sink. Almost no one is doing anything when they look at their phone, they're mindlessly scrolling Facebook or Twitter, clicking on a game and so on. I'm not special, I do it to. So I try to keep my phone pretty lean, few to no games. If I pull it out I need to have a purpose in mind. The expectation I make is on the train, I let myself zone out there but even there I could probably do better.