Saturday, January 25th, 2014.
The weekend. Oh fucking boy.
I'm gonna go off on a bit of a tangent here, so bear with me, but I personally never understood the hype behind weekends. Back in America, all my co-workers and men would be pumped up for the weekends. Even in school, we had this whole thing, a meme, you could even say, where whenever it was Friday, my classmates would all chant "TGIF!" which stood for "Thank God it's Friday!" It continued even into my time at Hargrave, my military college that I graduated from, and into my career as both an Army officer and a Navy officer. My men and other soldiers would always look forward to the weekends so that they could have barbeques, drink themselves silly drunk, socialize, and just act like normal human beings having a good time. For that, I can understand. War is stressful - people need an outlet to let loose so that they don't drive themselves nuts from the burdens that they have to carry. But as much as I understand the logic behind the hype for the weekends, I personally never managed to bring myself to enjoy them as much as other people have. Yeah, sure, weekends mean generally less work (not always applicable, though), chill time, and at least some amount of respite from the dizzying burdens of real life, but even still, I don't really know. Is it because I don't really get the whole meaning of socializing? 'Cause I think I've said this before, I don't have a lot of friends, nor am I interested in making a lot of friends - I'm just not that kind of gregarious human being. Or is it because I've just been jaded too much in my work that weekends just feel like just another day at the office or on the battlefield? Eh, I don't know. Things like these - just better not to dwell on for too long. It's good to gloss over 'em, make sure that you know exactly where you stand and you're not getting sidetracked or something, but it's not healthy if you keep thinking about it to the point where you really don't know anything anymore. It's like what they say in Saya no Uta, too much oxygen and it poisons your brain.
Well, that being said, paperwork was rather light today, being Saturday and all. I debated whether I wanna treat weekends like they do in school, just have no missions and instead focus on training and drilling. But because we did skip a mission earlier this week, I still sent some of the girls on a sortie. But we'll talk about that a little later.
Good news: Kirishima and Murakumo were released from the infirmary today. They're still in no condition to sortie, but Akashi told me that after this weekend that they should take to rest, they should be good to go. Kirishima apologized for not being in battle-ready condition just yet, but I told her not to sweat it. Sending them out to fight when they're in a weakened state is never a viable military tactic to begin with.
The only time you ever do that as an officer is when you know the war's already lost. They don't teach you that in military school - you have to learn it yourself. The hard way.
Meanwhile, Murakumo's still all like, yeah, whatever. Figures, at least Murakumo's back to her old usual self.
Shipments of supplies arrived, and in the middle of the morning, Ooyodo came in and delivered a small cardboard box for me. At first I was confused when I saw it, because I didn't immediately remember me ordering anything personally, but as soon as I saw the packing peanuts, I knew what it was. So I got up and went to the destroyers' dorm and put the new laptop on Fubuki's desk and went back to my office. Ooyodo asked me what that was all about, so I explained the situation to her, how I bought a laptop for Fubuki and the other destroyers to use to watch anime and do other stuff. Ooyodo didn't really react positively to that. She warned me that by doing so, I'd be setting myself up to drop even more money on the other destroyers who'd inevitably be jealous and also want laptops of their own. I told Ooyodo real simply that if it came down to that, I'd talk to the girls myself, and that what I did with my own money was my own business.
After getting the morning paperwork done, I had some time before lunch, so I continued work on the comprehensive program report. It's actually going a lot more smoothly than I thought. Like I said, I'll include a copy of the report in the journal here...question is, though, how. Maybe a Word document and save it on a small flash drive and stick it in here? Nah, I don't like that, to be honest. I'll just stick some papers in here - it's no big deal.
Ooyodo gave me the shipment invoice for today's supplies that got flown in before lunch, and the construction supplies for the new dockyards arrived. There was a handwritten note on the backside of the invoice, telling me that HQ would send some guys over to handle the plumbing and everything, so we just need to do the cosmetic stuff. Fine by me - I was wondering how the fuck we'd even pull off building a bathhouse in the first place, because I sure don't have any advanced temp or building experience or knowledge, and I'd bet none of the girls do either.
So here's the embarrassing part for today. During lunch, while we were eating, Fubuki burst into the mess hall by slamming the doors open, and everyone looked over like what the absolute fuck is wrong with you. She dashed over to me, while I'm eating lunch with Samidare and Murakumo, and here's the thing: the mess hall is actually really, really big, so it took her a few moments to actually run over to our table. She slammed her hands down on our table right next to me and screamed,
"YOU ACTUALLY BOUGHT ME A COMPUTER!?"
I swear to God her yell made my naval cap fall off.
So I told her, uh, yeah, I did, I told you about it, remember? But Fubuki didn't believe me. Apparently there was something in the back of her head that convinced her that I wouldn't actually buy her a brand new spanking laptop to watch anime on, no fucking way. So when she had gone to her dorm right before lunch and opened the box that I had left on her desk, she flipped the fuck out.
I've never seen a girl like Fubuki, with her gentle personality and reserved manners, freak out so wildly like that in my life. Like, holy shit.
