I've been going to the Pentagon Athletic Center (PAC) gym almost every weekday for the past year and a half. It would be interesting if I had the data to plot a histogram of topics I've overheard in the men's locker room showers. If I were playing Family Feud and had to guess what the top topics were, then my guesses would be:
1. How far did you run today?
2. Where did you run today?
3. How hot or cold was it outside today?
4. What muscle group did you work on today?
5. Military career milestones - are you screened for command / when are you going to command?
6. Orders - as in, when are you going to Permanent Change of Station (PCS)? Where are you PCSing to?
I suspect that would cover about 80 to 90% of the conversations I hear in the gym and in the locker room. Once in a while, you'll hear two friends talking about their kids or families.
This week I heard an outlier for the histogram...
Two guys in the shower were talking about the musical Annie.
Then one of them spontaneously burst out singing one of the songs from Annie.
In the shower.
In the men's locker room.
In the Pentagon.
Surrounded by a bunch of other naked men.
Odd.
Felt like I had stepped into another dimension. Is the TARDIS around the corner?
What's the craziest thing you've overheard in the locker room?
Monday, February 16, 2015
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Blog Celebrity and Defunct Blog Rolls
It doesn't happen often, but I am occasionally surprised to meet a stranger who says, "Hey, I read your blog!" I recently had a fellow Navy officer come to my office for a meeting, and he recognized one of the framed pictures over my desk that was also posted on my blog. He told me when he received orders to PCS to the Pentagon, one of the Navy officers in his new office sent him an email with a link to my "Pentagon Gouge." Wow! I'm honored to be included in the unofficial Pentagon welcome aboard packet, and glad to know some have found the information I've shared here to be useful.
That gave me a nudge that I should get back in the habit of sharing things on my blog that may be of use to folks working in the Pentagon or the National Capital Region in general.
To that end, please tell me (comment or email), how do you keep up on your blog reading? For me, I used to have a long list of blogs I read on Google Reader. I was out at sea when Google Reader went away, and I just never recovered or reconstituted any means of keeping up to date on all the blogs I used to read. How do you do it? I know I keep up to date on a lot of things via Facebook. Maybe I should change this into a Facebook page. What do you think?
That gave me a nudge that I should get back in the habit of sharing things on my blog that may be of use to folks working in the Pentagon or the National Capital Region in general.
To that end, please tell me (comment or email), how do you keep up on your blog reading? For me, I used to have a long list of blogs I read on Google Reader. I was out at sea when Google Reader went away, and I just never recovered or reconstituted any means of keeping up to date on all the blogs I used to read. How do you do it? I know I keep up to date on a lot of things via Facebook. Maybe I should change this into a Facebook page. What do you think?