I’m really sure how this happens, but it seems that every night after work I’ll head down to my house, make some dinner, relax, and flip on the tv to CNN to catch up with what’s going on in the world. After that I’ll usually make my way up to another staff house on the property and hang out for bit, maybe a game of darts if everyone’s feeling a bit competitive.

It’s at this point when someone will ask what time it is. The next comment usually goes something like this. “You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s only 6:15 pm.” Back home after I left work, ate some dinner, and watched some tv it was around 9 pm. Here it’s very different. I don’t know if it’s because we all live on the base and can walk to our homes so we don’t lose time in the commute home, but most of the time we’re all looking for something new to do by 7 at night. We can’t run into town to hang out at Starbucks and the closest movie theater is an hour away, so we are simply here on the base with each other trying to amuse ourselves.

The only nights the TV can save us are Tuesday’s and Saturday’s. On Tuesday’s we have Survivor, CSI, 24 (actually, 24 just ended last week for us over here so now that’s out.) Then on Saturday there’s Overhaulin, Mythbusters, and The Deadliest Catch. On the other nights we’ll either talk shop, throw in a DVD movie, or watch some episodes of season 1 of the West Wing that I brought over.

At first it was pretty annoying, but now it feels more like a blessing because the days seem longer. More time to work, hangout, and watch movies.