I am officially Not a Criminal Pervert.

At least, in the state of New Jersey.

Went to the realtor's last night for my credit check. Turns out my credit score is like 40 points higher than the last time I got it checked- I have a service w/my credit card company where I get my credit report four times a year. At the same time they scanned my credit history they scanned my residential history, which I had written down differently on the lease form 'cos my college dorms were never my legal residence, but they also scanned the NJ state sex offender database. Since I wasn't there, I am officially not a criminal pervert.

I gave them three pay stubs to photocopy and a photocopy of my latest W-2; the building people wanted to see 'two or three' pay stubs or two W-2s. Since I just changed jobs in October, I felt that indicating level of income might make up a bit for the lack of employment history at this job. The realtor says he thinks this will be more than enough.

Now I wait to hear from the building company and talk to them about when I can a) see the lease and b) sign the lease. I won't be able to sign until Sunday at the earliest, 'cos they want two and a half months' rent up front and I get paid on Sunday. I have two months' rent in the bank but I need that extra half-month, y'know? At least the last tenant is paying the realtor fee. That makes me happy.

From here it is a matter of renting a U-Haul truck and getting a day off to move, since there is a move-in fee of $300 for weekdays and $500 for weekends. You do the math. I have driven box trucks before, so unless U-Haul's trucks differ from the one I drove in Florida, that should be all right. Dad won't be able to take time off to move stuff, though, and Mom's still on crutches. I don't suppose people on my friendslist who live in the area might be available sometime around 1 Feb or the same week...?

EEEEEE!

I just realised... if my father can't have time off to help me move, then...

I GET! TO RENT! A TRUCK!!!

U-haul is right near my parents' house. I can drive anything up to and including a 24-foot basic truck- I did it for the Red Cross for three weeks, after all. I can pack everything into the truck and then figure out what to do with it all.

But I get to rent a truck!

(no subject)

Long as I remember
The rain been coming down.
Clouds of myst'ry pouring
Confusion on the ground.
Good men through the ages,
Trying to find the sun;
And I wonder,
Still I wonder,
Who'll stop the rain...

Well, it looks as if I just might get home in time for my niece's birth after all.

Close to it, anyway. The colonel said they were going to try and get me sent back to the States by next Thursday, which is pretty close to my sister-in-law's due date. There's no guarantee, of course, but they've already extended my tour in the sandbox twice. They can't really justify extending it any longer. (Well, they could, but there are other guys they'd rather keep over here. One chaplain more or less isn't going to make that much difference.) As long as nothing goes catastrophically wrong on Sunday, and I mean really catastrophically wrong, like whole-city-goes-boom kind of catastrophic, I'll be on a plane bound for Fort Dix sometime next Thursday.

They tell me it's been snowing back in Jersey, which should be entertaining. I haven't lived in that state in years, but I don't think the people there ever learned to drive. If the ground's still white when I get there I'm going to talk to someone about 'borrowing' something with treads on. I don't trust Jersey drivers. They're almost as bad as the drivers in Boston. About the only difference is that the ones in New Jersey don't usually go up on the sidewalk when they're impatient. I don't know why my brother Doug and his wife still live there- I mean, Patty's family is all in Pennsylvania, and the rest of our family's in New York and Connecticut- but they're the closest family I've got to my point of return, so I'll be staying with them when I get back.

I expect to get a phone call while I'm stateside, of course. Wouldn't be too surprised if I get shipped to Korea at the end of my leave. I won't mind, the cold should make a nice change from what we get over here in the sandbox. And I can read a little Han'gul. My Arabic stinks- Dr. Laing back at the seminary would probably kill me for saying so, but it's true. Hebrew? Yeah, I can read that, speak a little too. Aramaic? Bring it on. Arabic? ... not so good. The reading is okay, but the spoken, no. I've tried, I really have, but I can't hear the spaces between the words when it's spoken to me, and the accent I learned to use in school doesn't seem to be comprehensible here. Maybe it's the local dialect or something. I understand there are problems like that with Italian. I can guess what people are saying really, really well, but I can't hold anything like a proper conversation unless you allow pantomime. I'm told this actually made me popular with the local kids. They think I'm a clown.

There are worse things for a soldier to be mistaken for.

Anyway, just thought I'd keep you posted. I'm almost out of computer time. There's been a lot of guys who need to talk to me lately, between the improv explosives and the chopper crash and everything else. I'm almost starting to wish I'd stuck around to get my doctorate before going to St. Andrew's, I could at least, you know, write them a prescription or something...

I know, I know. They don't need drugs. They need to talk. And they don't need to talk to me so much as they need to talk to what I represent, and I can live with that. It's just that sometimes I kind of wonder, you know- what if things had been different, huh? Almost as soon as I knew what a priest's collar meant, I knew I wanted to be one, and as soon as I knew why we always took Grandpa out for dinner on Veteran's Day I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I don't think there was ever any doubt in my mind that I'd find a way to combine the two. It's not a bad job, being the Catholic chaplain for my unit, but sometimes I kind of wonder how I would have reacted if it had been derailed somewhere along the way. If I'd gone for more sports in college. If I'd taken that advanced physics class, or the international health course instead of the one in linguistics. If I'd gone to a different high school. If I'd been born a girl. Who'd be here to help these guys out? Someone else? Anyone at all? You never know. One change, changes everything else...

Anyway. Gotta go. Someone else wants the machine. More when I can manage it.

Ch (CPT) Matthew Brian Carter
US Army
The Other Side of the Rabbit Hole