So that immediately caused a shitstorm in the mess hall. The rowdier ship girls all rose up and hurried over to me, demanding me why I was showing favoritism to Fubuki and buying her a new laptop for apparently no reason. It was like Ooyodo had predicted - well, not exactly, per se, but they were definitely upset with the fact that I got something for Fubuki and not for everyone. So I had to try 'n explain my way out of getting absolutely hated, saying that the laptop wasn't necessarily completely Fubuki's to own, but that I bought it with the intention of letting Fubuki have it to share with the other destroyers. But that made Kitakami complain about the light cruisers, since the destroyers have a complete dormitory to themselves due to the sheer amount of them, while the light cruisers and heavy cruisers had to share a dorm. They wouldn't just be able to walk over to the destroyers' dorm just to go watch anime with them, even though those two dorms are basically right next to each other.
Soooooooooooo now I have to get the exact same one for the light cruisers to share with the heavy cruisers, and one for the capital ships to share amongst themselves. Goddamn it. I immediately regret my purchase.
No, actually, I don't regret it. I certainly should've seen this coming, but even still, I think it's worth it. These girls don't really have many options for entertaining themselves here at base - it's pretty bare, to be honest, and I don't really know how they pass their free time to begin with. Maybe cards, board games - I saw Kitakami and Ooi playing some ratslap (I think they were playing something like ratslap, it was some kind of two-player card game), but not really anything electronic-based. And seeing that this base has god-tier Internet (it kinda has to, it's a military base for God's sake), having a lot of computers hooked up to it wouldn't be a big deal. Memories of old-school LAN parties come to mind back from late high school.
After sending some of the girls on a sortie (just another relatively safe recon mission), I called Mamiya, Irako, and Houshou together again (I wasn't planning on sending Houshou out on sortie today anyway), and we spent the entire afternoon until the girls came back from sortie discussing where we'd put the dockyards. Eventually we decided on sticking it close by the dorms so that the girls could dock, repair, and go back to their dorms easily. In fact, that way, it's basically right in between the mess hall and the dorms, so it's super convenient for everyone. The only inconvenient thing that I can think of with our layout for the dockyards is that it's a bit far from Shinsengumi, so if the girls get out of the bath and wanna head over for a late night snack or drink, it might not be the best feeling in the world knowing that you'd have to walk a bit further to get there. But hey, at that point it's my duty as a military officer to tell the girls "Just deal with it". I mean, I'm paid to say that after all.
The girls came back with no injury again, so that was great. After they demobilized, I called everyone to my office again and told them that I was going to send the naval personnel request to HQ, and because I didn't really know who to request, I was open to suggestions from everyone else. Not surprisingly, everyone requested ship girls from their own classes. Ooi, naturally, didn't want anyone to be requested, for fear someone might steal away her precious Kitakami. Seriously, she needs to get over that. Since HQ didn't specify any limit to the amount of ship girls I could request, I just listed them all, and they were:
(DD) Suzukaze
(DD) Ushio
(DD) Oboro
(DD) Akebono
(DD) Ikazuchi
(DD) Akatsuki
(DD) Hibiki
(SS) I-19
(SS) I-8
(SS) I-158
(SS) I-401
(CA) Atago
(BB-X) Kongou
(BB-X) Haruna
(BB-X) Hiei
(CVN) Hiryuu
Those were the ones who were requested directly by the ship girls themselves. To this I added a few of my own:
(DD) Shiratsuyu
(DD) Shigure
(DD) Murasame
(DD) Yuudachi
(CL) Yahagi
(CL) Kiso
(CA) Ashigara
(CA) Maya
(CA) Choukai
(BB) Yamato
(BB) Musashi
(CVL) Hiyou
(CVL) Jun'you
(CVN) Shoukaku
(CVN) Zuikaku
Obviously this's a lot to request, but there wasn't a cap to how many ship girls I could request, so fuck it. I sent the email with this request list over to HQ with that exact disclaimer. It's pretty clear they're not going to send even a fifth of how many are there, because if they sent every single one who's requested here, that would literally triple or even quadruple our current roster. But hey, it's something to look forward to - we'll see what HQ says tomorrow morning.
Nothing else eventful happened the rest of the day after that. After dinner, Fubuki invited me to watch Clannad together, and even though I've already watched Clannad and Clannad Afterstory (hell, I even read through one of the routes of the visual novel, I liked it so much), I didn't mind watching it again. Everyone crowded into Shinsengumi and we watched through half of the first season of Clannad while eating Hakata ramen and chugging Ramune and sweet blueberry tea. The laptop screen wasn't too big - it only had a thirteen or fourteen inch screen, but that didn't stop us from watching.
So now I'm thinking about installing a projector somewhere in Houshou's izakaya so that the next time we do that, we have a projector that'll display the laptop screen for everyone to see better. That probably means an extra hundred or two hundred dollars...but oh well. I don't really spend the money that I earn from work all that much anyway - I'm one of those hoarders who just sticks all his paychecks right in the bank after he gets it and sits on all that saved money. At least this whole thing gives me an excuse to dig through some of that cash.
I've been hanging out a lot with Batsubyou lately. Even though I'm still kind of pissed at him for knocking over that glass of tea the other day, I still like scratching his head, and he still likes sneaking into my room. I'll have to take him back to Error though before I go to sleep, and I'm not looking forward to Error potentially scratching my sleeve with her sharp fingernails. She really needs to cut them.